Fly by Night

by Frances Hardinge

  ‘We cannot dally long,’ whispered Dotheril. ‘We could nudge the bank and buy time that way, but if we did that, there might be a rattling in the . . .’ His eyes dropped pointedly towards the deck.

  Partridge’s mouth twitched once, twice, as if he was trying to crack a tiny nut between his teeth.

  ‘Take up the planks,’ he ordered in an undertone. ‘But if either of you makes a sound, I’ll nail the deck in place above your heads, seal the cracks with pitch, and leave you to your prayers.’

  They had to lever up three planks before Eponymous Clent was able to squeeze through. He disappeared into darkness with a muffled squawk.

  ‘Quiet!’

  ‘Merciless Fates! I would like to see you hold your tongue if you had just taken Good Lady Shempoline in the eye—’

  ‘Silence!’

  Mosca followed her employer into the cramped darkness below the deck. The darkness was almost absolute, apart from a few strands of light visible above between the deck planks. She raised her hand and felt the coarse wooden underside of the deck and wished she hadn’t. It was like finding oneself inside a wooden coffin.

  The voice of the water was now far louder. Here you could hear the thoughts of the barge, how it clicked its tongue in annoyance as the wavelets slapped its flank, how it boomed and droned with effort as it strained against the ropes of the hauliers, the drag of the current.

  A crickle, a crackle. Somewhere not far from Mosca’s head lay Clent’s fistful of papers. Somewhere among them lay the Stationers’ letter. Even the few lines Mosca had read were enough to prove Clent a Stationer spy. This was her chance to gain something that might give her a hold over him. ‘Somink big,’ Palpitattle’s voice echoed in her head. Her long fingers reached out stealthily and touched a papery corner.

  ‘. . . elcome aboard . . . seems to be the probl . . .’ Partridge’s voice from on deck.

  ‘. . . orders of the Duke . . .’ Long-suffering tones from a stranger. ‘Nay, there’s no need to uncover all o’ the bales. If we search every inch of every boat we’ll not see our wives tonight . . .’

  Mosca carefully gripped the paper corner between thumb and fingertips, and started to pull at them. Almost immediately her knuckles took a sharp blow from what felt suspiciously like the knobbled features of Goodlady Agragap, He Who Frightens the Harelip Fairy from the Childbed.

  ‘. . . what are you looking for?’

  ‘. . . oofprints.’

  Mosca’s free hand closed around a bust of Mipsquall, the Patron of High-pitched Winds, and a moment later the saint’s twin horns were jabbed firmly into Clent’s clenched fist.

  ‘. . . what?’

  ‘. . . orders of the Duke. On account of the highwayman Clam Blythe. His Grace has made it known that his loyal people would never harbour such a rogue –’ there was a wealth of weariness and cynicism in these words – ‘so Blythe must be a-comin’ from lands across the river, an’ we’re to stop all boats to look for signs that they’ve given him an’ his men an’ their horses passage across to Mandelion. Hoofprints, dung, signs of horses where there should be none . . .’

  Below deck, stealthy move and countermove had disintegrated into a stifled tug of war. A faint rattle told Mosca that Clent had lost his grip on Goodlady Agragap, and was scrabbling for a new celestial ally. She lashed out, too slowly to prevent him snatching up St Whillmop of the Peaceful Dream. As St Whillmop’s bland and loving features struck Mosca painfully above the eyebrow, she could not help uttering a stifled mewl.

  The conversation on the deck hushed, and feet stirred above, quietly, carefully. The two fugitives froze in the darkness.

  ‘Just the goose puttin’ in his farthing’s worth,’ Partridge declared coolly. Saracen’s flabby steps were just audible above.

  There were a few more affable murmurs, the slap of palm in palm, and then a cry to the hauliers to take up their ropes. The Mettlesome Maid swung back into the current.

  Ten minutes later there was a whisper of foliage against the barge-side and a protest of ropes. Two deck planks were levered hastily, revealing a banner of blue sky and two scarlet faces.

  ‘Out,’ said Partridge.

  The hidden passengers clambered on to the deck, Clent triumphantly clutching his mangled papers to his chest, Mosca gingerly feeling the tender place on her forehead.

  ‘Off,’ said Partridge.

  There was a duet of protest. The land around was a featureless moor of gorse, without even a dirt track to be seen.

  ‘The route’s swarming withWatermen. Ye’ll pay what ye owe now.’ Partridge watched as Clent grudgingly placed a few coins in his hand. ‘And some more for this trouble, now.’

  Clent looked around him at the unsmiling hauliers, and he seemed to be reckoning the odds. His mouth grew as small and round as an unripe plum.

  Before Mosca could react, he had seized her around the middle, pinning her arms to her sides.

  ‘Keep the goose,’ he called over his shoulder, and he bodily dragged his young secretary from the barge, ignoring her kicks and spirited attempts to break his fingers.

  Mosca had time to see Saracen lifting his head quizzically to observe her unceremonious departure, before her bonnet fell over her face again.

  It was five minutes before her weight wearied Clent’s arms, and his ankles tired of her accurate kicks, and he dropped her in a heap amid the bracken. When she found her feet, the wincing sunlight, the ragged gorse and the slow-blinking wings of the moths were witness to an epic Trade in Exotic Terms.

  Mosca’s opening offer was a number of cant words she had heard pedlars use, words for the drool hanging from a dog’s jaw, words for the greenish sheen on a mouldering strip of bacon.

  Eponymous Clent responded with some choice descriptions of ungrateful and treacherous women, culled from ballad and classic myth.

  Mosca countered with some from her secret hoard of hidden words, the terms used by smugglers for tell-alls, and soldiers’ words for the worst kind of keyholestooping spy.

  Clent answered with crushing and high-sounding examples from the best essays on the natural depravity of unguided youth.

  Mosca lowered the bucket deep, and spat out long-winded aspersions which long ago she had discovered in her father’s books, before her uncle had over-zealously burned them all.

  Clent stared at her.

  ‘This is absurd. I refuse to believe that you have even the faintest idea what an “ethically pusillanimous compromise” is, let alone how one would . . .’ Clent’s voice trailed away as his eyes fixed on something beyond Mosca’s shoulder.

  They could hear the racket of crude wheels over rough stones. In the distance, beyond the banks of gorse, could be seen the tottering crest of a high-loaded cart.

  In an instant, the pair abandoned use of their tongues and took to their legs. Through thick grass and ragged brush they plunged after the cart, Mosca with her skirts scooped thigh-high, Clent whistling to catch the driver’s attention.

  The cart was little more than a family of creaks on wheels, bound together with rope. The driver, a tiny, tanned imp of a man, was champing on a piece of bread, leaving the reins slack and trusting his ponderouslooking bay to follow her own head.

  ‘Lookin’ for a lift to Mandelion, are you? Clamber on up if you can find a space. Go easy, though – my wares has teeths, they does.’

  Drawing back the covering cloth, Mosca’s gaze was met by two dozen metal grins, as if the false teeth of a dozen iron beasts had been stolen while they slept.

  ‘Traps. Any kind of traps you needs, I got. Traps for taking the toes off a trespasser, traps for taking the nose off a badger.’

  Mosca replaced the cloth, and nervously clambered up to sit on the assembled heap, hearing the occasional spring sing and jaw snap.

  Traps in Clent’s bed, Mosca thought. Traps in Clent’s soup. She hugged herself into bitter thinness, and said nothing. A Stationer spy would have enemies, she was sure of it. She would bide her time until Mandelion, and the
n somebody would pay good money for what she knew about Clent. And then a purse for her belt, a shilling to buy back Saracen, a fee for the school and a trap, a trap for the Stationer spy . . .

  ‘I makes them all myself, you know. Traps for the belt, in case someone tries to fork you of your purse . . .’

  ‘How ingenious,’ Clent remarked. ‘Have you thought of having posters made? Perhaps making it clear that this is a limited opportunity to buy, since a Coalition of Criminals has declared you their Mortal Foe due to your Effect upon their Livelihoods . . .’

  The little trap-pedlar started to laugh, with a sound like a cat coughing up furballs. ‘Ah now, I does like the way you talks in capitals,’ he remarked. ‘It’s as good as . . . well, now, will you look at that? It’s another of ’em fell foul of the Trollhole.’

  Ahead, the road took a sudden dip. The dip had clearly been rather too sudden for the large wheels of the biggest and most elegant carriage Mosca had ever seen. It blocked the road, tilting in a fashion that could only mean a wheel had come off. Two white horses grazed upon the gorse while two white-clad footmen were stooping to examine the damage. The white box of the carriage perched in fringed splendour on a frame of curling metal tendrils so slender that it almost seemed to float in the air on its own. The entire equipage looked far too fine and fairy-like for the real world, Mosca thought, and the rugged road clearly thought so too.

  ‘Bit of business,’ smiled the pedlar, and lowered himself off the cart.

  The little pedlar, it seemed, fancied that he had the tools to fix the wheel. The footmen were glad to hear this, and agreed with him that he should be paid handsomely for such a service. There was some disagreement as to what constituted ‘handsome’, however. The discussion of the attractiveness of various sums looked set to continue for some time.

  Mosca sighed and Clent blinked as a single raindrop tapped him peremptorily between the eyes. They clambered down from the cart and approached the bargainers.

  ‘For five minutes’ work? That’s daylight robbery!’ the carriage driver was exclaiming.

  ‘Ah,’ Clent intoned ominously, ‘better daylight robbery of this consenting sort than something bloodier, would you not say? After all, you would hardly care to be stranded out here come twilight, what with –’ he paused dramatically – ‘Black Captain Blythe on the loose.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Ah, I dare say you know him by a different name. The Widowmaker, probably.’

  ‘Or the Devil’s Friend,’ Mosca added quickly. A number of eyes turned to her questioningly, two of them belonging to Clent. ‘Yeah, he’s so uncanny with the things he knows, some people say he’s got an imp given him by the Dark Gentleman, who tells him things. Like, when he attacks he always seems to know who’s carrying a pistol, and he shoots them before they can draw.’ She had the satisfaction of seeing the carriage driver and one of the footmen go white. ‘Right through the gullet,’ she added cheerfully.

  Clent raised his eyebrows slightly, and gave the tiniest nod of approval.

  At the carriage window the breeze set a curtain of fine lace quivering as if in alarm. The movement caught Mosca’s attention. A single muddy droplet hung from the top of the window. The wind rolled it gently to and fro, then it became too self-important, and fell. It sank greedily into a sleeve like snow, leaving a spot the colour of coffee. A white handkerchief appeared in a slender, white-gloved hand and smoothed at the stain, smoothed and smoothed until it was no more. Mosca’s gaze followed the glove as it withdrew into the shadow of the carriage, and she looked in on a world of white.

  Until this moment Mosca had thought she understood white. White was old, white was ugly, white was something that had been left in the water too long.

  Until this moment Mosca had thought that she understood riches. Riches was the smell of goose fat, riches was a red roll of fat on belly and jowl that kept out the chill.

  This strange new world held a multitude of clinging raindrops, but each drop was a pearl.

  Mosca had never seen pearls before. And there were so many of them, playing ring-a-lilies across fields of spotless silk, hanging in long strings from the wrist and throat of the carriage’s single occupant.

  A face hung in the darkness, porcelain-pale and perfect. Above it rose an intricate mound of whorls and curls, pinned in place and powdered until the whole might have been carved out of marble. If there had ever been any warmth or expression in the face, it had long since been smoothed away and stifled with powder. And Mosca suddenly understood that real riches was not a roaring fire or a red woollen cloak. Real riches was snow.

  ‘Heatherson, what is wrong?’

  The words were cool, soft, feathery, and Mosca suddenly realized that the woman behind the marble face was young.

  ‘Heatherson, what is happening?’

  The woman leaned forward a little to give herself a better view of the road, and Mosca saw that on the gleaming surface of the lady’s cheek lay a faint lacework of an even more brilliant white. It was a scar, splaying like a snowflake across the lady’s right cheekbone.

  ‘My lady, I think that we might have to . . .’ The driver’s voice trailed away in a sick little hiccup. ‘. . . I think we might . . . I think . . .’

  The discussion around Mosca had stilled. The pedlar no longer chirruped, the footmen no longer grumbled, Clent’s delighted tones no longer painted pictures in the air. The driver above her had raised his hands above his ears. His face was as white as the lace curtain.

  Some four or five men had risen from their hiding places among the gorse. Each held a pistol, carefully trained upon the group around the carriage.

  E is for Extortion

  Mosca had never seen a pistol before, but she had jealously bartered for Hangman’s Histories and Desperate Tales, and had seen woodcuts of highwaymen and murderers. She was a little surprised at how small their pistols were. They had always been drawn large in the pictures to make it clear what they were.

  How strange it was to look down the barrel of a pistol! It was not exactly fear, more a soft shock, like being hit in the stomach with a snowball. She seemed to be able to think quite clearly, but at the same time her thoughts seemed to move so slowly that she could watch them trundle past with a feeling of disinterest.

  Most of the men were young, she noticed with a frosted calm. One of them kept swallowing, as if he was nervous, and adjusting his grip on the pistol. His head kept twitching, as if he was trying to avoid peering over his shoulder, and a moment later she heard what the robber had already heard, the sound of horses’ hoofs. None of the armed men seemed alarmed by the noise. They seemed to expect it.

  A raindrop fell unexpectedly into her eye, and she instinctively reached up to brush it away before she had time to consider how the robbers might react to such a sudden gesture. She froze, her fingers still on her cheek, pins and needles running through her chest in preparation for a hail of bullets. The robbers did not seem to consider the twelve-year-old girl a mortal threat, however. Half of their attention was trained on the coach’s attendants and half upon the man whose head and shoulders now became visible above the bracken, beyond the road’s bend.

  A few moments more, and a sturdy-looking grey turned the corner, dappled like slush. To judge by its panting, it had come some way.

  The rider of the grey was neither tall nor of Fine Athletic Build. Mosca looked in vain for any sign that he was carrying a flageolet or wearing a claret-coloured cape. But no, he was not even wearing a periwig.

  A round-brimmed hat was pulled low on his brow, keeping the wind from his ears. Beneath this, a faint attempt had been made to tie back his ragged hair into a pigtail, but many strands had mutinied. A rough cloak of hessian was flung around him, over his greatcoat.

  His face was a fearful sight. It was a good few moments before Mosca understood the meaning behind his reddened eyes, his drawn-back upper lip and the occasional puckering of his face, and she realized that the highwayman was suffering from a streaming col
d.

  ‘Black Captain Blythe,’ Clent muttered wearily under his breath.

  ‘Take those men off the coach,’ Blythe ordered his men, ‘and turn out their coats.’

  He did not sweep off his hat in greeting.

  ‘Get the passengers out of the coach where we can see them.’

  He did not pass elegant comment on their predicament.

  ‘Take their purses. And their boots. And their wigs.’

  His eye did not twinkle. Mosca started to wonder if he was a real highwayman at all.

  As the coach driver and footmen clambered down to be searched, Blythe’s eye passed questingly over his other prisoners. The quivering trap-seller received a glance of contempt, and Blythe’s gaze slid off Mosca, to rest on Clent.

  ‘You. Open the carriage door and hand the passengers out.’

  Hesitantly, Clent laid his hand upon the carriage door.

  ‘My lady,’ he murmured softly through the window, ‘I fear your presence is required.’

  There was a pause. The moon-like face bloomed into view behind the curtain.

  ‘Do they mean to search us?’ There was no hint of outrage in the woman’s tone. It was simply a question.

  ‘I . . . think so. The captain has many men to pay, and seems too desperate to be nice.’

  ‘Unacceptable.’ The voice was soft, almost childish, but chill with resolution.

  ‘Unavoidable.’

  ‘Anything is avoidable. I have a pocket watch crafted in the shape of a pistol. If I give it to you along with my purse, you might take my money to the brigands’ leader, and then hold the watch against his head until my men are given back their pistols. You would be well rewarded.’

  Clent opened his mouth until it would have taken in a potato, then closed it again.

  ‘My lady, when a man takes a bullet, all the gold thread in the world will not sew him whole again.’