Twilight Robbery aka Fly Trap

by Frances Hardinge

  Twilight Robbery aka Fly Trap

  Frances Hardinge

  Mosca Mye and Eponymous Clent are in trouble again. Escaping disaster by the skin of their teeth, they find refuge in Toll, the strange gateway town where visitors may neither enter nor leave without paying a price. By day, the city is well-mannered and orderly; by night, it's the haunt of rogues and villains. Wherever there's a plot, there's sure to be treachery, and wherever there's treachery, there's sure to be trouble – and where there's trouble, Clent, Mosca and the web-footed apocalypse Saracen can't be far behind. But as past deeds catch up with them and old enemies appear, it looks as if this time there's no way out…

  Frances Hardinge

  Twilight Robbery aka Fly Trap

  The second book in the Fly by Night series, 2011

  To Martin, for being my partner in crime, fellow adventurer and one true love, and for being wiser than anybody has a right to be

  Goodman Springzel, Bringer of Surprises

  ‘Read the paper for you, sir?’

  One small voice strove against the thunder of rain, the shuffle and huff of the passing mules, the damp flap of canvas as the last sodden stallholders gave up their fight against the dismal weather. Market day was coming apart like a biscuit in coffee, fragments of it running for cover with trays and baskets held over their heads.

  ‘Oi! Gentlemen! Read the paper for you?’

  The two farmers that had been hailed hurried on, without looking up to see where the voice came from. And so they did not notice a small figure that had found, if not shelter, at least a place where the rain simply pelted her instead of pummelling her. The upper storeys of the courthouse, debtors’ prison and magistrates house all jutted themselves forward like three frowning foreheads, and beneath this the figure hunched against the wall, bowing so as to shield a crumpled, sodden copy of a much-travelled Pincaster Gazette from the worst of the rain. Small wonder that the poor Gazette drooped so forlornly. Even in the cities reading was a rare talent, and here in the little sheep-farming town of Grabely none of the inhabitants could read the tiniest tittle.

  The rain washed people, stalls and barrows from the market square, leaving only that one figure like a particularly

  stubborn stain. Drips fell from the tip of a pointed nose. Beneath a drooping bonnet with a frayed brim, hair spiked and straggled like a tempest-tossed blackbird’s nest. An olive-green dress two sizes too big was hitched at the waist and daubed knee high in thick yellow mud. And behind the clinging strands of damp hair two large black eyes glistened like coal and gave the marketplace a look that spoke of coal’s grit, griminess and hidden fire.

  This shivering, clench-jawed scrap of damp doggedness had a name, and that name was Mosca Mye. ‘Mosca’ meant fly, a housefly name well suited to one born on an evening sacred to Palpitattle, He Who Keeps Flies out of Jams and Butterchurns. It was a name that would have been recognized in her home village, where a number of people would have had questions to ask about the burning of a mill, the release of a notorious felon and the theft of a large and savage goose. In Mandelion, a city port to the west, a well-informed few would have known her name, and how it fitted into the tale of conspiracy, murder, river battles and revolution that had turned the city upside down and shaped it anew.

  Three months had now passed since the gates of Mandelion closed behind Mosca. Those three months had brought in winter, eaten the soles of her shoes to a paper thinness, pinched her cheeks, emptied her purse and, most importantly of all, used up her last ounce of patience with her travelling companion.

  ‘Mosca?’ A faint, querulous voice sounded behind her, rather like that of a dying great-aunt. ‘If you do not wish me to perish from want, you might try to use a little charm. The flower girls manage to coo or sing their wares – they do not shriek like an attacking hawk.’

  The voice came from a narrow, barred window set in the wall of the debtors’ prison. Peering in, Mosca could just make out a ponderous figure lying in its shirtsleeves upon a bed of straw. The man in question had allowed a tragic and injured expression to settle upon his plump face, as if it was he and not Mosca who was braving the elements. His coat, wig and pocket-watch chain had all been sold, leaving his much-patched waistcoat on display. Eponymous Clent, poet extraordinaire, word-wizard laureate and eternal bane of all those mean-minded enough to expect him to pay his bills. Once upon a time Mosca had thought it a good idea to continue travelling with him instead of settling in Mandelion. They shared a love of words, a taste for adventure and a dubious relationship with the truth, but such common ground can take two people only so far – and it was starting to seem as if it would take them to Grabely and no further.

  ‘What’s your charm done for us, Mr Clent?’ snapped Mosca through her teeth. ‘Why don’t you charm your way out of that cell? Why don’t you charm us some dinner?’

  ‘She mocks me,’ murmured Clent with a maddening air of stoic forgiveness. ‘It is her nature. Those of tottering intellect and meagre spirit always turn against their best friends and protectors as soon as they face real hardship. She cannot help it, Fates.’ He sighed. ‘Madam, you might reflect upon the fact that you at least have your liberty.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s lovely out here.’ Mosca glared up at the louring sky of her liberty. ‘If I was any freer, I’d have influenza already.’

  ‘Or,’ Clent continued with a hint of bitterness, ‘you might reflect on the reason I find myself thus incommoded. After all, you would insist on bringing him into this accursed town.’

  Mosca made a crab-apple face, but here sadly Clent had a point. If it had not been for her, Saracen would not have been with them. For a good deal of her childhood Saracen had been the orphaned Mosca’s only friend and ally, and so she had taken him with her when she fled her damp and miserable home village. Since then she had resisted all Clent’s attempts to sell him, lose him or lure him into a pie-case. Mosca usually kept Saracen on a muzzle and leash, but on their first night in Grabely a laughing ostler had made the mistake of assuming that if something waddles it is funny, and that if it is funny then it is harmless, and that if it is harmless there is nothing to be lost by removing its muzzle…

  Clent had been thrown into the debtors’ prison due to his inability to pay for the resultant damage to the inn. The ostler, who was somewhat damaged himself, was carried off demanding that Saracen be put in the stocks (into which his wings would hardly have fitted) and that he be publicly flogged (which nobody seemed willing to attempt). And by the time the townspeople had collected their courage and an array of long sharp objects, Saracen had escaped into the countryside.

  Since that time Saracen had been making a name for himself. That name was not ‘Saracen’. Indeed the name was more along the lines of ‘that hell-fowl’, ‘did-you-see-what-it-did-to-my-leg’, ‘kill-it-kill-it-there-it-goes’ or ‘what’s-that-chirfugging-goose-done-now’. Every time Mosca begged, stole or earned almost enough to pay off Clent’s debt, another bruised and bleeding farmer would limp into town to report a shattered roof or a stunned mule, Clent would be blamed for Saracen’s doings and they would find themselves right back where they started.

  ‘Naturally I would earn our way if I could,’ continued Clent in the same dolorous tone, ‘but since the Stationers stopped buying my poetry… what am I to do?’

  Although nobody usually admitted it, everybody knew that between them the powerful guilds that represented the main professions and crafts of the land held the country together. The formidable Guild of Stationers controlled the printing of all books in the Realm, and burned any book they considered dangerous. Most people were glad to leave them to this, for it was believed that reading the wrong book could drive you mad. T
he Stationers appeared the lesser of two evils, albeit one with a tendency to correct your grammar while burning your neighbours. Clent had once worked as a spy for the Stationers, and it was on their orders that he had travelled to Mandelion with Mosca at his heels. The Stationers had not, however, ordered him to help overthrow the city’s government, and had been unamused by Mosca and Clent’s involvement in Mandelion’s revolution. Over the last three months they had shown their lack of amusement by refusing to buy any of Clent’s work, not so much as a limerick.

  ‘Why do you not cut off my hand if you will not let it write?’ Clent had railed at them. ‘Why not cut off my head if you will not let it dream?’

  ‘Don’t think it wasn’t considered, Mr Clent,’ had been the curt response.

  Remembering all this did nothing to improve Mosca’s mood. At the moment the most marketable commodity Mosca owned were her eyes – and the fact that she and Clent were the only people in Grabely who knew how to read. Newspapers sometimes washed up in Grabely, declarations and wanted posters were pinned to the door of the courthouse by the decree of the nearest cities, but they might have been covered in bird footprints for all the sense the inhabitants could make of them. And so every day for the last two weeks Mosca had been standing in the square offering to read newspapers, letters, wanted posters and pamphlets to anyone who would pay her a penny. Mosca had always felt a passionate hunger for the books everyone else feared, but right now most of her waking thoughts were taken up with a far more ordinary sort of hunger.

  Most people were interested in the copy of the Gazette, of course, wanting to hear more of the strange rebel town of Mandelion that had overthrown its duke and, with a reformed highwayman as its leader, still held out against the disapproval of its neighbours. Unfortunately after the first week there was nobody in town who had not heard every word in the newspaper, so Mosca had started making up more stories, and she was afraid that people were beginning to notice.

  ‘Try calling out again, this time in a sweeter manner…’

  ‘There’s nobody here!’ exploded Mosca. ‘There’s nobody on the blinkin’ streets! Nobody wants to know how the world’s going! I’m sellin’ the news to the bleedin’ pigeons! There’s nobody – oh, hang on…’

  A serving man had just come out of the courthouse, staring in confusion at a poster in his hand, before pinning it against the door, upside down. When official declarations and bills were sent to Grabely, the local magistrate always ordered them to be posted outside his courthouse in the approved fashion, despite the fact that even he had no idea what they said.

  ‘Mister! Mister! Do you want me to read that for you? Mister! Only a penny!’

  The man looked at her, then swept his wet hair out of his eyes.

  ‘All right.’ He tossed a penny. ‘Just the gist. Make it snappy.’

  Mosca tilted herself so her head was almost inverted, gripping her bonnet as she did so.

  ‘It’s a…’ Unlike every other ounce of Mosca, her mouth was suddenly dry. ‘It’s… It’s an announcement of a… new… tax… on… table legs.’

  ‘Table legs!’ The man swore, and turned up his collar. ‘’Twas only a matter of time, I suppose,’ he muttered as he clipped off down the street.

  Mosca turned back to the poster and gaped at it white-faced. What it actually said was this:

  Eponymous Clent – Wanted for thirty-nine cases of fraud, counterfeiting, selling and circulating lewd and unlicensed literature, claiming to be the impecunious son of a duke, impersonating a magistrate, impersonating a horse doctor, breach of promise, forty-seven moonlit flits without payment of debts, robbing shrines, fleeing from justice before trial, stealing pies from windows and small furniture from inns, fabricating the Great Palthrop Horse Plague for purposes of profit, operating a hurdy-gurdy without a licence. The public are advised against lending him money, buying anything from him, letting him rooms or believing a word he says. Contrary to his professions, he will not pay you the day after tomorrow.

  Eponymous Clent was known in the debtors’ prison by his real name. That had been unavoidable.

  Nobody ever did lie about their name, not least for fear of angering their patron Beloved. The Beloved were the little gods everybody trusted to take care of running the world, keeping clouds afloat, hens laying and dust out of babies’ eyes. There were far too many Beloved for each to have a whole day of the year sacred to them, and so instead every little god had to make do with a fraction of a day or night. If you were born in an hour sacred to a particular Beloved, it became your patron god, and you were given one of the names linked to that god. Everybody agreed that your name was who you were, your destined, god-given nature. Lying about it was as unthinkable as slapping a god in the face or trying to glue a new soul into your body.

  Clent had been named ‘Eponymous’ because he had been born under Phangavotte, He Who Smooths the Tongue of the Storyteller and Frames the Legendary Deed. While he was shameless enough to impersonate anything from a High Constable to a hedgehog, even Clent would not lie about his name. And so, sooner or later, somebody else who could read would turn up in Grabely and look at the poster, maybe read it aloud…

  ‘Oh muckbuckle,’ muttered Mosca. ‘We’re sunk.’

  And then, not for the first time, it occurred to her that only Clent need sink, and that she did not have to be aboard when it happened.

  The thunder of the rain hid the clatter of clog on cobble as she ran along this wall and that, making her way towards the easterly road. It did not take long. The town was tiny, and soon her clogs were squishing into mud. The houses fell back, and she was gasping and sneezing and gazing out along a barren dirt track ribboning across the grey heath.

  Ranged along the road like a rough-cut welcoming committee were Grabely’s statues of some of the Beloved. These particular Beloved were hacked and hewn from wood, which the water glossed to a slick, dark red. Greyglory with his sword, Halfapath brandishing a sextant, Tombeliss beating on his drum.

  The morning had been sacred to Goodlady Emberleather, She Who Prevents the Meat from Becoming Chewy and Unwholesome. The hours between noon and dusk on this day of the year, however, were devoted to Goodman Springzel, He Who Tips Icewater Down the Collar and Hides the Pearl in the Oyster, the Beloved in charge of surprises both good and ill. Somebody had placed a crude wreath of leaves around his statue’s neck to show that this was his sacred time.

  Like everybody else, Mosca had been brought up worshipping the Beloved. Every habit of her mind told her that she needed to perform little gestures of respect to these miniature gods, in order to ward off disasters great and small. But, wondered her fierce, rebellious, practical mind, what happens if I don’t?

  Mosca’s mother had died in childbirth, and thus the only parent she had ever known had been her father, the studious and uncompromising Quillam Mye. He had died when she was eight, leaving her an orphan. Some remembered him as a great thinker, and a hero in the fight against the murderous Birdcatchers, who had ruled the Realm for a few bloody years. However, the wild and radical views on equality that filled his later books had seen him exiled, spending his last years in the miserable backwater village of Chough, where his daughter was born and raised. Mosca’s childhood had always been tainted by the villagers’ suspicion of her father. Had they known the full truth of his views, the people of Chough would probably have burned him when he first set foot in the village… for Quillam Mye had secretly been an atheist.

  Ever since discovering the truth of her father’s atheism, Mosca had discreetly stopped nodding to the Beloved’s statues, reciting prayers to calm them or leaving offerings in their tiny shrines. In spite of this it did not seem that rain made her any wetter, or that her milk curdled any faster, or that she was any more prone to attack by wolves.

  And thus she felt no particular qualms about sitting down upon the wide flat head of Goodman Springzel to consider her situation. She took out a wooden pipe and chewed angrily at the stem, but left it empty and unli
t. It was a habit she had developed long ago, whenever she needed to clear her thoughts.

  I’m done with Mr Clent – done for good this time. All I need to do is find Saracen, then I’ll leave that ungrateful old bag of lies to stew in his own juice.

  But where could she run? To the west, back towards Mandelion? It was not that easy. She had friends there… but after the revolution a number of powerful and dangerous people had made it clear that she, Clent and Saracen should leave Mandelion and never come back. Besides, even if she did strike out for the city, she might never reach it. The land around it was starting to sound like a warzone in the making.

  A month ago all the big cities within spitting distance of Mandelion had passed hasty new laws decreeing that nobody was allowed to trade with the rebel city. The idea was to starve them out, but what it really meant was that suddenly all the little towns like Grabely that needed their trade with Mandelion to make ends meet found themselves with meagre market stalls and dwindling granaries. And so some people had decided that life might be better in Mandelion itself and had tried to flee to join the rebels. Now many of the local towns and cities had beadles and other lawmakers patrolling the moors in search of such refugees, ready to drag them back to a worse cell than Clent’s.

  Could she last the winter in one of the nearby towns or villages to the north or south? Unlikely. Soon there would be no more apples to tug off the trees, any hint of good humour and charity would be pinched away by the cold and nobody would pay to have a newspaper read to them. Knowing would become less important than eating.

  Where did houseflies go in the winter?

  ‘They don’t,’ muttered Mosca with her eyes full of water. ‘They jus’ die. Well, squash that for a start.’

  She would go east. Somehow she would find a way across the ‘uncrossable’ River Langfeather that roared through its gorge from the mountains to the sea. She would trudge her way to Chanderind, or Waymakem; everybody said the living was easier there. But how to get past the Langfeather? The only bridge that spanned it for a hundred miles was governed by the town of Toll, and nobody could pass over without paying a fee quite beyond her means.