Twilight Robbery

by Frances Hardinge

  ‘I beg pardon, madam, but are you saying that the Lock – forgive me, that they terrify the town with a giant cabbage-eating pantomime horse?’ Clent looked bewildered.

  ‘The vegetables are full of money.’ The midwife’s hand was not quite steady as she refilled the cups. ‘We all pay weekly taxes to them, but the biggest tithe is paid on the night of Yacobray. And if we do not pay it, or do not pay enough . . . then when the horse has passed by, cabbages are not the only thing missing. This is Toll-by-Night, sir. And people disappear in these shadows very easily and very often.’

  ‘What about the Night Steward?’ Mosca asked. ‘Isn’t he in charge?’

  ‘Oh dear, no.’ Mistress Leap shook her head with a sad little smile.

  ‘Wait a moment.’ Mosca narrowed her eyes, remembering Night Steward Foely’s claim that Skellow had not left Toll in two years. ‘Do you think maybe some folks come in and out of Toll sometimes without it showing on the Night Steward’s records?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Mistress Leap nodded. ‘I would certainly think so. After all, when somebody comes in or out there is a toll paid. Every toll the Jinglers report is money that must go to the Treasury . . . and every toll they do not is money they may keep themselves. Now, I do not say a word against them, for they keep order in Toll-by-Night better than anyone else could, but they always have a price. Always. And sometimes a bitter one.’

  ‘So . . . why does anyone stay here?’ Mosca erupted. ‘Why don’t they all get out?’

  ‘Many would if they could,’ answered Mistress Leap, her tone brisk but her eyes still lowered. ‘But it is no easy matter getting out of one of their towns.’ Mosca understood. Once a town or city fell to the Locksmiths, there was precious little chance of seeing the inhabitants again, or guessing what was happening within its walls. ‘Paying your way out of this town at night costs twice what it does by day, and with our taxes there’s no way to save the money. The walls are guarded, and even if you escape the town, they have ways of chasing you down on the moors. Some hang all their hopes on getting the Committee of Hours to reclassify them as dayfolk, so they can escape the night city that way, but I have never known that to happen.

  ‘A few scratch together enough to pay the toll and leave,’ continued the midwife, ‘but for most of us there are only three ways out of Toll-by-Night: a baby can be born to a daylight Beloved and go to live in Toll-by-Day, a person can die and have their coffin dropped into the Langfeather . . . or you can join them. Their agents come and go as they please.’

  But Skellow got out of Toll-by-Night, reflected Mosca. How did he get out and back in again? And . . . why did he get back in at all once he was out? Toll-by-Night does not seem like somewhere you would be if you had a choice.

  ‘But . . . ah . . . surely there must be other ways?’ Clent sipped his tea. ‘If this child and myself can fall into Toll-by-Night by the mere misadventure of staying out too late, why do not bright sparks do the same in reverse? Surely they may hide their badges, or steal some, or make new ones?’

  ‘These things have been tried – of course they have. Sir, I do not think you realize how lucky you have already been in dodging the Jinglers this night. And you would need twice the luck to slip from night to day, for the Jinglers are twice as watchful at dawn as they are at dusk.

  ‘Many have tried to sneak into Toll-by-Day and failed. And even those that have succeeded have all been caught sooner or later. Everybody in Toll-by-Day watches out for folks without badges, and nightlings tend to stand out in the day crowds, what with their sickly look and worn-out clothes. And of course it falls apart the moment somebody asks their name. Then when they are caught the dayfolk hand them back to the Jinglers with the dusk, and after that we never see a hair of them again.’

  Clent’s fingers began their dance over his waistcoat. Evidently it was dawning upon him that, however terrible all this might be for the citizens of Toll-by-Night, it might also currently be fairly terrible for Eponymous Clent. As a matter of fact, she was starting to have similar uneasy suspicions about the prospects of Mosca Mye.

  ‘What about us?’ Mosca asked curtly. ‘We got the right badges for daylight. What happens if we go out on the streets before dawn and just wait?’

  ‘If the Jinglers catch you out on the street between bugles, your badges won’t help you,’ came the answer. ‘Nobody is allowed out then except the Jinglers themselves.’

  ‘Mistress Leap, a child has just been born under Goodlady Twittet, yes?’ Clent’s eyes were sharply speculative. ‘And a babe so born is a passport, as it were, to the world of day. Could you perhaps . . . adjust the paperwork so that myself and my young charge were listed as close relations, so that when the family passed into Toll-by-Day—’

  ‘You do not understand, sir,’ the midwife interrupted firmly. ‘Only the babe goes to live in the daylight town. The family stay behind.’

  ‘Then that mother back in the other house . . .’ For the first time Mosca understood Blethemy’s tears.

  ‘. . . wanted a “scaring” so that her son would receive all the blessings she can never have, and live under a sun that she can never see, instead of growing up wan and thin and bow-legged with rickets.’ The midwife drew her knuckles hard across her own cheeks, as if angry that there were no tears to wipe. ‘Very soon that boy will be adopted by some daylight family . . . and no doubt Blethemy will find herself nursing and bringing up some night-named child born in Toll-by-Day. That sort of exchange happens a good deal.’

  Mosca thought of the tremulous, furious, purple-faced baby that was so soon to be motherless, just as she had once been.

  ‘Poor little gobbet,’ she muttered to herself.

  Clent also looked crestfallen, but Mosca guessed that his mind was still busier with the dilemma of Eponymous Clent than the plight of the Gobbet. ‘Mistress Leap, I can see you have an escape for us in mind, and mean to charge us toll in the place of the Lock – ah, in the place of them. But truly, madam, you find us without funds. Plucked. Fleeced. Bare as midwinter trees.’

  ‘So how were you planning to pay your way out of Toll?’ The midwife folded her arms, her bird-like face a picture of scepticism.

  ‘Ah . . .’ Clent made tiny adjustments to his cravat. ‘We . . . ah . . . anticipate being of great service to a family of consequence, and receiving our just reward. The . . . the mayor’s family, in fact . . .’

  ‘Oh!’ The midwife’s face thawed instantly. ‘So you’ll have seen young Beamabeth! How is that little peach?’

  Mosca heard her cup crack as her grip became vice-like.

  ‘Hale and well, fair and blithe,’ Clent answered quickly, ‘and courted by a little lord from another town, as I hear it. But she and her family face some . . . difficulties which they have called upon us to remedy . . .’

  ‘Courted by a fellow from another town, you say?’ Mistress Leap’s face had fallen, and suddenly she looked quite distraught. ‘You mean . . . she would be leaving us? Young Beamabeth Marlebourne would be leaving Toll?’

  Mosca had to clench her teeth shut. Why did everyone react to Beamabeth this way?

  ‘So . . . you will be seeing her again?’ The midwife’s brow cleared. ‘Sir, can I ask you to take a letter to her? It is a presumption, of course, for we only met once – the day I helped bring her into the world, and she will never have heard of me. But I always remembered her . . . and I believe I would like to send her a letter.’

  Why? How had this otherwise sensible woman who had only met Beamabeth as a screaming purple blob fallen under her spell? Or had Beamabeth slipped immaculate into the world, petal-cheeked and smiling amidst gleaming golden curls?

  ‘I would be enchanted,’ said Clent. ‘But . . . ah . . . I would need to actually reach Toll-by-Day first. It might also help if I was alive when I did so.’

  Mosca sat and chewed her knuckles as Clent negotiated with Mistress Leap. There was, it appeared, a mysterious person who could perhaps help them back into Toll-by-Day, though at considerable risk. M
osca and Clent were to go with this person and would not ask any questions. When Mosca and Clent had done what they needed to do to gain their reward, they would then leave a portion of it in an agreed place for the Leaps and this person. There was no guarantee that Mosca and Clent would be safe with the unnamed individual, but then the Leaps had no guarantee that they could trust Mosca and Clent to leave the money. It was a deal of mutual desperation.

  Mosca’s eyes kept creeping to the crack-faced clock on the mantel, watching as it gnawed away the hours until dawn, a nibble at a time.

  At last there came a strange rattle of raps at the door. The midwife opened it, and Mosca glimpsed a slight, youthful figure outside, dressed in a tunic, breeches and a tight cap.

  ‘Got parcels for me tonight, Mistress Leap?’ Only as the figure stepped forward to speak did two things become clear. First, the youth outside could not be more than sixteen years old. Second, the youth was in fact a girl. A girl with a boxer’s watchfulness and a pugnacious jaw, but a girl nonetheless.

  ‘Packages of a sort,’ was the midwife’s answer, as she held the door open and glanced at Mosca and Clent by way of explanation.

  The new arrival seemed loath to step into the light of the room, but leaned forward a little to take her measure of the midwife’s guests.

  ‘So these are newborns, are they?’ Her voice was gruff, almost a rasp. ‘Somebody must ’ave big hips.’

  ‘They need passage to Toll-by-Day. There’s money in it – but they need to be in daylight to lay hands on the coin. Can you do it?’

  ‘If they’re not cacklers, and if they’re not maggot-pated, and if they can take orders and duck into a jague when I tell ’em . . . then ’tis possible. Risky as adder soup, but possible. If they prove slow or clatterfoot though, I’ll leave ’em in the streets to stew, mind.’

  This was thieves’ cant. Mosca was a lover of words, and she had a sneaking liking for the grimy panache of cant, and those who wore it like a ragged red cloak.

  The girl raised her left hand, and for the first time Mosca saw that there were long, curved metal hooks tied to the ends of her leather-gloved fingers. With one such hook she scratched very carefully at the jut of her chin. Her other hand was bare.

  ‘Now or never,’ she declared abruptly, and darted off into the night. Half a second passed before Mosca and Clent realized that she intended them to follow and leaped for the door.

  Dawn was on the way. The eastern sky looked sickly, and here and there birds made restless enquiries of each other, asking the time. The biting cold of the air seared the skin of Mosca’s face and hands. The girl with the claws ran off down the street without looking back, and Mosca sprinted after her, hearing Clent huffing as he took up the rear.

  A distant bugle sounded, and their nameless guide turned a corner and halted, her back flush with wall.

  ‘Hold here, and bleat if you see aught.’ The girl bent her knees and leaped, hooking her claws over the lintel of the nearest house, then found a hold with her unclawed hand, scrabbled her way up the brickwork with her feet and hauled herself on to the roof.

  The minutes dragged like hours as the girl crouched on the tiles, her head turning this way and that like a weathercock in a storm, listening to the sounds of day rousing itself. In the growing light it was now possible to see the chilblains on her wrists, the two smallpox scars on her neck. She had a fierce face, and unknowingly ground her teeth as she listened.

  ‘I hear ’em,’ she muttered at last. ‘Coming up Drake’s Dirge.’ She dropped from the roof and set off down the lane, beckoning with her taloned hand. ‘It’s just round – oh, ratscraps!’

  Four figures had lurched from an alley, one of them hefting what Mosca recognized as a filch, a long stick with a hook usually used for stealing from high windows but now brandished like a weapon. It swung down in an attempt to catch the girl’s ankle, and she leaped it with inches to spare. The boots of a second man slithered on the icy cobbles, and he seemed to grab at Clent’s coat for support. Clent reared away reflexively to the sound of rending cloth, and a slim dagger fell to the stones with a clang.

  Their guide lashed out at the nearest attacker with her clawed hand, and at the last moment he decided in favour of keeping his nose and leaped back, sprawling on the ground with one of his fellows under him.

  ‘Run!’ she yelled. ‘Scour!’

  Mosca aimed a deft kick to the nearest kneecap and took off after the older girl. Clent, whose coat was now sporting a new knife slash, also needed no encouragement. Fortunately there was no sign of pursuit.

  ‘Jinglers,’ called the clawed girl over her shoulder as she slowed, by way of explanation. ‘Looking to catch late strays. Now, stay close – I know the path the Changeover Jinglers are taking. ’Tis just a matter of staying a step behind them half the time, and a step ahead the rest . . .’

  A distant sound like sleighbells . . . or keys jangling at belts . . .

  The girl broke into a sprint, again without the slightest warning. She really did not seem to care whether or not her charges kept up with her. Unnervingly she seemed to be running directly towards the jingling. It was with relief that they caught up with her on the second street and found she was not up to her neck in Jinglers. She did, however, appear to be doing something very strange. As she ran she was tugging cloth pouches from her belt with her unclawed hand, and hefting them as if ready to hurl.

  As they passed before what looked like a boarded pub, a casement above suddenly opened half a foot. Without breaking stride the clawed girl deftly flung one pouch into the gap, which immediately closed behind it. Another pouch she wedged under a tree stump. A third she dropped into a hand extended through a hastily opened hatch.

  At a corner where a large yew had decided to grow through the wall of an old brewhouse, she halted again. With her hooked hand she pulled back some of the dense, needle-filled foliage to show a narrow gap.

  ‘In.’

  ‘What?’ Clent was already wheezing with effort, and he stared at the hole with wild-eyed horror.

  ‘They already been past here, so they’ll have spiked this tree to look for skulkers. They might not do it again. Best chance you got. In.’ And the girl was gone again, pelting down the street without leaving any chance for protest.

  However many centuries that ancient tree had stood there, it had probably never seen anything as graceless as Mosca and Clent trying to thrash their way into it at the same time. There is little give in a yew, for it has a mesh of small, fibrous branches and thousands of bristling needles, scrubbing-brush dense. Even when they stopped trying to struggle their way further in, it was impossible to tell whether they were invisible from the street.

  ‘Hush!’ whispered Clent. ‘Hold still!’

  Mosca obeyed and realized that she could hear the sound of jingling nearing and slowing. There were steps on the cobbles, then a rasp of steel. Without warning, something dark and wickedly slender jabbed through the concealing foliage. Mosca heard it tear through the loose fabric of her sleeve, and briefly felt the kiss of cold against her forearm before the blade withdrew. She clenched her teeth and managed not to cry out at the shock of the contact.

  What easier way to check for hiders than to jab a sword idly into a few places and see whether the tree screamed and bled? She held her breath, tingling all over in expectation of the next stab, even when the jingling sound passed.

  At long last, the after-dawn bugle sounded. Somewhere in the sap-scented darkness, Mosca heard Clent give a protracted, ragged sigh of relief.

  ‘Madam, let us . . . dismount.’

  Clent ‘dismounted’ fairly easily by falling out of the tree in disarray with a squawk of pain. Mosca however had to be dragged out by her ankles, the yew having worked itself into her hair, bonnet and gown.

  ‘So . . .’ Clent’s throat was still a little rough from gasping hurried air into his lungs. ‘Altogether a very successful . . . ah . . . reconnaissance outing. Very . . . ah . . . educational . . .’

&
nbsp; Haggard, sleep-deprived and bristling with yew needles, the pair wiped the soot from their badges and then limped down the street attempting amiable smiles at passers-by, some of whom recoiled from the prospect. As they passed the stump where the clawed girl had thrust her pouch, Clent looked about him and then stooped.

  ‘I am interested to know,’ he murmured in an undertone, ‘what exactly is so important that our brusque young friend was willing to brave the Jinglers in order to deliver it, and various decent citizens were willing to open their casements and hatches before bugle to receive it.’

  He examined the pouch, then hesitantly lowered his head to sniff at it. His eyebrows climbed, and he passed the pouch to Mosca. She followed his lead, and raised it to her nose for a good sniff.

  ‘But, Mr Clent – this smells like . . .’ She stared at him.

  ‘Yes.’ Clent stooped to put the pouch back in its hiding place. ‘Chocolate.’

  By the time that the pale winter sun had put in a lacklustre appearance, a slack flap of cloud smothering his face like a nightcap, Mosca and Clent had holed up in the little pleasure-garden pavilion they had found before. This provided exactly what they needed – a quiet and secluded spot for first-degree panicking.

  ‘We’re in a bleedin’ Locksmith town!’ Mosca had repeated this about a dozen times, but had not yet worn the edge off it. ‘We got Mistress Bessel after our hides, that gibbet-rat Skellow wants to skin me alive and we’re in a bleedin’ Locksmith town! The night town’s run by ’em, and I bet the day town will be as well, soon as salt, and their agents must be everywhere, and two nights from now if we’re still here they’ll send me to Toll-by-Night, and I got nowhere to stay so I’ll be on the streets with no money on the night of Yacobray, and the Clatterhorse’ll get me . . .’