Twilight Robbery

by Frances Hardinge

  Mistress Bessel’s smile thinned and her eyebrows raised.

  ‘Yes . . . I gather he is particularly impressed by your courage in the face of bereavement,’ Clent continued, finding fascination in his own fingertips. ‘Out of interest, what did your husband die of this time?’

  Mistress Bessel bristled like a fat ginger cat with a trodden tail. ‘Eponymous Clent! Have you said anything to the mayor to sour the jam?’

  ‘No. No, Jen, I would not dream of spoiling any tale of yours.’ Clent gave her a brief glance in which there was enough affection that the spoonful of sadness was almost lost in the mix. ‘Ah, winter is coming, and we cold birds must all feather our nests as best we can, must we not, Jenny-wren?’

  The nickname won a small smile from his companion, and something crumpled in her face, making her look both younger and older.

  ‘And there are few enough feathers to go round,’ she admitted. ‘The mayor says he might need a housekeeper. And take that look off your face, Eponymous Clent! I said a housekeeper.’

  ‘If you say so, then be it so. And . . . if in time the mayor should decide to marry his housekeeper . . .’

  ‘Then what would you have her do?’ Mistress Bessel demanded crisply. ‘Spit in his eye?’

  There was a long pause, during which Clent twirled his false flower between his fingers. ‘No,’ he said at last, placing the flower into her hand. ‘No. You should take everything fine that can be squeezed out of this bitter little life. And I will aid you any way I can. Friends scratch one another’s backs, do they not?’

  ‘Hold hard – are those the words of a man with an itchy back?’ Mistress Bessel’s brow darkened. ‘I knew it! You want something from me!’

  ‘A trifle, a morsel, a mere nothing.’ Clent’s hands danced before him, pinching the air into minuscule gobbets. ‘But, ah, an important nothing. You, my dear, are currently a light in the mayor’s darkness, the warm hearth to which he gratefully creeps after the cruelties of life. And if he values you as he seems to, doubtless he takes you into his confidence and gives you the run of the house . . .’ He trailed off and gave a small shrug. ‘He trusts you, you trust me and the world is richer for the benison of trust.’

  ‘Ha!’ Mistress Bessel gave a scornful laugh, though her gaze was less barbed than her tone as she pinned the flower to her dress. “Richer”, is it? So is that your pretty way of asking where the mayor keeps his silver? You are a scheming black-hearted dog, Eponymous.’

  ‘No, dear Jen, not this time.’ Clent’s tone was unusually serious. ‘Believe it or not, I have good reasons for asking this of you. There is a spy in the mayor’s household, and you are better placed to track them down than I. But for the Beloved’s sake be wary – we are playing a game of secrets against very dangerous opponents . . .’

  The sun sank in blood, and all over Toll shadows stretched like waking cats. A bugle sounded. Night swept through the town on chimes of silver. A second bugle sounded. The last true daylight departed the sky, leaving only a bruise of luminosity over the west. The doors of Toll-by-Night opened.

  Since an hour before dusk Mosca had been awake. In fact, ‘awake’ was too weak a term. She felt as if she was full of ingrowing spikes of apprehension, like an inside-out hedgehog.

  It made her restless, and restless was a very bad idea in a corridor-room as narrow and cluttered as that in which the Leaps lived. Mistress Leap had told her to stay still and touch nothing, and she thought she was staying still and touching nothing, but somehow she managed to fidget a warming pan off a wall-hook, and a stack of fire irons on to the floor. She even elicited a small hiss from Saracen, who had contrarily chosen this time to settle down to sleep.

  The sound of the bugle filled her with terror and relief.

  ‘Mistress Leap! We got to go – the men I told you of, they’ll be waiting by the Twilight Gate! And if we don’t find ’em, then five to one somebody else will.’ Unable to bear inactivity any more, Mosca was on her feet, pulling on her basket-hat and clogs.

  ‘One moment. Just let me make sure the coast is clear.’ Mistress Leap opened the door a crack, peered out, then gave Mosca a smile over her shoulder. ‘It all looks safe enough,’ she whispered. And with that she stepped out through the door on to the step, stiffened and toppled sideways out of sight.

  When Mosca scampered out to join her, she found the midwife slumped against the door jamb nursing her temple, her bonnet knocked askew. The culprit was clearly visible, a chunk of masonry that lay shattered on the step. Mosca glanced upwards in case more of the house threatened to fall on their heads, but the midwife shook her head.

  ‘No, it was thrown from down there.’ She pointed down the street.

  Mosca peered into the darkness, but could see no sign of any lurking assailants. Feeling exposed, she quickly helped the wobbly midwife indoors. A bleary, half asleep Walter blundered over just in time to help his stunned wife into her chair, and then set about rummaging through boxes for some ointment to smear on the injury. Mosca peered suspiciously at the older woman’s head and found a rosy swelling bump, but thankfully nothing worse.

  ‘Did you see who it was?’

  ‘No, just a blur at the street corner. Probably some lads throwing rocks for sport, without realizing that I was about to open the door.’The midwife glanced up at Mosca’s doubtful face and patted her hand reassuringly. ‘My dear, do not worry, I will be all right. Go! Find those friends of yours at the Twilight Gate! After all, if you do not, then we will have no tithe for Saint Yacobray, and we will all be lost.’

  Mosca hesitated, concerned at the prospect of leaving Mistress Leap so soon after her injury. However, the midwife had her husband to attend to her, and time was running out.

  ‘All right, but keep Saracen here to guard you. And . . . you better lock the door behind me.’

  Rocks thrown for sport? Mosca was not a great believer in innocent explanations, and that went double in Toll-by-Night. But why would anybody hurl rocks at a kindly midwife and then run away? Just for a moment, Mosca wondered if perhaps the mysterious attacker had not seen his victim’s face, but just a bonneted head peering around a particular door. Was it possible that the missile had been meant for the skull of Mosca Mye?

  There was no such thing as a safe street in Toll-by-Night, but at least after walking with Mistress Leap Mosca could hazard a guess at some of the safer streets. The day map in her skirt pocket was now criss-crossed with her own additions – names scribbled out and others added, new walls or highways drawn in. However, it was still early in the evening, and early meant danger.

  After her sojourn in non-existence the fading twilight seemed curiously bright, and she wondered if the bugles might have been mistimed, until she realized that the wheeling shapes she could see against the sky were not birds but bats.

  By now she knew what sort of person would be lurking by the Twilight Gate, like cats around a mousehole. Cut-throats, looking for some plump victim loaded down with all his earthly possessions, eyes still dazzled with the darkness of his new world. ‘Landlords’ with crocodile smiles, who would welcome strangers in for the night and then smother them or sell them to the toil-gangs. Pickpockets. Scissorwomen, waiting to steal the hair of children and young girls. She would need to weave her way past them, like a perch past pikes.

  I’ll take the route along the town wall, she decided. And then, with a leap of the heart, Yes, that way I can look in at the letter chink first. See if Mr Clent has left a message for me.

  The moon was low enough to be sallow, and everything cast shadows that might have been made for the Mosca Myes of the world.

  There were patrols along the top of the wall, of course, making sure that nobody tried to scale it, but it was their task to look for rash souls rearing up in silhouette on the wall’s crest. They did not notice the slight figure that ran from one patch of shadow to the next, a pint-sized attic-creature hastily fashioned from jumble and rags.

  Even in the dim light Mosca could make out the st
one faces of the Beloved carved into the wall. At last she glimpsed the curmudgeonly features of Goodman Belubble, He Who Snuffs the Last Candle Before Sleep. There. Goodman Belubble’s surly slit of a mouth. That’s where the letter will be. She crouched, scanned the wall for patrols, and counted the seconds till her moment by instinct, like a housecat watching blackbirds.

  Two seconds. One second. Now.

  And then the darkness reached out a hand and gave her a polite prod between the shoulder blades.

  ‘I really would not do that if I were you.’

  Meanwhile, unbeknown to Mosca, another darkling meeting was taking place.

  The little door that led to the Twilight Gate creaked open, and six men emerged into the night town, breathing steam and staying close to one another.

  Their leader cast a glance up and down the street, and felt not disappointment but a grim resignation. If the girl that Sir Feldroll had told them to expect was there to meet them, she was doing an excellent impression of a cobblestone.

  ‘Blades take it, the little mort’s probably already been caught,’ he muttered. ‘All right, everyone, we’ll wait for her a while, but not here in the bold of the moon. This is wolf country. If we huddle and bleat where everyone can see us, we deserve to be mutton.’

  Briefed by both Sir Feldroll and the mayor, he knew something of the town into which he was stepping. His birth under Goodman Snatchavoc the Gambler thirty years ago that very night had given him a ‘night name’ in the opinion of the Committee of the Hours, who as a result considered him to be a fiend of card and dice, reckless, undisciplined, lavish in vice and certainly unsuited to daylight. Perhaps the committee had really believed that he would be more at home in the nocturnal town but right now he could feel the enmity of Toll-by-Night tickle his neck hairs as if his collar was full of spiders.

  Accompanied by his five colleagues, he slipped into the shadow beside the Clock Tower and waited. The hands of the clock above them moved, but it seemed to have lost an hour or two somewhere, and he could not tell how truly it told the minutes as they crawled by. It seemed that a winter’s worth of nights passed before they finally saw a short figure tripping determinedly towards them, keeping close to the wall and muffling its footsteps as much as possible.

  It was definitely not a twelve-year-old girl. However, neither was it particularly intimidating. It was a man. A short man, alone, his small, pale, forgettable face just visible between his large, lopsided hat and the whorls of his two great scarves. Despite the new arrivals’ attempts to hide themselves, he made his way directly towards them, gloved hands slightly raised in a gesture of harmlessness and timid appeal.

  ‘My word. How good it is to find you.’ There was something odd and drab in his tone. Perhaps it was caused by fear, or a desire to keep his voice low. ‘Stout fellows capable of swinging a cudgel, just as promised.’ He paused, and seemed to notice for the first time that he was surrounded by suspicious gazes and tense pistol hands. ‘Friend of Mosca Mye,’ he offered in the same limp voice.

  ‘Describe her, then,’ hissed the leader.

  ‘Stands this high.’ The little man made a flat of his hand and let it droop in the air before him. ‘Black eyes, black hair, ferrety features.’ The new arrivals glanced at each other, exchanged nods, and relaxed a little. ‘Ran into some trouble at the letter drop. Somebody was waiting for her. She got away. Injured though and terrified. Poor child asked me to come in her place.’ The little man could not seem to keep his head still, but kept turning it to look this way and that, eyes luminous and watchful. ‘And it is a pleasure to speak with you gentlemen but here there is a danger of interruption. If you will permit me to show you somewhere more relaxing.’

  He’s terrified, concluded the leader. Well, what do we do? The girl is not here. If we do not trust him, what else can we do and where else can we go?

  In his pocket his fingertips stroked the knucklebone dice sacred to the Beloved that had given him his name. He chewed his cheek and took a gamble.

  The voice that had sounded behind Mosca was adult and male, but crisp and light-toned. It sounded as if it might sidestep deeper, gruffer voices without difficulty and deftly jab a pointed remark under their guards.

  Mosca leaped away from the sound and spun round, braced to flee into the night. The shape in the doorway behind her, however, made no attempt to lunge for her, but remained flattened against the panels of the door, in a strip of darkness which had concealed it from Mosca’s notice. She could make out little more than the subdued gleam of a cream waistcoat and the pallor of a face.

  ‘If you are looking for sentries, my dear, you are looking at the wrong wall. There is a fellow who has been sitting in the eaves just across the road from your letter drop ever since quarter past bugle.’

  ‘How . . . ?’ Mosca trailed off and left the word to fend for itself. There were so many questions it could begin. How do you know about the letter drop? How did you know I was going there? How did you happen to be here at all? How did you spot the spy? But all these questions paled in comparison to one other: How do I know I can trust you? It was this unasked question that the stranger chose to answer.

  ‘Eponymous Clent sends his greetings to you and your winged warzone.’ Staring into the darkness, Mosca could now just make out two large eyes, the dark line of a moustache and neatly cropped sideburns. ‘I do hope that means more to you than it does to me.’

  It did. ‘Winged warzone’ was just one of Clent’s many tender terms for Saracen, usually uttered in a tone of long-suffering despair. It was not a phrase that many would use.

  ‘Might do,’ she admitted.

  ‘Delighted to hear it. Your friend Mr Clent wanted us to warn you that the letter drop was compromised – betrayed, in fact. He believes that somebody in the mayor’s household is spying for the . . .’ He glanced about him, before mouthing the last word of the sentence. Locksmiths. ‘Now, can I suggest we go somewhere else, and quickly? If we loiter about on a night like this, we are likely to catch our death. Worse . . . our death might catch us.’

  Mosca followed her new guide back along the wall, but kept a distance of three paces between them. She had learned to look every gift horse in the mouth. After all, it was amazing how many of them bit.

  When they crossed moon splashes, she took advantage of the instant to examine her companion. He was slightly below average height, deft-gestured and dapper, despite the fact that his tailcoat was more of a collage than a garment, patches of dark wool, leather, linen and curtain fabric nestling in bewildered proximity. Two large, expressive dark eyes kept a watch on the rooftops and corners.

  ‘Hey!’ She risked a whisper. ‘I got to go to the Twilight Gate. There’s –’

  She halted, her mouth still poised to shape the next word. A sound had grazed her ear, a distant croaking cry, so muffled that it could almost have been a raven call or cough. But the ravens were all abed, and no cough could have travelled that far, even through the eerily silent streets.

  Ah.’ Somehow Mosca’s mysterious friend managed to put a wealth of meaning into that one, light sound.

  That came from the Clock Tower!’ hissed Mosca. ‘They’re in trouble! There are people waiting there for me!’

  ‘No, I think not,’ came the clipped response. ‘Not by now,

  anyway. Trust me. Let us simply withdraw while we have the chance . . . or . . . instead . . . you could run pell-mell towards the sound of the death cry. Wonderful.’ He gave a resigned sigh as Mosca’s sprinting figure disappeared around a distant corner. ‘Yes, let us do that instead.’

  To do him credit, the patchwork stranger succeeded in catching up with Mosca a couple of streets later, only slightly out of breath. Mosca was pressed against a corner from which she could gaze out at the Clock Tower, which looked back with all its shadowy bulk, as unruffled as a whale suffering the scrutiny of a damselfish.

  Nothing remarkable or bloody appeared to be taking place in the street before the tower. Indeed, it was entirely e
mpty, and would have looked serene to anybody who did not know that six men should have been standing there. To Mosca, that omission was as glaring as the ragged remains of a ripped-out page.

  ‘They got to be here!’ Mosca gnawed at her fist, fighting down a sickness in her stomach. ‘They got to be here! Nothing works if they’re not! Nothing . . . they have to . . .’ She trailed off, gasping.

  She jumped when her patchwork guide placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘Listen, my dear, we did promise to warn you of your danger, but nothing was said about joining you in suicidal gallops. Your letter drop was betrayed, as it would seem were your reinforcements.

  ‘Now, this promenade has been charming and exhilarating, but I fear I must go and practise for a recital tomorrow night. So I shall make my adieus. Steady – steady – can I recommend that you try breathing?’ He patted her arm, then squinted down the street, where one of the shadows had briefly showed signs of movement. ‘A-a-and perhaps running. Yes, my dear. Definitely time for some running.’

  Sprinting for ten minutes did nothing to help Mosca recover her breath. She continued running even when she realized that her new guide was no longer at her side. She ran until her legs seemed to become butter and gave out under her, leaving her gulping and shaking against a wall, the feathers on her basket-hat a-quiver. Then Mosca’s mind, which had held together while she needed to remember how to put one foot in front of another, set about unravelling.

  The disaster was absolute. The invisible silver lifeline that had linked her to the bright, safe world of day had snapped. The ambush she had planned for Brand Appleton later that night was impossible, for she had no reinforcements. There was nobody to compel him to reveal the kidnappers’ lair. And, she realized with a lurch of the heart, there was no money to pay the tithe for the night of Saint Yacobray.