Twilight Robbery

by Frances Hardinge

  ‘And supposing I even wanted to do so, why would I need the help of Mr Clent and yourself?’

  ‘Because the mayor has his daughter watched even closer than she ever was, and you lost your spy in his house,’ Mosca answered promptly. ‘His household trusts me now – and there’s naught to link you and me if it goes wrong.’

  There was a long silence, during which Goshawk pensively clasped and unclasped his tiny hands. ‘So – after setting up an elaborate trap that resulted in Miss Marlebourne getting kidnapped, and going to tiresome lengths to rescue her, you are now proposing to have her abducted again?’

  Mosca met his gaze with eyes like black stones. ‘It would be right crooked of me to even suggest such a thing, Mr Goshawk.’

  The very corners of Goshawk’s mouth deepened into pits for an amused second. ‘The symmetry is pleasing, I suppose.’ Every motion of his little hands was perfectly delicate. Mosca thought they were probably smaller than hers. ‘If you have won Miss Marlebourne’s trust, then . . . I can think of ways that such a thing could be managed. Very well. You will follow the man outside. I shall make some arrangements.’

  Goshawk sat in contemplation for a while after the girl with the black eyes, clean dress and grubby accent had left his cairn.

  ‘There seems little harm in letting her back within the walls,’ he said at last. ‘If she is successful, so much the better. And if not . . . there is a limit to how much damage she can cause.’

  A smaller Locksmith in a big coat shuffled out of the darkness at the back of the cairn, mopping meekly at his forehead. ‘Eponymous Clent seems to be playing a complicated game.’

  ‘Clent?’ Goshawk narrowed his meltwater-coloured eyes. ‘I wonder if he even knows she was here.’

  ‘Can you hear that?’ Laylow crouched in the darkness of the non-existent sick room, head cocked to listen. Her voice was hoarse with whispering, for she had received no response for some time. ‘The bells of Clamouring Hour, Brand!’ Sure enough, one could hear the muffled cacophony of Toll’s dayfolk ringing their bells in worship of the Beloved. ‘That means ’tis eleven o’clock. This day of the year is sacred to Sparkentress between eleven and one o’clock – that is right, is it not? Brand, can you hear me?’ She reached out, and prodded gently at the invalid’s shoulder with her unclawed hand. ‘Happy nameday, Brand,’ she muttered. ‘Eighteen years old you are. I . . . I have no gift for you.’

  The mound of breathing darkness beside her shifted, and spoke for the first time in an hour.

  ‘I . . . would settle for some water.’

  Brand’s fever had burned itself out for now, as had his temper. There had been a long sotto voce quarrel between Laylow and himself on the subject of Beamabeth Marlebourne, and now they sat exhausted amid the cinders of that argument in what was almost a truce.

  ‘All gone. I will tout and fetch you some after changeover, when I can go out in the munge.’

  ‘I still have no idea what you are saying half the time.’ Brand’s weary laugh was almost inaudible. ‘What are you going to do – run to and fro feeding and watering me like a mother bird with a nestling till you get caught? Why are you doing all this?’

  ‘You simkin, Brand Appleton,’ spat Laylow. She aimed a kick at his unseen shin, but not hard enough to hurt. ‘You pea-wit.’

  Silence.

  ‘Did the “Teacher” ever return? The foreign girl?’ muttered Brand.

  ‘No. Said she was running off to fetch you thistle wine, never came back.’

  ‘Perhaps she fell foul of some knife in the night,’ Brand whispered. ‘Or . . . or perhaps she went straight to the Locksmiths.’ A sigh. ‘Laylow, listen. The Locksmiths are bound to find this room sooner or later. I cannot run, or be of use to anyone any more – you should hand me over to them. At least that way you could live to see another night, perhaps even persuade them to go and rescue Miss Marlebourne—’

  ‘I will not bargain for the sake of that prissy vixen!’ hissed Laylow with force. ‘If I make terms with the Jinglers, it will be to keep you alive, you noddy! I know what old Goshawk wants – he wants me to work for him. Join the Locksmiths. And I shall – I shall do even that.’

  ‘I always thought you wanted to become one of them.’ Brand sounded surprised. ‘Your chocolate smuggling – I thought it was meant to impress Goshawk, so that he would ask you to join.’

  ‘What? No! Brand, I was born under Wilyfell. So I am born to lure other folks into vice. It is my Beloved-given nature; I am doomed to it. So I sneak in chocolate because it is a vice which does a scratch less harm than gin or dice or poppies or –’ Laylow halted as her companion succumbed to helpless snorting and snuffling. ‘What is so devil-speckled funny about that? And the money from chocolate was good too – I wanted to save enough that I could leave and never need to join the Locksmiths. When you take their mark, they have you. Life and soul. No going back.’

  ‘Then why in conflagration are you thinking of joining them?’ whispered Brand. ‘Stupid girl. Promise me you will not. Whatever happens.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘Please! Promise.’

  A few moments ticked away, followed by a slow release of breath through teeth. ‘All right. You have my promise.’

  In the darkness, two temporarily non-existent hands brushed fingertips, and neither flinched away.

  ‘Laylow,’ Brand whispered after a while, ‘are you sure all that noise outside is Clamouring Hour?’

  Mosca was not completely surprised to discover that the Locksmiths had a tunnel leading into Toll from outside. In fact, knowing what she did of the Locksmiths, she would have been rather more surprised if they had not. As far as they were concerned, being confined to one side of a wall or another was something that happened to other people.

  It was narrow, musty and supported by greying wooden struts that had clearly seen better days. As she followed the Locksmith in the blotchy grey coat, she could not help noticing that she was occasionally stepping on what looked like half-buried helmets or dank scraps of clothing. This tunnel, though she did not know it, had been dug as part of a failed siege during the Civil War.

  The tunnel ended in a rough stone face and a ladder leading upwards. Mosca’s guide halted and held up his lantern, inviting her to climb by its light.

  ‘Where does this go?’ Mosca’s lilac dress was thin cotton, and she was starting to shiver from the cold. She tugged her shawl around her, her hand brushing against the new pale ‘day’ badge the Locksmiths had lent her, its symbol a conveniently indecipherable muddle. ‘You coming with me?’

  ‘No.’ It was almost the first word her guide had given her since they entered the tunnel. ‘Bring the Marlebourne girl as close to this entrance as you can – we will be waiting for her.’

  Feeling numb from head to foot, Mosca started to climb. There was nothing else she could do now. At the top she found a hatch and pushed it up to find herself squinting at a criss-cross wooden lattice and a glare of green. She had come up through the floor of the pavilion of the pleasure garden, just next to the broken chair.

  It was only when she peered out through the door and saw the promenaders in the garden, with their parasols and lorgnettes, that it came home to her what she had done. Her die was cast, and suddenly she could not believe that she had run headlong back into Toll with only half a plan, and furthermore half a plan that might get her killed even if it worked.

  If there was one thing more dangerous than blackmailing Aramai Goshawk, it was lying to Aramai Goshawk. And the fact was, while Mosca had not said anything to him that was precisely and provably untrue, she had been guilty of misleading him. She had, in fact, no intention of luring Beamabeth Marlebourne to the tunnel, much as she hated the older girl. On the contrary, she had a rescue mission in mind.

  She could think of only one way by which she could both stop the Locksmiths claiming Toll and prevent Sir Feldroll from marching on Mandelion. And for that she would need the help of the only person who might be able to sway the
people of Toll more than the mayor’s chain or Beamabeth’s charm or Goshawk’s menace or Sir Feldroll’s guns. Paragon Collymoddle, the so-called Luck of Toll. She needed to find and rescue him.

  She did not know where the Locksmiths had spirited Paragon away, but she had a shrewd idea when they had done it – during the hours of Saint Yacobray, when they could be sure that the streets were empty and that nobody would see where they took him. Only of course the streets had not been empty. There had been no less than three false Clatterhorses chasing one another around Toll. Mosca and the Leaps had seen nothing of the Luck’s kidnap, of course, and if Skellow had seen anything he was no longer in a position to talk about it. But Brand and Laylow had also been running around, in their Sheep-Skull horse, and Laylow had gone back after Brand’s injury to look for the ransom. They might have seen something of the kidnap without even understanding what it meant. On the downside, as nightlings Brand and Laylow were non-existent right now, but on the upside Mosca had a pretty good idea where they were non-existing.

  Mosca had one other reason for wanting to find Brand Appleton before he could be hanged by the authorities or quietly murdered by the Locksmiths. Beamabeth had gone to considerable effort to cover her tracks, and Brand was the only track that she had not yet eradicated despite her best efforts. He might have letters, information, something that could be used against his treacherous ex-fiancée.

  To have any chance of reaching Brand and Laylow, Mosca would need chaos. Fortunately chaos was likely to be available very shortly. Mosca squinted up at the sun, noting that it was nearing the high point of its arc. She was just in time. Soon it would be noon, and Sir Feldroll’s ultimatum would run out.

  ‘So which way was the wind blowing before it died?’ Sir Feldroll narrowed his eyes at the drifting clouds, trying to read meaning in their shapes. ‘Yes, of course it matters! We are not attempting to burn the town to the ground. These will be a warning, nothing more. From the north, you say? Good – then land it just inside the south wall if you can. That way if the wind rises again, sparks will not be blown into the rest of the town.’

  He had hoped for a message before now, perhaps from the mayor or from Beamabeth. But the minutes had passed, and now he was steeling himself to give the order to fire.

  There were still qualms in his mind about raining fire on the town, but he quashed them. Toll-by-Day needed to be shaken out of its complacency. It might shrug at a few cannonball holes in its perimeter wall, but there was nothing like a threat of conflagration to put a walled town into a state of terror. One cry of ‘fire’ and a whiff of smoke would be enough. They might even lose a little faith in their precious Luck.

  It did occur to him, as he gave the signal for two of the mortars to be made ready, that after this day the mayor might have a few choice things to say about the prospect of Sir Feldroll as a son-in-law. However, running through the core of Sir Feldroll there was a steel wire of self-confidence that told him that he would yet manage to carry all before him. That the mayor, once cowed, could be brought round. That Beamabeth Marlebourne, given time, could be successfully besieged with gifts and the promise of estates in Waymakem.

  He checked his watch, squinting at the glint of pale sunlight on its face. Twelve o’clock. He gave a nod, and stared out at Toll as orders were shouted down the line.

  Two mortars were traversed to point at the southern side of Toll. Two crude bombs, little more than metal cans full of oil and debris, were loaded into the barrels. Two lit fuses were pushed into touch-holes to light the waiting powder. Then there was a duet of deafening explosions, and two mortars leaped back in their tracks like singed cats, filling the air around them with blue smoke.

  Mosca heard the double detonation from her hiding place under the hatch, and saw the promenaders react with shock and dismay, dropping reticules and lapdogs. The distraction was sufficient for her to pull herself up out of the hatch and pretend she had always been in the pavilion.

  As she was staring about at the scattering dayfolk, she caught something out of the corner of her eye, something moving rapidly through the sky like a big black bird swooping. Even as she was turning towards the motion, there was a far louder and nearer explosion, perhaps a handful of streets away. Another, closer to the centre of town, followed so closely on its heels that for a moment her bewildered mind took it for an echo.

  As the sound of the blasts faded, she could hear in all the surrounding streets frightened cries filling the air, like a cloud of birds startled from a field by a gunshot.

  It was the easiest thing in the world to follow those running from the pleasure garden and join the confused muddle in the narrow streets. Staring up past the tall houses at the ragged band of sky, she could see two faint trails of smoke adrift, and a sooty cloud rising a little way to the east.

  Toll-by-Day had limited experience of emergencies, and the double explosion had confused them. They could not tell which way they should be fleeing, if indeed they should be fleeing at all. Some had run out of their houses to gawp and ask each other pointless questions.

  But this was bewilderment, not panic, confusion, not chaos. Mosca’s black eyes flicked around the street, taking in face after face, all doped with uncertainty. Then she took a very deep breath.

  ‘FIRE!’ she screamed, pointing a skinny finger towards the miasma of rising black smoke.

  Half a second later there were rather a lot of other people doing exactly the same thing.

  It was clear from the roll of Saracen’s strut that, for him, finding a military camp was like coming home. There were people bellowing, and buff coats that tasted of cow-hide when you chewed them. Best of all, it turned out that hardened cavalry horses, inured to explosions, gunshots, screams and the smell of blood, could be thrown into fits of hysterical rearing by small flapping things in their peripheral vision, such as wind-chased papers or an unexpected fluttering of white wings.

  For now he was happy turning his beak to and fro to watch as two of the tall not-Moscas of his acquaintance took it in turns to shout loudly at each other over the wonderful clicks, rumbles and yells of the camp.

  ‘That was all she said!’ explained Mistress Leap. ‘She handed me this letter to give to you, told me to look after the goose while she was gone, and said she would try to be back by dusk.’

  ‘Songs of the celestial!’ Clent shook the paper in his hand, covered in Mosca’s scrawl. ‘Do you know what the child has done? She has absconded to talk to Aramai Goshawk and ask him to let her back into the town!’

  There were a lot of other words that Clent used after this, mostly to describe his opinion of Mosca’s conduct. None of them were profane, but all of them were long and highly specific, and Mistress Leap might as well have been a goose for all the sense she could make of them.

  Over Toll, the gunpowder-scented smoke that had been rising lazily was suddenly tugged and pulled apart like a dragged cobweb. Birds who had been beating their wings spread them and soared, washing lines came to life and the town’s few weathervanes started awake with a quiver and swung to point the opposite way.

  Outside the town, Sir Feldroll twitched, stared about him, then wetted his forefinger and lifted it into the rising wind.

  ‘Hellfeathers! The wind has risen again, and now it is blowing from the south! Where did those mortars land?’ From the trails of smoke it was clear that one had, in any case, landed closer to the centre than intended. Mortars were hard to aim at the best of times, and on such uneven ground the times were anything but best. ‘Have our diplomats gone in yet to negotiate the mayor’s surrender? No? Good. Hold them back until we can see whether the fires in the town get out of control.’

  Eponymous Clent puffed into earshot just in time to catch Sir Feldroll’s words.

  ‘Sir Feldroll – am I to understand that the town is now in real danger of burning?’

  ‘The wind changed direction,’ snapped Sir Feldroll. He had been shaken by this new lesson in the imprecision of war. He was many things, but an e
xperienced soldier he was not. ‘But the townspeople must have arrangements for such . . .’ He did not finish his sentence. Perhaps, like Clent, he was thinking of Toll’s complacent reliance on their Luck to defend them against calamity.

  ‘Sir Feldroll, I . . .’ Clent closed his eyes as if in pain, made a few grimaced attempts to continue, then pressed his fingertips together and steeled himself. ‘I would like,’ he went on, with an expression that indicated the very opposite of liking, ‘to volunteer to take the place of your diplomats and approach the mayor for you. Fate . . . fate has clearly allotted me this role. After all, I belong to neither of your cities – what better intermediary could you choose?’

  ‘Mr Clent!’ Sir Feldroll stared at him, his features managing a remarkable tug of war between gratitude and suspicion. ‘After all that has happened, you are happy to go as my ambassador into Toll?’

  ‘Happy? No. Willing? Barely. Compelled by some pustule of honour I shall lance if I survive the day? So it would seem.’

  One of the canisters had rattled down to street level, where it had blown in shutters, shattered windows and left its fragments smoking on the cobbles and a little stream of flaming liquid running down the kennel ditch at the centre of the street. But the second had lodged in a cluster of chimneys, where its explosion had scattered burning oil over tile and thatch. Now the wind was stroking the young flames, and dozens of tiny red-gold sparks were taking wing like thistledown.

  They blew out across a town full of timber and plaster, covered in facings of wood light enough to be moved at dusk and dawn. A crowded town where flames might leap from house to house and never be made to halt. A town just waiting to be burned.

  ‘Fire! Fire!’ Mosca ran from street to street, screaming it at the top of her voice, and heard it echoed everywhere. ‘We got to stop it spreading! We got to tear houses down so it cannot spread along the rows!’

  That was what had been done in the Ravens, the soot-blackened neighbourhood where Clent had met with Skellow in Brotherslain Walk. There had been a fire, and in spite of all their rules about who should be locked indoors at which times of day, the people of Toll had grabbed something heavy and torn down houses, locked doors and all, to stop the spread of the flames.