‘And small wonder, if three of them was hiding right behind the stocks!’ exclaimed Mosca hotly. ‘The Facilitator was no green shoot. I read his letter and he was sharp. He probably took one look at your boys playing peek-a-boo, then stuffed his lily back in his pocket and slipped away. I would have done, in his shoes.’
‘A glib answer.’ The mayor folded his arms. ‘Perhaps you will be as quick in explaining why the Committee of the Hours’ records show that Rabilan Skellow, citizen of nighttime Toll, was
not
at large in the vales two nights ago, and has not in fact left this town in the last two years?’
There was a silence during which Mosca gaped.
‘Apparently not,’ the mayor muttered with steely restraint. ‘Her river of invention appears to have run dry.’
‘Good sir!’ Clent recovered his composure before Mosca. ‘This is . . . most peculiar, I grant you . . . but I still have faith in this child’s story. One conspirator, alas, has had the good fortune to slip through our fingers, but the infamous Mr Skellow will be waiting at dusk tonight in Brotherslain Walk—’
‘Do you really expect me to risk honest men out on the streets at
dusk
– on nothing more than this girl’s word?’ snapped the mayor. ‘No! This is the end of the matter. Mr Clent, my daughter has been taken ill this morning, having spent the night sleepless with anxiety over this imaginary kidnap plot. Nonetheless she has asked that your girl should not be dragged into the Pyepowder Court for slander and fraud, and for her sake I shall leave you to punish your own secretary. Should I hear of my daughter being troubled by any further fictions from the same source, however, Mr Clent, I shall be a lot less lenient. Good day to you, sir – and may you have better fortune in choosing your servants in future.’
They were shown out rather firmly by two footmen, one of whom Mosca recognized as Gravelip. Curiously, he looked decidedly unwell, and seemed even more reluctant to meet Mosca’s eye than the rest. It was only when he opened the front door, and she noticed him wincing at the daylight, that she guessed at the reason for his greyish pallor and the unsteadiness of his gait. In an instant her temper went from simmering to seething.
Face carefully bland and meek, she stopped in the doorway just as Saracen was next to Gravelip’s feet and stooped to adjust her goose’s muzzle. She took enough time doing this that Gravelip became impatient and tried to nudge the goose off the threshold by gentle but firm application of his boot to Saracen’s white, waggling posterior.
After the screams had died down and Gravelip had been carried back into the house by his fellows, clasping a twisted ankle, Mosca looked up to find Clent regarding her with a long-suffering air.
‘Madam! In what way is our situation improved by setting your homicidal familiar on members of the mayor’s household?’
‘Well, it made me feel a dozen yards better!’ Mosca was aware that she was drawing stares from others in the castle-courtyard marketplace, but did not care. ‘Did you see that prancing, lug-eared ninny of a footman? Whey-faced, sick as a pig and smelling of the parsley he’s been chewing to make himself feel better. I know
that
look. I’ll bet my last button he was up all hours drinking last night – which is why he’s as queasy as a shoe full of eels today. You saw him! Can
you
imagine him leapin’ out of bed before dawn, or riding full gallop to Lower Pambrick without losing his breakfast or falling off his horse? I can’t. Do you know what I think? I think him and his friends staggered out of bed too late to make it to Lower Pambrick in time . . . but they all pretended they had so they wouldn’t get into trouble. No wonder he couldn’t look me in the eye!’
‘Ah.’ Clent appeared to reflect, then inclined his head in acknowledgement. ‘You might have the right of it, child.’
‘And if I try to tell them, nobody will believe me! Not against Gravelip, with his Goodman Juniperry name!’ Mosca stamped and fumed like a muslin kettle.
‘Be it even so, now is the time for calm calculation . . . and
not
for sending your web-footed apocalypse on a one-goose rampage through the house of the mayor. Mosca, rein in that viperish temperament of yours, and we shall yet have the reward. It will simply take longer than we thought.’
‘It’s all right for you,’ snapped Mosca. ‘You can wait around for that reward long as you like.
I
got three days.’ Until yesterday Mosca had been trapped between two rivers, desperate to get out before winter arrived. Toll had looked like her only means of escape. Now, however, she wondered if she had traded one prison for another, a smaller prison with high walls. If she was not out of it before her allotted time as a visitor ended, then the mysterious night town with its twilight cacophony would claim her.
‘Have no fear – we will be out in three days, child,’ Clent murmured. ‘By hook or by crook.’
Probably by crook
, thought Mosca, noting Clent’s narrowed gaze.
‘Something extremely peculiar is happening in this town,’ continued Clent, ‘and since we have a duty to call in at the Committee of the Hours in any case, let us begin our enquiries there. And . . . Mosca? I have a suggestion. Carry your demonfowl in your arms. It will cover your badge as we pass through the streets.’
As it turned out, this strategy was only partly successful. Wearing a dark wood badge earned one suspicious and hostile glares, but so did carrying around oversized, cantankerous waterfowl with a penchant for cheerfully pecking people in the eye. With Saracen in her arms, however, Mosca did find the crowd more likely to part before her, and thus she was able to look around and observe more of the town. Once again she was struck by the way Toll’s brightly painted wood and plaster contrasted with the grim, flint-ribbed cottages of the villages in the county she had just left.
Mosca was already disposed to regard Toll bitterly, and everywhere she looked she found reasons to compare it unfavourably with Mandelion. With her endless thirst for reading she looked for posters and found almost none.
Bet nobody here can read without mouthing the words
, she thought.
‘Interesting,’ Clent said after they had been walking for a little while. In answer to Mosca’s questioning look, he flicked a glance to the nearest hanging sign, which showed a row of painted candles. ‘A town is like a tapestry, Mosca, a story to be read from pictures. Look at the shop signs, and tell me what they tell you.’
They walked on in silence for a little longer, and Mosca obeyed, staring at the signs that swung over doors and along walkways. Some were tavern signs, some bore symbols of the various guilds of the Realm. The Stationers, the Wig-makers, the Playing-card Makers, the Watchmakers, the Goldsmiths – the powerful guilds that kept the splintered Realm from collapsing into anarchy, and who nonetheless spent their time circling one another, wary as winter wolves.
‘Well?’ Clent asked at last.
‘Pawnbrokers.’ For the sixth time, Mosca had caught sight of the triple hanging bauble of the Pawnbrokers’ Guild. ‘There’s lots of pawnbrokers.’
‘Indeed. No doubt many pay their way into Toll in the hope of earning or begging enough money to pay their way out again, and end up pawning everything they own. What else do you notice? What is missing?’
Mosca chewed her cheek for a moment, then inspiration struck her.
‘Coffeehouses! There are no coffeehouses!’
Back in Mandelion there had been half a dozen of them.
‘No coffeehouses,’ agreed Clent. ‘No chocolate houses either. No tobacco-sellers. None that are in business, anyway.’ He paused, dusted a grimy pane with his sleeve and looked in through a window into an abandoned shop where pipe racks were still visible under a fine fur of dust. ‘And look at the stalls – can you see any silks, any Laemark lace, any loaves of sugar, any spices?’
Mosca realized that she could not.
‘All the big cities and towns in the Realm, including Toll, have agreed that they will not trade with Mandelion,’ Clent murmured, ‘in the hope of starving her out. What none of them seems to have noticed is that
Mandelion is a port
. If she needs anything, she can send out ships and trade with other countries. Mandelion does not suffer greatly from the ban – but Toll does.
‘Mandelion is the only major port on this part of the coast. Toll
needed
Mandelion, needed the traders who came to and fro through this town, paying in silver and loaves of Salamand sugar, gold and Grenardile port.’
‘So . . . that’s why they put the tolls up, then? They’re running out of money here too?’
‘You have the beginnings of perspicacity. Now . . . what is
not
visible in these streets? What is there here that we cannot see?’
Mosca made a number of guesses. ‘A way out of town’ was apparently not the right answer. Neither was ‘any sign of that chirfugging reward’.
‘
Think
.’ Clent’s impatience was evidently being held at bay only by his pleasure in revealing his own cleverness an inch at a time. ‘What do you remember about these streets last night, just before we found sanctuary?’
‘You mean apart from all the doors fastened against us, and the great, big bolts, and the giant latches on the shutters, and the great, big shiny locks on the . . . oh.’
A penny descended with an inaudible
plink
. Mosca stood back and looked up and down the street. Nowhere did she see a sign with silver keys crossed on a black background.
‘There should be ’undreds of ’em,’ she muttered, instinctively lowering her voice. ‘Toll locks itself up like a chest every night – there must be
guineas’ worth
o’ good locks in every street.’
‘Indeed.’ Clent cast a nervous glance over each shoulder, despite the fact that neither had spoken the word that was in both minds.
Locksmiths.
‘So,’ whispered Mosca, ‘where are they? Why aren’t they here?’
‘Oh, they are here.’ Clent’s words slipped out through barely open lips. ‘We cannot see them, but they are here in Toll. Mark my words.’
They reached the Committee of the Hours just in time to avoid Clamouring Hour. All over the Realm, for one hour every other day, it was traditional for bells to be rung in worship of each and every Beloved, not only in the churches but in every house and public place. In towns and cities the sound was usually deafening, and it was a good idea to be indoors when it happened.
The Raspberry was still enthroned in full glory when they entered the office of the Committee of the Hours. As before he managed a nod of smileless courtesy towards Clent, and icily ignored Mosca. While young red-headed Kenning ran to claim their visitors’ badges and replaced them with ‘second-day’ badges bordered in yellow, Clent took pains to engage the Raspberry.
‘Good sir, I have been admiring your town’s, ah, curfew arrangements.’ Clent’s voice was careful. ‘An . . . intriguing system. And very logical.’ He flicked the briefest glance across at Mosca before moving companionably towards the Raspberry and adopting a confidential tone. ‘After all . . . if one knows who the bad apples will be from birth, then why mix them with the good?’
‘Precisely.’ The Raspberrry glowed with satisfaction. ‘It has served us well for eighteen years, ever since Governor Marlebourne established it. All through the Civil War and the Purges we held to it, sir, which is why Toll retained order even when the rest of the Realm gave in to butchery and brouhaha. And for the last two years our system has been nigh infallible, thanks to the new measures.’ He mimed turning a key in a lock.
‘It must present some ingenious problems, however.’ Clent frowned. ‘That is to say . . . is it not difficult for the day town to keep track of what happens at night? For example, how can your committee keep track of those who enter or leave the town during the hours of darkness?’
‘Oh, that is really quite straightforward,’ the red-faced clerk assured him. ‘The Night Steward’s office passes our committee all details of those who are born, who die, who leave and who arrive in the night town so that we can enter them into the town’s records.’
‘I suppose –’ Clent hesitated – ‘that the Night Steward’s Office never makes . . . mistakes. Have they ever left names off the records they give you?’
The Raspberry managed to redden about the neck and blanch across the cheeks at the same time. He cast a fearful glance towards his papers as though they might suddenly rebel against him.
‘That,’ he whispered, ‘is unthinkable.’ In Mosca’s experience, such statements generally meant that a thing was perfectly thinkable, but that the speaker did not want to think it.
‘But, my good sir,’ Clent followed up his advantage, ‘how exactly
are
the reliable clerks and forces of law chosen for the night town? Surely any appointed constables must have trustworthy names, so if everybody with a trustworthy name is a day-dweller . . .’
Clent let the sentence trail. The Raspberry did not pick it up. It lay there on the desk between them like a stunned weasel.
‘So,’ Clent tried again, ‘the Night Steward and his men control the town at night? Might I ask what manner of men can have names bad enough to be barred from daylight, yet names good enough to be placed in charge of law and order after dark?’
‘There are certain kinds of cur,’ the Raspberry said after a long pause, ‘whom you would never let in the house, but which are good enough to guard the yard. Biters and barkers, but suited to the task once you have them on a leash.’
It was clear that the bristling clerk would not be further drawn, so Clent sighed and changed the subject. The Raspberry appeared all too happy to seize upon a new topic of conversation.
‘. . . ah yes, of course I remember that scapegrace Brand Appleton.’ Gradually the Raspberry was thawing again, his colour mellowing to a gentle raspberry wine. ‘Reclassified as a nightling just a few months after his engagement to Miss Beamabeth Marlebourne. Nothing to be done about it, of course. Young Appleton made a fuss and talked of appealing or rattling our heads until our ears fell off, but what do you expect from someone born under Sparkentress? Showing his true colours at last, that is all. Miss Marlebourne had a lucky escape there. And of course her father is considering a far better match for her now – you have heard of Sir Feldroll, I trust? The young governor of Waymakem.’