Twilight Robbery (2 page)

‘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 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 unlit. 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.

. . . But perhaps she would try her hand at getting money from a stranger one more time.

Looking back towards the edge of town, Mosca could see a figure sheltering in a broken barn, half hidden by the water that streamed in crystal pipes from the sodden thatch. He was tall, he held his shoulders slightly hunched as if his coat was too tight and he was beckoning to her.

Mosca hesitated only an instant, then tucked away her pipe, sprinted over and ducked into the little barn, hastily pushing the wet draggles of her hair out of her eyes to look at her new acquaintance.

His face was knife-thin, long-nosed. There was a strange stillness about him, which made Mosca think of a heron motionless beside a pool, waiting to became a javelin of feather and bone as soon as a trout was lulled to torpor in the water below.

‘You know your letters?’ The question was deep and gravelly.

‘Yeah, you want me to read a newspaper? I got . . .’ Mosca boldly brandished her fistful of sodden paper pulp.

‘No, not that. Come with me. You need to talk to some friends of mine.’

Mosca followed him into the adjoining barn, her eye making an inventory of the stranger’s mildew-coloured coat, good boots and weather-spotted felt hat, her mind caught up in feverish calculation. She would charge this man and his friends too much, of course, but how much was
too
too much? How much would cause them to walk away in disgust instead of haggling?

There were four men in the next barn, sitting bowed on bales of hay, one of them mopping at his collar with a soaked kerchief, another trying to wring out his hat. They all looked up as Mosca and her guide entered the room.

‘So that’s the girl, is it, Mr Skellow?’ asked a young man with a mean mouth.

‘That’s her,’ answered the man who had brought her in. ‘What’s your name, girl?’

‘Mosca.’ Yes, now they would look at her and see a housefly, a snatcher of scraps, a walker on ceilings. There was no help for it. One could not lie about one’s name.

‘She doesn’t look much like a scholar to me,’ objected the mean-mouthed man. ‘It’s a ruse. She’s no more a reader than we are.’

‘I can prove it!’ exclaimed Mosca, stung. ‘Give me some letters and I’ll show you! Or get me to write some for you!’

‘All right,’ answered Skellow. ‘You there – Gripe.
You
know a letter or two, don’t you?’

A bearded man in a brimless hat looked furtive.

‘Only my given name,’ he murmured into his collar.

‘Well, scratch it out on the floor. Let’s see if she can see the sounds in it.’

Mosca watched as the bearded man knelt and drew lines in the dirt and straw scraps with his forefinger.

‘Your name’s Ben,’ she said when he was done. ‘But your B’s back to front.’

The men exchanged long looks.

‘She’ll do,’ said Skellow.

‘I charge more when it’s raining,’ Mosca added through chattering teeth. ‘Cos it’s a special service then, you see. Risk of drowning in floods, and ruining of clothes, and . . . and . . . pleurisy.’ She was pleased to see the impression created by the unfamiliar word.

Yeah, and I also charge more for people with good boots who hide in a barn on the edge of town instead of heading to the inn, even though they’re wetter than herrings. You got something to hide and something important you need read, Mr Skellow, so you can pay me for it.

‘How much more?’ asked Skellow.

Mosca opened her mouth and hesitated, breathing quickly as she assessed her chances. She held Skellow’s gaze, then found herself naming the sum needed to pay Clent’s debts, plus a little more in case he tried to haggle.

There was a cold pause, and one of the men gave a bitter cough of a laugh, but nobody moved to throw her out.

‘You must,’ Skellow said icily, ‘be very, very afraid of pleurisy.’

‘Runs in my family,’ declared Mosca promptly.

Skellow stared at her for a long time.

‘All right,’ he said.

Mosca could feel her eyes becoming larger and brighter, and the effort required to avoid a delighted grin made her face ache. She had it, she’d bluffed it, she could feel her problems loosening with a click like manacles and clattering to the ground at her feet . . .

Skellow reached for the purse at his belt and hesitated. ‘It’s just you I’m paying, am I right? We won’t dish out the coin and then find out you’ve got, oh, a master, or starving parents, or pleurisy-ridden brothers and sisters who need as much again, will we?’

Mosca’s mind flitted to Clent, and the thought of him as her ‘master’ rankled.

‘No,’ she snapped with venom. ‘There’s nobody. Just me. Nobody else I need to worry about.’

‘Perfect,’ said Skellow. He made the ‘t’ at the end sound like a stone chipping a windowpane, and he smiled as he did so. The corners of his mouth climbed high up his cheeks, dragging furrows in all directions, and showing rows of narrow teeth. It was the face of one who does not smile often because they cannot smile well.

And that smile was the last thing Mosca saw before a muffling, stifling weight of cloth was thrown over her head, drowning her in darkness.