Twilight Robbery (33 page)

‘He’s here every time they hold a Bludgeoncourt.’ Mistress Leap sighed. ‘All the folks in the boxes and big stands pay a trifle to come and watch, but the prize the contestants fight for isn’t money. It’s hard-to-come-bys, luxuries – a bottle of Vantian sherry, a roll of chocolate, spices – and tonight it’s candied violets. He enters the contest every time. I suppose he still has daylighter ways – maybe he’d sooner die than go without his silks and coffee.’ There was a cold edge of disdain in Mistress Leap’s usually kindly voice, and Mosca could hear the mutual distrust of Day and Night grinding together like a giant’s teeth.

‘I don’t think so,’ Mosca murmured. ‘Gifts for a lady, I think.’ She could picture Brand Appleton limping home each night with cinnamon and sweetmeats, like a disgraced dog dragging in a mangled gamebird and hoping to be loved for it. ‘Let’s get closer.’

Through time-honoured use of the elbow Mosca and Mistress Leap found standing room on a stage near the battle-bridge, and Mosca’s suspicions were confirmed – Appleton was not doing well. His opponent was a few inches shorter, but strongly, squatly built. Both were stripped to their shirts, but only Appleton’s was marred by dark splotches that Mosca guessed must be blood. Furthermore he did not seem to be a favourite of the crowd. Time and again a piece of fruit peel or a small stone pattered off his shoulder or clipped his ear.

The shorter man darted a blow that fell short, but his foot slapped the boards loudly, and Appleton launched himself towards the sound with a wild, cranefly flailing of his limbs. Instead of retreating, his opponent stepped neatly forward and aimed a deft lateral lash that caught Appleton on the temple and unbalanced him. He slipped off the bridge, grabbing at its edge at the last moment and banging his chin and chest against the boards. There he hung winded, while his enemy edged cautiously towards him, one step, two . . . and then a third which rested the weight of his boot on the fingers of Appleton’s right hand.

The crowd dissolved into a maelstrom of noise. Some were clearly trying to shout to Appleton’s opponent, to tell him what it was that he was standing on, but their words were lost in the general cacophony. Appleton’s face was screwed tight, but he made no sound or motion for the ten long seconds it took for his enemy to move his boot, advance, and unwittingly step over Appleton’s other sprawled arm. The shorter man continued to advance, occasionally darting questing jabs with his cudgel in search of his foe, and Appleton was free to wriggle his way painfully back on to the bridge, his legs waggling froggishly until he could get a knee back on to the planks.

Then he stood, blood from his injured ear soaking into his collar, his face locked in a grimace, and limped quietly after his oblivious enemy. At the last moment the shorter man seemed to hear him and whirled round, but the motion caused the board beneath him to creak, and Appleton swung his cudgel with all his ungainly force. The roar of the crowd drowned the sound of wood on skull, but the shorter man spun about, tilted his head vaguely as if looking for something, then dropped to his knees and sprawled softly to the boards.

A bell rang, and Appleton pulled off his blindfold, wiped his face with it and hobbled to the end of the bridge, examining his wounded fingers. He clambered down a ladder to stage level and hobbled to the pavilion, where Mosca could see him nodding, bobbing small bows and accepting a bag, presumably of candied violets. There were new contestants climbing the trees to the battle-bridge now, and he was largely ignored as he reclaimed a bundle from one of the attendants and staggered away, his red hair just visible above shorter night-dwellers.

‘Well, there’s no chance of following him in this crowd,’ murmured Mistress Leap. ‘Perhaps we can talk to people later and find out where he went . . .’ She turned, and her sentence trailed away, hanging like smoke in the empty space that an instant before had been occupied by her greenish companion.

It had been the work of a moment for Mosca to stoop and pretend to adjust her clog. The newest combatants were waving to the crowd, and suddenly all heads were up, all eyes on the bridge. Nobody noticed a mysterious foreigner with a bell-shaped basket for a hat ducking down in the crevice between two stages, dropping to the sacred, untouchable grass, then running crouched beneath the creaking, thundering structure.

When she found Brand Appleton, he was sitting alone on a set of wooden steps built into the side of the stage, his back to her. His head had been clumsily bandaged with a long kerchief. Peering at a slight angle, Mosca could just make out the little bag of violets in his lap. With trembling, tender fingers he was trying to wipe a spot of blood from the linen of the bag.

Some higher steps creaked above Mosca’s head.

‘You’re the radical, aren’t you?’ A voice like someone sandpapering a cello. Mosca tried to imagine its owner, and every time he came out seven feet tall with fists like melons. ‘Go on, say something radical.’

Brand Appleton turned his head, allowing Mosca to see his split lip. He blinked, and Mosca could almost hear his temper clicking into readiness like a pistol hammer. But then his eyes fell to the bag in his lap, and his hands stealthily moved to cradle it against his stomach. When the man further up the stairs took another step towards him, he wrapped both arms protectively around the bag and ducked his head down.

‘Er . . . the . . .’ He shook himself to gather his battered wits. ‘The . . . An end to all kings and we . . . their crowns should be beaten into ploughs and . . . for every man that is born a . . . in the sheds and stables and fields as much as in the . . . er . . . have a right to, um, a right as sacred as the air or . . . or sunlight . . .’ He bowed his head and swallowed.

A heavy boot placed itself gently but firmly between his shoulder blades and gave him a contemptuous shove. The creaks were apparently satisfied and took themselves away.

Mosca watched Appleton’s shoulders shake with suppressed emotion and her own feelings were thrown into confusion. Was this the ruthless, crazed kidnapper she had been led to expect? This half-stunned man hugging a bag of sweets?

Then Appleton turned his head to look about him, perhaps to make sure that his persecutors had gone, and Mosca saw his face properly, with its dark trails of blood down the left cheek and jawline. A young face, perhaps only a year or two older than Beamabeth. There was no disguise to his expression, and Mosca found herself flinching as if an oven door had been left open.

In his wide eyes she saw pain, and mortification, and exhaustion, but also a fierce and haggard stillness. And behind that stillness a roar like a forest fire, a driving fervour that would eat all the air and shrivel whole trees with a hiss. His gaze seemed to burn through the world and every obstacle in his path to rest on something distant and desired, something that reflected in his eyes with a steady white light. This was a man who might do anything. He might not do it well, but he would do it until it worked.

He turned back, gently placed the bag down by his side and busied himself with fastening a sword belt about him. Two pistols were dusted off and checked for powder, then tucked away. Apparently he had put aside his weapons for the fight.

Very slowly and carefully, Mosca drew out the little knife she had been given for self-defence. If she could only make a hole in the bag, perhaps when he left sugar and violets would trickle out to leave a trail for her and help her find his lair. But Appleton was maddeningly protective of his little prize. He kept reaching out to pat it, just when her knifepoint was an inch away, or moving it to the other side of him. Finally he shifted it back into his lap again, out of Mosca’s reach. Soon he would put it in a pocket, stand and walk away among the crowds.

Mosca pulled back her knife-hand, a rash and terrible impulse gnawing away at her mind. The worst thing about Appleton’s gabbled radicalish was that he had clearly once heard a fragment of
something
. Some forbidden text hidden in cabbage barrows and badly copied and learned by rote and misremembered and half forgotten until it washed up in fragments on his tongue like so much meaningless shingle. Somewhere a book was screaming.

She bit her tongue hard, but somehow the sentence slipped out anyway.

‘You got the words wrong, Mr Appleton.’

He froze and turned his head a few degrees.

‘What?’

‘That radical speak of yours. You got the words wrong.’

A long, long second of silence.

‘You know the right words to the
Solace for the Thousands
?’

‘No, but those weren’t them. I been to Mandelion. I
know
radicals. They make a load more sense than that.’

Her words seemed to poke Appleton into alertness, and his posture noticeably straightened.

‘When I got here, I heard you were this terrible radical, so I come to find you.’ Mosca took a deep breath, then threw what was left of her caution to the winds like so much chaff. ‘And you know what? You’re more than terrible. You’re bleedin’ useless. Don’t turn round!’ This last was delivered in an urgent hiss since Appleton seemed in some danger of twisting about to remonstrate with the steps. She had gone too far. She must have gone too far.

‘Funnily enough,’ Appleton answered through clenched teeth, ‘my childhood tutors failed to ground me properly in the basics of revolutionary thought. And when I reached manhood I wasted my time studying books of anatomy in the mistaken impression that I would become a physician as planned. Back then, nobody told me I was a radical!’

‘Well, you don’t sound like much of one,’ muttered Mosca.

‘The Committee of the Hours are never wrong,’ intoned Appleton. The words rang hollowly as if he had recited them to himself too many times and worn the heart out of them. ‘If they say I am . . . then I am. I can . . . I can face that. But—’

‘But nobody told you how to be one – am I right?’ Above all, Mosca had to keep Appleton interested, inquisitive. ‘Could help you there, maybe. Might have some radical teachings off by heart. And words right from the mouths of the
real
radicals, in Mandelion.’

Brand Appleton sat motionless, his head at a considering tilt. Mosca stared at the back of his neck and tried to guess his expression. A ‘brand’ was a fiery torch. She hoped that she was holding it by the right end. Either way, she was certainly playing with fire.

‘These teachings – are they wild and subversive?’ he whispered at last.

‘Frothing,’ Mosca reassured him quickly. ‘Mad as a melon cannon.’

‘And . . . you come from Mandelion? You know the place well? The people in power?’ He had the hesitant tone of one tiptoeing around a new plan for fear of smudging it.

Somewhere the Tower Clock struck a tinny chime, and Appleton’s head twitched.

‘I have to go. Listen, whoever you are – meet me at Harass and Quail’s tomorrow night at two of the clock. It’s in Cooper’s Dark – do you know it? Opposite the old stone trough.’

‘I’ll find it,’ hissed Mosca, marvelling at the success of her strange gambit, ‘and I’ll be there. Bring a notebook. We’ll have you lopping kings’ ’eads off before you can say fraternity.’

At long last Appleton ventured a swift glance behind him, and then twitched his narrow head about, looking for his interlocutor. Mosca pulled back so the moonlight would not fall on her face.

‘Hey – are you under
there
?
On the grass?
’

‘Just between you and me,’ Mosca whispered, ‘radicalism is
all about
walkin’ on the grass.’

Watch him. He’s standing up. Walking away. . . after him! Now!

Mosca had made an appointment with Appleton for the morrow, but there might still be some small chance of following him. She clambered out from under the scaffolding, as unobtrusively as anybody with a basket on their head possibly could, and hastily climbed up on to one of the plank walkways so that nobody would know she had been on the grass. Unfortunately, much as she had suspected, Brand Appleton was gone by the time she had extricated herself.

When she felt a light touch on her shoulder, she jumped a foot in the air and would have fallen off the walkway if Mistress Leap had not grabbed her arm.

‘Did you see him, Mistress Leap? Did you see where he went?’

But the midwife had not witnessed Brand Appleton’s departure. The streets of Toll-by-Night had swallowed him once more.

‘My dear, we really should be heading home soon.’ Mistress Leap’s voice was muted but urgent. ‘There is a frost falling. Have you noticed?’ It was true, Mosca realized. The chill of the night was becoming more bitter, and there was a subdued sparkle to the cobbles. ‘It is getting cold, and from now on the night can only get . . . colder.’

Mosca understood. Cold meant fewer people. It meant the people who were still on the streets had either nowhere to go or the wrong sort of reason to be out. Besides, this was not her last chance to track Appleton down. He had promised to meet her the following night.

‘All right, Mistress Leap. But before we go back to your house, I got one more place to go. I got a letter to write.’

The route to the location where Mosca had agreed to leave letters for her daylight allies took Mosca and Mistress Leap past the bridge tower. Looking up at the clock, Mosca could see that the wooden Beloved sentry above the clock face had changed again. Paragon had clearly done his duty, and now it was Goodlady Adwein gazing forgivingly out across the town, her pestle and mortar in her hands.