Twilight Robbery (8 page)

They left the slayer of the Titan of terror rubbing at the tender place on his nose, and clearly well on the way to deciding that discretion was the better part of candour.

Five minutes later the air of liberty had blown Clent into fine fettle in spite of the cold, and he greeted a cooper’s cart with such magnanimous good humour that its driver seemed half convinced that Clent was doing him a favour in agreeing to accept a lift.

They were heading east, east towards the plump towns of Chanderind and Waymakem, towards the uncrossable Langfeather . . . towards Toll, Mosca realized. Toll, where some young woman dwelled oblivious of the fact that a man named Skellow had plans for her future, plans he would kill to protect.

As the cart rumbled on, conversation gradually dwindled as the minds of the two human passengers contemplated the same question. Mosca and Clent were remembering, not for the first time, that while away is initially good as a travel plan, sooner or later there must be a ‘to’.

Clent blew out through his nose and reached for a small black book that Mosca had seen before. Over his shoulder she could see him flicking to a blank page and writing, ‘Grabely – debtors’ prison, brain sold, fowl play in chapel.’

Mosca had of course filched it from his pocket while he slept on earlier occasions, and as far as she could tell it contained notes on towns and villages that he had already visited, and therefore could not safely visit again. It was full of scribbled place names and occasionally entries like ‘Lady Garnergaville’s Soiree!!’ or ‘Duke for three days’ or ‘Tried the “Troubadour” caper in the fish market – dogs!’

Clent riffled through the pages with a frown and cleared his throat.

‘Where are we headed?’ he called to the cart driver.

‘Well, I was planning to stop and water the horses at Hanging Sparrow – ten miles on,’ came the answer.

‘Hanging Sparrow . . .’ Clent leafed feverishly through his book. ‘Oh, merciful suns!’ He leaned slightly towards Mosca

and allowed some low words to creep from the corner of his mouth. ‘We cannot possibly go to Hanging Sparrow – an abominable place where forgetfulness is an offence punishable with the gibbet.’

‘What?’

‘Well . . . it is if one wanders into it forgetting that one once fabricated the Great Horse Plague for purposes of profit within its walls.’ He leafed through the book again, muttering place names under his breath. ‘Twelve Apples . . . no. Starlington . . . no. Upper Dangwit . . . no. Child, I start to fear that we have sucked the very juice from this accursed county.’

It did not surprise Mosca that Clent had not for an instant suggested returning to Mandelion. When sneaking her peek at his black book, Mosca had of course hunted down the entry for the rebel city to find out which of their many escapades and disasters there Clent had thought worth mention. Instead, beneath the city’s name he had written only a single word. A name, in capital letters.

GOSHAWK.

Mosca and Clent had fled Mandelion on the orders of a set of quietly insistent men in clean but well-worn overalls – representatives, in fact, of three of the most powerful guilds in the Realm: the Guild of Stationers, the Company of Watermen . . . and the Locksmiths.

Locksmiths. They were more than pedlars of locks and strongboxes. They were shadow-masters, ghosts, and they thrived on fear.

To outward appearances they were the epitome of respectability. What could be more upstanding than to sell the locks that kept honest men’s goods safe? And the Locksmiths did more than this. They ran an organization of Thief-takers more skilful than any constable, who, for a price, would hunt down criminals or retrieve stolen goods. They even offered to take over the policing of cities completely and rid them of crime altogether.

What was less well known was that the Locksmiths also ran the criminal underworld in most of the great cities of the Realm. What lock could hold them out? Yes, they would hunt down thieves – but only those who refused to join them and pay tithes to them. It was a bold soul that defied them, for they had hundreds of agents secretly working for them, each bearing the brand of a key on the palm of their right hand.

And from time to time a city ruler would lose heart in his battle against streets full of cut-throats, moors bristling with highwaymen, and would hand over control to the Locksmiths. The smiling Locksmiths would bring in their own guards to keep order, and double the height and breadth of the city walls, and seal the gates up tight . . . and nobody ever heard anything more about the doings inside that city. The citizens within were doubtless safe . . . from everything but the Locksmiths themselves.

Mandelion itself had come within a stone’s skip of becoming one of these cities, due to the manoeuvring of one of the Locksmiths’ most dangerous agents, an elusive, cold-eyed individual named Aramai Goshawk. Mosca and Clent had played a part in helping the city escape that fate, and they were uncertain how far Goshawk and the other Locksmiths blamed them for that.

There were a hundred reasons to avoid returning to Mandelion, but for Clent the other ninety-nine paled beside Aramai Goshawk. No, they would not be going back to the rebel city.

Mosca watched Clent for a few seconds, and gnawed her knuckles, while Saracen adjusted his unwieldly bulk on her lap.

‘Mr Clent,’ she said at last, ‘there’s only one place we can go, isn’t there? Toll.’

Clent did not answer, but nor did he look particularly surprised. Instead he closed his book, sighed and nodded.

‘I fear so. If we remain between the rivers, then sooner or later we will starve or be caught, unless we can make ourselves invisible to the beadles or learn to eat stones. We cannot travel to Mandelion and so . . . Toll. It is the only way across the Langfeather. I suppose you know that travellers must pay to enter the town on one side of the river, and again to leave it on the far side?’ He lowered his tone. ‘I do not suppose that capacious pocket of yours conceals enough money to pay two tolls apiece?’

Mosca chewed her cheek and kicked her heels for a few seconds. Then she delved into her skirt pocket and slowly pulled out four cambric handkerchiefs. She shrugged.

‘Mistress Bessel had a handkerchief for each day of the week, so . . .’

‘. . . so that admirable viper in female form will now only be able to blow her nose on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Not bad, but I doubt these little leavings will muster enough funds to enter Toll, let alone leave it again.’

‘No,’ Mosca muttered, ‘that’s what I thought. Which is why I took her stockings too.’

Clent’s eyes widened as Mosca dropped two much-darned stockings between them. One bulged strangely about the foot, and hit the wood with a promisingly coin-like clink.

‘Might be enough, Mr Clent. To get into Toll, anyway. Didn’t have time to count, cos she was coming back up the stairs.’

‘Yes. I see. How enterprising.’ Clent cleared his throat. ‘So . . . in the wake of various thefts, frauds and goose-related blasphemies, is there anyone in Grabely who will
not
want to see us hanged?’

‘Nobody springs to mind, Mr Clent.’

There was a short pause.

‘Toll!’ declared Clent briskly, and with sudden zeal. ‘What a gleaming sound that town has! What a peal of polished bronze resonates in the mere word!’

He pondered, and then gave Mosca a sharp look.

‘Child – you are forgetting something though, are you not? Toll . . . That is where your kidnappers were heading. The brigands who appear determined to kill you?’ The whole sour tale of the kidnap had been related to Clent during the hasty flight from Grabely.

‘I haven’t forgot any of that.’ Mosca jutted her chin and stared at the distant trees.

I haven’t forgot how I was tricked and tied up and carried off and poked with a knife and used as a scribe and thrown in a cellar and marked out for death like a chicken for a pot of stew. I haven’t forgot how all this was done cos I didn’t matter. Well, I’ll matter all right. I’ll matter so hard I’ll make them think the sky’s fallen on their heads.

Clent regarded her shrewdly.

‘Revenge is a luxury reserved for the powerful, rich or unusually vicious.’ He broke into her thoughts. ‘We cannot afford it. Mosca, be grateful that you have escaped this adventure with your skin.’

But I don’t want to be grateful. I’m tired of being kicked about like a pebble, and told that I have to be happy that it’s no worse. I’ve had enough. It’s time the pebble kicked back.

‘Mr Clent.’ Mosca turned wide, black, guileless eyes on her companion. ‘We got a duty, don’t we? To that poor girl with all the money – the one that Skellow and his boys are going to kidnap. Don’t we?’

‘Ah.’ Clent fiddled with his cravat ends. ‘Ah.’

Mosca knew that his mind was skipping nimbly to the thought of rewards. It occurred to her that she and Clent were a good deal like clock hands, one large and one small, often pointing and striving in opposite directions, but always linked and bound to come into line sooner or later. The mention of money had brought Clent into line, and quickly enough the long hand would overtake the short and run off into wilder plans, things that Mosca had not even considered.

‘Yes . . . yes.’ Clent’s tone was circumspect. ‘You are quite right, it is our duty. We
must
go to Toll, we
must
warn the damsel of her danger, point an accusing finger at her would-be abductors, modestly claim our just reward and use it to pay our way out of Toll on the far side. And then! Ah, the fair counties beyond! The warmer winds, the trees bowing under late-swelling fruit, the streams gleaming with trout, and above all the welcoming smiles of—’

‘People who don’t know us properly,’ finished Mosca.

‘Exactly.’

Mosca and Clent parted company with the cart outside a village called Drinksoll and continued their journey on foot.

Before long the route started to climb, and after an hour or so the first straggling pines and cedars came down to meet the road, their foliage wild and feathery, their trunks ankle deep in bracken and soft dunes of dry reddish pine needles. Gradually, although the air was still, Mosca became aware that she could hear a breeze-like breath in the distance, so relentless that it might have been a tickle of trapped air in her ear.

They did not have the road to themselves for long. Soon they were overtaking carts dragged by stocky little ash-and-milk-mottled mountain ponies, their blinkers tagged with ribbons and bells to stop evil spirits calling to them from the roadsides. Alongside them tramped figures on foot, many muffled against the cold in cloaks and shawls of yellowing Grabely wool, their backs laden with packs and pots, baskets and spinning wheels. Few talked, and there was a nervous, exhausted urgency in the manner of every traveller, their hopes trodden as thin as their shoe leather. Clearly Mosca’s party was not the only one determined to escape the land between the rivers before winter set in properly.

The road climbed until Mosca’s calves burned, and the soft roar in the back of her ears grew louder and louder. As they neared the very top, it became several roars in one. A long churning bellow, a thunderous echo, a thin and delicate hiss. Finally the road cleared the trees, and they emerged on to the stark, stony, sun-gilded crest of a knife-edge ridge.

Mosca blinked, blinded by the sun, her breath still recovering. Down on one side of the ridge, back the way they had come, was the county that had shunned and half-starved her for the last few months. Its grey stone villages were little more than gravelly blots, its beet and pumpkin fields furrowed patches of brown corduroy, its drystone walls rippling over the lumpish land like seams in cloth.

On the top of the ridge itself a shanty village perched like a shabby hat. Here, it was clear, the river of desperation had been dammed. Families skulked huddled under the same cloak, all eyes bleak with waiting. On the far side of the ‘village’ she could see what appeared to be a large gatehouse of ochre-stained brick, beyond which the ground seemed to drop away. The roar which had been seething at the corner of her hearing was much louder now. Mosca guessed that this gatehouse guarded Toll’s precious bridge at the end furthest from the town itself. Looking up Mosca could see arrow slits and punctures in the stonework for pouring boiling oil upon attackers.

Listening to the murmurs around them, Mosca soon worked out the reason for the atmosphere of despondency. The admission toll had been raised, and many had trekked here for miles only to find that they did not have enough money to enter. Some families seemed to have been camping here for several days, each morning sending down a few of their number to hunt out odd jobs and try to scratch together the last few coins they needed. There were of course a number of people there who had come specifically to ‘help’ them. Men and women with an eye to the main chance, hopping through the rubble of stones and tired figures like magpies, offering a meagre price for anything the wanderers had left to sell – their boots, their heirlooms, their hair. Mosca’s heart lurched as she wondered whether the little riches in Mistress Bessel’s sock would be enough.

Mosca caught at the sleeve of one of the ‘buyers’ as he passed. He cast a quick and watery eye over her stolen handkerchiefs, then a shrewd and watery eye over Mosca herself. The price he named was a pittance, and Mosca felt herself flush. Clearly he had guessed they were stolen.