Twilight Robbery (50 page)

Mosca’s glee burned itself out in a second. She dropped down to sit on a boulder like a lilac-coloured imp. All these troops and weapons were meant for Mandelion, for people she knew And so she could only stare at the soldiers raising tan-coloured campaign tents, the riflemen cleaning their guns, Eponymous Clent handing a paper over to Sir Feldroll in exchange for a small purse of money . . .

Clent did not look round as Mosca ran to join him, but continued pointing out details on the map in his hand with a tone of airy pride, as if everything it showed belonged to him.

And, as you can see, it was originally a map of Toll-by-Day, but some of the night-time alterations have been added in ink, should your men find themselves fighting their way through the streets after dark. And I have marked in a few “murder holes” I noticed above the gates for dropping hot sand or pitch on invaders –’

‘Hopefully this will not be needed,’ responded Sir Feldroll, whose face had now settled into a steady crimson twitch-gavotte. The close attention he was paying to the map rather suggested that he thought it would be needed. ‘My thanks, Mr Clent – Miss Mye – you at least have been as good as your words throughout this bitter business. I am glad to

see that the pair of you are leaving, before everything becomes . . . difficult.’ He halted, clenched his jaw and regarded the walls of Toll with a resentful but appraising eye.

‘This is our last chance to strike against Mandelion before winter settles in,’ he added through his teeth. ‘If not now, then the radicals of Mandelion will have months – months! – to strengthen their position and find their feet. I have given the mayor an ultimatum. If he does not keep his promise and arrange for the troops to have passage through Toll by noon . . . then perhaps a carcass over his walls will serve as a warning and show him how serious I am.’

Mosca boggled. She remembered carcasses from Mandelion, great barrels of burning matter hurled out of a cannon.

Sir Feldroll the mild-mannered, attentive fop had vanished. This was a nobleman who was not used to being opposed, and who was reaching an impressive powder keg of temper at the end of a two-month fuse. Perhaps he still cared about winning Beamabeth’s goodwill, but evidently not enough to stop him bombarding her town.

‘But, Sir Feldroll –’

Mosca’s outrage was clipped before it could fly by Clent grabbing her arm and dragging her away, directing a warm and engaging smile over his shoulder at Sir Feldroll as he did so.

‘Mr Clent!’ squeaked Mosca. ‘You sold him my map!’

‘And why not?’ answered Clent in an undertone, still guiding her from the simmering knight. ‘We have no further need of it, and that gentleman might do. What we
do
need at this time is travelling expenses . . . with which we are now supplied.’

‘You got no more soul than a toadstone, Mr Clent!’ spat Mosca, yanking her wrist free. She screwed her features into a scowl and looked away so that he would not see the tears prickling into her eyes.

‘Do you really imagine that your scrawl of a map has just sealed the fate of Toll and Mandelion?’ Clent asked quietly but coolly. ‘Madam, it will make no real difference.
We are simply not that important
. We are ants watching the clash of dragons, and trying not to get cooked to a crisp by creatures that have barely noticed us.’

‘We
did
make a difference once.’ Mosca dug her nails into her hands. ‘We made a difference in Mandelion.’

‘Perhaps.’ Clent gave a long sigh. ‘Yes, in a small way we helped Mandelion to revolt. And even that – what good has it done? We have seen the whole area between the rivers plunged into a state of near famine, Toll collapsing from within and turning to the Locksmiths, and now the armies of the other cities marching in against the “radical threat”. And if Mandelion does not fall now more armies will march next year, and there will be yet more bloodshed. Bold actions have
consequences
, child.’

Mosca felt a tear threatening to tip out of one of her eyes, and she wiped it angrily away with her knuckle.

‘I ain’t sorry.’ She glared at him. ‘Even with all that has gone wrong since, it was right. We made a
good
difference!’
And maybe that is the only thing either of us will ever do that was worth anything. And if Sir Feldroll’s army gets there it will have been for nothing
.

‘Well . . . put your mind at peace. The mayor is unlikely to give in to Sir Feldroll, even when he does start pelting the town with burning debris. He will count on the Luck to stop Sir Feldroll invading successfully. So instead the mayor will turn to the Locksmiths and sign papers with them all the faster, a couple of unlucky people will be cooked in their houses and Toll will become a Locksmith town by nightfall. There will be a siege until Sir Feldroll gets bored, some people will starve . . . and Mandelion will be safe a little longer.’

‘But that . . .’ That was not much better. ‘There has to be a way . . .’

Clent’s expression had set up camp somewhere between amusement and pain. ‘Sometimes I forget that your small size is the result of youth, not pickling. You are . . . young, Mosca.

‘To be young is to be powerless, but to have delusions of power. To believe that one can really change things, make the world better and simpler in good and simple ways. To grow old is to realize that nobody is ever good, nothing is ever simple. That truth is cruel at first, but finally comforting.’

‘But . . .’ Mosca broke in, then halted. Clent was right, she knew that he was. And yet her bones screamed that he was also wrong, utterly wrong. ‘But sometimes things
are
simple. Just now and then. Just like now and then people
are
good.’

‘Yes.’ Clent gave a deep sigh. ‘Yes, I know. Innocent people force one to remember that. For you see, there is a cruelty in all innocence.’

Mosca remained silent for a few moments, daunted by the colossal sadness in his voice. ‘I’ll never understand you,

Mr Clent,’ she said at last.

‘Mosca,’ he replied simply, ‘I truly hope you never do.’ They might have spent another few minutes in pensive

silence, if down by the road Saracen had not decided to begin

the war on his own.

To be fair, he had been provoked. Two soldiers who had already pitched camp had broken open a loaf without any thought for the hunger of waterfowl in the vicinity. The soldiers in question were now hiding on the far side of one of the provisions wagons, and one had sneezed gunpowder over his arm and shoulder while trying to load his pistol in too much haste.

‘Don’t shoot!’ Mosca sprinted down towards Saracen’s enraged green-and-white form. Nonetheless she might have been too late, had another figure not run in to place a restraining hand on the soldier’s arm.

‘No, please, I
know
this goose, it belongs to a friend of mine –’

‘Mistress Leap!’ It was indeed the midwife, with her bundle of goods on her back and her husband in tow, who had interceded on Saracen’s behalf. ‘You got out of Toll!’ Mosca was genuinely relieved, for she had been worried that the Locksmiths might have guessed at the Leaps’ involvement in Beamabeth’s escape and stopped them leaving.

The soldier with the pistol very reluctantly lowered it, all the while meeting the gaze of Saracen’s fearless, unblinking black button eyes. The man did not seem reassured, but there was little he could do with a happy reunion taking place between him and his enemy-in-plumage.

Mistress Leap pulled Mosca into a hug, and then the pair of them held each other at arm’s length and studied each other by daylight for the first time. Despite the overcast sky, the midwife was having to squint against the light, but her spirits seemed to be giddily high. Her husband stood nearby, and had the look of a rabbit that has just realized the pen door is open and is staring at everything beyond it with rapt terror. He seemed particularly afraid of gorse.

‘Look at you!’ Mistress Leap beamed, and Mosca could see how dingily pale and hollow her cheeks were and had probably always been. ‘Your eyes really
are
jet black! I thought they were. I am so glad you managed to escape as well! We have been waiting out here for you since we left town last night – and I was worried, but then I saw your goose, so I knew you must be nearby.

‘Oh, and Mr Clent safe as well!’ Mistress Leap beamed at Clent as he approached, walking carefully around Saracen’s animated dissection of the bread loaf. ‘Glad to see you well, sir. Why do we not all travel to Waymakem together?’

‘A fine idea,’ Clent agreed with unnecessary haste. ‘Before, ah . . .’ He glanced at the army.

‘Oh, these troops?’ Mistress Leap cast an unconcerned glance at them. ‘Yes, I was worried myself when I came out and saw an army massing outside Toll. But I have talked to some of the young men over there, and they swear they are just passing through so they can march on Mandelion. Apparently the mayor gave his permission days ago.’

‘Ye-e-es,’ Clent answered gingerly, as if the word might give under his weight. ‘But then he . . . un-gave it again. I fear that the Locksmiths now hold the keys to Toll-by-Day and the mayor’s own strings, and he can give no permission without their say-so. You see, madam –’ his voice dropped to a whisper – ‘they have seized the Luck.’

‘The Luck?’ Mistress Leap clapped a hand to her mouth, her large eyes aghast and mortified. ‘Paragon? Are you telling me that they have seized poor little Paragon Collymoddle because they think he is the Luck?’

‘Alas, that is exactly . . .’ Clent halted as realization came knocking belatedly. ‘Pardon? What precisely do you mean,
think
he is the Luck?’

‘Oh, this is all my fault!’ Mistress Leap’s fingers trembled as they covered her mouth. ‘But he was so small, so very small and weak, he would never have survived in Toll-by-Night. I wanted to save him – I never imagined that I would be sending him to a different kind of danger. I—’

‘My good lady,’ interrupted Clent, ‘are you telling me that he is
not
the Luck? That you have in some way obfuscated the chronology of his nativity?’

Seconds passed. A beetle flew into Mistress Leap’s hair while she stared at Clent, then it struggled free and flew off again.

‘Did you lie about when he was born?’ translated Mosca.

Mistress Leap dropped her gaze. ‘He was so close to being born under Goodman Lilyflay instead of Goodlady Habjackle, so close to having a really beautiful daylight name instead of the worst sort of night name. We “scared” as long as we could, but he just would come out at the wrong time, and there was no dissuading him. Two minutes! Just two minutes more and he would have been a daylight name. So . . . when nobody was looking I reset my pocket watch and told his mother that she had a daylight son. I . . . have never lied about the paperwork before or since. My conscience has never been easy about that one time, but at least I could think of that poor little boy living in the light of the sun—’

‘But he never did!’ exploded Mosca. ‘He ain’t
been
in the sunlight! They locked him away in a little room in a tower, with no windows or company, and left him to go half crazy! And now he’s been stolen like a necklace or a sovereign, and all anyone cares about is what he’s worth!’ She was shouting at the wrong person of course, but Paragon’s treatment had been eating away at her for days.

‘What? Oh, the poor little thing!’ The midwife’s eyes were dazed pools of horror. ‘I . . . I knew he would be living in the Clock Tower, but I never thought he would be locked in there all the time!’

Mosca put her hands on either side of her head. Her thoughts had been kicked over like a cup of water, and now they were spilling off in all directions. ‘Anybody else know that he ain’t the Luck, mistress?’

‘No, of course not.’ Mistress Leap shuddered. ‘Can you imagine the scandal? Nobody knows. Except Welter, of course. Oh, and Miss Beamabeth. As soon as I heard that she was thinking of leaving Toll to marry Sir Feldroll I
had
to tell her. That’s why I asked you to give her that letter. Can you imagine how terrible that would have been – the Luck leaving the walls of Toll because she did not realize she
was
the Luck?’

Of course. Beamabeth Marlebourne had the second-best name in Toll. If Paragon did not really deserve his name, then the real Luck of Toll was . . . Beamabeth Marlebourne.

Mosca remembered Beamabeth’s reaction to Mistress Leap’s letter, the sudden pallor and trembling that she had explained away as a fear of the night town . . .

‘That letter of yours must have put a terror in her.’ Mosca snickered. ‘You did not know that the Luck was kept locked away from the light o’ day, but
she
did. I am surprised she did not try to – oh!’ Mosca broke off and jumped up and down on the spot, trying to jog her thoughts into order. ‘What noddies we all are! Mistress Leap – somebody has been trying to kill you! More than once!’

‘What?’ Mistress Leap stared at her aghast. Even Welter abandoned his usual glower of weary misanthropy for a look of real outrage and concern.

‘Twice, I think,’ continued Mosca. ‘That man with the dagger and the pimply face, who tried to trick you into walking off into the night with him. I seen him since in the top room of a cooper’s shop – with Skellow’s men. I
knew
he looked familiar. Then . . . there was that rock that flew out of nowhere and hit you in the head, mistress.’

‘But why would Skellow’s people try to murder Leveretia?’ asked Welter, still goggling watery-eyed at the very idea.

‘Because Beamabeth Marlebourne told them to,’ answered Mosca promptly. ‘Because if you ever told what you knew about Paragon, there was a speck of a chance that the mayor would lock
her
up in the Clock Tower ’stead of him.’

Not for the first time Mosca had to listen to a stuttered list of Beamabeth’s virtues, and the reasons why she would never do anything so vile.

‘She’d do a dozen worse things before breakfast, then complain if the toast was cold!’ retorted Mosca. ‘Oh, the stories I could tell you of
her
! No,
no
! I’ll be spitted before I let her win, after everything she’s done and tried to do!’