Fly By Night

G is for Gentleman’s Agreement

‘Hoi!’

Mosca shifted from sleep to waking in her usual way, flinging out her fists to left and right. On this occasion, she bruised her knuckles on two close wooden walls, and was shocked into total clarity. Above her an unfamiliar set of rafters was looped with long, dusty, cobweb banners. The sound of water nearby made her think herself back in Chough for a moment. But this was a watery voice of a gentlemanly sort, each lap like the idle slap of a horsewhip against a calf.

‘Hoi!’

Mosca’s head was turned to one side at an awkward angle, and her pantaloon-clad knees were hooked over a wooden footboard. Below the rafters was a single window, the grey pre-dawn sky sliced into diamonds by the window leading. Somewhere beyond the window, someone was trying to shout under their breath.

Mosca heaved herself out of the truckle bed, and pulled the window open. Below, a woman with a fat yellow pigtail and a wide, frog-like mouth was hauling her gentleman companion to his feet, her strong, plump arms around his middle.

‘Hey! You up there!’ The woman was using the hoarse, hushed call of one who is trying to rouse the house without waking the neighbours. ‘You does marriages, right? We wants to get married. Don’t we?’

‘Bwuzzug,’ her friend agreed, and smiled at the bottle in his hand.

A little further along the wall, another window opened and a head of wild red hair appeared.

‘You need a marriage done quick?’ The voice was young and as sharp as a thorn. ‘You got three shillings, and sixpence for the late hour?’

‘Right here in me purse.’ The strain of holding her fiancé upright was starting to show in the colour of the plump woman’s face.

‘I’ll come down and let you in, then,’ declared the red-haired girl. ‘You’ll have to guide his hand when you’re signing the register, though, looks like.’

Somewhere in the house, a tinder scratched and heavy soles flapped on wooden boards. Then the front door opened and swallowed the woman and her drunken friend.

Five minutes or so later, the other window swung wide again. The red hair had been pushed roughly under a mob cap, and there was a wise, pale face the colour of uncooked pastry beneath it. The face’s owner scanned the windows until she spotted Mosca.

‘Sorry for you bein’ woken, ma’am, I hope you an’ your husband will have no more trouble.’ Mosca could only assume that the other girl could not see her face properly. It was strange to be called ‘ma’am’ by someone who looked two years older than her.

‘I’m not here for marriage – we’re just stayin’ here, that’s all.’

‘Oh.’ The red-haired girl relaxed and grinned. ‘What are you here for, then? I’m the Cakes.’

‘What?’

‘I does the Cakes. For after the nuptyals. What you here for?’

‘I’m a secretary.’

‘Oh.’ The Cakes’ face fell as if she did not think she had been told the truth, and then she shrugged as if to show that that was Mosca’s business. ‘See you at breakfast, then.’

While the sky silvered behind the distant spires, Mosca tried to patch the tatters of her plans. The slumber-bewitched conversation with Lady Tamarind had changed everything. Had it really taken place?

Thinking of Lady Tamarind, Mosca felt her stomach twist. It was excitement – but excitement of a not entirely pleasant sort. Rather, it was a sudden awareness of something she lacked, something she had sensed in the rich otherness of the lady in the coach. The lack ached, like a hole in a tooth.

To work for Lady Tamarind! Sooner or later Lady Tamarind’s strange white wealth and power must surely rub off on Mosca like powdered snow… and Mosca would become… she could not clearly see what she would become. The thought seemed to pass on soft wings behind her, close enough to stir her neck hairs with the breeze of its passage. There was the faintest sensation of little golden drops of venom trailed across her skin, like those bled by a bee after the sting.

At six o’clock the market bell rang, and hawkers gradually filled the streets. With a sense of infinite luxury, Mosca gazed down at the step to watch pewter being polished by someone other than herself. By the time she followed a carefully spruced Clent down to a late breakfast, she could not imagine why she would wish to be anywhere else. Bockerby greeted them in the parlour with a new wariness and crispness that made Mosca realize he had been drunk the night before.

‘Ah, yes – I recall you saying that you are a friend of Jen – how is dear Jen?’ Bockerby asked as they all sat down.

‘Brown and bonny as a wren, and becoming quite the mistress of means. She is growing plump on it, and has taken on two apprentices.’

‘Ah, plump now, is she? She always had a hungry wit – I was surprised to hear she’d retired. Ah, all of us respectable nowadays… even Jen.’

‘She lost a taste for the profession after a magistrate… gave her a strongly worded letter, you might say.’ Clent gave a wince of a smile.

Bockerby grinned mirthlessly, and touched each of his teeth in turn with his tongue-tip, as if counting them.

‘That’d be a letter “T”, then,’ said Mosca through a mouthful of bread.

Bockerby looked at Mosca as if she had appeared from nowhere. After scrutinizing her briefly, he looked sharply to Clent. ‘Is this one flash?’ he asked, nodding towards her.

Clent inclined his head in something between a nod and a shrug. ‘Safe enough, for immediate purposes.’

Bockerby gave a wordless murmur of dissatisfaction.

‘How old is she? Ah, it cannot be more than thirteen years… a bit green, a bit green. Still -’ Bockerby hacked himself another piece of bread – ‘if I were you I’d marry her anyway. They’re often more pliable, you know, once they bear your name.’

‘Have you traded your sense for pence?’ Clent’s outrage was deafening. Somewhere beyond the fragile wall, the drone of a marriage ceremony halted briefly, before continuing more hesitantly. ‘I am little enough pleased to find myself having to think for two, without shackling myself in perpetuity.’

Bockerby shrugged and wafted his glass over the jug before drinking, in honour of King Prael.

Mosca could only conclude that she had suddenly become invisible. She decided that, if this was so, it was probably a good time to steal all of the bread and cheese left on the table.

‘Well.’ Bockerby watched Clent shrewdly over his meaningless grin. ‘You must do something about her sooner or later, you know.’

‘Yes, yes, I know…’

‘Mr Bockerby?’ The red-haired girl pushed her head around the door, and blew a stray ringlet off her nose. ‘Need you in the east chapel, Mr Bockerby.’

‘Well… to work. Beg pardon.’ Bockerby stood, and slapped his broad-brimmed chaplain’s hat on his head. ‘My sacred duties call me. Now, my friends, as you return to your rooms, do remember you are set up in apartments usually set aside for our customers, so if you pass anyone in the corridor, pray try to look… blissful.’

Mosca was not quite sure how to manage ‘bliss’, and Clent clearly had something on his mind, so it was perhaps just as well that they encountered nobody in the passageway.

When they were safely in the privacy of their rooms, Clent slid the bolt to.

‘Sit down. No, over there by the desk.’ He rummaged through his bottomless pockets, and drew out a few objects, each of which he put down on the desk in front of Mosca. ‘Ship’s articles,’ he declared.

Mosca stared down at a roll of unused paper, a bottle of ink, and a slightly mangled quill.

‘Are they?’

‘If you must interrupt,’ Clent responded tersely, ‘you might at least do so intelligently. Ahem. Sometimes two privateer ships may be forced to sail abreast for a time. They may have a common aim, or a common foe, but, for whatever reason, to squabble is to founder. In such circumstances these gentlemen of the waves are accustomed to draw up a list of articles – of rules – to be observed by all parties. Do you understand now?’

Mosca understood that a truce was being proposed. She chewed on her cheek for a few moments, but she had promised Lady Tamarind to hold with Clent for now. What was more, without Saracen, Clent had become her only link to the world she understood.

‘Do I write them down, then?’

‘You are my secretary, are you not? Take these down and write small – paper is dear. First, that Mosca… ah…’

‘Mosca Mye.’

‘Mosca Mye… will serve Eponymous Clent in the capacity of Secretary, obeying all Reasonable Instructions without Question, and in exchange Eponymous Clent will provide for the said Mosca Mye’s meals and lodging… and… ah… twenty shillings per annum to be paid at the end of each year.’

‘… and a pipe…’ Mosca added, with a bitter emphasis. And a goose, she wanted to add, but she did not dare to think too hard about Saracen.

‘What? Oh, very well, but if you require tobacco you must find that for yourself.’

‘… and clothes…’ Mosca continued stubbornly.

‘Adequate clothing,’ Clent amended. ‘And for the moment your current apparel seems to serve very well.’

Without looking up from her writing, Mosca extended one foot to show the worn state of the shoe. The flat soles of the shoes she had found in Mrs Bessel’s chest had been walked to ruin by some younger child.

‘Let us not be delicate about this, your shoes will serve very well for a few- Songs of the celestial, child, are you wearing breeches?’

Mosca pulled her feet back under her skirts.

‘They’re wading breeches,’ she explained defensively.

‘My dear frog, you are no longer living in a puddle. Now I dare say that you could pass for a measly kind of a boy, but right now you are neither fish nor fowl. Take this down. Second, Mosca Mye will choose one gender and stick to it.’

‘Third, Eponymous Clent promises not to take things what are Mosca’s, or use ’em to pay for things, or run off sudden.’

‘Oh… if you please.’ Clent waved one hand airily, as if the idea of him doing anything of the sort was clearly absurd. ‘Fourth…’ Without looking up, Mosca could tell that Clent had paused by the window. She could not be sure whether he was gazing out at the view of the river or watching her reflection in the glass with his clever grey gaze. ‘Fourth, Mosca Mye shall not divulge anything of a sensitive nature pertaining to her employer without his permission, nor shall she rifle through his papers or repeat his conversations.’

‘Fifth, nor shall he peach on her neither, nor handle her things.’

‘Sixth, she shall not hoard information from his attention, but shall be diligent in keeping him informed.’

‘Seventh, he will keep her wise about stuff what concerns them, and persons what they are working for.’

‘All right, that will do, sign at the bottom.’ Clent added his signature to hers.

‘So -’ Mosca watched as Clent rolled the paper once more and slid it into his top pocket – ‘why we workin’ for the Stationers, then?’

‘This evening you shall sup full on answers, but in the meantime we both have work to do. I must write the ballad I promised to that cut-throat of the road, and you… well, my last secretary, for all his faults, always took the greatest care that my boots were kept clean – I believe that there are some rags beside the ewer. Furthermore, the sorry state of my coat currently reflects badly upon your diligence. And… for goodness sake, before we go out, do something about your eyebrows.’

Clent retreated to the little closet, and Mosca pulled a bit of charred wood out of the fire and, using her reflection in the window, carefully drew herself new eyebrows with the charcoal tip.

The rest of the day Mosca spent removing gorse spines and travel dust from Clent’s cloak, darning the seams, and cleaning his boots. From time to time Clent himself would explode from his closet, gripped by fits of poetic rage.

‘St Bibbet lend us light! Why must the man have a name so unsuited to verse? I have already used “lithe”, and unless I use “writhe” I shall be forced into repetition.’ He would smooth his hair as if combing his thoughts, then return to the closet.

A little after supper he finally emerged, scanning a scribbled paper like a mother looking for signs of sickness in a newborn baby.

‘It must do, it must do.’ He glanced at Mosca’s new, coal-black eyebrows, and gave a thin, despairing ‘hhssst’ through his teeth. He donned his coat, picking and preening over it with hands that trembled. ‘And thus,’ he murmured in apprehensive tones, ‘must we brave the gaze of Mabwick Toke.’

‘Who’s he then?’

‘Mabwick Toke is the head of the Stationers’ chapter in Mandelion. He can quote the whole of Pessimese’s “Endeavours”, from Amblebirth to Aftermath, in the original Acrylic. He can speak twenty languages, half of them living, including two from the Aragash Heights, and one that can only be spoken with a coin under the tongue. When he travels, his carriage is lined with shelves so snug with books that the very breeze must squeeze for entry. He once uncovered a league of subversives by identifying a single silken thread in the paper weave of an opera ticket. If wits were pins, the man would be a veritable hedgehog.’

‘If he’s so sharp, what do they need you for?’

‘Because there are delicate matters afoot, and they require a Special Operative who is not too obviously linked to the Stationers. I am an Unknown Quantity, and may pass through Mandelion Like A Ghost.’

To Mosca’s mind, Clent did not look as if he had haunted anything but a pantry, but she managed not to say so.

‘When do we go see Mr Toke the hedgehog, then?’

‘Now. Put on your bonnet and follow me.’

Mosca snatched up her bonnet, slipped her outdoor clogs over her leather indoor shoes, and clattered after Clent.

Out in the street, Mosca’s sharp eyes were dazzled by a hundred sights. The sound of hoofs on cobbles was deafening, and Mosca started as a horse’s head appeared directly in front of her, blowing through its nose with a sound like a broken bellows.

‘My good fellow, where might I find the Telling Word?’

A tinker paused in response to Clent’s cry and stared skywards, as if judging the position of the sun.

‘The Telling Word? You’ll find her on Morestraws, just outside the Papermill.’

Clent strode across the cobbles, paying little attention to his secretary, who followed him at a hop, still fastening the buckle of one clog as she struggled to keep up with him.

At last he halted outside a large building with a mighty mill wheel which jolted Mosca with the memory of Chough. From within came a vigorous whoomp! whoomp! whoomp! as if many pairs of giants were playing battledore at once. Several men, stripped to their shirts, were hurrying to and fro with barrows, some full of white rags, others full of coloured rags, rope ends and scraps of sailcloth. This was clearly the Papermill, and the rags were destined to be shredded and pulped and thumped into paper.

Peering through the open window of an adjoining building, Mosca saw two rows of women sorting scraps of cloth with quick, practised fingers, cutting them into pieces and slicing off buttons. Fascinated, she scampered to the next window.

And here, criss-crossed by the diamond-pane light from the window, was a Stationer printing press, its square-shouldered wooden frame standing up straight like a gutted dresser. A large man in his shirtsleeves lowered paper gripped in a hinged frame on to a blackened tray of type, then pushed the tray on rollers into the heart of the press. A mighty heave on a lever, and the machine stressed and pressed the paper down on to the type. Mosca could almost feel the flexing of the metal, forcing words into the world. The lever was raised, the tray dragged out, the frame lifted and the printed page tweaked free. A second man dipped the ends of what looked like fat drumsticks into a pot of ink, and slathered the mix over the type again, in readiness for the next page. The two men glistened with heat and effort. The press glistened with lamp-black and varnish. On the other side of the room an elderly, fox-faced man scanned each page carefully. In one hand he held a stick of wax, which he softened in a candle before drawing a molten splotch in each page corner and stamping it, using a ring with the Stationers’ seal.

Mosca nearly broke her neck turning her head upside down to read the drying sheets. They were posters in big, crumbly-looking capitals, advertising ‘Clashes between the Heraldry Beasts of the Many Monarchs’, to be held at the Grey Mastiff Inn.

Clent, meanwhile, had approached a smaller building across the road, flanking the river. It was unlike anything Mosca had ever seen before.

She knew it was a coffeehouse, for the sign above the door bore the image of an elegant Eastern coffee-pot. Even with her limited knowledge of the world, Mosca had heard of the coffeehouses of the big cities. Many men chose them as a place in which to relax, or cut deals, or talk of high matters with the like-minded. Each coffeehouse had its own character, and usually its own loyal band of customers, close knit as any club.

The walls of this coffeehouse, however, were almost completely hidden under a jostling patchwork of sunbleached, slantwise posters and printed snippets. Along the guttering, newspaper cuttings fluttered loosely like scarecrow rags. Each page bore the red blot of the Stationers’ seal, so that the coffeehouse seemed to be suffering from a slight case of measles.

‘Eponymous Clent, poet,’ Clent declared airily, brandishing his scrawled poetry at a quiver-cheeked man at the door. ‘Here to speak with Mabwick Toke.’ The door swung back, and Mosca followed Clent into the Telling Word.

They entered a large square room filled with tables that bore a startling resemblance to writing desks, complete with ink splashes and glass quill stands. Several customers, indeed, had their own writing boxes open before them, quills and steel pens nestling on the green felt lining. Coffee fumes mixed with the metallic scent of ink, and instead of brisk tavern chatter there was the deadened murmur of voices hushed through habit.

Mosca’s eyes were helplessly drawn to the sheaves of words pinned here and there on the walls, and the advertisements behind glass. Words, words, words. This was her gingerbread cottage. The smell of ink, however, seemed to be dizzying her. From time to time she could swear that the floor was gently dipping and rising.

Mosca and Clent were led to an unsmiling little man of fifty with a gnawed, yellow look like an apple core. The little man’s mouth was a small, bitter V-shape, and seemed designed to say small, bitter things. His wig frightened Mosca; it was so lustrous and long, so glossy and brown, one could think it had sucked the life out of the little man whom it seemed to wear.

‘Ah… Master Printer Mabwick Toke? Ah, I am honoured to meet a man so celebrated among the Stationers-’

‘What I would like to know, Mr Eponymous Clent, is why you have chosen to meet me at all,’ Toke interrupted sharply. ‘We have agents of our own in Mandelion. Our whole reason for bringing you here was our wish to use someone who was not obviously connected to us.’

‘Assuredly, assuredly.’ Clent spread his plump hands reassuringly. ‘However, as a poetic practitioner it would be strange if I did not approach the Stationers about publishing my works. On this occasion -’ he passed his scroll of paper across the table – ‘I have taken the precaution of preparing an excuse for my visit.’

Mabwick Toke ran a quick eye over the ballad, droning the words to himself in his throat. Absent-mindedly, he caught up a quill to jot and correct, occasionally licking at the nib to wet it. This was clearly a habit of his, since the tip of his tongue had become as black as that of a parrot. He drinks ink, thought Mosca, looking at his black tongue. He eats nothing but paper, she added to herself, noting his dry, pale lips and the crumpled-looking skin of his face and hands.

‘Fair. A little florid, but it will sell. Your invalid lady is not named, but that is no great matter. You paint your highwayman in colours too bright for his craft perhaps. It lacks moral instruction. Could you add another verse to say that he has gone to the gallows, but that he repented his wickedness at the eleventh hour?’

‘With respect, my good sir, I hardly think so. The fellow still lives…’

‘Too bad. Well, I suppose we must print the ballad as it stands until this man Blythe has been caught and hanged.’ Toke rolled the ballad carefully, and laid it inside his mahogany writing box.

‘Good sir -’ Clent cleared his throat – ‘the truth is, without this man Blythe we would never have reached Mandelion so soon or so safely. It has been the only stroke of good fortune in a journey otherwise blighted by calamity. To relate the details would be to tell a tale of hazard, indignity, betrayal and misfortune… for which, ah, you are clearly too busy. Suffice to say that since leaving Long Pursing I believe that I have been followed. In Webwyke I heard that a well-spoken man had been asking for me by name, and in Lampgibbet he enquired after me by description. I tried to shake him off by taking the narrow roads, and took lodgings in a dismal hovel-stack called Chough, but I fancy he found me out even there. Some gentleman arrived there unexpectedly, I know that much, and spent hours talking with the magistrate. That very afternoon I was dragged from my tea table by a howling mob and clamped into the stocks. If I had not proved ingenious, I think his slanders might have seen me hanged. Master Toke, someone meant to prevent me reaching Mandelion.’

A gentleman arrived unexpectedly… Mosca suddenly remembered the conversation she had heard from the dovecote, between the magistrate and the man with the voice like warm milk. But she was already biting her tongue to stay mum and secretary-like, and she wasn’t sure she could capture her tongue again if she stopped holding it.

‘Mr Clent, were the seals on the letters I sent you intact?’

‘Letters? Good sir, I received only one letter, calling me to Mandelion and recommending secrecy.’

‘Two letters were sent. The second, which gave further details, has clearly been intercepted. I would assume therefore that someone knows all too well why you are here – and that you yourself have not the slightest idea.’

Clent ruefully inclined his head.

‘Very well, the reason for summoning you is this. There is an illegal printing press in Mandelion.’

A silence fell across the room, as if everybody there had expected his words but had hushed out of respect for the gravity of the announcement. One or two of the eavesdropping Stationers clutched reflexively at little Beloved talismans on chatelaines for reassurance. Clent raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips in a silent whistle, as if he had been told that Mandelion sat on a layer of gunpowder. Only the child of Chough thought that a printing press did not seem half so exciting after meeting a real live highwayman.

‘Caveat! The printed villainy!’ The quiver-cheeked young man approached with a step as rapid as a stutter, carrying a mahogany box as if he thought it contained live vipers.

‘Mandelion has been flooded with pamphlets.’ Toke unlocked the box to reveal a small square of brownish printed paper which seemed to have been torn from some larger sheet. Using a pair of tongs, Toke lifted the fragment and extended it towards Clent, whose eyebrows climbed as he read.

‘Madness, and mischief, and menaces of murder,’ Clent muttered under his breath. ‘Radicals, I assume.’

Mosca had heard a little about radicals from chapbooks about the trials of traitors. She had a fuzzy idea that most radicals shouted a lot, and threw grenadoes at anybody rich or powerful, and tried to stir people with hoes into charging at people with muskets. All the would-be kings agreed that they were mad and dangerous, and radicals could be prosecuted for treason in any part of the Realm.

‘It reads like the ranting of a radical,’ Toke said, taking back the paper. ‘There is the usual canting about equality for all, and suggestions of how many ploughmen’s families could be housed in the Duke’s private residence. But these pamphlets also reveal the Duke’s precise plans for rebuilding the city more symmetrically; for example, the fact that everything from Midmackle Street to The Crockles is to be levelled make room for a new marketplace. Those streets are now in uproar. When the last pamphlet came out a week ago, there was a riot, sir.’

Mosca remembered what Bockerby had said the night before about riots in Mandelion.

‘People are often excitable about losing their homes,’ Clent murmured.

‘That is not the point. No street-ranter could have known of these plans. Only someone at court, and close to the Duke,’ continued Toke. ‘I believe that somebody has tried to make these pamphlets look like the work of radicals, and has tried too hard. I see the hand of the Locksmiths in this. Aramai Goshawk is in Mandelion.’

The name was strange to Mosca, but she noticed that Clent had gone completely white.

‘But… I have heard no reports that he had left Scurrey…’

‘Reports from Scurrey? There are no reports from Scurrey. Since Scurrey became a Locksmith city six months ago, there is a new city gate, solid oak and heavy with locks, and hardly a soul has been permitted to leave or enter.

‘Goshawk undoubtedly was in Scurrey. His Thief-takers too, secretly hiring half the felons in the city, and claiming rewards for “catching” any criminals that would not work for him.’ Toke’s bitter little mouth gave a twitch which might have been a smile. ‘When Goshawk’s tame cut-throats and pilferers were causing enough trouble to frighten the mayor, the Locksmiths came forward and offered to crush the crime wave. That buffoon of a mayor agreed, gave them half his treasury, and signed charters to give them special powers. The next day a boatload of guards in Locksmith liveries turned up with masons to rebuild the city walls. And now, anything might be happening in Scurrey, for all we know.

‘Now the Locksmiths have sent Goshawk to Mandelion, and he is trying to play exactly the same trick with our Duke. The Duke’s dearest dream is to see his beloved Queens ruling Mandelion, and he has a morbid fear of seeing them assassinated by insane radicals. The rogue pamphlets read like something from his worst nightmare – raging against the Twin Queens, and calling them “A Monster of Nature which might Count to Twenty-one on its Fingers”. It has thrown the Duke into frothing and fits, and he would do anything to find the people responsible.

‘Of course, he first turned to us to hunt down the perpetrators. For the last month we have trawled the city for the press. We arrest anybody found with one of these pamphlets, but it always turns out that they found it pinned to a tree, or pushed through their window. There is no pattern to where these pamphlets appear – east side, west side, the press seems to dance where it will. The paper is crudely pulped and unfamiliar, and we can learn nothing from it. Every few days more scandal sheets from this invisible press appear in our streets, in spite of our efforts. The Duke is fast running out of patience.

‘Who stands to gain from all this? Why, the Locksmiths themselves. Goshawk has promised the Duke that if he will call in Locksmith troops and give them special powers, they will find the rogue press where we have failed. I believe that Goshawk himself is writing these scandal sheets, in order to persuade the Duke that there is a radical conspiracy, so that the Duke will call in Locksmith help to crush it. If we do not find this accursed press, and fast, the Duke will agree to Goshawk’s terms, and another city will fall into the hands of the Locksmiths.’

Lady Tamarind’s words returned to Mosca’s mind: The Locksmiths are on the rise, and if I cannot stop them, Mandelion will be theirs. I must know if others mean to act against the Locksmiths. The Stationers, in particular… I must know their plans…

By this point, Mosca was listening so hard that she felt her ears might poke holes in her muslin cap. She did not understand everything that was being said, but three things were becoming clear. First, her conversation with Lady Tamarind had been no dream. Second, the Stationers did not like the Locksmiths any more than Lady Tamarind did. Third, Clent was heartily terrified of them.

‘Ah. Ahem. I must say, had I known that you wanted me to spy on the Locksmiths…’

‘Mr Clent,’ rapped Toke, ‘you were caught with sixteen illegal burlesque chapbooks of “King Cinnamon and the Milkmaids”, hidden in a hurdy-gurdy. You wisely chose to work for us rather than hang. You, sir, are caught between the frying pan and the fire, so you will sizzle and like it.’

Clent visibly wilted and, despite herself, Mosca almost pitied him.

‘We chose you as our agent because we cannot be seen to be investigating the Locksmiths. We are fighting a strange and secret war here in Mandelion – but it cannot become an open war between our guilds; that would be disastrous for the Realm.’ Toke’s pale eyes shone. ‘Both Caveat and I have been followed everywhere for some time by gentlemen unwilling to introduce themselves. Fortunately they do not dare enter this coffeehouse. For the last four days I have lived here. Caveat has been here for two weeks.’

Caveat nodded rapidly, and twittered faintly.

‘I could survive thus for weeks, but Mandelion will not. Do not be deceived by the city’s calm, Mr Clent, there is hanging thunder in the air. The last time Mandelion crackled like this, it was just before that terrible Mye trouble, fifteen years ago…’

Mosca gave a guilty start, before recollecting that Mye was a common surname, and that anything happening fifteen years before was unlikely to have been her fault. Perhaps it was her nervousness that made the floor seem to plunge and rise again beneath her feet.

Toke finally noticed her. ‘Mr Clent – is that girl yours?’

‘Ah, yes – it became necessary to retain the services of this child. I brought her that she might be signed up as an apprentice of some sort, so we could bind her to secrecy…’ So she was to be bound to secrecy again, even after signing the ‘ship’s articles’. Mosca was getting the distinct impression that Clent did not trust her.

‘As you wish. Caveat, fetch the appropriate papers and have her sign articles as an apprentice rag-sorter.’

When Caveat returned, he was struggling beneath two great scrolls of paper. Speaking his sentences piecemeal, in a strange, pouncing, broken fashion, he listed the terrible things that would happen to Mosca if she gave away Stationer secrets, and then pointed to a place at the bottom where she could ‘make her mark’. Mosca’s pen trembled. What was the ‘Mye trouble’? Would the Stationers be prejudiced against her if they discovered her name? She could not sign with a false name. It would sit like a china mask over a real face – everyone would surely see the join. Instead, Mosca signed with a cross, as if she was an ordinary country child with no knowledge of letters.

‘Does this mean I’ll be goin’ to a Stationer school, then?’ she whispered to Caveat as she handed back the papers. ‘I mean, you’ll want me lettered up proper, won’t you?’

‘I dare. Say that if your employer gives. A good account of you it will be considered.’ Hearing Caveat was like watching an animal scuttle from cover, pause halfway to look about itself, then continue its low run. He attempted a smile, but eye contact seemed to alarm him, and he scurried away, cradling his scrolls.

Clent was giving an account of his meeting with Lady Tamarind, the promised letter of introduction and access to the Honeycomb Courts.

‘Good.’ Toke looked more good-humoured now. ‘If you learn anything in the Courts, leave your report at the bookbinders in Pellmell Street. Your girl can mingle on the streets, and keep her ears open.’ He studied Mosca acutely for a moment or two. ‘Have I met you before, girl?’ He frowned when Mosca shook her head in bemusement. ‘You look familiar. No matter.’

‘Come, Mosca,’ Clent whispered. Mosca was rather relieved that nobody actually seemed to want to drag her off to sort rags there and then, and she followed Clent back out to the street.

The crowds were sparser now, and Mosca noticed Clent’s gaze darting nervously to the remaining dawdlers.

‘Mr Clent,’ hissed Mosca, as she hurried along beside him, ‘how do we know if we’re bein’ followed by Locksmiths?’

‘A true Locksmith will always wear gloves, because the outline of a key is branded into his right palm,’ Clent whispered back. ‘The head of each secret cell also wears a chatelaine at his belt – with keys on the belt that match the brands of all the men that answer to him.’

‘Mr Clent… most gentlemen wear gloves out o’ doors, don’t they?’

‘Yes, child, they do.’ Clent’s eyes darted from one street corner to the next. ‘Anyone we meet on the street might be a Locksmith spy.

‘Goshawk himself is a shadow among shadows. It is said that his fingers are slender and dainty as a child’s, and that he has kept them so by binding them every night in lemon-drenched muslin. He has fashioned keys so quaint that only he can use them, and he can pass through a triple-locked and bolted gate as easily as you or I might walk through rain. He can sense a secret passage or compartment the way a cat’s pink nose can scent a crock of cream. We have been commanded to spy upon the Wind.’