Fly By Night

K is for Kidnapping

‘I want my goose back!’

‘Mosca, while your affection for your anserine accomplice does you credit, I hardly think-’

‘I want my goose back!’

‘I can see that your orphaned state has caused you to regard the bird as a family member, perhaps a particularly beaky uncle-’

‘Mr Clent, I want my goose back!’

‘Have you forgotten that by your own account Mr Partridge is planning to roast my heart in the sun?’ bellowed Clent. The conversation had made little progress over the last half-hour and he was starting to lose his temper.

‘You could give him money. Bet he wouldn’t eat your heart if you give him enough money. Bet the Stationers gave you money for what I found out.’ Clent had been so delighted with Mosca’s discovery of the Floating School that the pair had actually got on tolerably well for two days. However, Mosca had just woken to a gleaming morning, and the sight of Clent trying on a new cravat. Instantly she had guessed that he had been paid without telling her. ‘They did pay you, didn’t they? That’s my money, or near enough anyway.’

‘Read through our “ship’s articles” again, child, if you have not forgotten your letters as well as your duties. You are bound to obey my orders, and you stand to receive a generous salary at the end of the year. Before this explosion of ingratitude, I had even considered recommending that the Stationers grant you a place in a school, as you requested.’ It seemed to occur to Clent that their voices had become rather loud given the thin walls of the marriage house, and his voice dropped to a whisper. ‘If, of course, you would rather throw away all hopes of bettering yourself in favour of buying yourself a mangled old fowl that seems to be harbouring all the demons of fable within his moth-eaten breast, then so be it. The choice is yours.’ Clent folded his arms, and his mouth became an adamant plum.

A place in a Stationer school… Somehow Mosca’s thoughts were not where she had left them; the idea of school had been so real to her. She had imagined the cool of a slate between her fingers, and had seen herself cutting quills for the younger children. She had even puzzled over how she would stop Saracen eating the inkbottles. Now the school seemed a means to an end, and that end was Lady Tamarind and the Eastern Spire.

Two images flitted before Mosca’s eyes.

Mosca saw a woman stepping out of a white carriage, lifting her hem slightly to protect it from contact with the street. Two footmen dusted the cobbles with swans-down brushes so that they could not stain her satin shoes. She swept through a door into a ballroom where the walls were hung with the hides of white tigers. She danced, and, from mahogany tables, stuffed ermine stoats watched her with pearls instead of eyes. She drank from a crystal glass. She was too beautiful to smile or flush, and her eyes were black, black as pepper. They were Mosca’s eyes.

Then Mosca saw the darkened hold of the Mettlesome Maid. Saracen was scrambling unsteadily over a heap of wooden and leaden Beloved, his leathery feet sliding on ridged faces and graven wings. He gave little chuckling noises in his throat, but his neck drooped with weariness and hunger. He nibbled at the pointed nose of the Kind Lady of Fools, and then shook his head disappointedly. Soon, when he was weaker, the sailors would pull up the planks and come after him with spades and boathooks…

‘Well?’ Clent was waiting with a look of satisfaction on his face. ‘Have you recovered your senses and made your choice?’

She had.

‘I Want My Chirfugging Goose Back!’

‘Well, you can’t have it!’ Clent snapped, scarlet-faced.

‘Then you’re a mouldy-mouthed liar an’ a cheat an’ I’m not doing nuffin’ for you no more!’ screamed Mosca. Before she had finished the sentence, Clent had stormed from the room, slamming the door.

His boots made a very satisfying thud as they hit the wall. All Mosca’s strength was not enough to tear the sleeves of his coat from the body, so she settled for stamping his new wig flat until it resembled a terrier that had fallen foul of a dustcart-wheel.

As she was standing, panting, her boots dusted with flour from Clent’s wig, she suddenly saw with absolute clarity what it was that she needed to do. If she could squeeze no reward from Clent and the Stationers, she could think of only one person who might give her money for Saracen’s ransom, and that was Lady Tamarind.

Clent had left paper, quill and inkbottle in the window seat. Snatching them up, she scratched out a quick letter.

Dear Ladyship,

The Stationers have an antipathy to the Locksmiths, on account of they suspect they are running a printing press to make the Duke go into fits. This is all to help them take over the city somehow.

The Locksmiths are hiding a radical called Hopewood Pertellis who teaches forbidden books to a school in alleys and I seen him do it. They are hiding him in the Grey Mastiff. Tomorrow night the Stationers will go in and arrest him when he is all ringed about with Locksmiths, so the Duke will find out how tricky and toad-spotty the Locksmiths are and slap his head.

Mosca from the Road.

She rolled the letter into a narrow pipe, tucked it intoher apron pocket, and hurried from the marriage house with her heart beating.

‘’Scuse me.’ She tugged at the sleeve of a woman with a basket of gillyflowers. ‘Can you tell me the way to the Plumery?’

The woman’s smile faded. She was of middle age, with a broad, cheerful face that sun and hard work had polished and cracked like wood. She gazed sadly at Mosca as if she had seen a ghost of a dead daughter standing behind her.

‘Of course, blossom.’ She whispered directions gently, as if she was talking to an invalid, and Mosca left her, feeling more ill and uncertain than before. As she walked, the streets dwindled into alleys, the houses became dwarfish, and then she took a turning into an open square and stopped dead.

Even before Mosca saw the shrines of Goodman Postrophe at every corner she sensed something deathly in the square’s stillness. No sheep or goats cropped the central green. Among the grass, their quills planted deep into the earth, nestled thousands of feathers – pigeon, magpie, dove, pheasant, rook. Most were broken-backed from the wind, and ragged from rain. Mosca felt superstitious fear climbing her spine on spider-feet.

Mosca had never seen a plumery before. She remembered a pedlar talking about the Plumery in the Capital:

… didn’t have room to do it proper, you see, not inside the city walls. ’Sides, most of the time the bodies were shovelled into the same great pits outside the city bounds, and even after the Birdcatchers fell, nobody had the stomach to go pickin’ through the bones all jumbled together and working out what was whose…

There would be a similar desolate memorial in every city in the Realm. Each of those feathers represented a grave, a man or woman or child killed by the Birdcatchers. This she had already known, but she had not expected to feel as if she were staring into the city’s open wound. Mosca could not guess how many thousands of feathers twitched in the early breeze. There were too many to think about safely, and she decided not to care whether the tiniest downy feathers were children.

She realized that she was not alone. People moved around the green in ones and twos, talking in church whispers or bowing their heads in silence. Some knelt between the feather plots, replacing broken plumes with fresh. The Praymaster chaplains from the cathedral would renew all the feathers on St Berrible’s day, but clearly some of the departed had families who liked to keep their graves in fine feather.

On a little pedestal sat a statue of Goodman Claspkin, He Who Carries Our Words to Departed Kin, one hand extended as if to cup the chin of a beloved child. Her knees weak with cliff-edge shakiness, Mosca knelt and reached a trembling hand towards the clump of pheasant feathers at his feet, as if she too had come to renew the plumes on a loved-one’s grave.

She tugged at a feather. It slid out, to show a tube of horn fastened to the feather’s stem. Struggling against the urge to look around, she pulled her letter out of her pocket, slid it into the tube, and pushed feather and tube back into the earth. It was done. She had broken the Stationers’ oaths of secrecy, and if they ever found out, they would put her in a printing press and crank it down until she popped like a chestnut…

She hurried back to the marriage house, thinking that everybody was wearing gloves and was watching her strangely. She opened the door of the room she shared with Clent, and Clent himself turned to stare at her, a queer and unfocused expression on his face.

‘What?’ Her hands twitched. Had he seen the earth on her knees? Did he suspect her? How could he suspect her? If he did, Mosca just wanted him to say so. ‘What?’

‘Perhaps…’ Clent held up a finger, and peered at a point over Mosca’s head, trying to stare his thoughts into clarity. ‘Perhaps if you truly wish it we will retrieve this winged warzone you call a goose. But.’ He waved his finger. ‘But. The Goose Must Earn His Keep. If it becomes necessary, he must be considered a… an Agent of the Stationers’ Company, and committed to their cause.’

Mosca stared at him, uncertain whether to feel relieved or suspicious. Clent seemed to have gone slightly mad, but mad in her favour. Lady Tamarind might not pay her for a day or two – why not take advantage of Clent’s change of heart?

‘S’pose that’d be all right,’ she agreed warily.

‘Splendid. Make my wig and coat ready, and we shall brave Mr Partridge after breakfast.’

The wig!

Clent strode down to order breakfast.

A few minutes later, Mosca was knocking at the Cakes’ door with a muffled, rapid urgency. There was a tiny noise within that she took to be a call to enter. She had flung open the door and taken two steps into the room before she realized it had been nothing of the sort. The Cakes was on her knees by her bed, a piece of embroidered cambric gripped in both hands and her mouth making a loose, rubbery shape as if she were about to cry.

Apologies did not come naturally to Mosca, so she did not make one. Instead she ruefully held up the wig by way of explanation.

‘It’s Mr Clent’s… I… stepped on it.’

The Cakes sniffed, and her face sharpened into its usual business-like expression.

‘Looks like most of the Mandelion militia stepped on it an’ all.’ She stood up, biting in both her lips, and walked over, taking the wig from Mosca’s hand. ‘Here, I got a brush for this kind of thing. We rent out wigs to grooms as can’t afford it and you should see the state we get some of ’em back in…’

Mosca watched as the other girl made little fussy, twitching gestures with the brush, which somehow seemed to tease curls out of their tangle, so that they sprang back into their intended shapes.

‘So… Bockerby beats you a lot, then?’ As far as Mosca was concerned, crying alone meant one thing.

‘What? Oh no, almost never… it’s just weddings. I always cry at weddings.’

Mosca stared.

‘What – at all of ’em? But you live in a marriage house! No wonder you’re so thin, you must be all dried up inside with squeezin’ out tears.’

‘I just like weddings,’ the Cakes said sadly. ‘I like watching folks write their names in the register – the ones that can write. I like giving ’em the Cakes. I like the happy ones, an’ the frightened ones, an’ even the ones in their altitudes with gin. I like watching ’em in their best bits of ribbon and their grandfather’s smartest waistcoats. I like throwin’ the honesty pods over ’em for good luck. I guess I just… keep hoping some of it’ll rub off on me, somehow.’

The hand holding the brush drooped miserably. Clearly the Cakes had to be cheered up, or the wig would never be salvaged.

‘Well, it might rub off. You’re not ugly or anything. You’re just sort of pointy.’ Mosca had a feeling that these encouraging words had sounded better in her head, but as it happened the Cakes was too despondent to take offence.

‘Doesn’t make any difference. No one’s going to want me with my Base Beginnings.’ The Cakes gave Mosca a narrow glance, then sighed. ‘Oh well, someone’ll tell you, I guess. My father meant to marry my mother, but somethin’ put it out of his mind and he went to sea instead, and when he came back my mother was dead and I was ten.’

‘Didn’t he do nothin’ for you?’

‘Course,’ the Cakes answered curtly, then gave Mosca another appraising glance. ‘Took me in, didn’t he? Gave me a position. Can’t say fairer than that.’

‘Bockerby’s your father?’

‘Course. An’ he’s kind when we’re alone, treats me right and everything. I think he’s sorry he didn’t marry and can’t call me his daughter. It’s funny really – we write out lots of marriage licences for people, and sometimes if they ask us to, we write down the dates a bit earlier than they should be, so children look like they were born proper and legal after the wedding. But it’s too late to do that for me.’

The Cakes pushed up her fists inside the wig and turned it about, inspecting it critically. ‘That’ll do, I think.’

By the time Clent returned to his rooms, Mosca was waiting for him and polishing his boots. Her expression of unaccustomed innocence seemed to alarm him a little, but he passed no comment, and they walked down to breakfast without further argument.

He was unusually quiet throughout breakfast. Mosca decided that his head was probably full of Schemes, and that if he wished to share them with her, sooner or later he would. Her own head was full of Saracen and the thought of seeing him again.

From Bockerby they learned that most barges and narrowboats could be found moored on the wharf near the Dragmen’s Arches, and after breakfast they set off for the wharf.

The Dragmen’s Arches had been cut into the old fortified wall so goods could be unloaded from boats and brought into the city. Mosca and Clent slithered down one of the brick ramps that descended through the arches, covered with wooden slats so barrels could be rolled up more easily.

‘There she lies.’ Mosca tugged Clent’s sleeve and pointed.

The Mettlesome Maid had been laid up at the end of the quay, at a slight distance from the other barges, as if, despite her name, she had become timorous or coy. One of her crewmen squatted on deck, twisting and plaiting some narrow lengths of line, the cotton startlingly white against his tanned fingers.

‘Indeed. Mosca – I fear it is often incumbent upon a gentleman to prevent injury to the feelings of others, regardless of his own sentiments. At this moment I sense that Mr Partridge must be quite mortified at the way he spoke of me to you. If I were to approach the boat, and he were already in a state of mental turmoil, the sight of me might cause him considerable distress, and he might…’

‘… rip your heart out an’ spike it on a boathook an’ roast it an’ eat it an’ throw the bits he didn’t like to the seagulls…’

‘Mosca…’ Clent glanced at her, then closed his eyes and gave a little shudder, as if he had looked down into a moral well at her benighted soul, and had been gripped by vertigo. He dropped a purse into her waiting hand. ‘Take the money. Retrieve your goose. Let us have the matter over with.’

Mosca approached the Mettlesome Maid with some trepidation, encouraged only by the fact that Partridge was nowhere to be seen.

‘Good morning, sir?’ she called out quietly. The crewman glanced up at her, then let his eyebrows rise and his knotwork fall into his lap.

‘Blood and breath. Well, that’s something. Hey! Dotheril! The Niece is here.’

A mournful, eerie sound rose up from the belly of the barge. It sounded like a cat in a bucket. It might have been a sob of relief.

‘Come on.’ The sailor stood up and held out a hand. Mosca took it and tripped carefully aboard up the gangplank.

‘Is Mr Partridge about?’ Best to know the worst quickly.

‘No, he’s not. I’m hoping you’ve nothing particular you need to say to him either, for I cannot tell you where he might be found. He went off yesterday, saying that he’d be gone for a while as he had some business to attend to – which I took as meaning business at the Ship Inn. When he was not back by dusk, I knew he’d crawled into a bottle. When he wasn’t back by morning, I thought maybe someone had stoppered the bottle before he could get out.’ He gave a grim laugh.

‘So – you talked to him yesterday evening, then?’ Mosca was frightened to ask whether Partridge had left his men detailed instructions involving her heart and boathooks, after chasing her over half the city.

‘No – not since yesterday lunchtime. The captain’ll roll back down that ramp like a barrel before long, I’ll take my oath, but till then I can’t tell you where to find him.’ The sailor suddenly glared at Mosca, and gave a slightly menacing motion as if loosening his shoulder. ‘Of course, now it comes into my head that perhaps the captain’s in a jail somewhere, clapped in darbies. Would you know something of that? Has your uncle decided to blow the widd?’

‘No…’ Mosca bit her lip, not entirely sure what she had been asked, but certain that ‘No’ was probably the safest answer. She looked about for a change of subject, and gave a vague gesture in the direction of the deck. ‘Is… is he all right?’

‘Not so hearty. A broken ankle, but he’ll rally.’

‘That’s not what I…’ Mosca stopped short of explaining that she had been enquiring after her goose, not the injured Dotheril.

‘What are you waiting for?’ There was an echoing wail from below the planks. ‘Get-this-thing-out-of-oh-Beloved-above-it’s-walking-up-my-chest-again…’

The sailor tugged up the edge of canvas, and gestured Mosca under it with a jerk of his head. Three planks had been left out of place, presumably to let air reach the trapped Dotheril. Mosca pulled off bonnet and cap, and swung her upper body down through the crack, head downwards.

The first thing she saw was an inverted Saracen, his white plumage gleaming moonishly in the darkness. Fat little soap bubbles of joy burst in his throat as he saw Mosca.

Another fainter sound from the region of his feet drew Mosca’s attention to the object upon which he stood.

‘Mr Dotheril… ’s all right, just don’t move. ’S all right, really, he only stands on your face if he likes you.’

‘I can’t say as my feelings is likewise,’ hissed Dotheril through his teeth. There were tight creases around the corners of his mouth, as if he had been doing everything through his teeth for some time. He was bracing his elbows against the shifting beach of graven godlings, and trying to drag himself backwards. One of his hands was tightening around an oaken pedestal.

‘Please don’t go hitting him with Good Lady Syropia the Forgiver, it’s not good for your soul, or your health neither. You’ll go frightenin’ him. A wild dog tried to bite him once, an’ he broke its neck.’

Dotheril’s hand faltered, and released the icon.

‘C’mon, Saracen, we’ll find you barley.’

‘Barley!’ Dotheril’s voice shook with rage. ‘It’s had bread, and cheese, and biscuits, and strips of mutton – not a scrap could they throw to me without that devil clapping its beak around it, and shaking it down its gullet…’

Saracen waddled forward, chuckling solemnly, until Mosca’s falling hair tickled over his beak and white neck. She closed her arms around his solid, white weight, and struggled herself upright.

Bonnet back in place, she pushed her way out through the tarpaulin. The sailor who had been waiting nearby suddenly remembered that he had left his ropework near the bow, and nearly kicked bales overboard in his haste to recover it. As Mosca climbed gingerly after him to make her farewells, it seemed to occur to him that light for working was far better at the stern, and he scrambled away from her to find a suitable seat.

‘You don’t want me to wait for Mr Partridge to come back?’

‘No!’ The sailor’s voice had a tight sound, as if he was trying to hold his breath. ‘You just… just go your ways.’

‘And you don’t even want-’ Mosca’s hand half reached for the money in her pocket.

‘No!’

‘Right then.’ When Mosca’s feet had crossed the plank back to the jetty, the sailor’s shoulders relaxed a little.

When he saw Mosca approaching along the street with Saracen in her arms, the muddied look of concern on Clent’s face suddenly dropped away, and he positively beamed.

‘Let us regard this latest recruit in our Grand Objective.’ Clent put his head to one side as he pretended to examine the goose, taking care all the while to stay out of reach of Saracen’s beak and wings. ‘Hmm. Chin rather weak, but fiery eyes courageously spaced. Shoulders drawn back, chest thrust forward nobly – yes, madam, I think your friend has the makings of a soldier.’

With every step away from the Dragmen’s Arches, Clent’s mood seemed to soar, and they dragged Mosca’s own spirits skyward like a man-sized kite. The smiles he directed at Saracen were so generous and affectionate that she felt a rush of warmth towards Clent. Not enough warmth to make her return all the money, of course, but enough for her to tell him that Partridge’s men had asked for only a little ransom.

‘Admirable – no doubt you sliced their price with that pointed little tongue of yours. There must be celebration, and now -’ he tossed his purse three yards in the air and caught it on the descent, to the disappointment of a couple of eagerly watching urchins – ‘now we have the means to conduct ourselves properly at the Grey Mastiff tomorrow night. I hear that their wine is a symphony, and that for tuppence they will sell you a cream pudding the size of a bath. Many fine ladies and gentlemen put their powdered noses through the door, and it will do you no harm to be seen there – but first we must prepare to be worth their gaze. Your poor shoes must be resoled, and I fear that we will need a muzzle and leash for our leather-footed comrade – lest he commandeer another barge as he did the Mettlesome Maid.’

Somehow Mosca was left with the feeling that they had come into money, rather than just losing less than expected. Somehow it was almost impossible to remember that not very long before, Clent had been arguing bitterly against cobbling Mosca’s shoes or retrieving Saracen. Clent simply swept such memories away, with the impatience of someone shoving crockery aside so that he can spread a treasure map across a table. The facts fell to the floor with a fractured tinkle and were forgotten.

The leatherworker refused to cut the price of the muzzle and lead, even when Clent explained that Saracen had once saved Mosca’s life by dragging her out of a burning church and he now had to be muzzled to prevent him turning a violent beak upon himself for having failed to rescue the rest of her family. However, the leatherworker said it was a touching tale and that it did him good to laugh now and then. He gave them each a sip of gin, which made Mosca’s nose numb and lit a candle behind her breastbone. They bought a muzzle meant for a young foxhound. When Saracen shook his head, it rattled a bit but did not fall off.

The cobbler enjoyed the tale as well, particularly with the addition of two storms and a gypsy conspiracy. Despite Clent’s insistence that Mosca had worn her soles thin on a pilgrimage to a hilltop shrine to Goodman Claspkin to pray for her dead family, the cobbler would not cut his price either. However, after he had stitched on Mosca’s new soles he gave them half an oyster pie to break between them. They cupped it in their hands and munched it on the way back to the marriage house, the juices running down their chins.

Only as they reached their rooms did Clent’s manner sober a little. ‘My mind seems alive with ideas this evening, and I must spear them with my quill. I am sure I can rely upon you not to interrupt me.’

After he had disappeared into the closet, Mosca perched on the edge of the bed with her pointed chin resting on her hands, thoughts intertwining behind her black eyes to become a plan. Perhaps a sly, buzzing whisper in Mosca’s brain told her that she had a chance to make a useful ally and put someone in her debt. Perhaps, however, a part of her had heard the Cakes’ story with a sense of recognition, and guessed at the other girl’s loneliness.

It was midnight when Mosca crept to the door of the Cakes’ bedroom, late enough for the other girl to be making no attempt to stifle the sound of her sobs. There was a snuffly sort of a gasp when Mosca knocked, and when the Cakes opened the door, her mob-cap was pulled almost down to her chin to hide her red eyes.

‘You got something of your mother’s?’ whispered Mosca.

‘What?’ The Cakes gave up and lifted her mob-cap frill to see who was talking.

‘Your father, he does the marriages sacred to Leampho with the One Wakeful Eye, don’t he?’

The Cakes nodded.

‘I was remembering… back where I come from, there’s this old ceremony they do sometimes, when you want to marry someone who’s alive to someone who’s dead – if they both wanted to marry. I mean, like, if they were just about to marry and then the man got stamped to death by a cow or fell in the rapids. I been thinking an’ I think I can remember how it goes. You got something of your mother’s?’

‘Yes, a bit of lace and a stuff gown. But is that sort of ceremony legal?’ the Cakes asked doubtfully. ‘I mean, legal enough to put in the register?’

‘We can’t tell anyone,’ Mosca said quickly. ‘It’s not the sort of thing you can tell about. I mean, it’s like Leampho with one eye open and one eye closed, right? Our eyes are open to see this, but the rest of the world has to have its eyes shut.’ Mosca almost believed her words herself. ‘What does it matter if no one else knows? You’ll know. Come on, and put the shawl round you. I got one of your father’s cravats off the back of a chair in one of the chapels.’

The little chapel Mosca chose bristled with clay vases full of dried honesty plants, the sheer shell pods reflecting the light of the Cakes’ candle like so many pale eyelids. The white lace shawl had split a few stitches but, draped over the head of the Cakes, it gave her an other-worldly look and hid her tearfulness. As soon as Saracen had satisfied himself that the cravat was not edible, he allowed it to be tied around his neck without further argument.

‘You stand there, and play your mother… and Saracen’ll be your father.’

Mosca wet her lips, took a breath, and began to speak. She pulled out rags of wedding words she had heard by listening through the thin marriage-house walls. She patched them with pompous-sounding phrases from her father’s books. She stitched the whole together with the scarlet thread of her own imagination.

In an alcove on the wall, a porcelain Leampho stood with one eye closed, as if winking to let Mosca know that he was on to her. The Cakes, on the other hand, snuffled her way through the ceremony, and at the end had to wipe her eyes with the shawl.

‘It must be a real wedding,’ she said at last, ‘or I wouldn’t be crying.’

Mosca put the cravat in her hand and left the Cakes to enjoy her tears.

Mosca retired to her trucklebed, where she lay in a state of happy sleeplessness for almost an hour, listening to the brook-like sounds of Saracen chuckling himself to sleep. It seemed that at last things were turning out as they should.

At the very moment when Mosca slipped into sleep, Tamarind was waiting for an audience with her brother. It was a peculiar and unsociable hour for an interview, but the Duke’s whims had become more irregular recently. Her face powder hid any sleepless circles around Tamarind’s eyes.

Most visitors to the Duke’s residence in the Western Spire found themselves trying to blink away double vision, and pinching the bridge of their nose to clear a headache. Every desk, every shelf, every chair, every stair, everything here had its twin. Tamarind, however, was accustomed to the obsessive symmetry, even the window-shaped alcoves painted with matching views in place of the recalcitrant countryside.

‘Beautiful Tammy!’

Resplendent in an emerald-green dressing gown, the Duke strode forward to take his sister’s hands in greeting. Like many of his line, Vocado Avourlace was a handsome man. When he had first arrived back to reclaim his family’s ancient rule over Mandelion, he had seemed the very picture of the hero come to usher in brighter times.

At first only Tamarind had noticed the awkward, disquieting way his expressions changed, as if a puppeteer were pulling wires to move his face muscles, and doing it rather badly. Nowadays she saw the fear in everybody’s eyes. Her brother was going out of tune like an old piano, and nobody would come to retune his strings. Dukes and kings may go mad at their leisure, for nobody has enough power to stop them.

‘Come and sit down, I have wonderful news.’

Tamarind seated herself.

‘Your good news, Vocado,’ she prompted him gently, with the same quiet, level tone she used for her pet crocodile. The Duke’s eyes were large and brown, but dull and lifeless. He blinked, and for a moment they became very bright, like pebbles licked over by a wave. After a second they dulled again, as if drying in the sun.

‘I thought I would never hear from Them again, after…’ A small palsy passed across the Duke’s face. He never spoke directly of his broken engagement to Queen Peri. ‘But They have forgiven me.’ Reverently, he drew out two identical letters with matching seals, and placed them on his lap. ‘Their Majesties…’ There was a world of awe, ache and longing in the whispered words.

‘That is wonderful, Vocado.’

‘You never believed They would forgive me, Tamarind,’ he added sharply.

‘Of course I did.’ Tamarind softly stood and moved around behind him so that he could not see her face. Her hands trembling slightly, she lifted his ornate, powdered wig from his head. She took an ivory comb from her hair and ran it through his brown hair, as carefully as if she was calming a dangerous beast. ‘What do the letters say?’

‘They say that I must find the master of the printing press that profanes their good name. And I shall. I shall make harpsichord keys out of his bones for Their Majesties to play when they come back to rule Mandelion. Little white keys for their little white fingers.’ The Duke twisted his head to look into Tamarind’s startled face. ‘I am joking, Tammy.’ He gave a sudden, disquieting smile. ‘You never seem to know when I am joking any more.’

It was true. Even Tamarind, who had spent her life trying to govern her brother, was finding him ever harder to predict or understand.

‘What else do they say?’

‘They advise me on how to know my enemies,’ he murmured, then looked at her suspiciously over his shoulder. ‘Why are you so keen to know? You have things on your mind, Tamarind. Some day I think I will open up your head to find out what they are.’ He stared at her for a few moments, then smiled to show that he was joking. Above the smile his eyes kept staring at her.

Tamarind’s gaze dropped to the letters on her brother’s lap. With satisfaction she noted the wax seal on each letter, the imprint of the Twin Queens’ insignia. It had cost her considerable trouble and expense to have the signet ring made secretly in the Capital, but she prayed the fruits would be worth it.

‘And… have they helped you know your enemies, Vocado?’

‘My mind will not settle.’ The Duke gently stroked the letters with his fingertips, as if the paper was living skin. ‘Sometimes when I have been reading these letters I look into the clouds for the face of my enemy, and I seem to see Aramai Goshawk staring back at me. But, Tamarind, what am I to do? This radical conspiracy must be crushed – I see their hand in everything – helping highwaymen escape, rousing my people to riot… My constables are useless. The Stationers too. Goshawk tells me that he has troops upstream who can be in Mandelion in two days if I give the word. Only the Locksmiths can help.’

‘That is not true.’ Tamarind circled her brother to stand before him, and dropped to her knees. ‘Goshawk is not your only choice. I can help. Off the coast a ship stands ready with troops from Jottland – awaiting word from me.’

‘The Watermen have sworn that they will not permit any troops to be brought along the waterways from the coasts, until the Succession is decided,’ the Duke answered dully.

‘You might distract them. If you gave them enough money, you might persuade them to go upstream and delay the Locksmiths’ ships and…’

‘Why do you wish to put me at odds with the Watermen, Tamarind?’ The Duke scowled, and Tamarind could sense the floor becoming quicksand beneath her feet. It was time to gamble all her gains, and she did so without a tremble.

‘You must listen to me, Vocado. The Locksmiths are playing you false. The Stationers have discovered the identity of the man running the radical conspiracy, the master of the villainous printing press. They have not arrested him because he is being protected. The Locksmiths are hiding him, Vocado.’

An ugly sickle curl was developing in the corners of the Duke’s mouth. The curl appeared when he was on the brink some cruel or violent act. It had appeared on the day of the fateful badminton match.

‘I can prove it.’ A frightened moth was a-flutter behind Lady Tamarind’s scar. She could not read her brother, or guess whether his current anger boded ill for Aramai Goshawk or for herself. ‘Put some men at my disposal, and I will prove it to you by tomorrow night. You… will want time to think about this, Vocado. I will leave you.’

She composed herself outside the door. Her scar throbbed so hard it numbed her cheek. In one instant she had staked everything – her influence over her brother, the fate of Mandelion, her own life. All now depended on the decision the Duke was about to make. Vocado Avourlace was alone with the voices that only he could hear. They murmured from twinned smiles in painting, tapestry and stained-glass window. The words that whispered from the newly arrived letters, however, spoke most clearly.

‘We have every faith that you will find the culprits,’ whispered the twin voices, ‘and when you do, arrest them without hesitation. The law is your lance and you may wield it as fiercely as you see fit in order to crush the evildoers…’

‘Yes…’ For days the Duke’s thoughts had been circling giddily like tea leaves in a cup. Now at last they were settling, and soon they would form a pattern which would spell out destiny for Mandelion and everyone in it.