Twilight Robbery aka Fly Trap

Goodlady Nizlemander, Winnower of the Chaff from the Grain

Mistress Bessel arrived a little after breakfast time, or what would have been breakfast time if Mosca had had anything to pay the Keeper.

As soon as the last bolt scraped, the stocky woman turned to Mosca with an eagerness that drew her broad face taut, her gloved hands restless with anticipation.

‘Well?’

Mosca frowned and fumbled at her apron strings.

‘I done everything you said…’ She could not stop her tone sounding defiant.

Mistress Bessel stared at her, and then the eagerness faded and the muscles around her mouth tensed.

‘You failed?’

‘No! I shinned my way into the Luck’s cell, just like you told me! And I found your precious Luck. It’s not my fault I couldn’t bring it back!’

Tell me, then!’ snapped her visitor. ‘Tell me everything you saw in that room!’

Mosca swallowed drily. ‘I will – but you got to get me out of here first.’

And have you frisk off down the nearest alley as soon as you see daylight? Precious little fear of that, my dove. Tell me the truth and I’ll fish you out of here, you have my promise

on that, but you tell me what you know first. You’re in no place to haggle – bear that in mind.’

It was true. Mosca took a deep breath. ‘There’s no magic skull up there, Mistress Bessel, no saint’s apple core. Just a lad a few years older than me, half crazy with staring at the walls. The Luck… it’s not an it. It’s a he.’

Mistress Bessel’s features took on a stony cast, and it was impossible to guess her thoughts. Was she angry? Did she even believe Mosca? ‘Are you sure it was the right cell?’

‘Sure as rock. Only one other flue off the chimney.’

‘What else was there in the cell apart from the boy? Tell me! Don’t leave out a grain or jot!’

Mosca could only assume that Mistress Bessel was still hoping against hope that the Luck would turn out to be something else in the room, something pocket-sized. Wearily Mosca set about describing every detail of the Luck’s cell, right down to the wall hangings, the crockery and the Beloved statues littering the floor, while Mistress Bessel clasped and chafed her gloved hands, her face intent and inscrutable, her eyes narrowed.

‘But it’s no good – the Luck weren’t none of those other things. It was the lad. He told me so.’

‘What?’ The older woman’s head rose sharply. ‘He spoke to you? You let him see you? Well, that tears the plan in two -’

‘He won’t tell anyone,’ Mosca retorted. ‘I know he won’t. I’m his secret. I’m all he has.’ Mosca gave a sketchy account of their nocturnal conversation. ‘And the plan’s torn in two anyways. Even if I could lug five foot of lumbering mooncalf up the chimney, how would we smuggle him out of the prison? Under our aprons?’

There was a pause. It appeared to have brought a few friends. Apparently Mistress Bessel did not have an answer.

‘Mistress Bessel, you made me a promise.’ Mosca could not keep a tremble out of her voice. The older woman glanced at her with features still set in a scowl, and for a terrible moment Mosca thought she might go back on her word out of spite and disappointment. ‘You promised!’

‘Oh hush!’ snapped Mistress Bessel. ‘One would think that nobody had trials but you! Yes, I made you a promise, and a good deal of trouble it will bring me for very little gain. But -’ she sighed deeply and smoothed her apron with the air of a martyr – ‘I am a woman of my word, even in dealings with a rag of mischief like you.’ She pursed her lips speculatively for a few moments. ‘So… tell me about his lordship the mayor. Does he have a wife? A sister? A housekeeper? Anybody of the female sort to look after him?’

Over the next five minutes Mosca found herself answering a barrage of questions about the mayor’s household, temperament, likes and dislikes. Mistress Bessel appeared to be handling her disappointment rather better than Mosca had expected, and in spite of her colossal relief Mosca could not help wondering why.

She suspected that Mistress Bessel had walked into the jail with more than one plan up her sleeve, and when one had broken she had smoothly cast it aside in favour of the next. If so, the backup apparently involved ingratiating herself with the mayor. Mosca did not care a single pin providing it also ensured her liberty.

‘Your mayor sounds a sore old bear,’ said Mistress Bessel as she took her leave, ‘but I’ve tamed fiercer beasts before today, my honeycomb. Now, all I need is a word with Eponymous…’

Mosca did not trust Mistress Bessel any further than she could fly, but in spite of this her hopes once again began their battered, indomitable spider-climb up the grimy flue of her soul.

After four hours of bitten nails, Mosca received another visit. She was not sure whether to be relieved or disappointed to discover that it was not Mistress Bessel, but Sir Feldroll, accompanied by the portly and nervous form of Eponymous Clent.

Sir Feldroll’s manner was unusually tense and curt, and Mosca soon learned why. He had spent most of the morning arguing with the mayor, leaving his fuse all but burned out.

‘The mayor received a ransom note this morning,’ he explained, the muscles in his peaky, expressive face jumping and twitching. ‘In exchange for Miss Marlebourne’s return, the kidnappers have demanded the Soul of Santainette.’

This was a fine opportunity for Mosca to practise her blank look.

‘It is an emerald of considerable renown – and no small value, if one has the right contacts. It is the size of a child’s thumbnail, and cloudy, flawed you might even say, with a plume of smoky yellow coiling through the middle of it. But since it is said to have been prised out of the crown of the last king of the Realm…’

Mosca gave Clent the most fleeting glance, and noted the feverish interest that had glossed his eyes like varnish. Apparently he had not heard this particular detail before. Battered, hungry, frightened, cold and exhausted as Mosca was, she felt that she would cheerfully have thrown a dozen such stones into the Langfeather in exchange for a bowl of stew, a night’s sleep and an escape from Toll. The gem sounded like trouble.

‘This emerald was entrusted to the care of the mayor many years ago,’ continued Sir Feldroll, ‘and I believe that he intends to hand it over to the kidnappers as instructed a few nights from now.’

A memory jolted Mosca’s frozen mind and forced it back into life.

‘Not the night of Yacobray?’

Sir Feldroll nodded, looking somewhat surprised. ‘His lordship the mayor is under orders to place the gem within a radish and hang it outside the door of his counting house in town, just before the dusk changeover. Rather outlandish request.’

Mosca thought it sounded far from outlandish. The night of Saint Yacobray was the one night of the year when something like that could be hung outside without attracting notice, and nobody but the Locksmiths would dare touch it. Nobody, that is, except the daring conspiracy of kidnappers.

‘I have advised the mayor against this in the strongest possible terms.’ Sir Feldroll frowned. ‘This brigand Appleton is plainly obsessed with Miss Marlebourne. It is absurd to imagine that having snatched her from her family he will meekly hand her over in exchange for mere wealth. Once he has the gem, he is far more likely to use it bribe his way out of Toll-by-Night, and carry off Miss Marlebourne. To Mandelion, no doubt, for once he reaches that nest of anarchists, cut-throats and fellow radicals he knows all too well we shall be unable to reach him, or rescue his victim. Confound it, he means to marry her!’ His chin bobbed and wobbled, and his face flushed with emotion.

Mosca and Clent did not look at each other; indeed their gaze upon Sir Feldroll’s face became particularly steadfast. It did not seem a good idea to mention that they had been accomplices of many of the ‘anarchists, cut-throats and radicals’ in Mandelion, or the extent to which they had helped them take power. However Sir Feldroll was probably right to distrust the kidnappers’ promises. After all, Skellow had spoken to Clent’s ‘Romantic Facilitator’ of claiming the ransom even if Brand and Beamabeth were married.

‘Picture it.’ Clent met Mosca’s eye with an expression at once appealing and nervous. ‘That poor child, captured and unfriended… need we say more?’

There was a long and heartfelt pause.

‘Well, somebody bleedin’ well better,’ snapped Mosca. ‘I don’t see where you’re driftin’.’

‘Then I shall speak more plainly,’ answered the knight. ‘I could not talk the mayor out of paying the ransom. However, four solid hours of… discussion with him have not been entirely in vain. My persistence and Mr Clent’s eloquence had achieved little, but by the greatest good fortune Mr Clent happened to encounter a respectable lady of his acquaintance with an impeccable name.’ Evidently Mistress Bessel had acted quickly. ‘She added her arguments to ours, and between the three of us we finally succeeded in talking your cell door open. The hearing has been cancelled. I will personally be paying your release fee.’

Mosca’s heart broke into a gallop, then slowed to a doubtful canter, and finally a cynical trot. She crooked a black eyebrow and waited. Her short and bitter life had trained her to recognize the sound of a ‘but’ hovering in the air.

Sir Feldroll cleared his throat.

‘The argument which Mr Clent finally brought to bear with the mayor was this: your allotted time as a visitor comes to an end tonight. At present we have no agents in the night town, nobody at all. We have only until the night of Yacobray to find Miss Marlebourne – once Brand Appleton has the gem, I am firmly persuaded that we shall never see her again. I am asking you to help us – to help us find Miss Marlebourne, and if possible to arrange her rescue.’

‘So that’s it.’ Mosca gave a bitter laugh, and then directed a gaze of fire at Eponymous Clent. ‘This your idea, then? One of your brilliant plans? Somebody promised me I’d never have to go to the night town. Wonder who that was.’

Clent, to do him justice, did look somewhat abashed and crestfallen.

‘Child,’ he said quietly, ‘the situation was quite desperate. If I had been able to think of any other way of slipping your shackles…’

‘Yeah. Well, thank you for gettin’ me out of the frying pan, Mr Clent. So that’s the plan, is it? Throw me into the night town so I can rescue the mayor’s daughter from a nest of cutthroats all by misself? How am I supposed to do that?’

‘You will only be alone the first night,’ answered Sir Feldroll. ‘By the second I should have summoned some night-named servants from my estates. They will have the mayor’s permission to enter the night town immediately, without spending three days as visitors. Your job will be merely to dig out information – my men will perform the rescue. And the reward, if you succeed, will be generous, easily enough for you and your employer to buy your way out of Toll.’

Mosca scowled at nothing and nibbled soot from her fingernail while she thought.

‘Child,’ Clent added quietly, ‘you and I have at least the dubious privilege of having been educated in the world. Whips and briars have been our nursemaids, kicks and cuffs our tutors. Life has whetted our wits and toughened our hides – our kind stand at least a chance of surviving in Toll-by-Night. Miss Marlebourne quite simply does not.’

Miss Marlebourne’ll survive, all right, said the bitter voice in Mosca’s head. She’ll survive because she’s worth something to somebody alive. They know what they can get for her; they won’t so much as crush a ringlet or stain a satin shoe. But in her mind’s eye she was seeing again Beamabeth’s frightened face as she talked of her fears that the night town would reclaim her.

‘Oh…’ She meshed her fingers in her ragged, abused hair and tugged it until her scalp ached. ‘Oh, crabmaggots. I’ll do it, I suppose. Sir Feldroll, this reward – there needs to be some left over for some other folks we made promises to, and who need it as much as their necks. Oh, and my goose! Saracen comes with me.’

‘I do not think,’ Sir Feldroll remarked, with an uncharacteristic quirk of humour in the corner of his mouth, ‘that you will have any trouble persuading the mayor of that at all.’

If the mayor’s staff had been any happier to lose Saracen and regain their second pantry, they would probably have broken into a caper.

They were clearly less jubilant at the idea of having Mosca back within their walls once more, though it would only be for a few hours. However, there was nowhere else Sir Feldroll could take her, since he was staying at the mayor’s home. The mayor himself was out, thankfully.

The smell of porridge banished all fear, anger and thought in a moment. The mayor’s footmen watched with a mixture of fascination and distaste as Mosca demolished three bowls of it so fast that her tongue burned and her stomach cramped. As soon as she had finished, the exhaustion that she had been holding at bay refused to accept any further argument.

She did not remember drooping into sleep at the table, but a few hours later she woke to find herself in a little nest of blankets by the hearth, watched by a maid who stood against the wall, just where Mosca had been placed with her tray two nights before. Saracen slept in a basket beside her. With a sinking of the heart, she saw that the sky beyond the window was dulling to violet.

‘Where’s Mr Clent? I need to speak to ’im.’

Leaving Saracen to his grain-filled dreams, Mosca went to find Clent and tracked him down in the library. To her surprise, he was pacing, his wig slightly to starboard, his fingers knotted behind his back. When he saw Mosca, he came to an abrupt halt. For a few seconds his fingers fretted at the frayed ends of his cravat. Then he spread his arms in an expansive shrug and let them fall with a slap.

‘It was all I could think of,’ he said simply. ‘The only plan that would tweak you out of that lousehouse. I dropped my bucket into the well of my invention to the rope’s extent, but could pull out nothing better. I am… truly sorry.’

‘Well, you chose a rosy time to run out of ideas,’ muttered Mosca, sitting on one of the ornate library chairs and pulling up her feet to sit cross-legged.

‘Here.’ Clent placed a bundle on the table before Mosca and opened it. Inside lay a small purse, a knife in a leather sheath, some bread and cheese wrapped in a handkerchief, a reed pen, a bottle of ink and a wallet full of blank writing paper. ‘Not much… but our Sir Feldroll seems loath to gild your pockets too heavily lest you pay your way out of Toll and escape into the heather. Nonetheless, this might be of service to you.’ It was a map, with the words ‘The Faire Citie of Toll’ looping rather pompously along the top.

‘This is a map of Toll-by-Day,’ Mosca said, scowling at the fine, spidery names that sidled down the streets.

‘I know. Many of these streets will not be there come the dusk. But these will.’ With a careful fingertip he touched an image of a spire, a sketch of a tree, the Clock Tower, the castle turrets. ‘High points. Look for these above the roofs and you can recover your bearings. And this will not change.’ He drew his finger along the sweeping arc of the town wall. ‘Mosca – if all else fails, look for this wall and follow it until you find the house of that redoubtable midwife. She at least does not appear to be an urchin-eating ogress, and if she has tolerated you once she might do so again. And… you can leave letters here -’ Clent tapped the map again – ‘inside the mouth of the statue of Goodman Belubble that is built into the town wall. I will… There will be letters for you as well.’

Mosca nodded, and swallowed a gulp of coarse, dry nothingness. There was a silence.

‘For Beloved’s sake, try to keep track of your bonnet,’ Clent broke out at last. He pulled Mosca’s bonnet from a chair and dropped it on to her head. ‘Running about bare-headed like a ragamuffin…’ His voice trailed off.

‘You’ll need to find somebody else to tell you when your plans are bleedin’ stupid,’ Mosca said gruffly. ‘Not that you ever listen to me when I do.’

‘How I shall survive without the perpetual barbs of your conversation I cannot imagine,’ mused Clent with a little frown, as he set Mosca’s bonnet straight.

Just before dusk, Mosca and Clent were escorted by several of the mayor’s men to the Committee of the Hours.

Day air had a smell, Mosca realized as she walked with Saracen in her arms, even chilled late-autumn afternoon air. The flowers had long since died, but the cold sun still drank dew from leaves, drew tartness from withering crab apples. Daylight cooked the sullen sludge in the roadways, the fierce green moss on old roofs. There was the nose-pinching cold smell of gleaming linen flapping itself dry on lines between the balconies.

A sunstruck spiderweb was silver embroidery against the darkened gable beyond. A robin throbbed on a hitching post, looking as if it had been dipped in tomato soup. Dead leaves flared underfoot in ginger, purple and lemon yellow.

Mosca realized that she could not imagine never seeing the sun again. It felt a bit like going blind. She did not look at Clent’s face, but watched his battered boots striding alongside her, taking one pace to one-and-a-half of hers.

The evening side of the sky was greening over and dulling like old ham, and there a few knifepoint stars were gleaming. Soon the sky would be prickling with them.

The Raspberry looked up when they arrived in the office of the Committee of the Hours, and his eyebrows climbed and tipped a fraction.

‘Ah! Yes…’ His eyes narrowed. ‘We were told to expect you both. Kenning, the boxes!’ Kenning obediently scampered away, returning with two boxes. One appeared to be full of light-coloured badges, one full of black wooden ones, and it was into the latter that the Raspberry now peered. ‘Ah… there.’

He pointed carefully into the box, and Kenning obediently fished out one badge with tongs and held it towards Mosca at arm’s length as if it was hot. She gingerly took it in her hands, half expecting it to burn. It was a jet-black badge with a fly carved on it, without the coloured border of the visitors’ badges.

The Raspberry spent a long time staring into the dark-badge box, then Kenning politely reached past him to the other box, pulled out a light wooden badge and placed it in his master’s hand. The Raspberry stared at it in some surprise, beckoned Kenning closer and whispered into his ear. Mosca caught mere fragments.

‘… thought that under the circumstances… change of classification… after all, given his associations… mistake?’

Kenning’s whispered return was just as indistinct.

‘… still bein’ decided… not yet… might still change…’

Both were darting quick glances at Eponymous Clent, a fact that was not lost on Eponymous Clent. He had flushed somewhat, and his gloved fingers were beating a pitter-pat tattoo against his pocket.

So that was it. Clent has been born under Phangavotte, a Beloved that was only just considered a daylight Beloved, and after Clent’s part in the terrible kidnapping of Beamabeth Marlebourne it sounded as if Phangavotte and all those born under her were within a hair’s breadth of being ‘reclassified’ as nightfolk. The badge in the Raspberry’s hands was a daylight badge, free from a visitors’ border, but he seemed reluctant to give it to Clent.

Given his associations. That could only mean Mosca. Clent’s fortunes were hanging in the balance, not only because of the failed ambush plan, but because he was seen to be friends with a nightling…

‘Well, good riddance to you, you fat maggot!’ Mosca rounded on Clent without warning. ‘Go ahead, suck up the daylight, what do I care? At least I won’t have to deal with your whining ways any more! All you ever been to me is a cart out of town, and a sadder, more rickety ride I couldn’t have picked. So let them tell you you’re worth more than me, let them tell you that you’re a “good name” and better off without me! It’s me that’s better off without you, you mincing, nettle-tongued, sorry sack of nothing!’ She blinked hard, and made the momentary blur of tears go away. All around, the guards were flinching with shock at her outburst.

Clent stared at her, the wind snatched from his sails, and then his face puckered into a most peculiar frown, one in which the corners of his mouth seemed in some danger of curling upwards. He coughed, covered his mouth with his hand and for a few moments seemed robbed of words.

‘Dreadful child,’ he murmured at last, his voice rather muffled. ‘Ah, now the asp rises from the apple bowl to show its fangs…’

‘This my badge, then, is it?’ Mosca waved her new badge over her head. ‘Good!’ She stripped off her visitor brooch and flung it on to the Raspberry’s desk, then pinned the all-black badge to her dress. ‘I’ll wear this with pride! Is it night yet? Can I go and find some people worth my time? Because I don’t care if I never see another two-faced, toffee-nosed day-lighter again!’ She turned on the Raspberry. ‘And that goes for you too, you pompous old pustule!’

‘Get her out of here!’ The Raspberry’s face had deepened in colour almost to the point of graduating to ‘blackberry’. ‘Get… Get her out of here!’

Two guards hurried over and hooked their arms under Mosca’s armpits, lifting her from the floor. As she found herself receding at speed towards the door, she locked gaze with Clent one last time.

‘Yes, take her away,’ he said gently, his brow a curious map of crinkles, a certain softness in his expression. ‘Nothing but a burr in my clothing, a cinder in my eye…’

‘’Ope you choke on your next pie!’ Mosca shrilled by way of farewell as the door closed between them.

Courtesy of the guards she flew, legs a-dangle, out of the room, down the corridor and into the chamber where she had been interrogated by Excise on first arriving in Toll. There she was dropped unceremoniously on to a bench, which jumped under the three people already sitting on it.

She reeled a little as the guards left the room, and realized that she was focus of every eye.

‘I don’t know what you’re all staring at.’ She pulled her bonnet straight. ‘Never seen anybody with a private escort before? Made an impression on the committee, that’s all.’

‘We know,’ came the chorus. Mosca’s quick eye travelled down the line, noting the jet-black badge pinned to every chest.

‘That voice of yours goes through oak doors like a bodkin through cheese,’ said a middle-aged woman, her threadbare scarf hiding all of her hair and most of her mutilated ear. Her thin mouth was spread in a smile of genuine delight.

‘Pumpus ol’ pusturl,’ quoted a wiry young man, shoulders palsied with laughter.

‘Everyone move up,’ said a tall, strongly built man with long, ragged black hair, cheeks rough with untended beard and a voice that made Mosca think of chutney and gravel. ‘She’s sitting next to me.’

There was a shifting and scrape of boots, and suddenly Mosca was sandwiched among the taller bodies and festooned with glittering smiles.

‘This one’s a little wolfcub.’The black-haired man grinned approvingly down at her. ‘Stay close to me when we go into the night, lass. I’ll see you safe.’

Mosca nodded, suddenly warm with self-consciousness.

‘Let’s all stick together,’ muttered the woman, casting a narrow glance at the darkening window. ‘Safety in numbers.’

Little red-haired Kenning ran into the room, his mouth still hanging open with shock, a handkerchief twisted in his hands. He scuffled to a halt in front of Mosca and stared at her, entirely failing to haul up his jaw. After a few small incoherent noises, he gave a squeaky hiccup of a laugh, pushed the handkerchief into her hand and fled the room with one fist in his mouth.

The handkerchief turned out to contain a hunk of bread and cheese. Apparently the sight of his eminent master entering apoplexy had been worth Kenning’s supper.

The conversation in the little antechamber was a strange mix of the frank and the careful. Like Mosca, each of the other three had night-time names and had come to the end of their allotted time as visitors, having failed to find enough money to pay their way out the other side. Everybody gave an account of themselves, and by unspoken agreement nobody asked questions about the obvious gaps. Nobody asked why Mosca had a large goose with her either.

Jade, the thin woman in the scarf, had previously been the accomplice of a travelling ‘doctor’. She used to come forward out of the crowd while he was proclaiming the virtues of his wares and pretend to be cured by them. In order to enter Toll she had needed to sell all the doctor’s bottles, his alchemical scales, his hat, his stuffed crocodile and even her own hair. (Nobody asked what had happened to the doctor or the top half of Jade’s right ear.)

The leaner, younger man was Perch. His gestures were a symphony of starts and jerks, and he smelt like a crate of frightened rabbits. He had spent the last few months trudging from village to town looking for work. But as winter crept in and belts tightened, nobody wanted to spend money on having crows scared or roofs mended or firewood chopped, and he knew he had to get to the lands beyond the Lang-feather. (Nobody asked Perch how he had found the money to get into Toll.)

Last was Havoc, the guttural, grinning giant of the group. He admitted to having been a ‘roaring boy’ with a company of ‘blades and brave lads’. He listed with some pride several heaths that carriages would no longer traverse for fear of meeting ‘the boys’. He admitted that he had experience of using a sword, twin daggers, a pistol, a cudgel and a blunderbuss. (Nobody asked him why he was no longer with ‘the boys’.)

‘So,’ declared Havoc, when everyone had finished, ‘we all have something to toss in the pot. Mye here can be our sneaker, micher and little snakesman, small enough to dodge a glance. Jade can be our face, our speak-piece, particularly if we need to do a bit of cony-catching. Perch here says he already has a cousin nightside who can help us get jobs if there’s no other way of finding the mint. And if anyone comes to us looking for trouble, the trouble they find is me.’

Mosca was relieved to hear that her companions were so well cut out for survival in Toll-by-Night, though it did occur to her that if the Committee of the Hours had been listening to that conversation, they would have heard very little to shake their belief that those born under night Beloved were destined for the shady side of the law. She knew enough thieves’ cant to know that a ‘micher’ was a sneak thief, a ‘little snakesman’ was a slang term for a child passed in through a window to open the door of a house, and that ‘cony-catching’ had more to do with con artistry than catching real rabbits.

‘’Tis a good thing my cousin Larkin had a sharp set of wits,’ offered Perch in his quavering tones, his country vowels spreading like butter. ‘Found a way to leave me a letter ’neath a stone. Says that running loose on the streets at night is a doddypol’s game and a good way to die.’ Remembering her brief excursion into Toll-by-Night, Mosca could not help but silently agree. ‘Told me to seek him out in Slake’s Way, by the grand old beech, in a tavern under a yellow sign – they call it the Whip and Masty. He’ll find us a place to stay.’

A little before dusk the guards returned for them, now looking somewhat stony and nervous.

‘You’ll come with us.’

Mosca and her new coterie were shown into a long, narrow stone-walled cell, which was almost entirely taken up with an enormous black iron turnstile, reaching from ceiling to floor and from wall to wall.

‘It’s the Twilight Gate,’ one of the guards said curtly. ‘Only turns one way. Through you go.’

Havoc went first, walking in among the black metal branches and pushing hard at one ‘bough’. There was a squeak, and then a long grinding note as the vast turnstile began to revolve, a jerk at a time. Havoc vanished beyond it, and Jade followed, then Perch, and finally Mosca ventured with Saracen into the forest of cold iron prongs. It took all her weight to turn it, and she found her comrades on the other side, squeezed between the stile and a small wooden door.

‘Hey!’ Havoc’s voice echoed through the cell. ‘How long do we have to wait here?’

No response.

‘Hey!’

‘They won’t hear us now,’ Jade said quietly. ‘We’ve passed through the stile. We’re nightside. They can’t admit we exist.’ The door beyond closed, leaving them in darkness.

There was no room to sit, so they stood in a non-existent huddle. They all sensed that silence was an enemy, so Havoc sang songs. Of a man who bludgeoned his landlady and her daughters, one, two, three, and went to the gallows without ever saying why. Of a gang of crows following Murthering Drack across the county, ‘For where Merry Drack has been, there the dead men lie.’ Havoc’s voice was deep and tuneless and bleak but with a terrible jollity, and the others held their tongue as they would during a hymn.

The sound of a bugle. Even Havoc’s tune halted.

Night air had a smell too, Mosca decided, as she heard the distant music of approaching Jinglers. Night smelt the way Havoc’s songs sounded. It smelt of steel and rushlights and the marsh welcoming a misstep and anger souring like old blood.

A rattle, a ring, a clatter, a clang. Bolts drawn away, a creak like a gate. Suddenly there was light through the keyhole of the nearby door. A long pause. A second bugle.

Havoc pushed at the door, and it swung open upon a silver scene, the cobbles glittering with frost stars. Once again Toll-by-Night had burst out of its captivity, like a monstrous jack from an innocent-looking box. And this time Mosca was a part of it.