Twilight Robbery aka Fly Trap

Goodman Giddersing, Guide in High and Treacherous Places

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘But, Sir Feldroll -’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr Clent,’ she said at last.

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

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

the war on his own.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mosca spread her arms like an enraged lilac gull.

‘She uses everybody. And when they’re bleedin’ at her feet, off she trips before she can get her satin shoes stained. Skellow served her like her own right hand, and she tricked him into taking a bullet. Oh, and that blockhead Brand Appleton is innocent! Innocent of kidnapping, anyway – innocent of aught but being a halfwit over a girl who cares nothing for him, and doing whatever she says. And now the whole city is after his blood, so even if he don’t die of fever they’ll find him and drag him to the gallows, and probably Laylow with him if she is still trying to protect him.

‘The whole rotten town is full of folks ready to die for Beamabeth Marlebourne, and she would let them. She saw Toll-by-Night, she knows what will happen to this town. And now that her plans have gone wrong, all she thinks about is gettin’ away and living comfortable. She doesn’t care a pip if Toll goes to the devil and the Locksmiths, or if Sir Feldroll burns it to the ground, so long as she can prance off to Waymakem and eat chocolate.’ It was not the best speech in the world, but the heartfelt ones never are, and it was at least loud. ‘She used us! She made us a part of her games, and I…’ She waved her arms helplessly. ‘We have to do something! Something about her… something about Mandelion… something about Toll…’

‘Mosca, child.’ Clent shook his head, and counted out slowly on his fingers. ‘One – if we denounce the Marlebourne creature, nobody will believe us, and we will probably find ourselves decorating a pillory.

‘Two – Toll and Mandelion are a cleft stick, for they cannot both be saved. If Toll-by-Day is snatched from the grasp of the Locksmiths, then these troops march on Mandelion. The only thing stopping Sir Feldroll’s army from threatening Mandelion right now is the Locksmiths’ new grip on Toll-by-day. You should be delighted at Toll’s fate – particularly since you have shown nothing but loathing for the town since setting foot in it.’

‘But what if Sir Feldroll burns half the town and marches through anyway?’

‘Three -’ Clent ignored Mosca’s question and continued – ‘even were there the tiniest thing we could do about any of this, we could not do it out here. The gates have closed behind us. We are out. They are in. Our part in this play is over.’

Mosca turned about, breathing heavily, glaring up at the dingy walls’ machiolations and arrow slits. Mistress Leap looked distraught. Welter looked bemused.

‘Child, after all the trouble it has cost us to leave this accursed town, are you seriously considering re-entering?’ Clent shook his head. ‘How, precisely? Do you plan to glare the walls down? Or climb into a mortar and wait to be fired over the walls, perhaps? Or will you be asking Aramai Goshawk nicely, in the hope that he is in a forgiving mood?’

Mosca’s only answer was silence. Clent’s first mistake was assuming that this was a sign of defeat. His second was taking his eye off her five minutes later.

In the end, Mosca found the lair by following the carriage tracks.

Most of the visible wheel tracks stuck to the road that led to Waymakem, but Mosca hunted and hunted and at last found some that etched their own path cross country. Once she had found them, she followed them doggedly, despite an uncanny sense that sound was dying around her. It was not just that the noises of the town and army camp were fading as the rugged land blocked them from view. Even the birdsong seemed to be dwindling.

She realized why when she saw the first owl. It perched with dark, stooped malignity at the top of a pole, its angular head and blunt ears silhouetted against the sky. Mosca peered up at it, then walked over and shook the pole. No flurry of feathers, no reproachful orange glare. Instead the owl wobbled with the pole. It was made of wood. A little further down the path she saw another, then another.

The owl-lollipops were comical in a way, but they did make one feel uneasy, watched… mouse-like. Certainly their fearsome outlines seemed to have frightened away the ordinary birds, resulting in an eerie silence.

‘I’ve eaten owl stew,’ Mosca told them conversationally.

Here and there the wheel ruts were clearer, slicing through bright moss and leaving fresh gashes of mud that smelt of cold greenness. A few red hawthorn berries had been tumbled and crushed. And then she fought through a shielding wall of heather and found the carriage.

There it was, real as rent-day in its gleaming black paint, the carriage she had seen tearing through the streets of Toll-by-Night. It was just as she suspected. If the carriage had been kept locked up in the town during the day, everybody would have heard frustrated whinnies from behind locked doors, and the horses themselves would quickly have become sickly and fretful. The carriage and horses had to be let in and out each night.

The carriage was empty. Two black horses tethered nearby cropped at the thick, wind-shivered grass with their greyish, clever mouths, quite unperturbed by Mosca’s presence. The whole scene had the weirdness of a fairy tale. Mosca stroked the neck of one of the horses, then reached up to feel the wood of the driver’s seat. It was very slightly warm.

‘Hoy!’ Her voice came out more squeaky than she intended. The only response was the wind, rattling the dry husks of seed-pods so they buzzed like insect wings. She took a deep breath, gathered her courage and tried again. ‘I know I ain’t alone! I come here to talk to Aramai Goshawk!’

The silence lasted just long enough to make her feel stupid, disappointed and relieved, and then the response came.

‘Name?’ It was a rough, guttural voice, knobbly with the local accent. Mosca spun round but could not see its owner, nor could she be sure where the voice had come from.

‘Mosca Mye!’ she shouted, then realized that her name would probably mean nothing to most people. ‘Secretary to Eponymous Clent, who Mr Goshawk knew in Mandelion!’ It seemed safer than mentioning anything they had done in Toll. ‘I come ’ere to talk to him ’bout the Luck of Toll!’

Whisper, whisper.

‘Stay there,’ ordered the voice, ‘and do not move the tiniest muscle.’ There was a damp sound of steps crushing grass as they slouched away. Mosca stayed rigidly where she was, her mind performing panicky whirligigs.

A horseshoe of heather bushes surrounded the clearing where she stood beside the carriage, and she felt watched on all sides. She was a mouse in owl country once again, frozen amid the twitching grass. When a broad-shouldered stranger finally lurched without warning from the undergrowth, she could not help starting.

‘This way.’ He gave a jerk of his head, and Mosca fell in behind him, wondering whether she would ever get the chance to retrace her steps, or whether this strange landscape would swallow her whole.

Her taciturn guide took her along a path down a hidden ditch, flanked on both sides by hawthorne hedges. It ended at a cairn of heaped boulders, probably raised centuries before to Goodman Giddersing Who Guides the Careless Step in High and Treacherous Places. At ditch level there was an entrance into the cairn, framed by three long stones arranged as doorposts and lintel.

Her guide stood aside and waved her through, and Mosca walked on, ducking beneath the low stone doorway.

The cave beyond was a lot less dark than she had expected, for there were six lanterns hung from chains attached to the ceiling. Their light was, furthermore, reflected in about two dozen steady, unblinking orange and golden eyes. Barn owls, snowy owls, tawny owls, all rigidly examining Mosca’s every move as if preparing to tear her apart with their cruel little hooks of beaks. It reassured her somewhat to see the dust on their claws and realize that they were stuffed, but they still had the look of things enchanted awaiting an order from their master.

Amid this tawny parliament sat Aramai Goshawk in a finely carved chair, his tiny gloved hands picking through a sheaf of scrawled letters, his pocked and pitted face expressionless. He looked up at Mosca with eyes as cold and colourless as midwinter slush.

Mosca had come armed with a rich pack of lies, ready to pick whichever seemed to suit Goshawk’s mood best. Under the wintry draught of his gaze, however, she felt most of them wither away in her hands. Her mouth dried. He would see through her. What had she been thinking, coming to this place?

‘“Mosca Mye, secretary to Eponymous Clent, whom I knew in Mandelion,”’ quoted Goshawk, in a pensive grindstone rasp. ‘Yes, I do remember. I remember the events in Mandelion very clearly.’ Perhaps raising the subject of Mandelion had not been such a good idea either. ‘Elaborate interference appears to be a hobby of your employer. It is not a healthy pastime. His meddling in Toll has been clumsy and… unappreciated.’

Mosca racked her brain quickly. How much was Goshawk likely to know? He probably knew that she and Clent had been involved in the rescue of Beamabeth. She could only hope that he did not know about any of her curfew breaks, or her part in the cavorting of the world’s least convincing Clatterhorse.

‘As a matter of fact, I was thinking of extending an… invitation to Mr Clent and yourself, so that we could discuss his recent activities and the whereabouts of a certain ransom gem.’ There was something in his tone that gave Mosca the clammy impression that the ‘invitation’ would be hard to refuse, and the ‘discussion’ would be hard to survive. ‘But… here you are. Walking into my study of your own accord.’

‘I don’t know nothing about where the ransom went!’ exclaimed Mosca in alarm. ‘We ain’t got it!’ Perhaps Goshawk had only let her walk in alive because he wanted to know where the ransom was. Perhaps his men were waiting to draw secrets out of her with hot irons and screws.

‘Do you know, I actually believe you.’ Goshawk gave what might have been a smile. ‘If you had it, you would be putting leagues between yourself and Toll right now. But your willingness to approach me was sufficiently interesting that I was willing to spare you a minute or two. Do not let me find that you have wasted my time. You wished to speak of the Luck?’

‘Yes.’

‘I cannot see there is much to discuss. The Luck is in our care.’

‘That is the grit of the matter, Mr Goshawk.’ Mosca wet her lips with the tip of her pointed tongue. ‘You do not have the Luck.’

The owls stared. Goshawk stared. The draughts grew colder.

‘What?’

‘Paragon Collymoddle got given the wrong name. He was born the murky side of the cusp ’tween Lilyflay and Habjackle, but the midwife had her watch set a few minutes wrong and by the time she found out all the paperwork was done and the baby was dayside. She was too ashamed to tell anyone.’ It was not quite the truth, but it was a close relative of the truth that might get Mistress Leap into less trouble.

Goshawk’s face went completely dead, as his thoughts retreated into their inner recess like a soft grey snail pulling back into its pitted shell.

‘Do you have proof of this?’ he asked.

‘We got the midwife.’ Mosca’s knees were shaking. If she had been on dangerous territory before, it was nothing compared to the ground she was now treading. After all, she was all but blackmailing a lord among Locksmiths, by telling him that she had it in her power to make his greatest bargaining chip for control over Toll completely worthless. ‘She will testify if we ask her. And you will not find her in Toll no more.’

‘Who else knows about this?’

‘Mr Clent, me, the midwife and one other who will stay mum if we wish it.’ Mosca took a deep breath. ‘But if I don’t come back alive, then Mr Clent will-’

‘Yes, yes.’ Goshawk waved one hand dismissively. ‘Mr Clent will spread the story far and wide, et cetera. Hmm. I suppose you are expecting to be paid for your silence?’

Mosca shook her head. ‘We do not want to queer your play, Mr Goshawk.’ Here it is at last. Time to throw down dice

and see how they tumble. ‘Everything is caught in a cleft stick. One of two towns must fall. Either Toll falls to your folk, or Mandelion falls to Sir Feldroll and his army. The way I hear it told, you will not let Sir Feldroll’s armies through Toll. And that is all I need to know. I – we – have made up our minds.

‘Mandelion must be saved. You can have Toll. It’s a rotten two-faced swill-tub of a town anyway.’ Mosca heard her own voice become stark and hard. ‘We will help you get it. All I want – all we want – is to be let back inside the walls to get revenge on somebody who deserves it. Beamabeth Marlebourne. The second-best name in Toll. If your people happened to capture her, then you would have the Luck after all. Wouldn’t you?’

‘And supposing I even wanted to do so, why would I need the help of Mr Clent and yourself?’

‘Because the mayor has his daughter watched even closer than she ever was, and you lost your spy in his house,’ Mosca answered promptly. ‘His household trusts me now – and there’s naught to link you and me if it goes wrong.’

There was a long silence, during which Goshawk pensively clasped and unclasped his tiny hands. ‘So – after setting up an elaborate trap that resulted in Miss Marlebourne getting kidnapped, and going to tiresome lengths to rescue her, you are now proposing to have her abducted again?’

Mosca met his gaze with eyes like black stones. ‘It would be right crooked of me to even suggest such a thing, Mr Goshawk.’

The very corners of Goshawk’s mouth deepened into pits for an amused second. ‘The symmetry is pleasing, I suppose.’ Every motion of his little hands was perfectly delicate. Mosca thought they were probably smaller than hers. ‘If you have won Miss Marlebourne’s trust, then… I can think of ways that such a thing could be managed. Very well. You will follow the man outside. I shall make some arrangements.’

Goshawk sat in contemplation for a while after the girl with the black eyes, clean dress and grubby accent had left his cairn.

‘There seems little harm in letting her back within the walls,’ he said at last. ‘If she is successful, so much the better. And if not… there is a limit to how much damage she can cause.’

A smaller Locksmith in a big coat shuffled out of the darkness at the back of the cairn, mopping meekly at his forehead. ‘Eponymous Clent seems to be playing a complicated game.’

‘Clent?’ Goshawk narrowed his meltwater-coloured eyes. ‘I wonder if he even knows she was here.’