Twilight Robbery aka Fly Trap

Goodlady Sparkentress, Bringer of the Autumn Flame

‘Can you hear that?’ Laylow crouched in the darkness of the non-existent sick room, head cocked to listen. Her voice was hoarse with whispering, for she had received no response for some time. ‘The bells of Clamouring Hour, Brand!’ Sure enough, one could hear the muffled cacophony of Toll’s dayfolk ringing their bells in worship of the Beloved. ‘That means ’tis eleven o’clock. This day of the year is sacred to Sparkentress between eleven and one o’clock – that is right, is it not? Brand, can you hear me?’ She reached out, and prodded gently at the invalid’s shoulder with her unclawed hand. ‘Happy nameday, Brand,’ she muttered. ‘Eighteen years old you are. I… I have no gift for you.’

The mound of breathing darkness beside her shifted, and spoke for the first time in an hour.

‘I… would settle for some water.’

Brand’s fever had burned itself out for now, as had his temper. There had been a long sotto voce quarrel between Laylow and himself on the subject of Beamabeth Marlebourne, and now they sat exhausted amid the cinders of that argument in what was almost a truce.

‘All gone. I will tout and fetch you some after changeover, when I can go out in the munge.’

‘I still have no idea what you are saying half the time.’ Brand’s weary laugh was almost inaudible. ‘What are you going to do – run to and fro feeding and watering me like a mother bird with a nestling till you get caught? Why are you doing all this?’

‘You simkin, Brand Appleton,’ spat Laylow. She aimed a kick at his unseen shin, but not hard enough to hurt. ‘You pea-wit.’

Silence.

‘Did the “Teacher” ever return? The foreign girl?’ muttered Brand.

‘No. Said she was running off to fetch you thistle wine, never came back.’

‘Perhaps she fell foul of some knife in the night,’ Brand whispered. ‘Or… or perhaps she went straight to the Locksmiths.’ A sigh. ‘Laylow, listen. The Locksmiths are bound to find this room sooner or later. I cannot run, or be of use to anyone any more – you should hand me over to them. At least that way you could live to see another night, perhaps even persuade them to go and rescue Miss Marlebourne-’

‘I will not bargain for the sake of that prissy vixen!’ hissed Laylow with force. ‘If I make terms with the Jinglers, it will be to keep you alive, you noddy! I know what old Goshawk wants – he wants me to work for him. Join the Locksmiths. And I shall – I shall do even that.’

‘I always thought you wanted to become one of them.’ Brand sounded surprised. ‘Your chocolate smuggling – I thought it was meant to impress Goshawk, so that he would ask you to join.’

‘What? No! Brand, I was born under Wilyfell. So I am born to lure other folks into vice. It is my Beloved-given nature; I am doomed to it. So I sneak in chocolate because it is a vice which does a scratch less harm than gin or dice or poppies or -’ Laylow halted as her companion succumbed to helpless snorting and snuffling. ‘What is so devil-speckled funny about that? And the money from chocolate was good too – I wanted to save enough that I could leave and never need to join the Locksmiths. When you take their mark, they have you. Life and soul. No going back.’

‘Then why in conflagration are you thinking of joining them?’ whispered Brand. ‘Stupid girl. Promise me you will not. Whatever happens.’

‘But…’

‘Please! Promise.’

A few moments ticked away, followed by a slow release of breath through teeth. ‘All right. You have my promise.’

In the darkness, two temporarily non-existent hands brushed fingertips, and neither flinched away.

‘Laylow,’ Brand whispered after a while, ‘are you sure all that noise outside is Clamouring Hour?’

Mosca was not completely surprised to discover that the Locksmiths had a tunnel leading into Toll from outside. In fact, knowing what she did of the Locksmiths, she would have been rather more surprised if they had not. As far as they were concerned, being confined to one side of a wall or another was something that happened to other people.

It was narrow, musty and supported by greying wooden struts that had clearly seen better days. As she followed the Locksmith in the blotchy grey coat, she could not help noticing that she was occasionally stepping on what looked like half-buried helmets or dank scraps of clothing. This tunnel, though she did not know it, had been dug as part of a failed siege during the Civil War.

The tunnel ended in a rough stone face and a ladder leading upwards. Mosca’s guide halted and held up his lantern, inviting her to climb by its light.

‘Where does this go?’ Mosca’s lilac dress was thin cotton, and she was starting to shiver from the cold. She tugged her shawl around her, her hand brushing against the new pale ‘day’ badge the Locksmiths had lent her, its symbol a conveniently indecipherable muddle. ‘You coming with me?’

‘No.’ It was almost the first word her guide had given her since they entered the tunnel. ‘Bring the Marlebourne girl as close to this entrance as you can – we will be waiting for her.’

Feeling numb from head to foot, Mosca started to climb. There was nothing else she could do now. At the top she found a hatch and pushed it up to find herself squinting at a criss-cross wooden lattice and a glare of green. She had come up through the floor of the pavilion of the pleasure garden, just next to the broken chair.

It was only when she peered out through the door and saw the promenaders in the garden, with their parasols and lorgnettes, that it came home to her what she had done. Her die was cast, and suddenly she could not believe that she had run headlong back into Toll with only half a plan, and furthermore half a plan that might get her killed even if it worked.

If there was one thing more dangerous than blackmailing Aramai Goshawk, it was lying to Aramai Goshawk. And the fact was, while Mosca had not said anything to him that was precisely and provably untrue, she had been guilty of misleading him. She had, in fact, no intention of luring Beamabeth Marlebourne to the tunnel, much as she hated the older girl. On the contrary, she had a rescue mission in mind.

She could think of only one way by which she could both stop the Locksmiths claiming Toll and prevent Sir Feldroll from marching on Mandelion. And for that she would need the help of the only person who might be able to sway the people of Toll more than the mayor’s chain or Beamabeth’s charm or Goshawk’s menace or Sir Feldroll’s guns. Paragon Collymoddle, the so-called Luck of Toll. She needed to find and rescue him.

She did not know where the Locksmiths had spirited Paragon away, but she had a shrewd idea when they had done it – during the hours of Saint Yacobray, when they could be sure that the streets were empty and that nobody would see where they took him. Only of course the streets had not been empty. There had been no less than three false Clatterhorses chasing one another around Toll. Mosca and the Leaps had seen nothing of the Luck’s kidnap, of course, and if Skellow had seen anything he was no longer in a position to talk about it. But Brand and Laylow had also been running around, in their Sheep-Skull horse, and Laylow had gone back after Brand’s injury to look for the ransom. They might have seen something of the kidnap without even understanding what it meant. On the downside, as nightlings Brand and Laylow were non-existent right now, but on the upside Mosca had a pretty good idea where they were non-existing.

Mosca had one other reason for wanting to find Brand Appleton before he could be hanged by the authorities or quietly murdered by the Locksmiths. Beamabeth had gone to considerable effort to cover her tracks, and Brand was the only track that she had not yet eradicated despite her best efforts. He might have letters, information, something that could be used against his treacherous ex-fiancée.

To have any chance of reaching Brand and Laylow, Mosca would need chaos. Fortunately chaos was likely to be available very shortly. Mosca squinted up at the sun, noting that it was nearing the high point of its arc. She was just in time. Soon it would be noon, and Sir Feldroll’s ultimatum would run out.

‘So which way was the wind blowing before it died?’ Sir Feldroll narrowed his eyes at the drifting clouds, trying to read meaning in their shapes. ‘Yes, of course it matters! We are not attempting to burn the town to the ground. These will be a warning, nothing more. From the north, you say? Good – then land it just inside the south wall if you can. That way if the wind rises again, sparks will not be blown into the rest of the town.’

He had hoped for a message before now, perhaps from the mayor or from Beamabeth. But the minutes had passed, and now he was steeling himself to give the order to fire.

There were still qualms in his mind about raining fire on the town, but he quashed them. Toll-by-Day needed to be shaken out of its complacency. It might shrug at a few cannonball holes in its perimeter wall, but there was nothing like a threat of conflagration to put a walled town into a state of terror. One cry of ‘fire’ and a whiff of smoke would be enough. They might even lose a little faith in their precious Luck.

It did occur to him, as he gave the signal for two of the mortars to be made ready, that after this day the mayor might have a few choice things to say about the prospect of Sir Feldroll as a son-in-law. However, running through the core of Sir Feldroll there was a steel wire of self-confidence that told him that he would yet manage to carry all before him. That the mayor, once cowed, could be brought round. That Beamabeth Marlebourne, given time, could be successfully besieged with gifts and the promise of estates in Waymakem.

He checked his watch, squinting at the glint of pale sunlight on its face. Twelve o’clock. He gave a nod, and stared out at Toll as orders were shouted down the line.

Two mortars were traversed to point at the southern side of Toll. Two crude bombs, little more than metal cans full of oil and debris, were loaded into the barrels. Two lit fuses were pushed into touch-holes to light the waiting powder. Then there was a duet of deafening explosions, and two mortars leaped back in their tracks like singed cats, filling the air around them with blue smoke.

Mosca heard the double detonation from her hiding place under the hatch, and saw the promenaders react with shock and dismay, dropping reticules and lapdogs. The distraction was sufficient for her to pull herself up out of the hatch and pretend she had always been in the pavilion.

As she was staring about at the scattering dayfolk, she caught something out of the corner of her eye, something moving rapidly through the sky like a big black bird swooping. Even as she was turning towards the motion, there was a far louder and nearer explosion, perhaps a handful of streets away. Another, closer to the centre of town, followed so closely on its heels that for a moment her bewildered mind took it for an echo.

As the sound of the blasts faded, she could hear in all the surrounding streets frightened cries filling the air, like a cloud of birds startled from a field by a gunshot.

It was the easiest thing in the world to follow those running from the pleasure garden and join the confused muddle in the narrow streets. Staring up past the tall houses at the ragged band of sky, she could see two faint trails of smoke adrift, and a sooty cloud rising a little way to the east.

Toll-by-Day had limited experience of emergencies, and the double explosion had confused them. They could not tell which way they should be fleeing, if indeed they should be fleeing at all. Some had run out of their houses to gawp and ask each other pointless questions.

But this was bewilderment, not panic, confusion, not chaos. Mosca’s black eyes flicked around the street, taking in face after face, all doped with uncertainty. Then she took a very deep breath.

‘FIRE!’ she screamed, pointing a skinny finger towards the miasma of rising black smoke.

Half a second later there were rather a lot of other people doing exactly the same thing.

It was clear from the roll of Saracen’s strut that, for him, finding a military camp was like coming home. There were people bellowing, and buff coats that tasted of cow-hide when you chewed them. Best of all, it turned out that hardened cavalry horses, inured to explosions, gunshots, screams and the smell of blood, could be thrown into fits of hysterical rearing by small flapping things in their peripheral vision, such as wind-chased papers or an unexpected fluttering of white wings.

For now he was happy turning his beak to and fro to watch as two of the tall not-Moscas of his acquaintance took it in turns to shout loudly at each other over the wonderful clicks, rumbles and yells of the camp.

‘That was all she said!’ explained Mistress Leap. ‘She handed me this letter to give to you, told me to look after the goose while she was gone, and said she would try to be back by dusk.’

‘Songs of the celestial!’ Clent shook the paper in his hand, covered in Mosca’s scrawl. ‘Do you know what the child has done? She has absconded to talk to Aramai Goshawk and ask him to let her back into the town!’

There were a lot of other words that Clent used after this, mostly to describe his opinion of Mosca’s conduct. None of them were profane, but all of them were long and highly specific, and Mistress Leap might as well have been a goose for all the sense she could make of them.

Over Toll, the gunpowder-scented smoke that had been rising lazily was suddenly tugged and pulled apart like a dragged cobweb. Birds who had been beating their wings spread them and soared, washing lines came to life and the town’s few weathervanes started awake with a quiver and swung to point the opposite way.

Outside the town, Sir Feldroll twitched, stared about him, then wetted his forefinger and lifted it into the rising wind.

‘Hellfeathers! The wind has risen again, and now it is blowing from the south! Where did those mortars land?’ From the trails of smoke it was clear that one had, in any case, landed closer to the centre than intended. Mortars were hard to aim at the best of times, and on such uneven ground the times were anything but best. ‘Have our diplomats gone in yet to negotiate the mayor’s surrender? No? Good. Hold them back until we can see whether the fires in the town get out of control.’

Eponymous Clent puffed into earshot just in time to catch Sir Feldroll’s words.

‘Sir Feldroll – am I to understand that the town is now in real danger of burning?’

‘The wind changed direction,’ snapped Sir Feldroll. He had been shaken by this new lesson in the imprecision of war. He was many things, but an experienced soldier he was not. ‘But the townspeople must have arrangements for such…’ He did not finish his sentence. Perhaps, like Clent, he was thinking of Toll’s complacent reliance on their Luck to defend them against calamity.

‘Sir Feldroll, I…’ Clent closed his eyes as if in pain, made a few grimaced attempts to continue, then pressed his fingertips together and steeled himself. ‘I would like,’ he went on, with an expression that indicated the very opposite of liking, ‘to volunteer to take the place of your diplomats and approach the mayor for you. Fate… fate has clearly allotted me this role. After all, I belong to neither of your cities – what better intermediary could you choose?’

‘Mr Clent!’ Sir Feldroll stared at him, his features managing a remarkable tug of war between gratitude and suspicion. ‘After all that has happened, you are happy to go as my ambassador into Toll?’

‘Happy? No. Willing? Barely. Compelled by some pustule of honour I shall lance if I survive the day? So it would seem.’

One of the canisters had rattled down to street level, where it had blown in shutters, shattered windows and left its fragments smoking on the cobbles and a little stream of flaming liquid running down the kennel ditch at the centre of the street. But the second had lodged in a cluster of chimneys, where its explosion had scattered burning oil over tile and thatch. Now the wind was stroking the young flames, and dozens of tiny red-gold sparks were taking wing like thistledown.

They blew out across a town full of timber and plaster, covered in facings of wood light enough to be moved at dusk and dawn. A crowded town where flames might leap from house to house and never be made to halt. A town just waiting to be burned.

‘Fire! Fire!’ Mosca ran from street to street, screaming it at the top of her voice, and heard it echoed everywhere. ‘We got to stop it spreading! We got to tear houses down so it cannot spread along the rows!’

That was what had been done in the Ravens, the soot-blackened neighbourhood where Clent had met with Skellow in Brotherslain Walk. There had been a fire, and in spite of all their rules about who should be locked indoors at which times of day, the people of Toll had grabbed something heavy and torn down houses, locked doors and all, to stop the spread of the flames.

Mosca was counting on them doing the same now, if she could fill them with enough panic. Brand and Laylow were on the wrong side of a locked door, and so was the Luck. She could only reach them if the barriers started to fall. Everybody was terrified of the Locksmiths, but you could fight fear with fear. If there was anything that the townspeople would fear more than the Locksmiths, it would be fire. And it didn’t matter whether it was a dangerous fire, providing everybody thought it was.

‘Fire! F-’

Mosca smelt smoke, turned a corner into a wave of unexpected warmth and gaped at a blazing street. Windowpanes were popping, plaster blackening, black smoke churning between timber joints. This was no smoke display. Sir Feldroll’s ‘warning’ had decided to carry itself out in good earnest.

‘Oh dungbuckets!’ she exclaimed breathlessly, then turned to yell at other fleeing figures. ‘Hey! HEY! Come back! We got to tear down these houses! There are people locked in there!’

‘Lass! Come away!’ A tall man in a smithy’s apron ran out and seized her by the arm, dragging her away from a large shower of sparks. ‘Lass, what-’

He stopped dead. Now that he had joined Mosca in the street, he could hear what she could hear: a chorus of thin, muffled cries from behind the plasterwork of the buildings.

‘Goodlady Syropia’s mercy! The nightlings!’ His honest features contorted with indecision as his eyes flicked between the blazing timberwork and the gleaming Locksmith locks just visible at the edges of the facings. She could see the agony of fear and superstition, and she thought for a moment he would flee and pretend he had not heard the cries. Then he spun Mosca around and took her by the shoulders. ‘Run down to my forge – corner of Tattle Street – and find my brothers. Tell them to bring as many hammers as they can, and rally some strong arms willing to wield ’em.’

Mosca was running even as he finished his sentence, and was soon back with a gaggle of the smith’s family and friends. The smith seized the largest hammer out of his brother’s hand and ran forward to confront the locks that held the nearest facing in place.

‘What are you doing?’ Another man ran forward, catching at the smith’s arm as he raised the hammer to strike at the locks. ‘What about the Locksmiths – have you gone mad? And the nightlings, you will release them upon us all!’

The two men struggled for the hammer, and Mosca felt the watchers stir, uncertain which side to help. Then the smith knocked his attacker down with a short, sharp punch to the jaw. He stared around belligerently, then stepped back towards the lock, raising his hammer once again.

‘Beloved preserve me,’ he muttered tremulously, and brought the hammer down upon the lock with shattering force.

Everybody flinched with each blow of the hammer, and when the locks finally splintered and the facing was slid aside to reveal a door, most people there took a step back, as if they expected Night to ooze out of it like star-infested gravy and drown them. But when the door opened, all that staggered out was a young woman with dull fair hair, wild, bitter eyes and an imp-like boy of six clasped in her arms. She shivered in the daylight, and flinched with fearful hostility from the dayfolk around her. The surrounding gaggle gawped aghast at the pair, who were clearly the worse for smoke, shuddering coughs shaking their pitiably thin frames.

‘Break these doors down!’ shouted the smith. ‘Smash those locks and take the sliding house-fronts off! Do the same on that side! You, boy, run to the mayor and tell him what’s happening!’

Nobody noticed a twelve-year-old girl stooping next to a charred timber, testing its warmth with a fingertip, then using the soot to smear her face, arms and dress.

In shattering that first day-night door, the smith appeared to have broken a spell. Breaching the barrier between day and night was still dreadful to the dayfolk, something that could barely be managed without trembling, but at least now it was possible, thinkable. The nightfolk that scrambled coughing out of their cramped homes might be fear-maddened, ragged and earthworm pale, but none of them had slitted pupils or needles for teeth. They were people. And so more and more daylighters set about wrenching the false faces off the houses, kicking in doors and battering their way past shutters. The impulse spread outwards across the town from that first hammer blow, like a ripple from a dropped stone.

Mosca was not slow to help it spread. Satisfied that here at least people were starting to deal with the fire, she was soon running down another street.

‘Fire!’ she shouted as she went. ‘Fire in Myrtle Street!’

‘Fire in the Winces!’ she shouted a few streets later.

‘Fire in Scupper’s Way!’ soon became her warcry. ‘We got to tear down the houses to break up the rows!’

As she suspected, people were a lot more ready to believe her declarations about the fire when she looked slightly singed. And naturally it was not enough to have people tearing houses down and breaking down doors near to the fires. She needed it to be happening all over Toll, which is why she needed to spread the panic far and wide.

Of course there was one house in particular that she wanted to see torn open, and soon she was cursing Eponymous Clent for selling her map. She had only been to Laylow and Brand’s hideout once, and then it had been dark and half the streets had been in different places.

At last she found what looked like the right street. Naturally there was no door there for her to recognize, only an expanse of innocent-looking plaster criss-crossed with timber, but she was fairly sure that behind it lay Brand Appleton’s sickroom.

‘Please, sirs!’ Her cry halted a set of tradesmen who were hurrying past with hammers, chisels and a set of thatching tools. ‘Can you help me break into this house? There’s a fire a few streets down, and…’ And I need you to help me break into this house in particular for reasons I can’t tell you. ‘And…’ she inhaled and took it at a run, ‘and I had a little baby sister born a month ago and she was born to a night name and they took her away nightside and I think she’s living in this house because I hear her crying through the wall some days and can you break in for me please before the fire gets here and roasts her like a piglet?’

Whether her story would have been believed if she had been wearing a dark Palpitattle badge will never be known. However with her borrowed day badge and cast-off gown she had magically become a respectable young lady in distress, albeit a slightly sooty one. She watched hungrily as the false front of the house was levered away with a crack to show the stained wall behind. The dingy door gave in to a few solid kicks.

‘Go find your sister.’ One of the men chucked Mosca under the chin, and then the group of them hurried on. Gingerly Mosca pushed open the splintered door, and jumped back just in time to avoid a claw in the face.

It was probably as well that Laylow had not been the first nightling to stagger into daylight. She was doing a very good impression of the dayfolk’s worst nightmare, squinting ominously against the sun, her metal claws raised ready to strike and various bruises and cuts livid on her face.

As she peered at Mosca, however, bemused recognition clouded her eyes.

‘You…’ She peered, and her face hardened. ‘Seisian, is it? “Teacher”, is it? You’re no more a foreigner than I am! You’re one of those visitors I helped get dayside some nights ago! What’s your game?’

‘I scarce know misself any more. But we’ll all lose if we don’t play on the same side. Listen – the mayor’s gone limp, Sir Feldroll’s gone mad, the Locksmiths are taking over and the town’s on fire. Beamabeth Marlebourne is safe, and as long as she is nobody else will be. And now we need to rescue the Luck. Can I come in?’