Twilight Robbery aka Fly Trap

Goodman Hookwide, Champion of the Turning Worm

By the time Brand Appleton reached the castle grounds, he had acquired a significant crowd. Never in the history of Toll had one man needed so many people to arrest him. The mayor looked up to find a quarter of the town surging out into the castle courtyard before his house, the grinning ‘radical’ lolling in their midst.

There was a tumult of noise, declarations of Brand’s crimes and suggestions for immediate punishments, most of which seemed to involve a length of good stout rope and the nearest tree.

‘No! NO!’ The mayor stalked forward. ‘We are not animals! He shall be arrested, questioned, tried and executed according to the law! There will be no lynching on my lawn!’ He drew closer and his features took on a granite-like angularity as he started to decipher some of shouts from the crowd.

He rounded on Brand. ‘Is this true? Have you dared to harm the Luck of Toll?’

The crowd hushed, all eyes on Brand. His gaze flitted over the pale, downcast features of Beamabeth, the grey stone face of the mayor’s house. I was invited to supper here not so long ago, he thought. She played the spinet.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘This is a lie,’ declared one of the mayor’s new Locksmith

advisors, a greying, distinguished-looking gentleman who wore his chatelaine visibly. ‘The Luck is safe and well-’

‘Prove it,’ demanded Brand. ‘You cannot. The Luck is dead.’

‘I do not believe you!’ stormed the mayor.

‘No? Perhaps I killed the wrong person, then. About so tall, dark hair, fifteen years old, brows meeting in the middle? Green velvet frock coat too small for him? Gangly clumsy ways of moving? Does that sound like your Luck?’ Brand saw the mayor go waxen with horror. The Locksmith advisor looked somewhat uncertain as well. Neither could know that Brand was using Mosca’s hasty description of Paragon.

‘It is true. Beloved above – it is true!’ The mayor turned on his Locksmith advisor. ‘You lied to me! You all lied to me!’ He stared wildly about him, seeing his panic reflected in every face, and then turned his head slowly to regard his daughter. A strange mixture of emotions fought across his features – conflict, regret, pride, relief, anguish and resolution.

‘Silence!’ The mayor’s cry hushed the crowd, which had started to seethe with hysterical and panicky murmurings. ‘Listen, everybody! All is not lost. A cruel and terrible blasphemy has been committed, but there is still a Luck within Toll. This radical cur is just trying to stir us into unthinking panic, with his talk of flames unchecked. But you all know as well as I do that the Luck is the person with the best and most virtuous name in Toll – and when one Luck dies, the person with the next finest name succeeds them as Luck. Only taking the Luck outside the town bounds removes their protection. Behold! The new Luck! My own daughter… Beamabeth!’

Beamabeth’s eyes were wide dinner plates of blue terror. All the colour had blanched from her face, and the little freckles at the corner of her eye started from her skin with unusual vividness. Like a trapped animal she gazed around her for rescue, and saw only rapt faces basking in her presence as if she was the newly risen sun. Usually she used the adoration of others to escape her problems, but here their adoration was the problem.

Clent, however, suppressed any sense of pity without the slightest difficulty. His brain was busy with the icy clockwork of calculation. If only this young woman’s fears were justified! Beamabeth Marlebourne would be unlikely to threaten anybody, locked away inside the Luck’s cell for the rest of her life. Such a fate had a tempting poetry to it too, given that she really was the Luck of Toll, and had been all her life.

However, if Mosca was to be believed, Brand was lying. He had been prone in a fever since before the Luck was kidnapped, and would have had no chance to kill anyone. Clent was not certain why Brand had told an untruth that would set everybody against him. He could only assume that the young man had decided that, since a noose was awaiting his neck anyway, he might as well cause as much panic and chaos as he could in the meanwhile. In any case, Brand’s claims would be shown as false as soon as the Locksmiths could haul forth Paragon Collymoddle, and Beamabeth would be safe again. But perhaps something could be achieved before this happened.

‘Ah… actually, my lord mayor, I am rather afraid that you are mistaken about the identity of the Luck.’

Everybody stared at Clent – Beamabeth with the stunned hope and terror of a drowning swimmer who finds herself being rescued by a shark.

‘I fear I have a peculiar story to tell, but Miss Beamabeth… if I may still call her that… will be able to verify it. I have of late become acquainted with a certain midwife, who confessed to me that on one occasion she took pity on a small and sickly child, and pretended that it had been born at a slightly different time so as to give it a daylight name…’ And so he told the tale of Paragon’s birth, choosing his words very carefully so as not to mention the name or the sex of the baby.

‘Miss Beamabeth,’ he said at the end, ‘you have known this story for a while. Why do you not tell everyone the identity of that little child?’

The mayor’s daughter gaped at him, hardly believing that he was offering her an escape route, a lie that would save her from the cell of the Luck. But Clent had not actually crossed the line between truth and falsehood, he had simply opened the door for her to do so and made it plain that he would back her up.

‘I… yes.’ A trapped animal will always scrabble for the chink of light. ‘Yes – it was myself. I… was not really born under the Goodman Boniface.’

A murmur of surprise and consternation swept through the crowd.

‘So you must have been born under…?’ Clent prompted helpfully.

Beamabeth’s kitten face furrowed as she tried to remember which Beloved followed Boniface in the calendar, and she could not suppress a shudder of distaste as she remembered.

‘Palpitattle,’ she whispered.

Perhaps she really believed that such news would not affect her standing among the people of Toll. Perhaps she thought her charm was such that nobody could think the less of her, nobody could imagine sending her away to the night town. If that was her belief, then a moment’s glance around the listening crowd would have been enough to disabuse her of this delusion.

A slow ripple of recoil was passing through the crowd as the townspeople seemed to waken from a dream and regarded Beamabeth with newly sharpened and hostile eyes. She was no longer sacred to them. She was a fly-child, and so everything about her must smack of trickery and lies.

A shocked silence like this was far too good to waste.

‘Well,’ Clent rubbed his hands, ‘since we are telling stories, I think I might tell another. It is a curious tale of a kidnapping – or should I say an elopement – or should I say a betrayal… You shall make up your own minds, gentle friends. Really Mr Brand Appleton should be telling it, since he has been the most cruelly abused in this affair, but I suspect that he is gagged by chivalry. I, however, appear to have woken in a lamentably unchivalrous mood this morning, so…’

By the time a messenger panted his way into the castle courtyard to inform the mayor that Paragon Collymoddle was alive, well and being held at claw-point on the Toll bridge, Clent had finished telling the story of Beamabeth’s villainy, and several score of the Toll townfolk were staring at the mayor’s adopted daughter as if they had seen her bite a kitten in two.

Laylow and Paragon had reached the bridge before they found themselves stalemated. At first the growing crowd around them was content to give them a wide berth, fearful eyes upon the metal claws so close to Paragon’s throat. When they stepped out on to the bridge, however, their escort realized that this strange clawed girl really did intend to take their precious Luck out of the town.

Now the pair stood in the middle of the bridge. On the eastern side, the town end of the bridge, an ever-growing crowd of watchers gathered to gawp from the archway and the Clock Tower windows. On the western side, the gate to freedom and the road to Mandelion were tantalizingly visible, but the way was blocked by a small crowd of waiting guards and a heavy portcullis. Even the life-size wooden Beloved statues that flanked the walkway along the length of the bridge seemed to regard the fugitive pair with relentless hostility.

Laylow herself could barely see them, blinded by daylight and the spray rising from the Langfeather. She had shouted herself hoarse over the roar of the river, and even when her words did carry across it did not always help.

‘I want everyone let out of the nask and brought here!’ she was screaming. ‘Particularly a red-headed bird-wit called Brand Appleton! And I want those drumbelos with the muskets out of our way and the gate open, or your precious Luck is gone to Peg-trantums!’

‘Did anyone understand a word of that?’ asked the Raspberry, who had come out of his office in the Clock Tower to discover the cause of the rumpus. A dozen people shook their heads. ‘Oh for pity’s sake… run and find somebody who speaks cant!’

‘Hah,’ said Paragon again. Laylow glanced at him, noticing the tiny jewels that the spray had left on his hair, cheeks and grin. Then she looked down over the edge of the bridge to see what he was smiling at, and nearly lost track of where she was. She had lived all her life hearing the breath of the Lang-feather, so that was as much a part of her life as the taste of the air and the touch of her own skin. Now she saw it, a gleaming surge of ostrich-feather white more powerful than a hundred lions, blue shadows cast upon it by the jutting rocks above. Even the air was strung with the faint arcs of rainbows. It seemed alive, it seemed female. She had been living above a goddess her whole life and had never been allowed to see it.

Nobody was obeying her any more, she realized. They knew she was trying to take the Luck out of Toll. Some of them were starting to edge towards her along the bridge. She bared her teeth by instinct, like a cornered dog.

‘Get back!’ she shouted, but her ferocity only slowed them. As she had feared, her threat was losing its power.

‘Why do they not do as you say any more?’ Paragon whispered.

Because they would rather see you dead than free.

‘They are afraid for your life, but they are more afraid for theirs,’ Laylow muttered unwillingly. ‘They think the whole town will perish if you leave Toll… but if you die instead, at least another Luck will take over.’

The wind rose, and Paragon whooped aloud. Laylow felt sorry for him. Did he even understand what was happening, that their plan had run aground, that there would be no freedom for them after all? What was the point in further attempts to explain? Let him be happy for the moment.

‘Can I shout orders now?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Laylow said through her teeth. ‘You are the hostage, remember? The hostage does not get to shout orders.’

If it had been night and she had been a little less dazzled, she might have been ready for Paragon’s next move. As it was, she was caught off guard as he slipped from her ‘restraining’ arm and dodged to the edge of the bridge where the Beloved statues posed. He gripped the horns of Goodman Fullock, and swung himself out so that his feet were resting on the very edge of the walkway, the rest of his body leaning out over the long plummet to the Langfeather’s foamy embrace.

‘What about now?’ he said, grinning like a string of pearls.

There was an almost universal gasp of alarm, seasoned with a few shrieks and followed by the sounds of muskets being readied and aimed at Laylow.

‘No shooting!’ shouted the Luck, loud enough to carry to both ends of the bridge. ‘No shooting at us, or… I fly away!’ He bounced on the balls of his feet, to the consternation of the crowd who clearly thought he was mad enough for anything.

Laylow ducked between two statues to make herself a small target, breathing heavily and waiting for the rain of musket-balls. None came. After a while she peered out to dart a glance up and down the bridge. The guards had ceased their stealthy advance and stood frozen, staring at the capering Luck in shock, frustration and terror.

‘Listen!’ Paragon’s unguarded laughter bounced off the overhanging cliffs. ‘Everybody listen to me now!’

And they did. Even the Locksmiths who pushed stone-eyed through the crowds at the town end of the bridge to glower impotently at the delighted Luck. Even the mayor who appeared at a second-floor window of the Clock Tower, looking down upon the scene. Most of the town-end crowd was watching Paragon’s precarious slithering and capering with their faces set in a wince, both hands raised as if to placate or fend off a blow. The eyes of many watchers crept to the sheer fall below, the merciless bellowing engine of the water.

It took Laylow several stunned seconds to understand why his threats were working where hers had not. Her words had not been lost on him after all, she realized now, and in one swift, canny move he had turned the tables on everybody.

None of the spectators wished to see a careless boy fall off a cliff to his death, particularly one saintly enough to have such a good name. But nearly all of them were much more worried about the whole town following him. A dead Luck was a tragedy, a murdered Luck a shocking blasphemy. But a Luck who ‘left Toll’ by jumping off a bridge before dying a watery death could be a catastrophe. In their minds, if Laylow cut Paragon’s throat, then the next-best name would become the Luck and the town itself would be none the worse. However, if he jumped or fell, he would have ‘left’ the town while still living, taking Toll’s luck with him once and forever. Who could say what would happen then, or how quickly? Would people even have time to run for the gates before calamity struck?

‘Now… everybody… make the gates be open!’ Paragon’s eyes were shining.

This was the great test. All eyes rose to the mayor, who was clutching the sill of his window with such force it seemed he might tear it apart like pastry crust.

He bristled, and gave a short sharp nod. The small group of guards at the gate end of the bridge boggled, then set about cranking up the portcullis.

‘All the gates!’ crowed Paragon. ‘All the gates and doors open! All over the town!’

Even from below it was possible to tell from the mayor’s strained body language that the prospect of obeying was tearing at his very soul. He gave another curt nod.

‘You heard the Luck! Tear down the house-facings! Open all the doors! Do everything he says!’

Nobody felt like telling the mayor that a lot of his citizens had been doing that for some time.

The townspeople busy battling the fire had need of every strategy they had to hand, for the fire was hungry and ingenious. It leaped from balcony to jutting jetty with the agility of a burglar, crossing streets in a single flurry of sparks. It found out hidden stores of gunpowder, oil or liquor in cellars. However the people of Toll were fighting back. Some grabbed small barrels, butter churns and leather buckets and formed chains, passing water in a line from the wells to the blaze. Others ran for ladders and axes for making firebreaks, or even came up with proper long-handled firehooks for tearing down roofs and masonry.

At first breaking through the Locksmith barriers had been an impossibility, then the recourse of a courageous few, then a terrible necessity. But the mood had changed. Now the self-appointed firefighters attacked the locks and barriers with a passion. Daylighter and nightling fought the flame side by side without a glance at each other’s badges. The only enemy was the fire.

The fire was not ready for this solidarity, and as the wind dropped it grew dispirited. It let itself be cornered, drenched, covered in wet hides. It waited for another wild wind, a chance to show the town what it could do. But the wind did not come, and a lane at a time it was beaten back.

It was then, while the frontline troops were gasping and soot-stained, hammers and axes still in hand, that word came through. The mayor had ordered the destruction of every Locksmith barrier and lock in the town. Why? Nobody cared. With a new and wild intoxication bolts were yanked from their frames, locks burst, walls cloven. No terrible Locksmith vengeance ensued. The townspeople plunged on with the glee a very young child feels the first time they realize that their parents are not all-seeing and that plates break very easily.

Then another whisper rushed through the town, like a cold rain through a desert wasteland.

‘The gates! The gates are open!’

Most of the newly released nightlings responded to this news with admirable promptness. The resourceful ran home, seized their belongings and fled through the eastern gate, heading for the plumper, richer counties around Waymakem and Chanderind. The even more resourceful did the same but with other people’s belongings.

The shivering shanty town on the western bank of the Langfeather was only slightly slower. Abandoning their makeshift shacks, they hoisted their packs on their backs and were through the portcullis of the western gate, across the bridge, through Toll and out through the eastern gate before you could say ‘starvation’. On the Luck’s insistence, the western gate guards followed them across the bridge, so that nobody now guarded the portcullis. Laylow was hunched next to Paragon, ready to slash out at anybody who made a lunge for her or for the Luck. Everybody gave them a wide berth.

On Paragon’s orders all prisoners were released, including the weary, lank-limbed members of the toil-gangs and everyone in the Clock Tower jail.

‘And… Brand Appleton has to be brought here. To this gate,’ insisted Paragon, in response to Laylow’s muttered prompting.

The hushed crowd had to wait for two solid minutes while the mayor emitted sounds like a man gargling with starlings. Then he made a choked ‘gah!’ noise and gave a wave of his arm, which his guards correctly took as a sign of consent. Five minutes later a bruised, battered, red-haired man of eighteen years limped on to the bridge, one hand gripping his clumsily bandaged flank. When he drew level with the two fugitives, Laylow stepped out to join him and placed a supporting arm around him.

‘Mandelion better be all you say,’ she muttered. She gave Paragon a glance of concern, but he cackled and capered, waving her away towards the unguarded gate.

The mayor could only glare helplessly as Brand limped across the bridge, supported by Laylow, and vanished through the gate to a world beyond his control.

At last there was only Paragon Collymoddle on the bridge. The sun had gone in, extinguishing the rainbows, and he was shivering with the chill of the wind and the drenching from the spray.

‘Cold now,’ he said through chattering teeth.

The mayor came down to the bridge and ventured out on to it. His steps were slow, for he was acutely aware that nobody now stood between the Luck and the open portcullis.

‘Come, boy,’ he said, not without kindness and some reverence, for was this not the Luck? ‘Enough is enough. You are not used to this light or this cold, are you?’

Paragon shook his head. He pulled himself up enough to hug the head of Goodman Fullock as if his arms had grown tired of the strain.

‘It is all over. We will take you and make you warm and safe. No more troubles. No more dangers.’ The mayor cautiously took step after step. ‘Just… take my hand and come home. You are needed here. You have a job. You know that, do you not?’

The boy laid his cheek against the wooden head of the Beloved as if suddenly tired, and nodded. ‘Yes. Job. Save everyone,’ he murmured. Then he laughed, waved at somebody in the crowds behind the mayor, and with the same unexpected speed he had shown before swung himself back on to the bridge and broke into a run.

‘Quick!’ spluttered the mayor. ‘Shoot… leg… something…!’

Musketfire vented in a patter like applause, but Paragon’s run was lolloping and unpractised, and so lopsided that the bullets missed him. He leaped through the arch of the gateway and was gone.

‘After him!’ shouted the mayor.

Nobody moved but for one guard bolder than the rest, who darted forward on to the bridge and sprinted past the gesticulating mayor who was already retreating back to the safety of land himself. Two steps later, however, there was a splintering crack and one of the planks of the famous unshakeable bridge of Toll gave under the guard’s feet, so that he dropped halfway through the hole. Desperately clutching at the boards, he was able to halt his fall and managed to haul himself back up and drag himself to safety.

There was a deathly hush, of just the sort that never lasts.

‘Flee! The Luck has run out! The Luck has flown away! The bridge is falling down! Flee the town!’

With such cries all around, the mayor glanced behind him to see who the Luck had waved to before his flight. But there was only a heaving crowd full of faces made anonymous by fear. And in the corner of his eye just a fleeting glimpse of a lilac-coloured gown.