Twilight Robbery aka Fly Trap

Goodman Jayblister, Master of Entrances ans Salutations

As the cart rumbled on, conversation gradually dwindled as the minds of the two human passengers contemplated the same question. Mosca and Clent were remembering, not for the first time, that while away is initially good as a travel plan, sooner or later there must be a ‘to’.

Clent blew out through his nose and reached for a small black book that Mosca had seen before. Over his shoulder she could see him flicking to a blank page and writing, ‘Grabely – debtors’ prison, brain sold, fowl play in chapel.’

Mosca had of course filched it from his pocket while he slept on earlier occasions, and as far as she could tell it contained notes on towns and villages that he had already visited, and therefore could not safely visit again. It was full of scribbled place names and occasionally entries like ‘Lady Garnergaville’s Soiree!!’ or ‘Duke for three days’ or ‘Tried the “Troubadour” caper in the fish market – dogs!’

Clent riffled through the pages with a frown and cleared his throat.

‘Where are we headed?’ he called to the cart driver.

‘Well, I was planning to stop and water the horses at Hanging Sparrow – ten miles on,’ came the answer.

‘Hanging Sparrow…’ Clent leafed feverishly through his book. ‘Oh, merciful suns!’ He leaned slightly towards Mosca

and allowed some low words to creep from the corner of his mouth. ‘We cannot possibly go to Hanging Sparrow – an abominable place where forgetfulness is an offence punishable with the gibbet.’

‘What?’

‘Well… it is if one wanders into it forgetting that one once fabricated the Great Horse Plague for purposes of profit within its walls.’ He leafed through the book again, muttering place names under his breath. ‘Twelve Apples… no. Starlington… no. Upper Dangwit… no. Child, I start to fear that we have sucked the very juice from this accursed county.’

It did not surprise Mosca that Clent had not for an instant suggested returning to Mandelion. When sneaking her peek at his black book, Mosca had of course hunted down the entry for the rebel city to find out which of their many escapades and disasters there Clent had thought worth mention. Instead, beneath the city’s name he had written only a single word. A name, in capital letters.

GOSHAWK.

Mosca and Clent had fled Mandelion on the orders of a set of quietly insistent men in clean but well-worn overalls – representatives, in fact, of three of the most powerful guilds in the Realm: the Guild of Stationers, the Company of Watermen… and the Locksmiths.

Locksmiths. They were more than pedlars of locks and strongboxes. They were shadow-masters, ghosts, and they thrived on fear.

To outward appearances they were the epitome of respectability. What could be more upstanding than to sell the locks that kept honest men’s goods safe? And the Locksmiths did more than this. They ran an organization of Thief-takers more skilful than any constable, who, for a price, would hunt down criminals or retrieve stolen goods. They even offered to take over the policing of cities completely and rid them of crime altogether.

What was less well known was that the Locksmiths also ran the criminal underworld in most of the great cities of the Realm. What lock could hold them out? Yes, they would hunt down thieves – but only those who refused to join them and pay tithes to them. It was a bold soul that defied them, for they had hundreds of agents secretly working for them, each bearing the brand of a key on the palm of their right hand.

And from time to time a city ruler would lose heart in his battle against streets full of cut-throats, moors bristling with highwaymen, and would hand over control to the Locksmiths. The smiling Locksmiths would bring in their own guards to keep order, and double the height and breadth of the city walls, and seal the gates up tight… and nobody ever heard anything more about the doings inside that city. The citizens within were doubtless safe… from everything but the Locksmiths themselves.

Mandelion itself had come within a stone’s skip of becoming one of these cities, due to the manoeuvring of one of the Locksmiths’ most dangerous agents, an elusive, cold-eyed individual named Aramai Goshawk. Mosca and Clent had played a part in helping the city escape that fate, and they were uncertain how far Goshawk and the other Locksmiths blamed them for that.

There were a hundred reasons to avoid returning to Mandelion, but for Clent the other ninety-nine paled beside Aramai Goshawk. No, they would not be going back to the rebel city.

Mosca watched Clent for a few seconds, and gnawed her knuckles, while Saracen adjusted his unwieldly bulk on her lap.

‘Mr Clent,’ she said at last, ‘there’s only one place we can go, isn’t there? Toll.’

Clent did not answer, but nor did he look particularly surprised. Instead he closed his book, sighed and nodded.

‘I fear so. If we remain between the rivers, then sooner or later we will starve or be caught, unless we can make ourselves invisible to the beadles or learn to eat stones. We cannot travel to Mandelion and so… Toll. It is the only way across the Langfeather. I suppose you know that travellers must pay to enter the town on one side of the river, and again to leave it on the far side?’ He lowered his tone. ‘I do not suppose that capacious pocket of yours conceals enough money to pay two tolls apiece?’

Mosca chewed her cheek and kicked her heels for a few seconds. Then she delved into her skirt pocket and slowly pulled out four cambric handkerchiefs. She shrugged.

‘Mistress Bessel had a handkerchief for each day of the week, so…’

‘… so that admirable viper in female form will now only be able to blow her nose on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Not bad, but I doubt these little leavings will muster enough funds to enter Toll, let alone leave it again.’

‘No,’ Mosca muttered, ‘that’s what I thought. Which is why I took her stockings too.’

Clent’s eyes widened as Mosca dropped two much-darned stockings between them. One bulged strangely about the foot, and hit the wood with a promisingly coin-like clink.

‘Might be enough, Mr Clent. To get into Toll, anyway. Didn’t have time to count, cos she was coming back up the stairs.’

‘Yes. I see. How enterprising.’ Clent cleared his throat. ‘So… in the wake of various thefts, frauds and goose-related blasphemies, is there anyone in Grabely who will not want to see us hanged?’

‘Nobody springs to mind, Mr Clent.’

There was a short pause.

‘Toll!’ declared Clent briskly, and with sudden zeal. ‘What a gleaming sound that town has! What a peal of polished bronze resonates in the mere word!’

He pondered, and then gave Mosca a sharp look.

‘Child – you are forgetting something though, are you not? Toll… That is where your kidnappers were heading. The brigands who appear determined to kill you?’ The whole sour tale of the kidnap had been related to Clent during the hasty flight from Grabely.

‘I haven’t forgot any of that.’ Mosca jutted her chin and stared at the distant trees.

I haven’t forgot how I was tricked and tied up and carried off and poked with a knife and used as a scribe and thrown in a cellar and marked out for death like a chicken for a pot of stew. I haven’t forgot how all this was done cos I didn’t matter. Well, I’ll matter all right. I’ll matter so hard I’ll make them think the sky’s fallen on their heads.

Clent regarded her shrewdly.

‘Revenge is a luxury reserved for the powerful, rich or unusually vicious.’ He broke into her thoughts. ‘We cannot afford it. Mosca, be grateful that you have escaped this adventure with your skin.’

But I don’t want to be grateful. I’m tired of being kicked about like a pebble, and told that I have to be happy that it’s no worse. I’ve had enough. It’s time the pebble kicked back.

‘Mr Clent.’ Mosca turned wide, black, guileless eyes on her companion. ‘We got a duty, don’t we? To that poor girl with all the money – the one that Skellow and his boys are going to kidnap. Don’t we?’

‘Ah.’ Clent fiddled with his cravat ends. ‘Ah.’

Mosca knew that his mind was skipping nimbly to the thought of rewards. It occurred to her that she and Clent were a good deal like clock hands, one large and one small, often pointing and striving in opposite directions, but always linked and bound to come into line sooner or later. The mention of money had brought Clent into line, and quickly enough the long hand would overtake the short and run off into wilder plans, things that Mosca had not even considered.

‘Yes… yes.’ Clent’s tone was circumspect. ‘You are quite right, it is our duty. We must go to Toll, we must warn the damsel of her danger, point an accusing finger at her would-be abductors, modestly claim our just reward and use it to pay our way out of Toll on the far side. And then! Ah, the fair counties beyond! The warmer winds, the trees bowing under late-swelling fruit, the streams gleaming with trout, and above all the welcoming smiles of-’

‘People who don’t know us properly,’ finished Mosca.

‘Exactly.’

Mosca and Clent parted company with the cart outside a village called Drinksoll and continued their journey on foot.

Before long the route started to climb, and after an hour or so the first straggling pines and cedars came down to meet the road, their foliage wild and feathery, their trunks ankle deep in bracken and soft dunes of dry reddish pine needles. Gradually, although the air was still, Mosca became aware that she could hear a breeze-like breath in the distance, so relentless that it might have been a tickle of trapped air in her ear.

They did not have the road to themselves for long. Soon they were overtaking carts dragged by stocky little ash-and-milk-mottled mountain ponies, their blinkers tagged with ribbons and bells to stop evil spirits calling to them from the roadsides. Alongside them tramped figures on foot, many muffled against the cold in cloaks and shawls of yellowing Grabely wool, their backs laden with packs and pots, baskets and spinning wheels. Few talked, and there was a nervous, exhausted urgency in the manner of every traveller, their hopes trodden as thin as their shoe leather. Clearly Mosca’s party was not the only one determined to escape the land between the rivers before winter set in properly.

The road climbed until Mosca’s calves burned, and the soft roar in the back of her ears grew louder and louder. As they neared the very top, it became several roars in one. A long churning bellow, a thunderous echo, a thin and delicate hiss. Finally the road cleared the trees, and they emerged on to the stark, stony, sun-gilded crest of a knife-edge ridge.

Mosca blinked, blinded by the sun, her breath still recovering. Down on one side of the ridge, back the way they had come, was the county that had shunned and half-starved her for the last few months. Its grey stone villages were little more than gravelly blots, its beet and pumpkin fields furrowed patches of brown corduroy, its drystone walls rippling over the lumpish land like seams in cloth.

On the top of the ridge itself a shanty village perched like a shabby hat. Here, it was clear, the river of desperation had been dammed. Families skulked huddled under the same cloak, all eyes bleak with waiting. On the far side of the ‘village’ she could see what appeared to be a large gatehouse of ochre-stained brick, beyond which the ground seemed to drop away. The roar which had been seething at the corner of her hearing was much louder now. Mosca guessed that this gatehouse guarded Toll’s precious bridge at the end furthest from the town itself. Looking up Mosca could see arrow slits and punctures in the stonework for pouring boiling oil upon attackers.

Listening to the murmurs around them, Mosca soon worked out the reason for the atmosphere of despondency. The admission toll had been raised, and many had trekked here for miles only to find that they did not have enough money to enter. Some families seemed to have been camping here for several days, each morning sending down a few of their number to hunt out odd jobs and try to scratch together the last few coins they needed. There were of course a number of people there who had come specifically to ‘help’ them. Men and women with an eye to the main chance, hopping through the rubble of stones and tired figures like magpies, offering a meagre price for anything the wanderers had left to sell – their boots, their heirlooms, their hair. Mosca’s heart lurched as she wondered whether the little riches in Mistress Bessel’s sock would be enough.

Mosca caught at the sleeve of one of the ‘buyers’ as he passed. He cast a quick and watery eye over her stolen handkerchiefs, then a shrewd and watery eye over Mosca herself. The price he named was a pittance, and Mosca felt herself flush. Clearly he had guessed they were stolen.

‘All right, my little linnet, I’ll add a bit more if you’ll throw in the goose.’ His smile was probably meant to be winning.

‘No!’ Mosca’s cry was echoed by Clent, who took her by the shoulder and guided her away from the haggler. ‘Trust me, sir,’ Clent added over his shoulder, ‘I am doing you the greatest of services.’

‘Mr Clent,’ whispered Mosca, ‘what shall we do if the money is short? Mr Clent?’

Clent had glanced over his shoulder and frozen, one hand creeping to his cravat as though he feared to find a noose there. Mosca risked a look behind her and felt her heart plummet like a stunned starling.

Struggling to the top of the track and into the shanty village was a familiar figure, wisps of auburn hair escaping from its mob cap, its freckled face strawberry-red with anger and effort. It was Mistress Jennifer Bessel. She did not appear to have spotted them yet, but she was barely twenty yards away and it could only be a matter of time.

Both Mosca and Clent instinctively ducked to avoid her view, and Mosca offered no resistance when Clent grabbed her wrist and dragged her away into the crowd and towards the gatehouse.

Once in the thick of the crowd, Mosca dared to raise herself on tiptoes, curious to see if she could peer past the gatehouse and catch a glimpse of the river and bridge, or perhaps even Toll on the far shore. However, here the crowds were denser and more urgent, and one short girl had no hope of seeing past the crush of adult bodies.

Worse still, there was little chance of two new arrivals pushing their way to the front. The shrill tones of Mistress Bessel were now all too audible. By the sound of it, she was mere yards behind them, and asking after ‘a girl with a goose’.

‘Coming through! Coming through! Message for the guards!’ Clent called out hastily, and his words carved a narrow pass through the throng. When Mosca, Clent and Saracen reached the front, they found what looked like half a dozen guards holding the crowds back from the portcullis and the great door behind it.

Arms aching with Saracen’s weight, Mosca watched with her heart in her mouth as the coins were counted out of Clent’s purse one by one into the hand of the leader of the guard. There was a pause. The coins were stirred with a forefinger. A nod.

As they were allowed past the line of guards the mood of the crowd changed, and the glances cast upon them became outraged, even hostile, as if they had broken a rule somehow by having enough money.

A cranking grind, and the portcullis was winched a yard or so clear of the ground, and Mosca and Clent were encouraged to duck under it while the guards held the rest of the crowd at bay. They were through the gate, and the portcullis began lowering behind them, inch by jolting inch.

‘Stop!’

Mosca flinched at the bellowed word and spun around. Pushing her way through the crowd behind them, she could see Mistress Bessel, her ice-blue eyes fixed upon Mosca’s face.

‘That’s her!’ Mistress Bessel jabbed a finger in her direction. ‘That’s them – the thieves – the skirling bandrishes! Raise the portcullis again! There is a magistrate in Grabely who-’

‘Sorry, madam.’ The guard touched his forelock. ‘These people have just paid entry – they are in Toll now. The Grabely magistrate has no sway here.’

‘What?’ Mistress Bessel stared in disbelief as the portcullis finished its descent with a resounding clang, then glared through it at Mosca and Clent with such intensity that Mosca feared the metal grille might melt.

‘Friend of yours?’ one of the guards asked Clent in an undertone.

‘Er… not precisely.’ Clent took a few surprisingly nimble steps clear of the portcullis. ‘Ha… this lady is, ah, a very sad case… fell into a melancholia and lost her wits after her shop burned down and incinerated her husband…’

‘… And now when she’s in her fits she thinks Mr Clent here is her husband so she follows him everywhere…’ Mosca shrilled helpfully.

In the face of this assertion, Mistress Bessel went the most radiant shade of fuschia-pink, and proved incapable of anything more than throttled frog-noises in the depths of her throat.

‘… And she will make up any lies to be near me,’ huffed Clent.

‘… Even landed him in prison before now, so she could bring him flowers and poetry each day…’ added Mosca.

‘You… scampergrabs!’ Mistress Bessel appeared to have lost the ability to breathe. ‘You… scale-tongued… maggoty…’

‘You see how it is.’ Clent kept his demeanour solemn and compassionate despite executing a high-speed backwards caper. ‘Mad as a mushroom minuet. Alas. A tragic figure.’

The guard peered out at Mistress Bessel. There was little in her stocky figure to suggest melancholy or wilting devotion, but at present there was plenty to indicate insane rage, and the guard also took a step or two away from the grille around which Mistress Bessel’s plump fingers were now gripped.

‘All right, I’ll make sure the boys outside the gate know about her. And don’t worry – unless she’s got the money to pay admission, she won’t be troubling you.’

‘I’ll find you out, my honeybumbles!’ Mosca could hear Mistress Bessel shouting as the gatehouse door swung open before them. ‘I’ll reach you, my dumplings!’

‘Follow me,’ muttered the guard. ‘I’ll take you across the bridge so the Committee of the Hours can talk to you.’

As she followed Clent and the guard further into the gatehouse, Mosca could not quite resist pausing in the doorway to wave adieu to Mistress Bessel with one of her own handkerchiefs.

They found themselves in a short, unlit corridor, with a large number of pikes and halberds propped in racks against the walls. Emerging at the far end through an open arch, they found themselves staring down the length of the bridge.

The bridge itself was an impressive effort in timber some twenty feet long, its planked walkway flanked by hundreds of Beloved carved from black wood, their faces ravaged by weather-cracks. But it was not the bridge itself that took Mosca’s breath away. Without warning, the ground had run out.

Where the bridge began, the earth dropped away into sheer, giddying cliff face. On the other side of the abyss rose another cliff, interrupted here and there with the chalky streaks of waterfalls, and a few small trees that had decided to make the best of things and grow sideways out of the sheer face. Between them lay a plummeting gorge, at the base of which a seething white river hurtled, twisted, fizzed and roared through a maze of warped, slick black rock. Somehow over centuries it had carved, scooped and polished the rock bed into weird shapes and valleys and tunnels. The gorge itself was gauzed over with the mist and spray that drifted up from the churn of water. Here and there the chill winter sun painted the vapour with faint swathes of rainbow. Occasionally a white gull or coal-grey jackdaw sliced through the mist below.

Mosca had heard a hundred times that the Langfeather was unswimmable, unnavigable and all but unbridgeable. Now she started to understand why.

It was also said that the city of Toll had not been captured, razed or successfully besieged throughout the whole of the Civil War. Raising her eyes to gaze upon the town on the opposite bank, Mosca could readily believe this too.

At the far end of the bridge stood a full-blown tower, flags flying from its zenith. The town beyond it was ringed about with a great wall, its fortifications peppered with arrow slits and chutes, great dark weep-stains marking the brick beneath them where generations of inhabitants had used them to throw out their waste. The town had been built on the tilt, and had the unnerving appearance of having slid off the ridge down to its current location, stopping just on the lip of the precipice that would have sent it tumbling into the Lang-feather. Beyond the wall, Mosca could just make out clusters of dark-tiled roofs, jostling like rook wings. On the northern side of the town the wall suddenly became grey and ragged, and Mosca could see that it had been built into the remains of some ancient castle.

There had been other attempts to build bridges across the Langfeather, not only in these uplands across the roaring gorge, but also in the lowlands where the river was broad and muscular. None had survived, some burned during the Civil War or the Purges, some quickly losing their supports to the force of the water, others betrayed by the crumbling of the treacherous ground. Only the Toll bridge remained through some freak of luck and craftsmanship, defended by Toll’s walls.

‘It’s all right.’ The guard who had followed them through the keep smiled, misreading Mosca’s awe-stricken expression. ‘Don’t be scared to walk across. You can trust to the Luck.’

Mosca’s clogged foot hesitated above the first plank of the bridge. A moment before she had had no reason to doubt the bridge. But ‘trusting to luck’ didn’t sound particularly safe.

‘ To… luck?’

‘Not just luck. The Luck. The Luck of Toll. As long as the Luck stays within our town, we’re all safe as sunrise.’

‘Ah… I believe I have heard of such things!’ Clent sounded genuinely intrigued. ‘Certainly I know that some mansions and castles have a “Luck”, an object which it is said must remain inside its walls to guarantee prosperity. Often a glass chalice, or an ancestral skull, or a collection of breeding peacocks. So, what form does your Luck take?’

‘Oh no, sir.’ The guard touched the side of his nose. ‘We don’t talk of the Luck in case we rub the luck off it.’ Mosca wondered if he even knew the answer to the question. In his place she would certainly have wanted to know.

‘Now, if it weren’t for the Luck,’ continued the guard, ‘that cliff over there would be crumbling away like good cheese, and the city would be tumbling off its ledge like a pie off a window sill. And as for this old bridge, why, weather and time would have broke it apart like a breadcrust. It’d be falling in flinders into the Langfeather, and us along with it. But thanks to the Luck they’re all sturdy as steel -’

‘Wonderful,’ murmured Clent, whose knees had started to shake. ‘Admirable. Er… is there any chance that you could stop reassuring us now?’

The guard was happy to do so, evidently feeling that his work was done, and with new trepidation Mosca and Clent ventured out on to the bridge. The planks showed no particular inclination to give way underfoot, though some gave a slightly tuneful xylophone thunk when you stepped on them, and Mosca could not help noticing discolorations here and there that made her think nervously of rot. The air was cold and mint-crisp, scoured clean by the white river below.

Mosca was rather relieved when they reached the tower at the far side without the bridge having crumbled away. As she passed through the arch, again she found herself blinking in sudden sunlessness, then was ushered through a side door into a dim, high-vaulted, stone-walled room draped with long, fading banners. At a desk in front of them sat a squat little man with a straw-yellow wig and a face so knobbed and purplish that he immediately put Mosca in mind of a raspberry.

‘Names!’ barked the Raspberry. ‘Ah, greetings, if you will permit me to take upon myself the introductions for our party, I am Eponymous Clent, whose poems and ballads may even have reached this noble town, and this is my secretary, Miss Mosca Mye-’

‘Eponymous – that’s Phangavotte,’ snapped the Raspberry.

‘Mosca – that’s Palpitattle. Kenning – the Book of the Hours!’

In response to these orders, a red-haired boy of about eleven clambered up on to a precarious-looking stool and disappeared between the leaves of a vast leatherbound book chained to a pulpit-like stand on which it rested.

Phangavotte? Palpitattle? Sure enough those were the Beloved under which Clent and Mosca had been born, but why this pompous interest?

‘Phangavotte’s names are daylight… just about,’ came the boy’s thin, chirping voice from within the book. ‘Committee of the Hours have considered it for endarkening six times though. On grounds of Phangavotte being a patron of wile, guile, tall tales and ruses. Acquitted on account of Phangavotte being a patron of inspiration, myth and proud dreams.’ The whisper of more pages. ‘Palpitattle – night. Children of Palpitattle judged to be villainous, verminous and everywhere that they’re not wanted. No plans to review this judgement.’ The boy reappeared, and the book gave a wumph as it closed.

There was a long cool silence, during which the Raspberry carefully wiped his quill before looking up at Clent with an air of pleased surprise, as if the latter had just that moment materialized most agreeably before him.

‘I see. Mr Clent, are you planning to stay long in our fair city?’ The Raspberry’s tone had suddenly become more civil. His pale blue eyes rested steadily on Clent, with not the slightest flicker in Mosca’s direction to acknowledge her existence.

‘Ahh, no alas, just passing through… I have patrons in Mickbardring who will not be denied…’ Clent himself seemed rather confused by the sudden change in reception.

‘Do you plan to stay longer than three days?’ continued the Raspberry. ‘No? Then, sir, we shall provide you and your household with visitors’ badges.’

Had Mosca imagined it? The tiniest pause before the words ‘your household’, and during that interval, the quickest, coldest flicker of a glance in her direction? No, she had seen it. She could feel that look stinging her cheeks like a snowball’s graze. She was used to being looked on with disdain, but the Raspberry’s eyes had held a contempt so deep that it was almost loathing. She looked around the room at the guards standing against the walls, and as she met the eye of each their gaze slid off her as though she was somehow indecent.

What? she wanted to demand. What is it? Whatever ‘it’ was, she could feel it surrounding her, like a patch of frost spreading from beneath her feet.

‘Visitors are permitted to remain in the daylight city for no more than three full days after the day of their arrival,’ continued the Raspberry, ‘and must report to the Committee of the Hours daily to have their badges renewed. After those three days, if they are still within the walls of Toll they are issued with a resident’s badge. Of course in your case, Mr Clent, you would still be eligible for daylight citizenship. A man with a good name is always welcome in this city.’

‘Ah… good.’ Clent seemed rather baffled. ‘That is… I…’ His eyes strayed uncertainly, almost guiltily, towards Mosca. He too had evidently noticed the slight emphasis on the word ‘your’. Whatever ‘daylight citizenship’ meant, Mosca had a strong feeling that it was not to be granted to the rest of ‘his household’.

Kenning, the eleven-year-old assistant, emerged from a side door with two wooden brooches. One brooch was of dark wood and had an outline of a fly carved into it. The other was of light-coloured wood and featured what looked a little like a crudely carved picture of a Punch and Judy box. Both had pale blue borders. Kenning brought both badges to Clent, taking a curved circuit so that he would not pass too close to Mosca herself.

Mosca stared at Clent’s badge, then at her own. It sounded rather as if Kenning’s great book had a list of all the Beloved, each marked as belonging to either ‘day’ or ‘night’. It was certainly true that the period of each year sacred to Palpitattle fell within the hours of darkness… but the same was true of Phangavotte. Why then did the Book of the Hours devote Palpitattle to ‘night’ and Phangavotte to ‘day’?

‘The “arrival day” visitors’ badges have blue borders,’ the Raspberry explained. ‘Tomorrow you will be issued with yellow-rimmed badges, then the following day with green-edged badges, and the day after that with badges bordered in red.

‘Now, it is very important to keep to your Hours,’ he went on. ‘Our town, that is to say the town of daylight, exists from dawn until sunset. Between sunset and dawn, however, please remember that none of us exists, and we are expected to act accordingly. So you will be requiring these.’ He pushed two slips of paper across his desk towards Clent. ‘Hand them in at any tavern, and you will be given a room for the night. The hostel owner will claim the money from us afterwards. It will not cover your food of course, but you will be off the streets. Each day when you come to change your badges, you will be given tavern passes for that night.

‘You will hear a bugle just before dawn. A little later you will hear a second bugle, and this will tell you that your doors have been unsealed from the outside, and you should feel free to unlock them, emerge on to the streets and start existing. There will be another bugle call at sunset – this will be a signal that you have no more than a quarter of an hour to get back to your appointed residence. You must – must – make sure that you do so.’ The Raspberry leaned forward over his desk, his pale eyes agleam with meaning. ‘After all, Mr Clent, no city can be expected to tolerate non-existent people wandering around and drawing attention to themselves.’

There was an icy and pregnant silence.

‘Ah. Yes. I see.’ Clent nodded sagely, then a little less sagely, then with the cautious air of one who thinks his head might fall off. ‘At least… that is… no. No, actually, I do not see at all. My good sir, I mean no slight to your shining town and your eminent self, but I really do not have the flimsiest idea what you are talking about.’

The Raspberry hesitated with a vexed and weary air, as if contemplating the prospect of a lengthy explanation, then dismissed it with a shake of his head. ‘Just treat it as a curfew, Mr Clent.’ He dipped his quill and signed a piece of parchment, then dribbled wax on to it and sealed it with his signet ring. ‘Toll has its own system for keeping respectable people like yourself safe from dangerous elements, that is all.’ He stood and offered a small bow, his manner still crisp and footman-formal, then handed Clent a piece of paper. ‘Nothing you need to worry about during your stay, sir. Thanks to our precautions, Toll is the safest town under the sun.’

Responding to this cue, a pair of guards at the far side of the room swung open matching doors, and Mosca and Clent were ushered through. Whereas Clent was allowed to continue down the corridor, Mosca almost immediately found Kenning by her side, beckoning her through a side door.

‘Excise wants a word,’ he whispered.

As it turned out, the two briskly dressed women on the other side of the door wanted more than a word. They wanted to find out if Mosca was smuggling in any chocolate, coffee, Laemark lace, pepper, ginger, laudanum, silks, tobacco or anything else that might show that she had been secretly trading with the abhorred radicals of the port town of Mandelion. They searched through their edicts with a scowl, before admitting that there was nothing to forbid the import of geese. Just when Mosca was wondering if they meant to turn her upside down and shake her till the contraband fell out, they changed their tack, and Mosca found herself vigorously interrogated to see if she had any pocks, pimples, pustules, plagues, agues, aches, quakes or queernesses that might indicate she was bringing some dire disease into the town. For a ghastly moment it seemed they might try to inspect Saracen for similar ailments, but thankfully some light in his beady black eyes deterred them from laying hands on him. Finally, just as Mosca really was feeling as if she might be some huge, disease-dripping housefly, they meaningfully read out a list of the punishments due for a range of petty thefts, and released her back into the corridor.

Clent she found in another room, where he appeared to have been given a bracing cup of hot wine and a plate of seedcakes.

‘Ah, there you are at last, madam. Well, if you have quite finished delaying these poor people…’ The door at the end of the corridor was swung open for them, and Clent and Mosca emerged on to the street, Saracen muzzled at their side.

And there it was – Toll, under the sun. Mosca took in an eyeful of colour and had to blink until she could see straight.

They had emerged from a building built into the side of a tower, evidently the same tower that they had entered from the bridge. From left to right ran a thronging thoroughfare, curving slightly away from them in either direction as it followed the town’s perimeter wall. Opposite was a long rank of townhouses some three or four storeys high, bold in their milk-white and butter-yellow paint, their walls criss-crossed with the stripes of dark timber beams, all varnished with dew.

The street was aglitter with people, and suddenly it seemed to Mosca that for the last long month the world had been washed drab of colour. And here was where the colour had been hiding – the rich red of market cloaks, the green-gold of young lemons in a basket hoisted shoulder high, peacock-coloured brocade spilling languorously from the door of a sedan. The people ducked through the timber archways that pocked every wall like mouse holes leading into dark, covered alleys. They greeted one another on the finely carved wooden balconies and footbridges that crossed the gaps between the upper storey.

There was a metallic chime from above Mosca, and she turned to find that the nearby tower was adorned with a large, gleaming clock face decorated in blue and gold. Directly beneath the face was a foot-high arch in which a tiny wooden figure of Goodman Jayblister could be seen, blowing his silver trumpet. As she stared a brief tinny ditty issued from the belly of the clock, and Jayblister receded jerkily into the darkness, to be replaced by the Goodlady Sylphony, made unmistakable by her pink-gold wings and long honey-dipping nose. Yes, she realized dizzily, this would be about the time that the hours sacred to Jayblister yielded to those devoted to Sylphony. Perhaps all the Beloved were hidden in miniature inside that great clock, waiting for their turn to waltz out and smile benignly over this sun-blessed city.

It took a moment or two for Mosca’s dazzled eyes and mind to adjust and see the cracks in the stonework, the many blank and boarded windows. Not a real city, she reminded herself. Not like Mandelion. Just a fat little tick of a town sucking money out of travellers and swelling up all proud. But, she admitted grudgingly to herself, as towns went, Toll did look passing fair right there and then, under the sun.

However, her gaze was soon drawn to the badges worn by every passer-by. A very few had coloured visitors’ badges like the ones she and Clent had been given, and a couple of these were of dark wood like hers. The vast majority, however, were plain-bordered residents’ badges, and these were all of light-coloured wood. The picture on every brooch was different, and she started to make guesses at what each meant. There went a sickle, representing Goodman Uzzleglean, He Who Keeps the Harvesting Tools Sharp. That was the face of a pig, standing for Goodlady Prill, Protector of Pigs. Grey-glory, Upperfit, Syropia… barely a Beloved among them who was not considered auspicious.

Now at last she started to understand why Skellow’s letter had spoken of his Romantic Facilitator having a name ‘good enough for daylight’. People with day names didn’t have to be born by day; they just had to be born under a ‘good’ Beloved.

Everyone who glanced at the fly on Mosca’s own badge would know in an instant that she was born under Goodman Palpitattle, the grinning godling of bitter, buzzing things. She had a bad name, in short. Or to use Kenning’s word, a ‘night’ name. If she had not been a visitor, she would not have seen this street in daylight at all.

Yes, Toll was passing fair in the light of the sun, but she had a shrewd idea that for any who saw it by night it would be anything but fair.