Fly by Night

by Frances Hardinge

‘Pleased to meet you.’ He held out a hand. ‘Linden Kohlrabi.’

  She shook the offered hand, not sure whether she was being mocked.

  ‘You are not from Mandelion, are you? Your accent sounds familiar, but I cannot place it.’

  ‘I just come here with a poetic practitioner. I’m his secretary.’ Her declaration was proudly defiant. The corners of his mouth trembled with another suppressed smile. Suddenly she wanted to impress the man before her.

  ‘I’m only doin’ that for now,’ she added, ‘cos soon I’m going to work . . . over there.’ Above the sandstone wall and the mosaic of roofs she could see the pale needle of the Eastern Spire. ‘That’s where Lady Tamarind lives, and I’m goin’ to be workin’ for her.’ She grinned up at Kohlrabi, and was delighted to see that, yes, his eyes had now paled to a startled green. ‘I’m goin’ to get a place there, an’ read her poetry, an’ carry in her letters on a tray, and . . .’ She lost words as her mind drifted away to a serene cold place where nothing could jostle her and no one could lift her by the collar. ‘That’s where I’m goin’.’

  ‘What a coincidence,’ Kohlrabi answered smoothly, his expression deadpan. ‘I was thinking I might drop in there myself – call in upon Her Ladyship, admire the tapestries, and I hear there’s a rather fine view from the topmost room . . .’

  Mosca looked at his muddy boots and sly smile, and laughed aloud.

  ‘You’re making fun,’ she said. ‘You don’t believe me. ’S all true, though. You’ll see!’ She gave the Eastern Spire a wave, and then turned and sprinted away along the alley.

  Mosca’s good mood carried her halfway home before she remembered the back-alley school. Bitter thoughts stung her again and again, like a wasp in a clenched fist. I could’ve sat sentry for ’em up on the wall, she thought, I could’ve lifted pens for ’em from the Stationers. But then she remembered the clothier’s apprentice elbowing her off her feet, and felt the bruises to her limbs and her pride. She didn’t want to go that school, she’d never wanted to go to that school, it was rotten and radical and full of traitors.

  But . . . who would pay to learn of an unlicensed school, teaching radical books? The Stationers would. They would give her money, and she would buy back Saracen. They would be pleased with her, and send her to school, the way Lady Tamarind wanted.

  By the time Eponymous Clent came home, smelling of wine and wearing an orchid pinned to one lapel, Mosca’s mind was quite made up. He gave her a giddy, pink-nosed smile as he handed her his hat.

  ‘Ah, an admirable day. To have my poetry appreciated by persons of quality . . . and means . . .’

  Mosca thought that for a Special Operative, Clent seemed rather easily distracted.

  ‘I hope you managed to occupy yourself today, my dear?’

  Mosca grinned grimly.

  ‘Shuffle your thoughts snug, Mr Clent. You’ll need room in yer skull for everything I got to tell you.’

  While Mosca was telling Clent all about her adventures with Partridge and the alley school, Linden Kohlrabi was preparing to make a report of his own. The strange young girl with her wild stories and excitable black eyes had provided an amusing and welcome distraction from this unpleasant duty, but now it could be avoided no longer.

  The footmen at the gates to the Eastern Spire had been told to expect him, and he was shown in to meet Lady Tamarind immediately.

  ‘Your Ladyship. I regret to say that Eponymous Clent has evaded me. I traced him, I trailed him, I caught up with him and in a little village called Chough I lost him. He is still at large.’

  ‘I know,’ answered Tamarind. ‘He is in Mandelion.’

  ‘Already?’ Kohlrabi raised his eyebrows. ‘I suppose he took a boat downstream?’

  ‘He arrived by coach. My coach. We picked him up the roadside.’

  There are a number of things one cannot say to the sister of a duke, and Kohlrabi spent several icy moments not saying them.

  ‘My lady,’ he burst out at last, ‘if he were not so diabolically dangerous . . .’

  ‘. . . then I would have risked throwing him out of my carriage as soon as I learned who he was,’ finished Tamarind. ‘But I have turned the accident to the best advantage possible. I have recruited an agent to watch Clent’s every move, so that we are forewarned if he intends any harm. I do not yet know how reliable this agent will prove, but she shows promise . . .’

  J is for Judgement

  The next morning, Caveat of the Stationers left the safety of the Telling Word, and travelled by sedan to call upon a bookbinder in Pellmell, where Eponymous Clent had been told to leave any reports.

  ‘We’ve sent two different apprentices to pick up the reports,’ Mabwick Toke had declared angrily that morning. ‘Neither of them got there. Tittle was jostled under a cart, and is still in the care of the barber-surgeon. We don’t even know what happened to Weft. No, this time we’ll send a full guildsman – the Locksmiths can’t harm him without breaking the Rules, and openly declaring guild war. Even Aramai Goshawk would not dare do that. Caveat! You’ll do.’ Toke opened the door of the coffeehouse. ‘The Clamouring Hour is nearly over, so go quickly while the streets are empty.’ The many sects of the many Beloved had very different ideas about how the bells should be rung for worship, and it had become customary to let them battle it out through the metal of their bells for an hour every other day. Every church, shrine and cathedral became a scene of cacophony as bells chimed and clanged and tolled and jingled in every pitch from baritone to baby-chick squeak. Worshippers of more obscure Beloved would sometimes buy bells and hang out of upper windows with cotton in their ears, adding their own music to the general chaos. Most people preferred to hide indoors until the Hour was over, with their windows firmly closed. Caveat sat hunched in the sedan with his fingers in his ears as discordant peals assaulted the morning air of Mandelion.

  Mr Toke always. Knows what he is doing, Caveat told himself, as he ducked into the bookbinder’s shop. But how. Can we be sure that the. Locksmiths. Care about the Rules when we have not. Heard from anyone in Scurrey for so long anything. Might be going on in there.

  Two minutes later Caveat emerged on to Pellmell, tucking Clent’s report into his waistcoat. Although he stop-started his way through spoken sentences, he could read faster than hummingbird flight, and he had taken in Clent’s three pages of curling prose in as many glances. His eyebrows, which had been dancing like frightened caterpillars, were now dancing like excited caterpillars.

  ‘The Telling Word!’ he called sharply to the chairmen, raising his voice to be heard through their cloth-rag earplugs. He clambered back into the waiting sedan. Short phrases were easier to shout all of a piece. ‘Be quick!’

  The chairmen obediently set off at a jog. Caveat was just settling back in his seat when there was a thump from ahead, and the front of the sedan swayed and dipped.

  ‘What? What was that?’ Caveat was almost sure the foremost of the two chairmen had called out something.

  A series of thuds and crashes came from behind, and a muffled ‘Oh!’, as if someone had just remembered something very important. The rear of the sedan dropped sharply and bounced on the cobbles, so that Caveat fell backwards, his wig down over his nose and his feet skywards.

  Before he could remonstrate, the sedan was lifted smoothly and, as if nothing had happened, the unseen chairmen set off at their obedient jog. A moment later this accelerated to a disobedient canter, and then to a downright rebellious gallop.

  While he tried to right himself, his phantom carriers took a left, a right, a left, a left, a right. Caveat could hear more than two pairs of feet clattering on the cobbles, and the echoes spoke of dank, empty alleys and high walls.

  Then the echoes were gone, and there was the slap of flat soles on wet wood. Wind’s laughter, a fanfare of gulls. The mad gallop halted. The entire sedan swung giddily sideways, then plunged. Caveat struggled himself upright and leaned out of the window, just in time to see the caramel-coloured surface of the river rising
to meet him.

  A throaty splash. Cloudy water surged in from the cracks around the doors. Caveat lurched for one door, and the sedan tilted, shipping water through the open window. In terror he flung his weight the other way and righted it, not a moment too soon.

  As he sat rigidly in the very centre of his seat, feeling the rising water tickle his calves with cold, he heard a loud banging-scrabbling sound not far from his head. Looking up, he saw a black iron claw had hooked itself under the upper frame of one window. Three more bangs and scrabbles, and grappling hooks had secured the remaining windows. The sedan ceased its whirligig, and with a long, dragging gush rose into the air.

  After a few minutes of hushed paralysis, Caveat pushed up the lid-like roof of the sedan, and stood. The sedan hung, dripping, from four sturdy ropes in the shadow of a narrow footbridge, the battered boards of which leaked sky through seam and knothole. Inches below his feet, the Slye chewed the city’s flotsam like stale tobacco. On the dismal jetty nearby, three men in gloves stood watching.

  ‘Funny sort of a fish,’ said one. He had a rippled scar like mackerel markings down his left cheek. ‘But you never know what you’re likely to hook at Whickerback Point. All kinds of brackle washes up here.’

  ‘You’re very lucky we was passing by, Mr Stationer,’ his taller companion called, scratching the corn stubble at the corner of his grin. The third said nothing, but blew pipe smoke out through his teeth.

  ‘Perhaps,’ halted Caveat. ‘You might fetch the. Beadle to help me if so there’ll be a. Shiny. Shilling. For you.’ The men on the bank could not have seen his guildsman’s insignia, and yet they knew who he was. Despite their rough apparel, all three wore gloves of good quality.

  ‘Wouldn’t like to leave you a-dangle, sir,’ called the tall man. ‘What if you was to fall? Notorious for accidents, this place.’

  ‘Acca- acksi- acc-’ Caveat’s broken sentences disintegrated completely.

  Locksmith ‘accidents’ were infamous. Everyone knew of the sneak thief who had bowsed himself silly on brown ale, boasted of breaking a Locksmith lock, and been found the next day with his skull cloven by the gilded arrow of a fallen weathercock. Then there was the story of the Roaring Bladdiman brothers, two rakes who had kicked in a Locksmith’s door to have a conversation with his pretty daughter. The following night at their favourite tavern a stack of barrels had collapsed on to them, rolling them flat like pastry beneath a pin.

  ‘You know what, my dubbers,’ said the mackerelcheeked man, ‘I think we’d best try to swing him to shore with a one-two-three.’

  ‘Yeah, and maybe fetch the good cull a nope on the costard and make him easy,’ murmured the pipe-smoker. ‘Get the nizey to bird us the brittles first.’

  Caveat blinked. He knew every dictionary better than his parents’ faces, but this was thieves’ cant, and he could not tell whether the smiling men on the shore were praising his cravat or plotting to cut his throat.

  ‘If you tumble in the bubble while we’re swinging you to shore, we can haul you out, sir,’ shouted the tallest man. ‘But first you’d best throw us anything you wouldn’t want lost in the dunk.’

  ‘No. Need I will be. Fine in fact I was just. Waiting here for a friend.’ Caveat’s fingertips performed a quick patrol of his pockets, as if he thought the watchers could pluck purses with a glance.

  ‘Right now the best friends you got in the world is those four ropes,’ said the mackerel-cheeked man, ‘and wise men don’t wear out their friends’ patience. Else the ropes might wonder why they’re bothering with a man who can’t look to his own good, and they’ll break and give you to the Slye to buss.’ There was no mistaking the threat in his voice.

  If, as Caveat suspected, these were Locksmith Thieftakers, he had little doubt that they would dare to bring an ‘accident’ upon a Stationer guildsman. He thought of icy water creeping into his nose and mouth as he fought the current. He imagined his wig soaked and bedraggled on a shoreside, a tug of war toy for gulls.

  ‘Hoi!’

  Caveat turned his head and gave a faint twitter of relief as he saw a little rowing boat approaching. A young man with a crooked nose lowered his sculls and stared at the suspended Stationer.

  ‘You all right, mister? You need a lift to shore?’

  ‘Yes! Oh yes! The, ah. Far shore.’

  The three men on the jetty watched stony-faced as the little rowing boat glided up to nudge the hanging sedan. The sculler stood up and put out his hands to steady Caveat, who opened a door and gingerly lowered one foot into the boat. Then, without warning, the young man gave the Stationer a vigorous push in the chest. As Caveat fell sprawling backwards into the sedan, the oarsman pushed away with his paddle.

  ‘Sorry, old love.’ The youth waved a farewell with the rolled-up papers that his long, gloved fingers had tweaked from Caveat’s pocket. ‘Can’t take passengers, can I? Watermen’s rules.’ He tossed the papers and Caveat’s purse to the men waiting on the bank, grabbed his sculls and plied them. The laughter of the four men faded with their footsteps, and Caveat was left rocking in darkness amid the laughter of the wind, his face in his hands.

  Eponymous Clent’s report gave a detailed, florid and in some instances even accurate account of Mosca’s discovery of the Floating School, and her attempts to follow Pertellis. Aramai Goshawk, the new leader of the Mandelion Locksmiths, read and reread it, turning the pages carefully with his tiny, perfect hands.

  Goshawk’s ‘offices’ were never in the same place twice, and today he was holding court in the domain of the gulls. The cathedral roof offered a splendid view of the city, unequalled even by the spires. The great pitted dome shielded his desk and chair from the worst of the wind, and all around him the gulls eddied and perched, angelwing-white in the sun. He was pleased by their cruel raucousness, their symphony of selfishness.

  The man who stood before Goshawk twisting his cap seemed less happy. His knees trembled with the height, and he flinched from the gape of the gulls’ beaks.

  ‘So –’ Goshawk raised colourless eyes to look at him – ‘which part of the city does your gang control? Point it out to me.’

  ‘Over there, between the river and Cockle Street.’ The young thief’s face furrowed as he realized how small his territory looked from Goshawk’s vantage.

  As far as Goshawk was concerned, people were greedy, frightened or both, and that was all you needed to know about them. He preferred them frightened. Greed had probably brought this young criminal to Goshawk to offer his gang’s services, but fear would later prevent him changing allegiance. In time, fear would bring a parade of thieves, swindlers, blackmailers, fences, nook-gazers, murderers, magistrates and courtiers, all desperate to make terms with the Locksmiths. Secretly, Goshawk thanked the Birdcatchers for filling the Realm with broken, frightened people. The old anthems to freedom were dead. Nowadays everybody wanted safety, and the Locksmiths offered safety – for a price.

  In Scurrey, Goshawk’s tactics had been effective surprisingly swiftly. The turning point in his fight for the city had taken place just after he had seized control of the Mawkins gang. Openly attending the funeral of Willet Mawkins in his customary sombre black clothes, he had heard a whisper of fear among the ‘mourners’ that caused his pitted cheeks to pucker in an almost-smile. The other criminal gangs had decided that Goshawk’s victory was inevitable . . . and from that moment it was. They fell over one another in their hurry to join his organization. And now Scurrey was docile, a city of empty, fearful streets and shuttered windows, where everybody paid their tithes to the Locksmiths . . .

  The thief before him was by now deeply regretting the mission that had forced him to approach Aramai Goshawk.

  ‘We’ve a man in the pound,’ he was explaining, ‘our best sly-in-the-night. His trial’s due for the first day of the Assizes, four days from now . . .’

  ‘. . . and you want me to send a pair of plumpers to give him an alibi?’ The Locksmiths employed many ‘plumpers’, men who would perjure
themselves for money. ‘I can do this. But first . . . I would like to see some evidence of your loyalty to us.’

  A plan was forming in Goshawk’s mind. His eye slid over Clent’s report. In spite of his guild’s attempts to intimidate them, the Stationers had not halted their efforts to investigate the Locksmiths. Their interference did not frighten him – but it was an annoying distraction. Goshawk needed all his resources for a battle of wits that he was waging with a very different and more powerful enemy.

  For months he had been fighting the Duke’s sister, Lady Tamarind, for control of Mandelion. Influencing the Duke was like trying to grab a fistful of maddened bees, but he was sure that he would have succeeded by now, were it not for Tamarind whispering in the Duke’s ear. Her network of spies seemed the equal of Goshawk’s own. The agents he sent to break into her apartments in search of her correspondence were almost invariably mauled by her monstrous pet collection. Worse still, their battle of wits seemed to have become tavern gossip, and crooks that should have flocked to join him hung back leerily, waiting to see who would win. Goshawk frowned. He could ill afford to let the underworld suspect that he was dancing daggers with the Stationers as well.

  ‘The Stationers need to be frightened, that is all, and they will back down,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘They are too afraid of an open guild war to risk a confrontation with us. Let us see. Their investigation has led them to this Pertellis, on whom they seem to place great value . . .’

  He looked up at the waiting thief.

  ‘Let us see how skilled your men are. By dusk I want to you to find a man of letters named Pertellis.’

  Meanwhile, blithely unaware how famous he had become in two short days, the young lawyer Hopewood Pertellis spent the afternoon at the Mandelion prison, speaking with a farmer he was due to defend at the upcoming Assizes for non-payment of the Duke’s harsh new taxes. He thought of nothing but the case as he walked home, and as he absently munched through the potage that his patient housekeeper left by his elbow.