Fly by Night

by Frances Hardinge

  Something was pulling at his leg. Looking down the length of his own body, Carmine could see the frightened face of Eponymous Clent, who had pushed his head up through the trapdoor and taken hold of Carmine’s ankle. Carmine wondered dully if Clent was trying to steal his boots, and whether anyone would notice. However, he let himself be dragged inch by painful inch, and at last felt someone grip him under the arms and lower him down through the trapdoor, where he seemed to sink into darkness like a drowner, amid a crowd of supporting hands. He was laid gently on to the floorboards. Voices echoed oddly in his ear, and there were red ringlets trailed across his face.

  Blythe saw the young apprentice fall to a pistol shot but was too far away to do more than watch as Clent crept from cover to drag the boy to safety. What a world this is, he thought. Children put us to shame with their pluck, and are shot in the back for it.

  The highwayman’s mind was filled with a terrible, aching clarity, for he had no doubt in his mind that he would be dead by evening. He hid this belief from his comrades, just as he hid the fact that his recent influenza had left his throat rough as bracken, and that from time to time his head became so light that the objects around him seemed to glisten darkly. The men who depended upon him needed to see him strong and able.

  But they need more than Captain Blythe the hero, they need a dozen more men and as many guns . . . no, they need a miracle. On the other coffeehouse, Blythe could see men hanging off the outside wall rungs, or perched on sills, or skulking on deck and veranda – anything rather than face whatever it was that was breaking furniture in the main coffeeroom. Carmine’s strange attack had bought the Bower time, but it would not be long before the Queens’ Heads recovered from the crisis.

  ‘Ahoy the Laurel Bower! The Duke himself commands you to pull to and surrender yourselves to him and his men!’ The cry seemed to come from the veranda of the Queens’ Heads.

  Blythe thought again of Carmine’s face as the shot had torn through his arm, and his chest exploded with anger.

  ‘This is Captain Clam Blythe, and I challenge Vocado Avourlace, called Duke of Mandelion, to a test of pistols. I stand for the rights of the people he robs and oppresses, and will risk my body for my cause. I call upon him to stand against me for the Queens he claims to honour, and let the Beloved decide the Right of it.’ Blythe could hear his own words echoing long after he had spoken them. He realized that little sculls were bobbing not far from the shore, and that the men on them were bellowing his words to a listening multitude on the waterfront.

  ‘The Duke accepts.’

  Praise be to Goodman Varple of Thieves and Vagabonds, and bless his ugly dog, thought Blythe. The Duke truly is mad.

  ‘Mr Hind, captain of the Queens’ Heads, shall be my second.’ It was the Duke’s voice.

  Blythe gave Stallwrath a questioning glance, and received a nod.

  ‘Mr Stallwrath shall serve as mine.’

  While the crew of the Bower hurried to clear the deck, Blythe stood up, so that he could be seen by the men of the Queens’ Heads, the crew of the little boats bobbing nearby and the throngs at the riverside. If they shoot me like a dog now, it will be remembered . . .

  His heart beat as a tall man in jewelled blues and golds climbed on to the roof of the Queens’ Heads, the wind splaying the locks of his pale gold wig until it seemed to circle his head like a halo. With a throb the highwayman remembered that, as the man challenged, the Duke would be allowed to take the first shot.

  As Blythe willed himself to stand firm, the Duke carefully polished a slender, girlish pistol with a flared muzzle, then turned to regard his enemy shoulder-on, and brought his pistol down to bear. The other coffee-house was close enough for Blythe to see the flash of the powder before the surge of smoke. There was a bang so loud it seemed as if someone had slapped their palms hard against the highwayman’s ears. He took a deep breath, and found that his lungs were still whole. The Duke had missed.

  Blythe raised his own pistol and slowly lowered it, until he stared down the barrel at the figure of the Duke, bright as a damselfly. With a single shot he could take the Duke’s madness out of the world. But on either side, hundreds watched, and he felt the bating of their breath like the silence before thunder. Their eyes and hearts were full of Captain Blythe, the hero for whom villagers had risked the scaffold and the stocks, for whom the radicals would fight to the last man, for whom skippers of little boats would hazard fire and musketball. If he took mean advantage of a now unarmed man, the Duke of Mandelion would die, but so would the Hero.

  Blythe raised his gun to aim far above the Duke’s head, and pulled the trigger, sending a bullet through the string of the pursuing coffeehouse’s master-kite. As he lowered his smoking gun, Blythe heard a roar of applause erupt from the banks. There were cheers nearby from the lighters and dugouts, the dinghies and sculls.

  He was turning away from his opponent when the applause changed to a gasp. Blythe saw shock on the faces of the Bower’s crew, and turned to see the Duke pulling from his coat a second pistol, identical to his first, and levelling it with one smooth gesture. The beating of Blythe’s heart suddenly seemed too loud for one chest, as if he were hearing the heart of every watcher pounding for his peril. There was no time to throw himself flat. There was time only to think, so this is how it feels to be a hero . . .

  Then the frozen second ended, and from the skies swooped the severed master-kite, its canvas juddering with a sound like a mighty wingbeat. It struck the Duke on the back of the head with a chopping-block thud and tumbled him overboard. After the splash, nothing rose to the surface but a seethe of bubbles and the Duke’s three-cornered hat.

  Why have his men stopped firing at us? Blythe wondered, as he leaned against the chimney for support. A glance over his shoulder answered his question. The sky was thick with kites, all bearing the Watermen’s insignia. The swift wherries had slipped in among the other river traffic, only now throwing up kites to declare their presence. There would be no more gunfire on their patch.

  Skin me, thought Blythe, that girl must have got her message through to the Stationers after all. The far cries of the crowds were as shrill and gleeful as gull calls over a ploughed field, and Blythe looked about him, dazed, as distant hats were hurled into the air, and little boats ran up flags of celebration.

  Among the figures thronging the Ashbridge, Blythe thought for a moment he saw a short and slender figure in an olive-green dress, a point of stillness amid the jubilation. But a fit of light-headedness came over him again before he could be sure whether it was Mosca, and by the time it cleared the figure was gone.

  U is for Undefended

  So this is what living honesty is like, Mosca thought as she waded through bristling, rustling plants. The thick green seedpods that patted the skin of her arms were as cool and rough as the pads of cats’ paws. The riverside paths had been easy enough to follow in daylight, but now the light was starting to dim. Her only hope of finding the ragman’s raft again was to follow the river, so she struggled along within sight of the water even when the bank became overgrown.

  Ugly Mr Toke had told her that the high tide would cause wild water. The ragman’s raft was tethered by just one mooring pin in the soft bank. She needed to moor it more safely so that the river would not drag it loose and chew it to pieces, the way he had described. And she needed to find a better hiding place for it so that the Stationers did not find it.

  No, she did not want the Stationers to find it; she knew that now. She had realized that while she was staring into Toke’s clever little eyes. The Stationers would cage the press like a wild animal, and break its spirit. Suddenly she had known that the printing press should be hers and hers alone.

  There was a terrible excitement in the thought of the press lurking in its darkened lair with its iron grin and ink-stained teeth, ready to whisper forbidden secrets to her. If there is paper, there may be books, whispered a voice in her head. Dangerous books, gunpowder books, books that could burn away the c
astles of the mind and change the colour of the sky.

  Of course it was madness to be out alone in the woods, let alone at such an hour. Mosca had read of Wry Petchers, the Manhandler of Scumpy Bank, not to mention countless other footpads, cut-throats and gangs preying through the waysides and wild places. Even an ordinary pedlar might snatch the chance of robbing a small and solitary girl. But somehow these thoughts and the tingling scratches left by the briars only made her more determined. Besides, woods made sense. Woods were home.

  On two occasions Mosca noticed a convoy of Watermen boats sail by, kites high. The first convoy was a flotilla of small, fleet boats. The second was a glide of larger tideboats and barges, flanked by wherries. Each time, she hid in the undergrowth until they had passed. By the time a nibbled moon was climbing the treeline, Mosca’s clogs were heavy with black mud and her stomach was a blank, demanding hole.

  By the time a nibbled moon was climbing the treeline, Mosca’s clogs were heavy with black mud and her stomach was a blank, demanding hole.

  The river’s voice changed, and Mosca realized that it was struggling with a foaming tangle of boughs which chafed in the drag of the current. Her heart somersaulted as she recognized the dead tree where she had narrowly escaped the Birdcatcher ragmen. But surely it was foolish to imagine that they would still be waiting here in such a desolate place?

  Using the ripple of roots as rungs, she climbed up on to the trunk of the fallen tree, and kicked her heels against the bark to knock off the mud. She pulled a few blackberries from the nearest bush, but they were still hard and bitter to chew, and she could feel their tiny hairs tickle her tongue and throat as she swallowed them. She was just thinking of climbing further up the fan of roots to reach a dark spray of elderberries when a firm hand was placed over her mouth and she was pulled backwards off the trunk. Despite her shock, Mosca made hearty use of her elbows until her attacker set her on her feet and released her. She turned, fear hammering in her chest.

  ‘Mr Kohlrabi!’ Mosca was flooded with relief. ‘I looked for you an’ couldn’t find you an’ lots of things ’ve ’appened an’ you weren’t at your coffeehouse where you said to look an’ Mrs Nokes couldn’t say . . .’ Mosca’s voice dropped to a whisper as Kohlrabi shook his head and raised a finger to his lips.

  ‘Hush . . . Mosca, you are being followed. You have been followed all the way from Mandelion. And I do not think you wish to lead them to the printing press, do you?’

  Mosca shook her head silently.

  ‘Let’s see if we can lose them, then, shall we?’

  Kohlrabi seemed to know the paths of the wood where moss would silence their steps. He appeared much taller in the dark, or perhaps, Mosca’s tired brain wondered, perhaps he wore daylight in a way that made him seem shorter and more ordinary.

  ‘Who are they?’ whispered Mosca when they had been creeping in this way for some time.

  ‘Stationers.’ Kohlrabi’s whisper was a little louder than hers, as if he thought Mosca’s pursuers had probably been left behind. ‘Little god, you have been crashing through the undergrowth like a wounded boar, and they have been following the sound. I in turn have been following them. They were quite worried when you stopped walking, and they started arguing about which one of them should creep forward and get a sight of you. I thought I would try and reach you first.’

  ‘An’ how did you know I was goin’ after the printing press?’

  ‘A little guesswork, based on an apron in a herring-barrel. The Stationers must have suspected as much to trail you like that, and I trust them to know their job. So – where is the press?’

  ‘In the hold of a ragman’s raft. I hid it in the rushes an’ made sure I’d know the place again. I can take you there.’ Mosca paused and swallowed mournfully. ‘Are you going to take it away?’

  ‘Mosca –’ Kohlrabi’s voice was kind and patient – ‘look at all the hubbub this one printing press has caused in Mandelion. You must see that it is far too important a thing to have it falling into the wrong hands. Now, the Stationers would break it apart, or use it to print dull essays, and I think that would be a waste, don’t you? And other people might use it to print all kinds of stupid things and get themselves in trouble. Someone has to make sure it is used properly and fulfils its destiny.’

  ‘If there are books there with the press . . . can I read them?’

  Kohlrabi mulled this over for a few moments, his face invisible in the darkness.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said at last. ‘Yes. I think, when we take the raft downstream, it would be best if you came with us.’

  ‘We can’t go downstream, Mr Kohlrabi! That’s what I wanted to tell you about! There’s people comin’ from the coast, an’ they mustn’t catch us. And listen, listen, Mr Kohlrabi, I got to warn you about Lady Tamarind . . .’

  As Mosca’s voice rose in pitch, Kohlrabi turned to stare back through the trees behind him, hushing her. One of his hands slid to his belt, and she remembered his pistol. He held up a hand for silence and spent a few seconds quite motionless, before beckoning to her sharply, and creeping on stealthily as they had at first.

  Almost stifling with unspoken words, she followed him as the woods thinned and gave way to fields. She followed him at a crouch along ditches and through hedge shadow, across streams and over drystone walls. By the time they reached the darkness of the woods again, she had taken her new pipe from her pocket and was chewing at the stem while she fended the briars from her face.

  ‘I think that pipe is twice as loud as our steps,’ Kohlrabi whispered at long last.

  His only answer was the sound of wood clicking against the teeth of his companion.

  ‘You must be hungry, if you are willing to devour wood.’

  Mosca said nothing, but continued her champ, champ, champ in the darkness.

  ‘At this rate you will chew your way right through the stem. I would probably not have given you the pipe if I had known that you would think so hard with it.’

  ‘I can believe that,’ Mosca muttered.

  An opening in the trees allowed the moon to fall upon Kohlrabi’s face. He strode in silence for a few moments, then turned a puzzled smile upon his companion. At least, he would have done so if that companion had still been at his side.

  ‘Mosca?’ Kohlrabi’s expression see-sawed between a smile and a frown as he looked about him. Then both expressions faded like smoke and he wore only the wide-eyed look of one who is listening very intently.

  Hidden behind a fringe of ferns, Mosca lay flat, her cheek against the clammy softness of the dead leaves.

  ‘Mosca?’

  In a Mandelion street, Mosca would have been at the mercy of its flurry and flow, the hurried weaving of stride and barrow. But this was the freckled woodland, where you needed a different set of tricks. Be still where you can, be as silent as you can, let other small sounds drown your steps. If you cannot fool the eye, then fool the brain – stand where you are not expected and you will not be seen. Keep to the highs, keep to the lows, and avoid eye level if the terrain lets you. These were tricks that Mosca knew.

  She had abandoned her gleaming white bonnet and cap on the path as she slipped away. Her dark hair was now pulled forward to mask the pale skin of her face. She waited for Kohlrabi to take a few steps in the wrong direction before rising to a crouch. While he turned his back, a light figure beam-balanced its way along the trunk of a felled tree, arms spread for balance, stockinged feet silent on the dank green velvet covering the bark. By the time he looked back, the figure had dropped out of sight with a faint sound like a chestnut falling.

  These were tricks that Mosca knew better than Kohlrabi.

  Her skirts scooped over one arm, the pipe clamped silently in her mouth, Mosca slipped to the thicket’s edge, and found a feathered sea of reeds before her, shivering moonlight like shot silk. Where was the ragman’s raft? Mosca found a gash in the mud where she had anchored the mooring peg, and she knew that the raft must have pulled loose and floated away. B
ut no – there was a strange, squarish clearing among the reeds. The raft had floated, but not far.

  Wading through the reeds, Mosca found the ground growing treacherously moist and cloying, the mud welcoming her feet eagerly and giving an annoyed cluck of its tongue each time she drew them out for another step. At last the unseen ground surpassed itself by suddenly becoming river. Mosca found herself up to her hips in icy water, her descent slowed only by her skirts, which spread about her, the muslin seething with bubbles like egg white in a poaching pan.

  Mosca grabbed fistfuls of the reeds and used them to drag herself towards the raft. She reached it just before her skirts became sodden enough to drag her down, and she heaved her torso on to its planks. Using her legs to kick, she pulled at the reeds to drag the raft out towards the river. Only when she reached the very edge of the reed-forest and pulled herself up on to the timbers did Mosca realize why the raft had not floated away. The mooring rope had pulled taut. Somewhere among the reeds the trailing end with the mooring peg had caught on something.

  Almost in tears with desperation and cold, Mosca gave the rope several violent tugs, but it held. The mooring rope was fastened to a metal ring on the raft with a knot that made no sense to her, and her fingers were so numb the bristling rope was painful to twist. She was still struggling with it when she looked up and saw that Kohlrabi was standing on the bank.

  He was out of breath, as if he had reached the bank at a run. The moon was full on his face, and he still wore an expression of slight puzzlement. He took a step towards Mosca, before looking down at his feet, up at the raft, and then searchingly at the reeds separating him from the raft. Perhaps he had worked out that he was near the brink. Mosca was fairly sure he did not know how near.