Twilight Robbery

by Frances Hardinge

  ‘What? You . . . you cur!’

  ‘Blame my birth.’ Brand winced as he was roughly dragged to his feet, his arms slung over two sets of shoulders so that he could be carried. ‘Blame Sparkentress, the wicked minx. Blame the mayor for sending me to Toll-by-Night, where I could mix freely with others of my seditious kind, plotting his overthrow and the destruction of Toll!’

  Ah, so it ends, he thought, as he was dragged along the streets by his captors. And it seems I will be visiting the mayor and his daughter again after all.

  He would see Beamabeth one last time. And yet when he thought of her he could only remember a set of golden ringlets and a warm glow, with no actual face. Instead he found himself thinking of a surly, crop-headed figure with a cut lip, and thanking the Beloved that Laylow had not been caught up in his arrest.

  Let us hope Laylow and Mosca find the Luck. I am all out of luck, it seems. But perhaps I can help them . . . by forcing the Locksmiths’ hand. If I can persuade everybody that the town catching fire is a sign that the Luck is dead, then the Locksmiths will probably have to bring him out of his hiding place to prove he is still alive. That might give Mosca and Laylow their chance . . .

  ‘You are all closer to death than I!’ he declaimed, in a carrying and manic tone, ‘I have already doomed you all! There is nothing to stop the flames now, nothing! Last night I slew the Luck myself!’

  Let us see the Locksmiths ignore that.

  The reaction to his pronouncement was all he could have hoped for and more.

  Toll-by-Day was blinding, and Laylow could barely keep her eyes open. As far as she was concerned, the whole world might just as well have been aflame. The colours burned, from the murky green of the yews to the red cloaks of respectable housewives. Even her good friends the roofs had developed leeringly bright patterns of moss and scratch tracery. The sky was an ache, and the sun a searing, shapeless hole, so different from the gleaming penny of the moon. The air smelt different as well, and not just because of the smoke.

  Her own hands as she found holds on ledges and chimneys looked strange to her, the callouses yellow, the scars snail-white. She felt exposed, as if everyone must be able to see her every instant. In actual fact, however, most people were too busy with thoughts of the fire to wonder whether a claw-gloved girl might be running along the rooftops.

  There was a lot more noise in the streets than she was used to in the night town, but some fragments floated up to her.

  ‘. . . says the Luck is gone! Flames spreading because the Luck is gone!’

  ‘. . . captured Appleton and says he cut the Luck into pieces and threw them over different walls . . .’

  Laylow stiffened, and her claw-tips made squeaky sounds as they etched tiny white marks into a roof tile. Brand had been captured. He was a prisoner, and had come up with exactly the sort of mad defiant lie that would see him torn apart by a hysterical crowd. Did he want to die?

  For a little while she could not breathe, and thought about running to the jail to find him. But what good could she do against armed guards and a tower of stone? None.

  What now? Would rescuing the Luck help her save Brand? It was so hard to think in this blazing, clattering daylight. If she was lucky it would somehow. She pushed on towards what she prayed was Blithers Yard.

  Looking down she saw two men stop dead and exchange glances as they overheard the report of the murder of the Luck. Both were wearing gloves. They conversed hurriedly, then broke into a run. Face puckering in concentration, Laylow set off along the rooftops, keeping pace with them.

  She had to hope that these men were going to check on the Luck, make sure that he was still alive and well, and to report the rumours circulating. She almost knew where she was now. Laylow knew the Jinglers’ favourite shortcuts to most places, having conned them by rote when planning her chocolate delivery routes.

  In an alley, the two men met with two more, also in gloves, and Laylow craned to hear something of their furtive conversation.

  ‘. . . says we should move him . . . breaking into all the houses down there . . . move him further from the fire . . .’

  And on they went, now as a foursome. Jingle-jing, jingle-jing, the faintest silvery sound of hidden keys chiming as they ran.

  No doors had been beaten in yet in Pritter’s Lane, but the house-tearers were only a street away. Casting quick glances up and down the lane, the gloved men fumbled quickly with the locks on a house-facing and slid it aside to show a small red door. This was opened, and after more conference two figures came out, a large and burly man and a boy in his teens. Laylow could not tell how closely he matched Mosca’s description of the Luck because there was a thick cloth draped over his head, as if to protect him from smoke.

  If she did not act, they would lead him to another part of the town, pull him in through another door, fasten it and vanish. But there were five of them and only one Laylow. What could she do?

  Only one thing.

  The five Locksmiths were on the alert. Two kept an eye up and down Pritter’s Lane. One was casually keeping watch at the corner, another attending to locking the door behind them, the last making sure the hooded boy did not run or do anything sudden. None, however, were looking up, and so none were ready when a grim and wiry figure dropped down in their very midst, yanked the Luck backwards by his collar and placed the tips of three sharp iron claws to his throat.

  ‘Get back!’ hissed Laylow. ‘Or it’s an unlucky day for all of us! Step away!’

  During the following long pause the Locksmiths glanced at each other and sent furious messages using eyebrow semaphore, but there was nothing that any of them could actually do without endangering the Luck. Carefully, but with an air of barely reined menace, they moved backwards away from her.

  The boy whose collar she was gripping was trembling. His feet were turned inwards and his hands were big and clumsy. He was taller than her, but he was making tiny, squeezed sobbing noises under his face cloth, like a little child crying under its pillow.

  ‘Soot-girl sent me,’ Laylow whispered, and the crying noises stopped. ‘She says you want to be free. That true?’ The clothy head-shape nodded. ‘Me too. Stick with me and we will be.’ She reached up and tugged off the cloth, and the Luck blinked at the world around him, jaw hanging open. ‘I will not hurt you. But we must hoodwink these people so they think I will. Trust me.’

  Paragon nodded again.

  ‘Hah,’ he gasped. Pale sunbeams sat on his lashes for the first time since he was three, and his world was full of floating angel haloes.

  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 t
he 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.