Twilight Robbery (10 page)

‘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.

Names were important. You carried your name like a brand. You never lied about it, for fear of angering the god under which you were born.

In theory, there were no unlucky Beloved. All of them had their place in the world, and even those who munched head lice or inspired the artistry of spiders’ webs were useful and to be praised. However, the fact was that some Beloved
were
seen as luckier, brighter, more trustworthy, more generous, more worthy, and so were those born under them.

As a child of Palpitattle, Mosca was used to seeing noses wrinkle and gazes chill when she admitted to her name. Palpitattle’s job was to keep the flies in order and out of mischief, but this he could do because he
was
a fly, the emperor of flies. The thinly veiled loathing she was sensing now, however, was something new.

The more devoutly someone worshipped the Beloved, the more seriously they took the lore of names, and the more severe the reaction. Looking around at the Beloved faces carved into every timber beam, and the painted Beloved in the Clock Tower, Mosca could see that the people of Toll took the Beloved very seriously indeed.

‘Let’s go warn this plump heiress, grab the reward and get out of this spittle-kettle,’ she growled.

‘It is true, dispatch is of the essence,’ muttered Clent as he surveyed the crowds. ‘We are a few steps ahead of your friend Skellow for now, thanks to your ingenuity in sending his Romantic Facilitator astray. However . . . we have received repeated warnings to be off the streets by dusk. Let us strive to have our business finished by then.’

After finding an inn, and reserving a room by flourishing the documents given to them by the Committee of the Hours, Clent, Mosca and Saracen set off to track down the imperilled heiress. Fortunately this proved to be relatively easy. The mere mention of ‘the mayor’s daughter’ brought gleaming smiles to the faces of the guards at the Clock Tower.

‘Ah, you’ll mean his adopted daughter, Miss Beamabeth Marlebourne! Oh, we all know of her, thank you, sir. She’s the Peach of Toll, the Perfectest Peony. Mayor Marlebourne’s family live in old judge’s lodgings, up in the castle courtyard.’ A vague gesture to the north. ‘Ask anyone as you go, they’ll all know where to send you.’

And indeed they did.

‘Ah, you’re going to speak with Miss Marlebourne? Then I envy you, sir, for she is the finest sight within Toll’s walls. Seeing her, you’ll think the Beloved made a person out of honeysuckle . . .’

‘Miss Beamabeth Marlebourne? Sweetest creature on ten toes. Smile like a spring day. Yes, just take this alley to the end, and you’ll see the brocade curtains she’s hung at her windows, bless her . . .’

Toll, tucked tight within its walls, had solved the problem of room by building upwards, and cramming as much as it could into a tiny space. Shops were stacked above shops, each with little wooden boardwalks in front of them for wares to sprawl. Some of these walkways even bridged the narrow streets, creating covered alleyways. Mosca soon got used to the creak of clogged and booted feet overhead. There was a smell too, which came as a shock after the chill, clear air of the open meadows, the stifling reek of a lot of people living close together – unwashed clothes, ginslops, last week’s mutton, chamber-pot throwings.

Toll was a hill town, and all its streets knew it. They were a hodgepodge of cobbled ramps, upwards zigzags, sudden flights of brick steps and abrupt drops. By the time Clent and Mosca reached the central plaza, Mosca was out of breath again, and completely, utterly out of patience with the catalogue of Beamabeth Marlebourne’s charms.

The name itself was a bitter pill. Mosca had been born on the cusp between Beloveds, barely half an hour into the eve ruled by Palpitattle. It was an open secret that her nursemaid had suggested that her father pretend she was born a little earlier, under the deeply auspicious Goodman Boniface, He Who Sends the Sun’s Rays to Bless the Earth. And if her father had listened, if he had been an ordinary man instead of a meticulous monster with a mind like a guillotine, right now Mosca would not be Mosca. She would be a ‘child of the Sun’, with a name like Aurora, or Solina . . . or Beamabeth.