The Ravens proved to be a criss-cross set of alleys, most barely wide enough for two to walk shoulder to shoulder. There had clearly been a fire here long ago, for the oldest houses still had singed timbers, and Mosca guessed that this colouration had given the Ravens its name. She could even see gaps where the houses on the edge of the district had been pulled down to stop the spread of fire. Given how much of the town seemed to be a collage of white plaster and dark timberwork, Mosca was not surprised at the signs of fire.
‘Brotherslain Walk is somewhere here – it has an old summoning bell, they did say,’ Clent murmured.
One alleyway was a little wider than the rest, and at the far end they found an old bell hanging from a hook, blue with corrosion and pitted as an old fruit.
‘Good. Now we need to find a ferret hole for you to watch from. There’s little enough life in these houses – see if the ghosts have left the doors unlatched.’
Mosca obediently scurried around the nearest row of houses, retraced her steps, then stood and stared.
‘Mr Clent -’ Mosca found she had hushed her voice by instinct – ‘I know people block up windows sometimes so they won’t get charged for Window Tax, but… does anywhere have a door tax?’
‘A… I beg your pardon?’ Clent’s eyebrows rose.
‘I been all round this row of houses… and they’ve got no doors.’
There was something eerie about it, like finding a face with no nose or mouth. Upon investigation, several other rows also proved to have no doors at all.
‘So… the doors have been blocked.’ Clent was clearly becoming uneasy. ‘Plague, possibly. Or giant rats. Or of course there was that old superstition that you could increase the life of a town by bricking up sixteen feral black cats…’ He was blinking rapidly, as if his eyes had noticed that his words were not improving morale and were desperately signalling to his mouth to stop moving.
In the end, it turned out that one of the doorless houses had windows, and that one window had a loose shutter that could be prised open. The shop within – an old dairy – had clearly been untenanted for some time, and even the looting it had suffered had happened a long time before.
‘Well?’ Clent tap-tapped at his collar and glanced up and down the street as Mosca quietly slipped in through the window. ‘Will it do?’
‘Close enough. Least they can’t see me from the street.’ Mosca peered at one dust-clouded pane. ‘And these windows give me some view of the roofs and the lanes.’
‘So…’ Eponymous toyed with the chain of his long-pawned watch and glanced at the sky to judge the hour. The sun was already declining towards the horizon, and evening had come early in the narrow streets of the Ravens as the light faded out of the higher sky. ‘Our primary plan is…’
‘You talk to ’im like you’re the Romantic Facilitator,’ Mosca recited obediently, trying not to shiver, ‘and try to get your fee out of ’im or get ’im to talk about how he means to snatch the Marlebourne girl. And I keep an eye out in case he’s got a couple of bravos waiting with cudgels.’
‘Good. Secondary plan?’
‘If aught starts to look queer or chancy, I throw a stone some way off, and you talk like you’re skithered of being overheard and show ’im your heels.’
‘And… tertiary plan?
‘We run like Midsummer butter. Down-past-the-bell-turn-right-second-left-down-the-passage-past-the-cobblers-left-right-across-the-square-and-into-the-tavern.’
A five-minute sprint. The pair of them locked eyes and nodded – a nod that said that if it came to running neither would wait for the other. Then Mosca pulled the window shut, and Clent went to stand by the summoning bell like a magician waiting for his demon. Mosca could see Clent’s face, pompous and wily, the lips moving silently as he worked through lines, his expression shifting imperceptibly as he practised looks of surprise, pleasure, indignation.
In the midst of this silence came the distant sound of a bugle. Fifteen minutes until the mysterious ‘changeover’.
Mosca stirred her feet restlessly, hearing the mess of dropped crocks and churns crunch under her soles. Resting her fingers on the window frame, she felt something fuzz and tickle at her fingers. She looked down, and saw between her fingertips the corpses of a dozen or so jet-black flies. Drawn in by the choking reek of dust and sick milk, with its lies of sweetness and warmth.
And somewhere in the shadows, the little god Palpitattle laughed his thorny laugh at her.
Where do the flies go in winter, Mosca Mye? Where do they go?
She stared at the glossy little beads of death with their leg tangles uppermost.
Some die in the cold, and the others, they find a trap to fly into. And then they beat themselves to death inside it.
Mosca could feel her cast-off superstitions tickling at her mind, so she dug her fingernails into her palms and tried to imagine the universe free of little gods. She brandished her disbelief like a torch, but it was hard to keep it burning in the twilight with fear in her mind. And it was hardest of all to disbelieve in Palpitattle, for during her loneliest years his imagined voice had been the whisper of a secret ally.
It was dusk, and the Beloved flowed back into her head like water in the wake of a broom. She could not keep them from peopling the sky. She could not even keep them from peopling the one little alley before her view. There was a shape forming at the opposite end of Brotherslain Walk, a figure with inhumanly angular limbs.
But it was not a member of the Beloved. It was Skellow.
‘Good evening.’ Recognition of his voice sent a shiver of fear through Mosca, and the reddened marks on her wrists stung her. ‘Will you give me your name, brother of the dusk?’
There was a pause, during which Clent took a deep breath, examined his fingers’ ends and then pushed away from the bell against which he had been leaning.
‘You know, I am not at all sure that I shall.’ Clent’s tone was carefully languorous, with just a hint of steel in it. Mosca could not help admiring the way he could pull out a new voice and manner like an actor donning a wig or a fresh pair of hose. ‘My name is good enough that I do not like handing it out for free.’
‘Good enough for daylight, anyway.’ Skellow took some steps forward, and there was still enough light from the violet sky for Mosca to see that he was smiling his loveless smile. His dark wooden nightling badge was visible over his heart like a blot of black blood. ‘Just like you promised.’
‘That is better.’ Clent’s voice was still elegantly frosted with suspicion. ‘But I would like a little more proof that you have business with me.’
Mosca had forgotten that Clent could do this, become a different man. In this dusk he seemed a gentleman in control, and only she knew of the mapwork of stitches that held his fading waistcoat and coat together, or guessed at the scamper of his pulse as he played out his dangerous game.
Skellow’s face took on an angry colour.
‘We do not have time for games! I am taking a chance being out here in this light!’
‘As am I,’ replied Clent smoothly. ‘Sir, I am far from happy. An unknown gentleman suggested that I should meet him in this unsavoury little lane, and I wrote back to change our appointment to another place and time. That gentleman did not keep this appointment, and so I was forced to traipse here against my better judgement in the hope of meeting with him and receiving his no doubt fascinating explanation.’
In a flash, Mosca realized what Clent was doing. He had no guarantee that Skellow had not found someone to read the letter from the real Romantic Facilitator, or that he would not find someone to do so at some point. Clent was steering a clever route, spinning a story that would fit with the letter Skellow had actually received.