Mosca’s legs took her on a left and a right, and a huffing at her heels told her that Clent was just behind her. But again and again she brought herself up hard, hearing the frosty metallic chiming ahead of her, and strange whams and thuds like a parliament of doors in session. Finally she almost winded herself against something that swung away from her, then hit her in the chest with a broken chink. It was the summoning bell, and she was back in Brotherslain Walk.
‘Tertiary plan!’ croaked Clent between wheezes.
Run like Midsummer butter. Down-past-the-bell-turn-right-second-left-down-the-passage…
The passage was gone. Second left was gone. So was first left. There were only smooth timbers where the turnings had been. And along the opposite row, the doorless houses had sprouted doors and dull, dust-choked windows.
Mosca ran on, unable to work out how she had mistaken her route already. She weaved this way and that, trying to recover it.
… past-the-cobblers…
The cobblers was gone. Instead a differently placed doorway opened on to what looked like a stew or gin cellar.
She ran and twisted and zigzagged like a hare in a coursing, trusting the nose that told her that she must be heading towards the square, this must be the way to the square with the tavern…
She found the square. It was no longer the same square. Passages had vanished, new walkways appeared, doors and windows had moved, buildings had become longer, shorter, taller, more angular.
There was no tavern.
Here and there. It all made sense now. Brotherslain Walk had been chosen by Skellow as his meeting place because it was both here and there, it existed in both daylight and nighttime. But somehow, with the passing of the Jinglers, the rest of daylight Toll had disappeared.
As she stood staring helplessly at the square, she once again heard the sounds of a horse’s hoofs and the racketing of wheels, and this time the noises filled her with an unreasoning terror. She might have stayed there staring blankly down the cobbled street towards the sound if Clent had not unceremoniously seized her by the collar and dragged her into the darkness of a ginnel.
A black carriage surged into view, and in an instant every sound of its approach hatched into icy, echoing clarity. Two large black horses huffed steam into the chill air, while bells shook on their bridles. Just as the carriage passed, Mosca happened to look up at its window and caught the tiniest glimpse of the passenger that rode in state. The hand that pushed back the curtain was small and almost childlike, but the face behind was not. It was a lean face with skin like porridge and pale, incalculable eyes.
‘Goshawk!’
Aramai Goshawk, Thief-taker and king of thieves, ghost and puppet master. Aramai Goshawk, ever sent to pull the hidden strings of teetering towns and bring them under the sway of the Locksmiths.
Mosca knew now who the mysterious and much-feared Jinglers must be. The sound she had heard had not been sleighbells at all, but the jingle of keys at dozens of belts as their owners raced through the silent streets, locking away the day and releasing the night.
The mystery of the invisible Locksmiths was solved. Clent was right. The Locksmiths were in Toll. Their home was Toll-by-Night, and right now one of their most dangerous agents was riding through it as if it was his own private kingdom.
Goodlady Loominhearse, Mother of Nightowls
‘We’re… We’re in a Locksmith town! Mr Clent, we’re trapped in a-’
‘I know it, child, I know it.’
They hung back in the little ginnel, backs against the wall, not daring to talk above a whisper. Somewhere far distant came the long smoky note of a distant bugle.
Mosca swallowed and took a sidelong view of the square.
No lanterns. Silences like frozen treacle. Sounds that ran across your ear like rat feet on your skin. Scamper steps. Metal kissing metal with a hiss. The clapper-clap of shutters opening, doors creaking back on their hinges.
‘I think the nightfolk are coming out,’ hissed Mosca, as panic seeped up through her calves from the icy cobbles. ‘What do we do?’
‘Try not to get caught!’ whispered Clent hoarsely. He had instinctively taken hold of her collar. To comfort her, perhaps. Or so that he could push her in the way of any threat and run. As a matter of fact she seemed to be gripping his sleeve as well.
‘We got to hide, Mr Clent, we got to-’
‘… hole up until daylight comes – yes, yes…’
The fear that the dayfolk had shown at the approach of dusk made perfect sense. If the Locksmiths were the enforcers of the changeover and held free rein in the night city, no wonder not even the mayor wished to be out after curfew. Given the Locksmiths’ ruthless reputation, Mosca had the distinct feeling that being caught in night-Toll, when she and Clent ‘did not exist’, would involve something worse than a night in the jail.
Run. Hide. Hide from the night? But where? In the shadows?
In the shadows which were starting to murmur, where stone flags were grinding aside and cellar doors swinging wide?
‘Castle!’ Suddenly Mosca’s mind had filled with the green glades of the courtyard and the castle’s ruined walls – as full of nooks and holes as a Jottish cheese. No houses, nobody to bother them. They could lower themselves down in a well bucket, or camp in a broken tower.
Clent gave a nod, and the pair of them peered round the edge of the wall.
All clear? All clear. Run.
Strange painted shop signs swung slowly above their heads like gallows fruit. A dagger through an apple. A bird with a broken neck. A bone. A set of keys. A set of keys. Keys, everywhere. A Locksmith town.
Dark figures looming in this street and that, forcing Mosca and Clent to weave like fish. A hand with missing fingers reaching out through a shutter to throw some slops into the street. A slight figure sitting aloft on a gallows arm, swinging its legs.
The streets all seemed to be in different places, but Mosca knew that the castle was on the north side of the town. To reach it, they only needed to keep the dying streaks of sunset to their left. At last they reached the perimeter wall of the castle courtyard. Mosca followed Clent through the entrance arch at a sprint, only to cannon into his back as he came to a dead halt.
The castle on the other side of the courtyard was no longer barren and unlit. Reddish lantern light flickered in every arched window. Silhouetted figures spiked the parapets. At the crest of the highest tower flapped a large black flag with a set of silver keys patterned on it.
Mosca emitted a scream in miniature, a distant-sounding squeak. A similar noise seemed to have come from Clent’s open mouth. They locked eyes.
‘Quaternary plan!’ gasped Clent. ‘Creative panic!’
A second later, Mosca was taking a crash course in creative panic. The most important part of it appeared to be bolting at high speed back through the narrow alleys, taking turns at random and fleeing from any alarming noise that sounded nearby. Bouncing off street corners and ripping clothes on torch brackets appeared also to be essential features. But Mosca tightened her fists and gasped the cold air and kept herself a pace behind Eponymous Clent. Right now he was running pell-mell with peril at his heels and counting on his instincts to save his skin. He had been doing that his whole life and appeared to be rather good at it.
The alleys threw all sounds this way and that, so that you could judge the direction of none. There was a sound like sleighbells behind them. No, it was in front of them. No… to the right…
‘The Jinglers – they’re on all sides, Mr Clent!’
Clent halted, clearly having reached the same conclusion. Then, unexpectedly, he lunged into an alleyway.
As he did so, Mosca realized a little way down the alley a door had just opened a crack to admit a slight figure carrying a ewer. From within, a weird clattering uproar could be heard. Before the door could shut again, Clent barged through the closing gap. Mosca barrelled in after him, and slammed the door to behind her.