‘What?’ Sir Feldroll’s jaw dropped, and it took several seconds for him to crank it back up again. He rounded on Clent, his face a picture of disbelief. ‘Am I to understand that all of this night’s stratagems took place without the mayor’s knowledge or permission?’
‘Ah.’ Clent moved a hand to adjust his cravat, but was brought up short by the tightening grip of his captors’ hands on his arms. ‘Ah. Well… that is… ah.’
The ensuing explanation ordeal that took place in the reception room bore an unpleasant resemblance to a court in session. The mayor was incandescent, and strode to and fro in plum-faced fury until his boots threatened to chafe the rug into flames. He would probably have ordered everybody there to be clapped in irons, were it not for the practical difficulties of having the entire company arrest itself.
They were all imbeciles. And those that were not imbeciles were traitors. And thieves and criminals and murderers. And there was not a punishment in Toll’s oldest books of litigation that the guilty parties would escape. But that would be nothing compared to what they would suffer if any harm came to his darling Beamabeth.
Interjection did not seem very wise, so nobody said anything for a long while, even when the mayor ran out of threats and strode to and fro in silence, his right fist clenched in his left hand.
‘Well?’ He stopped abruptly and turned upon Clent. Clent’s shoulders jumped nervously, and his eyes glassed over.
‘This is all your handiwork, sir,’ declared the magistrate. ‘As far as I can tell, your stratagems guaranteed that at the most dangerous time of the day I would be absent, my doors would be unlocked and all the friends and servants that might have protected my daughter would be chasing will o’ wisps across the castle green. Is there anything you can say to convince me that this was not your intention all the time? That you are not, in fact, the Romantic Facilitator of which you pretended to warn me?’
A mottling of gasps. Self-congratulatory murmurs from the men who had ‘caught’ Clent at the doorway.
‘Hail and hellweather!’ Some of Clent’s colour had returned to his face. ‘My good and gracious lord mayor, do you imagine that if I had intended to kidnap that child I would have done so in such a preposterous way? There are a thousand easier ways to manage the business, without hazarding my own safety and good name in this fashion.’
‘Oh yes?’ The mayor folded his arms, his face a picture of incredulity. ‘Such as…?’
‘Well…’ Clent spread his plump fingers and frowned at them. ‘I could of course have used the clock trick on her, instead of your good self, and arranged some secret conference with her near the end of the day in another part of town. All I would need would be a well-muffled room in which she would not hear the bugle, and then I could have sent her on her way at dusk, not realizing that the first bugle had blown and that there was a gaggle of nightowls waiting outside to ambush her.
‘Or I could have drugged her food or drink, put her in a box and hoisted her up into one of the taller trees, high enough that the Jinglers would not be looking for hiders there, and my accomplices could claim her come night.
‘Or… well, quite simply, my good sir, I could have tried to negotiate a deal with the Locksmiths. A gamble, of course – but if it worked then all other perils would disappear.’
Clent shrugged very slightly as the mayor stared at him, his fist twitching.
‘Of course, these are merely the plans that instantaneously occurred to my mind,’ he continued. ‘There are many other ways I could have contrived it. Miss Marlebourne had given me her trust, and under those circumstances kidnapping her without trace would have been childishly easy. Coming up with a plan that we could sabotage to catch these foxes with their noses in the coop – that was the hard part.’
The mayor was still bristling, but thoughtfulness was doing battle with rage behind his eyes, and clearly Clent’s words had not been lost on him.
‘So what do you claim went wrong?’ he asked in a biting but more moderate tone.
‘Sir Feldroll, I believe, has the matter in a nutshell,’ Clent responded. ‘There was a worm in the peach, a thistle amongst the good grain, a weasel in the dovecote. In short, we were betrayed.’
‘A fly in the ointment?’ suggested the mayor, his eyes resting on Mosca with cold, hard meaning. Mosca flushed as she became aware that she was now the focus of nearly every gaze in the room.
‘Don’t be lookin’ at me that way! I never done it!’ Once again she had the feeling that she was standing in her own private patch of ice. Now she felt as if the ice beneath her feet was cracking, threatening to drop her into something infinitely worse.
‘She was the only nightling involved in this plan.’ The mayor’s tones were steely, and Mosca felt hot pins and needles flood her skin and stomach. ‘She was the one that started stories of this kidnap in the first place and brought all of this to pass. She could easily tip off her nightling accomplices when the need arose.’
Mosca could hardly breathe. Her badge was a leaden weight against her chest.
‘With the greatest of respect,’ Sir Feldroll broke in politely, ‘that makes absolutely no sense at all.’
‘What?’ The mayor turned on him, and once again drew himself up into a quivering tower of annoyance.
‘The girl certainly heard Mr Clent’s plan with the rest of us yesterday afternoon, but unlike most of us,’ Sir Feldroll went on, ‘she never left the house to fetch weapons. I have checked with the servants – she was here all the time. And overnight she was locked up with the rest of us. She did not have a chance to tip off anyone. The one thing she did have the chance to do though, is run away, while we were all blundering around in the early morn, and if she was guilty I cannot see a reason why she would not have done so.’
Bless your twitchy little features, Sir Feldroll, thought Mosca. You’re not as stupid as you look.
‘Sir Feldroll,’ simmered the mayor, ‘use your eyes. We are seeking a betrayer in our midst. Look at her.’
‘I am not vouching for the girl’s good character,’ answered Sir Feldroll, with the measured tones of one working hard to keep his own temper. ‘I very much doubt she has any. I am just saying that I do not think she can walk through walls.’
‘I am glad to hear it,’ the mayor declared, in tones as humorous as a gibbet. ‘Because I intend to surround her with the thickest, tallest, coldest walls we have.’
Mosca had two sorts of flying dream. The best ones were flying-as-a-fly dreams, full of weaving and soaring and walking on ceilings, her wing-whirr deafening as a drum roll. The others were mote-on-the-wind dreams, where a fickle breeze swept her up and bore her hither and thither, in spite of all her attempts to swim back down to earth. Such nightmares left her sick with vertigo, rage and helplessness.
The blur of her departure from the mayor’s house was very much like the second sort of dream. For one thing her feet did not touch the ground, and no amount of kicking and flailing served to give her a foothold. The half-dozen hands gripping her arms and shoulders might as well have been iron. She had had no choice but to leave Saracen in Clent’s care, so fearful was she that he would fall foul of someone’s pistol if he tried to protect her.
The market girls setting up their stalls gawped as Mosca passed, but when their eyes settled on her badge their brows smoothed. Ah, that explains it. She wanted to spit in their bland, doughy faces. She wanted to pull loose for a second, long enough to frighten them. And she hated the tears that turned them into dark pillars of mist and reduced the courtyard green to a fuzzy gleam.
Unfair, unfair, unfair. They’d done for her; this rotten town had done for her; Skellow, who should have been dragged off in irons, had done for her after all.