‘No!’ He looked angry, and very confused. ‘Paragon is a… an ideal example. It’s… perfect.’
Mosca sniffed at perfection. Perfection had no pulse and no heart.
‘Funny kind of a name.’
‘It is the best name in the town!’ The Luck looked aghast. ‘That is why I was chosen. My parents were night-dwellers, but I was born to higher things, born worthy of the brightest of noonday names. And… and now I stay here and keep the town safe, and hold off disease, and stop the bridge falling into the Langfeather.’ A look of feverish eagerness came into Paragon’s eyes. ‘You come from… out there, do you not? Have you seen my bridge? What do you think of it? Is it as grand and fine as they say?’
‘What? Have you not seen it yourself?’ Mosca stared with new eyes at the little bed, the scraped crockery. ‘How long have you been in here?’
‘Since I was three years old, when the last Luck died. Twelve years and three months and two days.’
‘Twelve years! ’ Mosca briefly forgot to speak quietly, but fortunately the words choked in her throat.
‘Night moves first.’ The Luck had returned his attention to the game. ‘Your move, Soot-girl.’ He looked up at her, face flushed and animated, undisguised entreaty in his eyes. Still stunned, Mosca picked up Goodlady Jabick, moved her to an adjoining square as he had shown her and saw a look of utter bliss pass over her companion’s face.
Twelve years. Twelve years with nothing to do but chew the ends of his hair and invent games, elaborate games of gods with rules that Mosca could barely remember from one moment to the next but which the Luck knew as well as his own fingernails. As they played, his speech became faster and sharper, explaining the mistakes she had made and helping her to find better moves.
Before long, Mosca was facing a terrible truth. The Luck was not a simpleton or a madman. He was clever, and his mind was starving.
‘Do you never go out?’ she could not help asking.
‘No.’ His face drooped. ‘I am too precious. But… they send me tutors sometimes, or papers for me to make my mark on them. And when the clock is working I have charge of the Beloved images -’ he waved a hand at his game pieces – ‘and put the right ones in the wheel each day, for I have a wondrous memory and nobody else is fit to handle them.’
‘But…’ Mosca was still choking on the whole idea. ‘You never get to tread on grass, or see the sky, or… or run? This town is mad as moth soup! Nothing but a great big prison. Some of the cells are nicer than others, that’s all. Precious? You’re a prisoner, like everybody else here. Protect the town, do you? Save its people, do you? Then wave your wand, and magic us all somewhere better.’
The Luck had dropped his gaze and would not look at her, instead stroking at one of the Beloved game pieces as if it was a pet. She was shouting at the wrong person.
Mosca sighed. ‘Not your fault, you big mooncalf.’ By her standards it was almost an apology. ‘How can you know what it’s like out there, with people starving and terrified, half of them ready to sell their own souls to get out of this stinking town? But what about you?’ She felt an unwilling sting of pity. ‘Do you never want to get out of here yourself? Run alongside streams, gaze your fill at the stars?’
The Luck’s face went slack with uncertainty and longing. Perhaps the weight of the stone walls about him had not after all smothered his ability to dream. He was silent for a time, picking at one frayed buttonhole, then his head drooped.
‘I cannot. I am needed. I am… I am the saviour. Protector of the town.’ He clasped his hands together and squirmed his fingers. ‘I am lucky,’ he quavered, defiant but anguished.
Mosca looked around the windowless cell, the person-shaped dent worn into the bed’s mattress, the chest full of undersized clothes.
‘You don’t look too blinkin’ lucky to me,’ she muttered.
Mosca’s return climb was no easier than the first, and a good deal more despondent. The Luck seemed ready to wail with anguish when she tried to leave, and the only way she could make him hush was to promise that she would return or send a friend to talk to him. She knew all too well that she would never be able to keep this promise, and was left with a bitter taste of more than soot.
By the time the dawn bugle had sounded, Mosca was back in her cell and had rubbed the worst of the soot off her face, hair and arms. Her dress covered the dark smudges on her chemise and breeches. A quick swab around cleared up the worst of the soot and ash that had tumbled into the hearth.
Another night with no sleep, and nothing gained. Soon she would have to tell Mistress Bessel that she did not have the Luck. That the Luck was not something that could be conveniently tucked into a pocket or a sleeve. That the Luck was a desperately lonely youth a few hiccups from manhood, raised since his infant years in a room sealed from the world, a room that might as well be an oubliette.
Mistress Bessel would not like that. And Mosca was not at all sure she liked it herself.
Goodlady Nizlemander, Winnower of the Chaff from the Grain
Mistress Bessel arrived a little after breakfast time, or what would have been breakfast time if Mosca had had anything to pay the Keeper.
As soon as the last bolt scraped, the stocky woman turned to Mosca with an eagerness that drew her broad face taut, her gloved hands restless with anticipation.
‘Well?’
Mosca frowned and fumbled at her apron strings.
‘I done everything you said…’ She could not stop her tone sounding defiant.
Mistress Bessel stared at her, and then the eagerness faded and the muscles around her mouth tensed.
‘You failed?’
‘No! I shinned my way into the Luck’s cell, just like you told me! And I found your precious Luck. It’s not my fault I couldn’t bring it back!’
Tell me, then!’ snapped her visitor. ‘Tell me everything you saw in that room!’
Mosca swallowed drily. ‘I will – but you got to get me out of here first.’
And have you frisk off down the nearest alley as soon as you see daylight? Precious little fear of that, my dove. Tell me the truth and I’ll fish you out of here, you have my promise
on that, but you tell me what you know first. You’re in no place to haggle – bear that in mind.’
It was true. Mosca took a deep breath. ‘There’s no magic skull up there, Mistress Bessel, no saint’s apple core. Just a lad a few years older than me, half crazy with staring at the walls. The Luck… it’s not an it. It’s a he.’
Mistress Bessel’s features took on a stony cast, and it was impossible to guess her thoughts. Was she angry? Did she even believe Mosca? ‘Are you sure it was the right cell?’
‘Sure as rock. Only one other flue off the chimney.’
‘What else was there in the cell apart from the boy? Tell me! Don’t leave out a grain or jot!’
Mosca could only assume that Mistress Bessel was still hoping against hope that the Luck would turn out to be something else in the room, something pocket-sized. Wearily Mosca set about describing every detail of the Luck’s cell, right down to the wall hangings, the crockery and the Beloved statues littering the floor, while Mistress Bessel clasped and chafed her gloved hands, her face intent and inscrutable, her eyes narrowed.
‘But it’s no good – the Luck weren’t none of those other things. It was the lad. He told me so.’
‘What?’ The older woman’s head rose sharply. ‘He spoke to you? You let him see you? Well, that tears the plan in two -’
‘He won’t tell anyone,’ Mosca retorted. ‘I know he won’t. I’m his secret. I’m all he has.’ Mosca gave a sketchy account of their nocturnal conversation. ‘And the plan’s torn in two anyways. Even if I could lug five foot of lumbering mooncalf up the chimney, how would we smuggle him out of the prison? Under our aprons?’