‘What in the world are you doing here, little miss?’ The voice was unfamiliar, reasonably educated and so close that it was almost in her ear.
Boom, sounded Mosca’s heart. Boom.
‘I’m…’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’m just standin’ here. And not turnin’ round.’ So I haven’t seen your face, whoever you are.
‘You came down here at quite a run. Looking for someone?’
Mosca shook her head slowly. ‘Not any more.’
‘That man down there – he wouldn’t happen to be a friend of yours, would he?’
Mosca forced herself to breathe evenly and shook her head again.
‘Face don’t look familiar,’ she whispered.
She felt a warm gust of breath as the person behind her gave vent to a small burst of laughter.
‘Oh, that’s quite good. What a sensible head you have on your shoulders. And what a good place for it that is. Little miss, do you know how to play hide-and-seek? You stay exactly where you are without turning round, and you count. You count all your fingers ten times. But when you are done… you do not play seek. You walk out of here very slowly and calmly and you never say one single word about any of this as long as you live. Do you think you can play that game?’
Mosca nodded.
‘Good.’ The steps moved away, more softly now, punctuated by the occasional faint jingle of metal on metal.
Mosca stared down at her own shaking hands and counted her fingers. And counted them again. And again. If she took her eyes off them, she might look up or over her shoulder. She counted them eleven times, twelve times before she realized what she was doing. Then she turned very carefully and walked on trembling legs back to the main cellar.
When she reached her group’s table, she found Saracen casually overturning stools and Jade sitting alone, her cup gripped fiercely in both hands. She looked up as Mosca approached, and her thin mouth grew thinner still.
‘Where’s Havoc?’
Mosca sank on to a stool and opened her mouth, but as soon as she did so she seemed to feel a presence floating ghostly just behind her, a calm and pleasant voice a few inches from her ear. Her throat tightened and would let no words out. She bit her knuckle hard and slowly shook her head.
There was a long pause before Mosca found words again.
‘Where’s Perch?’
Jade quivered, and her eyes suddenly became dark and alarming.
‘Do I look like his mother?’ she snapped with sudden savagery.
Mosca simply stared at her.
‘Stupid, addle-pated gull!’ Jade thumped the table. ‘Him and his cousin. His precious cousin who was going to sort everything out for us. Well, his cousin has debts, see. He’s in what they call the “toil-gangs”, trying to work off what he owes. And seems he’s rid himself of a heap of his debt by telling ’em Perch will take it on instead. That’s why he told Perch to come here, so the toil-gang could grab him and drag him off.’
‘But… where did they take him? What’s going to happen to him?’
Jade said nothing, but continued staring into her nearly empty cup.
‘You didn’t ask, did you?’ Mosca felt a wave of warmth sweep up from her socks to her crown. ‘You didn’t say a thing! You just let them take him! I thought you said we were supposed to stay together!’
‘Well, what do you expect?’ muttered Jade sourly. ‘I was born under Goodlady Gofflemire, She Who Helps Those Who Help Themselves. I’m not made to stick my neck out for anyone but myself.’
‘Is that it?’ Mosca exploded. ‘The Committee of the Hours – are they right about us? We nightfolk, are we just a bunch of cheats and bawdy-baskets and sheep-stealers, all just waiting to stick a knife in each other’s backs?’
Jade’s head snapped up, and Mosca found herself bathed in a glare of infinite loathing and contempt.
‘Oh yes, you’re loud enough when it’s safe, when you’re surrounded by daylighters who will only tut and get vexed. But you’d have held your tongue just like I did. And you know it.’
Mosca could say nothing. She thought of herself carefully and obediently counting her own fingers with Havoc’s murderer a pace behind her.
A heavyset man appeared by the side of the table.
‘You ready, mistress?’ The question was evidently directed at Jade. ‘He don’t like waiting.’
‘I’m ready.’ Jade stood.
‘No connections, you said.’ The new arrival was examining Mosca speculatively. ‘This girl with you?’
Jade shook her head without looking Mosca’s way. ‘Who’s with anyone?’ she snapped, with a bitterness that was almost despair. Mosca could only watch stunned as the last of her new allies walked away without a backwards look.
Mosca remained frozen in her seat, cold beads tracing their way down her back. She did not look round to see who was noticing her, a flimsily built young girl with a tasty-looking goose, sitting alone and undefended. But there would be eyes on her, she knew it.
The minutes dragged. Time and again she tried to chafe her cold wits and muster the spark of a plan, but every time she saw Havoc spreadeagled in the dark cellar, and the bleak and horrible glare of hatred in Jade’s eyes.
Got to get out of here, buzzed Palpitattle in Mosca’s head. Now. Right now. Gingerly Mosca got to her feet, wincing as her stool scraped and the table rattled.
She stooped and gathered Saracen in her arms. A big, hearty-looking goose, white plumage gleaming in the murk. A succulent roast dinner on webbed feet. A poster inviting every cut-throat to waylay her in an alleyway.
Mosca stroked a trembling hand over Saracen’s furled wing feathers, feeling their strange rough softness. ‘Me and you,’ she whispered against his neck. ‘Me and you ’gainst ’em all, right?’
Legs shaking, she edged through the crowd, squeezing past seated forms. Her neck prickled as behind her there was a stealthy, deliberate scrape of wood on wood as somebody else pushed back a chair. She pretended not to notice and made her way towards the exit, both arms around Saracen, hearing faint sounds of disturbance behind her as if another figure was pushing their way along the same route.
She reached the edge of the tables and set off as calmly as she could across the cellar floor. Her instincts screamed that she was being followed – she could smell the menace, feel it like the dry crackle before a storm. She reached the base of the steps that led up from the cellar… then raced up them like a kicked cat.
By the time she reached the street, gasping icy night air, there was a clattering of steps behind her that was not an echo. With a gasp of effort, she kicked one of the carved-face barrel-lanterns on to its side before the archway, then booted it down the steps. Off it rolled and bounded, spitting wax and dropping candles, and Mosca heard it recede with a bangitty-bangitty-bangitty-bangitty-YEEEAARGH-thubbitty-bangitty-bangitty-WAAAH-bangitty-roll…
She did not wait for Messrs Yeeeaargh or Waaah, since she doubted they were in a mood to talk. Even if they had not intended her any harm before, they probably would now. So instead she set about showing the Whip and Masty a set of heels. Not clean ones, perhaps, but certainly very rapid.
There was only one place in Toll-by-Night that might be a sanctuary: the house of the midwife and her husband. And it looked as if Mosca would be searching for it at high speed, with murder half a step behind her.
Goodman Larchley, Hoarder of Pennies
At a corner Mosca stopped, and hopped, and hooked off her clogs, then ran again. The cobbles bruised her feet, but did so silently. Behind her, she could hear other footsteps ring out, then muffle as they headed down the wrong street.
Her only hope of finding the Leaps’ house was to reach the town wall and follow it until she saw somewhere she recognized. As she ran, her quick black eyes caught one scene after another.
A line of skinny men and women mending the town wall, a long chain linking their leg irons, perhaps one of the ‘toil-gangs’ Jade had mentioned. Two youths squatting either side of a prone and motionless man and wiping something dark off his pocket watch. A ragged little alley unexpectedly full of a surging throng wrestling one another for meagre bundles of firewood.