The shorter man darted a blow that fell short, but his foot slapped the boards loudly, and Appleton launched himself towards the sound with a wild, cranefly flailing of his limbs. Instead of retreating, his opponent stepped neatly forward and aimed a deft lateral lash that caught Appleton on the temple and unbalanced him. He slipped off the bridge, grabbing at its edge at the last moment and banging his chin and chest against the boards. There he hung winded, while his enemy edged cautiously towards him, one step, two… and then a third which rested the weight of his boot on the fingers of Appleton’s right hand.
The crowd dissolved into a maelstrom of noise. Some were clearly trying to shout to Appleton’s opponent, to tell him what it was that he was standing on, but their words were lost in the general cacophony. Appleton’s face was screwed tight, but he made no sound or motion for the ten long seconds it took for his enemy to move his boot, advance, and unwittingly step over Appleton’s other sprawled arm. The shorter man continued to advance, occasionally darting questing jabs with his cudgel in search of his foe, and Appleton was free to wriggle his way painfully back on to the bridge, his legs waggling froggishly until he could get a knee back on to the planks.
Then he stood, blood from his injured ear soaking into his collar, his face locked in a grimace, and limped quietly after his oblivious enemy. At the last moment the shorter man seemed to hear him and whirled round, but the motion caused the board beneath him to creak, and Appleton swung his cudgel with all his ungainly force. The roar of the crowd drowned the sound of wood on skull, but the shorter man spun about, tilted his head vaguely as if looking for something, then dropped to his knees and sprawled softly to the boards.
A bell rang, and Appleton pulled off his blindfold, wiped his face with it and hobbled to the end of the bridge, examining his wounded fingers. He clambered down a ladder to stage level and hobbled to the pavilion, where Mosca could see him nodding, bobbing small bows and accepting a bag, presumably of candied violets. There were new contestants climbing the trees to the battle-bridge now, and he was largely ignored as he reclaimed a bundle from one of the attendants and staggered away, his red hair just visible above shorter night-dwellers.
‘Well, there’s no chance of following him in this crowd,’ murmured Mistress Leap. ‘Perhaps we can talk to people later and find out where he went…’ She turned, and her sentence trailed away, hanging like smoke in the empty space that an instant before had been occupied by her greenish companion.
It had been the work of a moment for Mosca to stoop and pretend to adjust her clog. The newest combatants were waving to the crowd, and suddenly all heads were up, all eyes on the bridge. Nobody noticed a mysterious foreigner with a bell-shaped basket for a hat ducking down in the crevice between two stages, dropping to the sacred, untouchable grass, then running crouched beneath the creaking, thundering structure.
When she found Brand Appleton, he was sitting alone on a set of wooden steps built into the side of the stage, his back to her. His head had been clumsily bandaged with a long kerchief. Peering at a slight angle, Mosca could just make out the little bag of violets in his lap. With trembling, tender fingers he was trying to wipe a spot of blood from the linen of the bag.
Some higher steps creaked above Mosca’s head.
‘You’re the radical, aren’t you?’ A voice like someone sandpapering a cello. Mosca tried to imagine its owner, and every time he came out seven feet tall with fists like melons. ‘Go on, say something radical.’
Brand Appleton turned his head, allowing Mosca to see his split lip. He blinked, and Mosca could almost hear his temper clicking into readiness like a pistol hammer. But then his eyes fell to the bag in his lap, and his hands stealthily moved to cradle it against his stomach. When the man further up the stairs took another step towards him, he wrapped both arms protectively around the bag and ducked his head down.
‘Er… the…’ He shook himself to gather his battered wits. ‘The… An end to all kings and we… their crowns should be beaten into ploughs and… for every man that is born a… in the sheds and stables and fields as much as in the… er… have a right to, um, a right as sacred as the air or… or sunlight…’ He bowed his head and swallowed.
A heavy boot placed itself gently but firmly between his shoulder blades and gave him a contemptuous shove. The creaks were apparently satisfied and took themselves away.
Mosca watched Appleton’s shoulders shake with suppressed emotion and her own feelings were thrown into confusion. Was this the ruthless, crazed kidnapper she had been led to expect? This half-stunned man hugging a bag of sweets?
Then Appleton turned his head to look about him, perhaps to make sure that his persecutors had gone, and Mosca saw his face properly, with its dark trails of blood down the left cheek and jawline. A young face, perhaps only a year or two older than Beamabeth. There was no disguise to his expression, and Mosca found herself flinching as if an oven door had been left open.
In his wide eyes she saw pain, and mortification, and exhaustion, but also a fierce and haggard stillness. And behind that stillness a roar like a forest fire, a driving fervour that would eat all the air and shrivel whole trees with a hiss. His gaze seemed to burn through the world and every obstacle in his path to rest on something distant and desired, something that reflected in his eyes with a steady white light. This was a man who might do anything. He might not do it well, but he would do it until it worked.
He turned back, gently placed the bag down by his side and busied himself with fastening a sword belt about him. Two pistols were dusted off and checked for powder, then tucked away. Apparently he had put aside his weapons for the fight.
Very slowly and carefully, Mosca drew out the little knife she had been given for self-defence. If she could only make a hole in the bag, perhaps when he left sugar and violets would trickle out to leave a trail for her and help her find his lair. But Appleton was maddeningly protective of his little prize. He kept reaching out to pat it, just when her knifepoint was an inch away, or moving it to the other side of him. Finally he shifted it back into his lap again, out of Mosca’s reach. Soon he would put it in a pocket, stand and walk away among the crowds.
Mosca pulled back her knife-hand, a rash and terrible impulse gnawing away at her mind. The worst thing about Appleton’s gabbled radicalish was that he had clearly once heard a fragment of something. Some forbidden text hidden in cabbage barrows and badly copied and learned by rote and misremembered and half forgotten until it washed up in fragments on his tongue like so much meaningless shingle. Somewhere a book was screaming.
She bit her tongue hard, but somehow the sentence slipped out anyway.
‘You got the words wrong, Mr Appleton.’
He froze and turned his head a few degrees.
‘What?’
‘That radical speak of yours. You got the words wrong.’
A long, long second of silence.
‘You know the right words to the Solace for the Thousands?’
‘No, but those weren’t them. I been to Mandelion. I know radicals. They make a load more sense than that.’
Her words seemed to poke Appleton into alertness, and his posture noticeably straightened.
‘When I got here, I heard you were this terrible radical, so I come to find you.’ Mosca took a deep breath, then threw what was left of her caution to the winds like so much chaff. ‘And you know what? You’re more than terrible. You’re bleedin’ useless. Don’t turn round!’ This last was delivered in an urgent hiss since Appleton seemed in some danger of twisting about to remonstrate with the steps. She had gone too far. She must have gone too far.