Laylow rubbed the back of her head, the callouses rasping against the wiry, cropped fuzz of her hair.
‘Well, then – go! Come back when you have them – and tell nobody what you seen or heard here.’
‘Of course not! I’m not a…’ Mosca remembered one of Laylow’s own choice words for idiot. ‘I’m not a doddypoll.’
A lock turned. A door opened. And then Mosca was out on the frozen streets again, quivering with the shock and disbelief of a fisherman who has trailed his rod for a particular large and dangerous fish, only to see it unexpectedly leap into the belly of his boat.
At long last she knew where Beamabeth Marlebourne was being held prisoner.
Goodlady Undlesoft, Dweller with Things Buried
Staring skywards, Mosca noticed some smudges of pallor to the east and heard the warbles of the first robins. The night was waning, and she gave a tsk of annoyance. She barely realized that she had already started to think of the night as the true day.
Mosca pulled out her pipe, gnawed on the stem and willed herself to think clearly.
Everything had changed. Brand Appleton, the so-called chief kidnapper, was desperate and pitiable and wrong-headed and possibly dying. She had felt scared of him… but she had felt sorry for him too. Beamabeth was no longer safe. Brand Appleton would do anything to protect her, but right now Brand Appleton was in no condition to protect even himself. The mayor’s daughter was at the mercy of Skellow, and Skellow was not well-supplied with mercy. Once he had the ransom or had to cover his tracks, Mosca would not give a bent pin for Beamabeth’s chances of survival. Mosca could only pray that neither of these circumstances had occurred yet, but it was only a matter of time.
Mosca needed reinforcements to rescue Beamabeth before the worst could happen. However if her dayside allies heard nothing from Mosca or Sir Feldroll’s men, they were hardly likely to send more. She needed to get word to Toll-by-Day.
But even her daylight allies could not be trusted. The more she chewed at her pipe and thought, the more it seemed that there must be two spies among them. One spy for the kidnappers, who had warned them about the ambush and helped them capture Beamabeth. One spy for the Locksmiths, who had betrayed the location of the letter drop and arrival of Sir Feldroll’s men. Of one thing Mosca was now fairly sure: the kidnappers and the Locksmiths were not working together.
No, Mosca needed to get word to the person in Toll that she knew best and trusted most, and the sorry truth was that that individual was Eponymous Clent. Contacting him in the ways they had arranged was impossible, but he had managed to send word to her, and that would do as a start. She had to track down the man who had given her warning in the alleyway, and she had only one clue to work on. It was a single word that he had uttered before disappearing.
Recital.
As the dawn chorus was engaging in its ancient but uncoordinated musical efforts, another more elegantly trained group of musicians were making their way back through the streets to their lodgings. It had been a long night, and now their nerves were as threadbare as their carefully patched gowns and waistcoats.
Performing for the Locksmiths at the castle was never calming, but since the former were willing to accept such performances instead of a Yacobray tithe, the three musicians were inclined to bear it with a good grace.
The grace was becoming less good though, as they struggled their way home from their ruined venue, sensing the approach of the dangerous dawn, hampered at every step by the barrow which carried their group’s harp case. The wheel had been carefully wrapped in rags to soften its progress, but even so occasional jolts stirred a musical thrum of protest from hidden strings, and the guardian of the cart insisted on choosing each cobble with care, more like a mother afraid of waking a sleeping infant than a barrowman.
‘Oh, Quince, for Peachbucket’s sake!’ A tall woman carrying a flute case turned and twitched, the flaws and blots in her face powder starting to show in the unforgiving predawn light. ‘My nerves are in flakes! Will you try to keep pace! Is it not enough that I have to hear that infernal instrument without having to die for it?’
The harp’s attendant seemed not a jot discomposed. ‘My sweet, given that you yourself have no art worth dying for, you should be grateful to me for letting you perish in the name of something worthwhile.’
‘Er… friends?’ The group’s gangly, grey-haired violinist was peering down the alley. ‘Does anybody know anyone really short… and oddly apparelled… and… green? It is just that, er, there seems to be one such creature watching us from the corner. And, er, waving a little green hand.’
Quince lowered the handles of his barrow.
‘Ah,’ he said.
‘Recital’ had meant music. Asking around, Mosca had learned that there was only one orchestra in Toll-by-Night, and that on this night it would be entertaining at the Castle. So she had set out to intercept the musicians as they returned.
Mosca had no trouble recognizing Quince as the man who had warned her away from the letter drop so mysteriously, and she was not entirely surprised to see him with a harp in his custody, though she was a little taken aback to see that the cloth enclosing it was of decidedly better quality than that he had used to clothe himself.
‘Is that what you were risking your neck to rescue, Quince?’ The tall woman surveyed Mosca from head to foot through lorgnettes that did not appear to contain any actual glass. ‘It looks like a ferret in jester’s weeds!’
‘Ignore the silly besom,’ Quince advised Mosca crisply. ‘Listen, my dear, it is delightful to see you intact, but if you will excuse us -’
‘Wait!’ Mosca caught hold of his sleeve. ‘You’re in contact with Mr Clent! Please, you got to get a message to him. He’s staying in the mayor’s house. Tell him…’ She hesitated, gaped guppy-like for the right words, and found herself shaking. ‘Tell him the old plan’s turned to slush. That someone was waitin’ for the reinforcements, and now everything’s gone to the devil in a battered old basket… and the radish is lost, and Brand Appleton ain’t got it… but I know where to find the lady -’
‘Slow, slow! Look, I do hate to interrupt while you are being so splendidly cryptic, but this will have to wait -’
‘It cannot!’ Mosca almost screamed. ‘If I cannot get word to him now, then the lady’s as good as dead…’
In the distance sounded the unmistakable sound of a bugle. The other two musicians stiffened like hares. But Mosca did not release the harpist’s sleeve. Her eyes were mad and adamant.
Quince seemed to spend a brief second weighing his chances of pushing a harp at high speed down the road with a twelve-year-old clinging to his arm, then came to a decision.
‘Your friend is living in the mayor’s house? Then you can speak to him yourself. This way!’ To Mosca’s bewilderment he abandoned his barrow, and tugged her back towards the Castle grounds. Just outside the perimeter walls he stooped, reached deep into a mass of ivy, and knocked against something that resounded like wood.
‘There!’ Before Mosca could protest, he had taken off down the street after his friends. ‘Pull the frog!’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Mind the drop! Follow the smells! And not a word to anyone!’
Mosca stared at the ivy-covered wall, then pulled back the curtain of creeper and stared at the little door hidden behind it. The door itself was carved to resemble the surface of a pond, complete with ripples, the snout of a surfacing fish and a lily pad with a chipped and blackened frog crouching upon it. Even as she stared at it, her ear caught the sound of a faint but approaching musical jingle.