In the street there were further cries and sounds of running steps. She felt a strong hand grab at her ankle and gave a squawk as she briefly became the rope in a tug of war. She kicked, and kicked, and then her shoe flew off and hit somebody to judge by the sound, and the grip on her ankle was released. Then the half-dozen hands on her arms dragged her upwards and into the light.
Goodlady Melnieck, Concealer of the Thorn within the Rose
Of course, most of the welcome waiting in the lighted room above was for Beamabeth. Her father was there, along with Sir Feldroll and the family physician, to make sure she had contracted nothing too dreadful. Her fears had now caught up with her, and her ensuing fit of faintness had the whole coterie running to and fro with cut-glass bottles. However, in the midst of this frenzy people did find time to whisper, ‘Well done,’ in Mosca’s ear.
‘Fissure!’ barked the mayor, who seemed to have recovered a little of his grit and bristle. ‘Tend to Miss Mye next!’
Mosca watched numbly as the mayor’s physician came over and examined her bruises and scratches, and the reddened marks on her wrists left by her bonds during her imprisonment at the bastle-house days before. Beamabeth had managed to avoid all such marks – apparently the rich even got a better class of kidnapping.
The candlelight seemed very bright, and Mosca was too dazzled for a little while to realize that Eponymous Clent had quietly sat down next to her.
‘Hello, Mr Clent. We… did it, didn’t we?’
He nodded. ‘We shall be free to leave Toll tomorrow. It is done.’
Mosca drooped her head against Clent’s arm, suddenly exhausted.
‘Technically,’ Clent continued with a twinkle, ‘you will be under arrest when the sun rises, as a nightling trespassing in Toll-by-Day. But I have been assured that your “custody” will involve a good deal of actual custard – not to mention rabbit pie, dumplings and jugged pears. Tomorrow you can expect to be “evicted” from Toll, alongside myself, through a gate of our choice. In the meanwhile, however, you will be sentenced to a long deep sleep in a nice soft bed.’
Mosca did indeed wake up in a very comfortable bed.
She had only the dimmest recollection of nodding off against Clent’s arm, hearing the conversation around her dull to a drone. Somebody must had carried her to a bed, removed her remaining shoe, stockings and bonnet, and tucked her under cotton sheets and three soft woollen blankets that smelt of lavender. She opened her eyes, and saw peach-coloured curtains around her bed. She closed her eyes again, and there was a warm and weightless sense of comfort, and the cool of a clean pillow against her cheek.
It was after an hour of such drowsing that Mosca roused herself enough to sit up. She drew back the curtain and stood, squeezing at the chocolate-coloured rug with her toes. The shutters of the little bedroom had been thrown back, and through the window she could see the ice-pale sun in a sky of eggshell blue. Mosca’s eyes hurt, but she realized they were watering from more than the light. Until this moment, in the deep, cold roots of her being, she had not believed that she would see the sun again. Walking to the window, she discovered that it looked out upon the green castle courtyard and realized that she must be in the mayor’s house.
For a little while she sat in a small wicker chair, watching golden dust motes chase each other slowly and futilely in the shafts of sunlight, and the birds string themselves like beads along the roofs of Toll-by-Day. Then she looked at herself in the mirror on the dresser, noting the dirt and bruises she had not noticed in the netherworld of cut-price rushlights. She splashed water on her face, cleaning the last hints of green crusting from her cheeks and eyebrows. There was no doubt about it, she was paler than she had been before entering the town, and there was a touch of shadow under each eye. Four nights in Toll-by-Night had, in keeping with its name, taken its toll.
I’m going to get out. Her spirits lurched unsteadily into the air like a wounded pigeon. I’m going to get out of this wormpit of a town. And I will never, never come back here again.
As she found out before long, a lot of other people had similar plans.
Shortly after a maid had brought Mosca a tray with a bowl of hot rabbit soup and a golden-crusted loaf of fresh bread, Eponymous Clent arrived with news of the town.
‘Stories of Miss Beamabeth’s daring escape from her captors are all over town, of course, and the citizens of Toll-by-Day are itching to see Brand Appleton aloft on a gallows.’ Clent stood by the window, peering down into the castle grounds market, plump fingers tap-tapping impatiently at his waistcoat pocket. Evidently he was eager to shake the dust of Toll from his shoes and write something curt and cryptic about it in his little black book of never-come-back. ‘However, it would seem that word of the missing Luck has got out… and now a number of notables are also trying to get out. The Guilds, mostly.’
‘The Guilds?’ Mosca halted her attempts to cram as much bread into her mouth as possible without her cheeks exploding.
‘The Stationers left first thing this morning. All of them. The Playing-card Makers were half a step behind them, and I notice that all the Goldsmiths seem to have shut up shop.’
‘What? Surely the Guilds do not believe that Toll will fall in the river if the Luck is took from the town?’ Mosca boggled.
‘I am sure not all of them believe that… but they see the way the wind sits. I think there is little doubt now that Toll-by-Day will fall to the Locksmiths just as Toll-by-Night did before it. The mayor’s spirit is broken. He is terrified that if the Locksmiths are angered they will take the Luck away, and that Toll will suddenly fall off the cliff like a pie off a sill. And so he has taken on new advisors – Locksmith advisors. From this day forth, I do not think he will be seen without them.’
Mosca’s blood ran cold. Toll was now a sinking ship, and she could hardly blame the Guilds for their rat-like scamper away from it. The subdued urgency in Clent’s manner was starting to make more sense too.
‘How long we got, Mr Clent? B’fore the Locksmiths take over?’
‘I, ah, have no idea. None at all. It might not happen for a fortnight, or, ah, for all I know by dusk today…’
‘Today? ’
By now Aramai Goshawk would know that Beamabeth Marlebourne had been snatched from under his nose, and since Mistress Bessel was spying for him he might have a shrewd idea that Mosca and Clent were responsible. If they were still in Toll-by-Day when Goshawk took control of it, she had a feeling their future careers would be limited to a very long drop followed by a brief and lethal swim.
‘Precisely,’ answered Clent. ‘And since it is currently such fine weather for travelling, I, ah, thought I should drop by and find out how quickly you were recovering.’
Mosca jumped up. ‘I jus’ got a lot better. Where’s my blinkin’ bonnet? And where’s Saracen?’
Over the next ten minutes Mosca made short work of her lunch, scrambled into the lilac gown that had been laid out for her, then flung herself into hurried packing and goose-retrieval, after which Mosca and Clent were almost ready to make their hasty adieus.
‘Typical,’ muttered Mosca as she fitted Saracen’s muzzle. ‘After all the trouble we went to, rescuing Beamabeth from one Locksmith town, and now she’ll be trapped in another.’
‘I think not,’ Clent remarked wryly. ‘In all probability she will leave and marry Sir Feldroll – a gentleman that stormed out of Toll in the highest dudgeon this morning, by the way. The mayor, on the recommendation of his new “advisors” has said that even fewer people will be let in and out of the town from now on and all tolls will be raised from tomorrow. So poor Sir Feldroll will not be marching his army through Toll after all, it seems. Mandelion is safe from that quarter, at least.’ Clent regarded Mosca with a gleam of amusement. ‘Yes, I rather thought that would please you.’