‘Gambling Fates… and we have been risking gizzard and gullet for this precocious piece of perfidy and perniciousness!’
‘That’s exactly what I said at the time!’ agreed Mosca eagerly. ‘Only… with not quite the same words.’
‘Such treachery behind such a sweet… er, one moment. Did you say “said”? You have spoken of this? To whom? Not to her?’
Mosca looked mulish. ‘There are words I can swallow, and words I cannot, Mr Clent! Not without them turning to poison in my belly. ’Twas all I could do not to take her nose between my knuckles and twist it till the freckles turned blue ow OW! Mr Clent, you are pulling off my arm!’
‘Madam, we are leaving!’ Clent had, with the dexterity of custom, snatched up his coat, Mosca’s arm and a bowl of dried fruit, taking only a moment to empty said bowl into his pockets. ‘May I point out that the last person to pose a threat to Miss Beamabeth’s secrets took a bullet through the vitals last night? For the moment she will be taken aback and out of step, but it will not be long before she realizes that the best way to blunt your blade is to blacken our names before we can tarnish hers. If we are to leave this accursed town, it must be NOW, before the wind changes and we find ourselves under the hatches again.’
‘But… that smirking spit-gobbet! She will get away with it all! We must show everyone what she is-’
‘Child, our credit still stands on the shakiest ground – nobody will believe us! Nobody. Yes, yes, by all means expose her – but perhaps by letter?’ Clent, gripped by his new momentum, had already dragged Mosca halfway across the room, and it was all she could do to pull free and run to collect Saracen. ‘Once we have put some town walls and several leagues between us? Revenge is a dish best served unexpectedly and from a distance – like a thrown trifle. Come!’
Mosca, Clent and Saracen took no leave of the mayor, for that would only have caused delays. Instead they strode purposefully through the curiously quiet and nervous town to the eastern gate, Clent with his best veneer of dapper confidence, Mosca with her arms full of goose, taking only one footman to show that Mosca was in ‘custody’, and the paperwork to show that she was being ‘evicted’.
The daylit streets looked peculiar to Mosca now. She kept glancing around for shortcuts she had learned over the last four nights, or seeing half-familiar corners gilded with sunlight. Could that gentle road full of glovers really be where she had seen the Clatterhorses clash? Could that homely lane full of drapers really lead into the Chutes? And could Toll-by-Day really turn on Mosca and Clent a second time, after all they had done?
Yes, probably.
At the eastern gate they requested passage out, and presented the toll they had taken so many risks to acquire. The guards were clearly suspicious of Mosca’s badge and the pair’s air of dishevelled urgency, and made a point of examining their papers thoroughly and counting the money with care. The presence of a footman in the mayor’s livery, however, seemed to be a point in the favour of the would-be travellers.
The guards brought out a ponderous ring of keys and unlocked a small door set in one of the gates. A rush of cold, moor-scented air hit Mosca in the face, and she almost panicked. She had grown so used to Toll’s reek of closeness, its trapped animal smell, that she had forgotten how the air of freedom tasted. It was too good, it was too close, it would be taken away from her. The door opened to show a craggy rise shivering with weather-bleached grass…
‘Hey! You!’ One of the guards caught her by the arm as she was stepping through the door. Saracen’s neck rose into an ominous curve. ‘Hand it over!’
Mosca stared at the guard in incomprehension, until she realized where he was glaring. With an incredulous snort she pulled off her badge and dropped it in his hand.
‘This? Did you think I was planning to steal it? Do you think I ever want to see that – or your stinkin’ old pit of a town – again?’ She pulled loose from his grasp, staggered out through the gate and then broke into a run. She ran into the very throat of the wind, so her bonnet ribbons whipped against her ears and deafened her, and her lilac skirts were blown back against her legs.
She gave a banshee shriek of sheer glee and whirled about, Saracen erupting from her arms, wings spread for his own little victory glide. There they were, the high walls of Toll, dull and rugged as stale cake, and she was outside them.
Ignoring Clent’s look of entreaty, Mosca caught up a small rock and threw it at Toll with all her might. It rebounded off the stonework above the gate with a ‘pick’ noise, startling a family of jackdaws above.
‘Goodbye, Toll, you old maggot barrel! Hope you fall off yer perch!’ The town’s arrow slits seemed to stretch in astonishment as they peered down at her tiny impudence. She scampered a little further away, snatched up another stone and flung it after the first. ‘Hope all your chimneys clog!’ Thrown stone. ‘And your clock falls off!’ Thrown stone. ‘And your…’ Her voice trailed away.
Her pursuit of better stones to throw had led her in a backwards scramble up the rise. Now, twisting around to stoop for yet another missile, she at last saw what lay beyond the rise.
Looking down across the declining plain of wind-whipped moss she could see a long road twisting between the gorsestrewn shoulders of the crags, all the way down into the levelling moors. Up this road, in the direction of Toll, surged a river of people. Hundreds of men, trudging in columns with pikes along their shoulders. Great wagons, laden with sacks and barrels. The stubby black muzzles of mortars, twitching as they were hauled up the uneven path. And behind them a few full-blown cannons, dragged by teams of horses. To judge by the different standards fluttering in the breeze, the three nearest cities had massed their forces to march on Mandelion after all, and it seemed the march had already started, even without Toll’s permission.
Perhaps, like Mosca, Sir Feldroll had lost patience with Toll and decided to throw stones at its walls. However, it looked as if his stones were bigger than hers.
Goodman Giddersing, Guide in High and Treacherous Places
Mosca’s glee burned itself out in a second. She dropped down to sit on a boulder like a lilac-coloured imp. All these troops and weapons were meant for Mandelion, for people she knew And so she could only stare at the soldiers raising tan-coloured campaign tents, the riflemen cleaning their guns, Eponymous Clent handing a paper over to Sir Feldroll in exchange for a small purse of money…
Clent did not look round as Mosca ran to join him, but continued pointing out details on the map in his hand with a tone of airy pride, as if everything it showed belonged to him.
And, as you can see, it was originally a map of Toll-by-Day, but some of the night-time alterations have been added in ink, should your men find themselves fighting their way through the streets after dark. And I have marked in a few “murder holes” I noticed above the gates for dropping hot sand or pitch on invaders -’
‘Hopefully this will not be needed,’ responded Sir Feldroll, whose face had now settled into a steady crimson twitch-gavotte. The close attention he was paying to the map rather suggested that he thought it would be needed. ‘My thanks, Mr Clent – Miss Mye – you at least have been as good as your words throughout this bitter business. I am glad to
see that the pair of you are leaving, before everything becomes… difficult.’ He halted, clenched his jaw and regarded the walls of Toll with a resentful but appraising eye.
‘This is our last chance to strike against Mandelion before winter settles in,’ he added through his teeth. ‘If not now, then the radicals of Mandelion will have months – months! – to strengthen their position and find their feet. I have given the mayor an ultimatum. If he does not keep his promise and arrange for the troops to have passage through Toll by noon… then perhaps a carcass over his walls will serve as a warning and show him how serious I am.’