Fly By Night

wherry that flew the crossed crimson swords of the Parliament. To Mosca’s slight disappointment, everybody seemed more interested in hauling ropes than engaging in naval warfare. Each crew made a brief offensive gesture towards the other boat, but no one seemed to have their heart in it.

Mosca was also fascinated with the hauliers of the Mettlesome Maid, partly because she had never been able to watch anyone hard at work without being expected to do her part. Compared to the water-whitened villagers of Chough, they seemed tawny and terrible as tigers. Sun and sweat had left them hard and conker-brown, and they seemed to think nothing of the python-thick ropes they dragged as they strained their way along the bank. The jokes they exchanged were like clods of earth thrown at the face, meant good-humouredly – but meant to bruise as well.

The captain was a grim-smiling river-king named Partridge. There was something crooked in the make of his right wrist, as if it had been broken and never quite healed, and something crooked in the corner of his smile, as if that too had been broken and put back together slightly wrong.

‘I could never have stomached one of the Watermen’s little passenger wherries,’ Clent remarked, waving a dragonfly away from his face. ‘They are always in such a hurry, and one finds oneself rubbing elbows with so many undesirables.’

For a mad moment, Mosca almost believed that she and Clent had deliberately chosen the barge as the most elegant way to travel, and not because they were fugitives from the law. He seemed so comfortable and glad to have her company that she almost believed that he had not meant to desert her after all, that there had been a mix-up with the purse, that Mistress Bessel had lied about the goose…

Clent offered her some of the mellowberries, and she took them. Leaning over the edge of the boat to spit pips at the ducks, she caught sight of Clent’s reflection as he watched her with that queer, lean, calculating look she had seen on his face before. The taste of the berries bittered in her mouth, and she knew that he still meant to leave her or sell her to the authorities at the first opportunity.

For a savage moment, she thought of slipping ashore with his mysterious burlap package when the boat moored, and running away on her own. But she knew that she needed him. She had never been further than five miles from Chough – without a guide she would do little better than a tumbled fledgling. A twelve-year-old girl travelling alone, furthermore, would be an easy mark for footpads, gonophs and conmen. She had no contacts, no money, no friends. All she had was a homicidal goose… and Eponymous Clent.

In Mandelion, things might be different. Mosca squinted at a blurred memory. She had a recollection of her father talking about a ‘ragged school’ in Mandelion, and over the years her wishes had painted the memory with a false clarity. Surely he had said that the school never turned away a clever child? Surely he had said you could turn up with nothing but a shilling and a hunk of bread in your kerchief, and if you could read six fiendish pages without a slip of the eye they would welcome you in for the tiniest fee…

Mosca gave Clent a wide, friendly grin, which seemed to unnerve him, and took another mellowberry out of his hand. Of course, if she turned ‘evidence’ against Clent, perhaps they would give her a reward, and then she would at least have some money. But what could she tell them about him? Nothing much, nothing as bad as arson. And he would just unroll his tongue and talk his way off the gibbet, leaving her to take his place…

So… how to win the advantage again? Mosca’s eyes dropped for a tiny second to the package that sat between them. Somewhere inside lay the little packet he had been so eager to hide from Mistress Bessel. Perhaps later, if she and the parcel found themselves alone…

The sun slid to rest, and the western sky gleamed like a copper kettle in firelight. Mosca, watching the sun’s last gleam, saw it split by the flight of a buzzard, which seemed to douse the light in that instant with its black wings before swooping away to land on top of a haystack. Without warning, the hills which had been sunning themselves like so many contented dogs closed in, black and ragged as wolves.

As the wind became chill, the hauliers’ grumbles rose to an ominous level.

‘We’ll take our sup at the Halberd,’ Partridge declared. ‘Ye’ll dine with us.’

The Halberd had once been a little watchtower set up to prevent pirates sailing up the river from the sea and attacking inland towns. During the war, brimstone had bitten off its roof like the crust from a loaf, and pushed out one of the walls. The rubble remained, now moss-covered, and a rough roof of thatch had been used to shut out the sky.

The crew made the Mettlesome Maid fast, and all but two accompanied Clent and Mosca to the tavern’s door. Inside, the air was thick with pipesmoke and the moist scent of the earth floor and the cloying smell of overcooked tripe. To judge by their clothes and sunburned faces, most of the customers were boat crew or hauliers. They were, of course, all men. The tables were a jumble of upturned coracle wrecks, and long deck planks rested on barrels to serve as trestles. The seats were bales of greying straw. Against a far wall huddled a handful of straw mattresses, on each of which a man lay sleeping in his shirtsleeves.

They sat themselves at one of the wider coracles, Mosca noticing with a hungry pain beneath her ribs that a plate of small loaves and a jug of water were already set upon the table. She was also intrigued to notice that when he took up his ale, Partridge first swayed it over the loaves for a moment, before drinking. In Chough, everybody always waved their drinking cups over a jug of water to show that they were drinking a toast to King Prael, the ‘king across the Tosteroy Sea’. However, she knew that Partridge’s gesture was in honour of King Hazard, the ‘king across the Magora mountains’, as represented by the loaves.

At the next table a haulier spilt a little water on the table and wafted his cup over it, in honour of King Galbrash, the ‘king over the Fallowsmere Lake’. His friend seated opposite waved his tankard over the fingers of his own left hand, to show his allegiance to the Twin Queens, ‘the monarchs beyond the Jottland foothills’. A dozen or so royal allegiances seemed to be represented in the Halberd, and yet none of them showed any sign of leaping at each other’s throats amid a flurry of ale foam. The business of kings did not seem to be a fighting matter.

Mosca did not know it, but she was staring at a sign of changing times. The days when followers of rival kings would exchange blows or musketfire on sight were long gone. Every town now accepted with a sigh its share of the different allegiances, and every barkeep carefully laid out a jug of water and a bowl of little loaves on each table so that his customers might toast any monarch they chose.

A captain from a lighter joined their table, and was soon deep in conversation with Partridge.

‘So – what news in Mandelion?’ Partridge asked, stooping to light his pipe at the candle.

‘Well, the Duke’s worse each day. Did you hear about the new Spires of Prosperity?’

Partridge crooked an eyebrow.

‘Twin spires, would they happen to be?’

‘That’s it.’

‘Still pairs with him, then?’ Partridge sighed, and shook his head.

Amid the stream of strange names, Mosca sometimes lost the thread of the conversation. There was a lot said about a group called ‘the Locksmiths’, which sounded like the name of a guild, but one she had never heard before. The lighter captain said they were growing stronger in Mandelion, which was something he had hoped never to see. Partridge said it was all right, the Duke’s sister would never let them take over Mandelion the way they had taken Scurrey. If the Locksmiths were just a guild of lock-makers, Mosca could not imagine why people looked so grim and frightened when they talked about them.

The beer in Mosca’s cup seemed as weak as river water, and tasted much as if a hundred ducks had been washing their feet in it. But after a while Mosca started to feel a warm and empty buzzing space near the back of her head. When she tried to understand the conversation, it was like trying to pick up a thread with Saracen’s webbed foot instead of her own fingers.

‘Your niece is looking a little dusky around the eyes. Better put her to bed before she falls off her chair and into the fire.’

‘Bed’ proved to be one of the straw mattresses by the far wall, set somewhat aside from the others. Mosca dared not undress, and she lay down fully clothed, with her bonnet tipped forward to shade her face. From under the brim, she watched Clent brush down his own mattress with fastidious care, remove his coat for use as a blanket, and lay himself down. To her disappointment, he tucked the package under the mattress first.

For the next five hours Mosca stared into darkness, listening to the crunch and rip of Saracen tearing her mattress apart. She had no intention of letting Clent slip off without her again, and she dug straw stems into her palms to keep herself awake. But, exhausted as she was, it was impossible not to doze off, and she was shaken awake at dawn.

‘Shake a leg, there.’ Partridge grinned down at her, not unkindly.