the Locksmiths?’
‘Probably the most feared guild in the Realm,’ said Lady Tamarind, after a hesitation. ‘Once they only made locks and strongboxes, but all the guilds have grown stronger and more powerful since the days when there was a king. Tell me, child, have you ever heard of the Thief-takers?’
‘Yeah.’ The Thief-takers had been mentioned in many of the
‘That is only a part of the truth. Listen well, girl. The Thief-takers are no better than the villains they seize. All Thief-takers answer to the Locksmiths, and their real task is to make sure that there are no criminals at large… except those that work for the Locksmiths themselves. The Locksmiths run the criminal underworld in four major cities, and are a rising force in the others. Do you understand now why I say I have dangerous enemies?’
Mosca’s jaw fell open.
‘If you are to work for me, you must speak of it to nobody, and we can never be seen together.’
Mosca nodded.
‘Good. The Locksmiths are on the rise, and if I cannot stop them, Mandelion will be theirs. I must know if others mean to act against the Locksmiths. The Stationers, in particular.’ Tamarind leaned forward and dropped her whisper, so that it was scarcely more than a tingle on the eardrum. ‘I cannot be seen to be plotting, but I must know their plans.’
‘You want me to spy on the Stationers?’ Mosca sanded her lips with a dry tongue-tip.
‘You will stay with your master, and find out more about him. He will bring you into contact with other Stationers, and can probably find you a place in a Stationer school. And once you have been schooled properly… it will seem less remarkable if a person of eminence should choose to employ you. When you have information for me, seek out the city Plumery. You will find a patch of pheasant feathers planted in front of the statue of Goodman Claspkin. Hide your letter inside the quill of one of these, and place it back in the earth. It will reach me.’
Mosca blinked hard, trying to commit everything to memory.
‘Now listen, for your own safety’s sake. Beware men who wear gloves even indoors and at luncheon. Keep a close guard on your pockets and purse – the Thief-takers sometimes serve an enemy by planting stolen goods upon them. And, girl? If you think that you are suspected… beware of accidents…’
Clent drew a long, waking breath. His eyes fluttered open, and stared unseeing and glassy at the carriage roof. Tamarind drew back against her seat with impeccable composure. Mosca curled away from Clent, closing her eyes and feigning sleep.
It seemed to Mosca that she had spent barely five minutes leaning against the window frame and counting her employer’s breaths when the carriage lurched and woke her. The woman in white was staring out of the window, the scar dead white in the stony light. Mosca wondered if she had dreamed the strange conversation.
Mosca dozed, and woke, and found that villages had sprung up at the roadside. She dozed, and woke, and found that the road was running alongside the river, and above the bristle of sails quivered some half-dozen craft- dragging kites which bore the insignia of the Watermen, a silver pond-skater against a black background. She dozed, and woke, and found that the sky was dim and a harsh crosswind was flattening the curtain against the roof.
The carriage was crossing a bridge. Houses clustered along the bridge-side as if to peer back at Mosca, and between them Mosca glimpsed a stretch of water so wide that at first she took it for a lake. But no, there were the far banks, curving away to clasp hands at the horizon. This was still the River Slye, and on the far side of the bridge the city of Mandelion smoked and sprawled and scored the sky with spires.
Helpless with excitement, Mosca wriggled to the edge of her seat, leaning out through the window for a better view. To the east and the west two spires rose above the rest, and the city stretched between them. Behind a long piecrust of crumbling wall clustered a mosaic of roofs, and a great dome that seemed in the dull light to be as glossy and ethereal as a soap bubble. To the west along the waterside unfinished ships bared ribcages of stripped wood to the sky. The creak and crack of the shipyard was as faint as a cricket orchestra.
The wind roared with an estuary freshness. It carried the smell of sandflats and sea-poppies, and the pale wails of wading birds, and the clammy, silver-eyed dreams of fish. Although she had never known the coastlands, Mosca felt with a thrill that somewhere beyond the edge of sight the ocean hugged its unthinkable deeps and dragged its tides in shrug after monumental shrug.
The carriage reached the end of the bridge, and now the tallest buildings Mosca had ever seen flanked the road. Evening had swallowed their black timbers and left their white plaster faces floating in the air like flags. To Mosca it seemed that they must in some fashion belong to the lady in the white dress, for they too were white. The gleaming white sails on the river had to belong to the lady. The fat white moon, sitting on a sliver of cloud like a clot of cream on the blade of a knife, had to belong to the lady.
‘Tell the driver where you would like to be set down, Mr Clent,’ remarked Lady Tamarind.
‘I believe our, ah, friends reside in East Straddle Street, my lady.’ The carriage steered around a squabble of hansoms and took a riverside road, the gleam of water occasionally visible between the buildings.
At last it drew up alongside a shuttered shop. Unwillingly Mosca let Clent guide her out on to the street.
‘Your Ladyship, the, ah, the, ah, letter…’
‘… will be sent to you at these lodgings shortly.’ There was a chill finality in the childlike tones as the porcelain face faded behind the curtain. The carriage lurched back into motion. Clent, hiding his disappointment, turned to knock at the door of the shop.
Mosca stared up at the hanging sign above the door. It depicted a man’s hand clasping that of a woman.
‘Mr Clent… why we stoppin’ at a marriage house?’
Before Clent could answer, the door was opened by a man as squat as a pepper pot, wearing the broad- brimmed hat of a chaplain and an expression that seemed to be a compromise between piety and a suppressed sneeze. A few whispered words from Clent, however, and the man’s face broke into a broad, badger’s grin, revealing a fine array of caramel-coloured teeth.
‘Ah, Mistress Bessel give you my name, did she? If you’re a friend of Jen, come in and be welcomed by Bockerby. You must take a pinch of snuff with me before you sleep.’ His every sentence began in a deep, sonorous, church-bell voice, and ended in a chatty, rough-cut tone like a pedlar’s shamble.
Mosca and Clent were led through a cramped, ill-swept corridor into a cramped, ill-swept parlour. The tabletop was crowded with vases. These were filled not with flowers but with bunches of dried, branching honesty plants, crowned with glossy seedpods the size of sovereigns and the colour of jaded paper. On a stand stood a name-day book, so that each couple who came to the marriage house could see if a match between their names was auspicious.
A host of tiny Beloved idols sat in rough-cut recesses in the wall, rather as if the little gods had gouged out their own homes like nesting birds. Many of the Beloved shown were unfamiliar to Mosca, but with some apprehension she recognized Goodlady Mauget of the Almost-Truth, Goodman Happendabbit of the Repented Oath, St Leasey, He Who Lends His Cloak to the Sly-in-the-Night, and Goodlady Judin of the Borrowed Face. The largest shrines were to Leampho of the One Wakeful Eye, a goodman who according to legend would smile upon contracts and unions that Torquest the Joiner of Hands would not touch with the tiniest finger of his steel-gloved hand.
Mosca knew that all respectable weddings took place in church, but for couples with too little money or too much to hide there were the marriage houses. Girls with child, forbidden love matches, would-be bigamists, anyone who did not want their affairs boomed to the congregation – all of these could creep with their sweethearts to a marriage house, and have a licence for a handful of shillings. To judge by his outfit, Bockerby served as cleric and master of ceremonies for this establishment.
Bockerby had fetched a mahogany box from the mantel, and now he offered it to Clent, who placed the daintiest pinch at the base of his thumb, before lowering his nose to his wrist and taking an energetic sniff.
‘So -’ Clent settled in a large rocking chair and gestured Mosca towards a stool by the wall – ‘what news in your brave city, Mr Bockerby?’
‘Been here before, sir? No?’ Bockerby gave a one-shouldered shrug and drew in a pinch of snuff, creasing his brow into a map. ‘Ah… truth is, Mr Clent, you find us in a bit of a hubble-bubble.’
‘I noticed your city wall was badly burned.’
‘Mostly old fires, Mr Clent. Yus, Mandelion’s a battered old nell.’
‘The old war?’
‘The old war. And then… the Birdcatchers. We was hit bad, worse than most. I was only about eleven when
