Fly By Night

window. She could not be sure whether he was gazing out at the view of the river or watching her reflection in the glass with his clever grey gaze. ‘Fourth, Mosca Mye shall not divulge anything of a sensitive nature pertaining to her employer without his permission, nor shall she rifle through his papers or repeat his conversations.’

‘Fifth, nor shall he peach on her neither, nor handle her things.’

‘Sixth, she shall not hoard information from his attention, but shall be diligent in keeping him informed.’

‘Seventh, he will keep her wise about stuff what concerns them, and persons what they are working for.’

‘All right, that will do, sign at the bottom.’ Clent added his signature to hers.

‘So -’ Mosca watched as Clent rolled the paper once more and slid it into his top pocket – ‘why we workin’ for the Stationers, then?’

‘This evening you shall sup full on answers, but in the meantime we both have work to do. I must write the ballad I promised to that cut-throat of the road, and you… well, my last secretary, for all his faults, always took the greatest care that my boots were kept clean – I believe that there are some rags beside the ewer. Furthermore, the sorry state of my coat currently reflects badly upon your diligence. And… for goodness sake, before we go out, do something about your eyebrows.’

Clent retreated to the little closet, and Mosca pulled a bit of charred wood out of the fire and, using her reflection in the window, carefully drew herself new eyebrows with the charcoal tip.

The rest of the day Mosca spent removing gorse spines and travel dust from Clent’s cloak, darning the seams, and cleaning his boots. From time to time Clent himself would explode from his closet, gripped by fits of poetic rage.

‘St Bibbet lend us light! Why must the man have a name so unsuited to verse? I have already used “lithe”, and unless I use “writhe” I shall be forced into repetition.’ He would smooth his hair as if combing his thoughts, then return to the closet.

A little after supper he finally emerged, scanning a scribbled paper like a mother looking for signs of sickness in a newborn baby.

‘It must do, it must do.’ He glanced at Mosca’s new, coal-black eyebrows, and gave a thin, despairing ‘hhssst’ through his teeth. He donned his coat, picking and preening over it with hands that trembled. ‘And thus,’ he murmured in apprehensive tones, ‘must we brave the gaze of Mabwick Toke.’

‘Who’s he then?’

‘Mabwick Toke is the head of the Stationers’ chapter in Mandelion. He can quote the whole of Pessimese’s “Endeavours”, from Amblebirth to Aftermath, in the original Acrylic. He can speak twenty languages, half of them living, including two from the Aragash Heights, and one that can only be spoken with a coin under the tongue. When he travels, his carriage is lined with shelves so snug with books that the very breeze must squeeze for entry. He once uncovered a league of subversives by identifying a single silken thread in the paper weave of an opera ticket. If wits were pins, the man would be a veritable hedgehog.’

‘If he’s so sharp, what do they need you for?’

‘Because there are delicate matters afoot, and they require a Special Operative who is not too obviously linked to the Stationers. I am an Unknown Quantity, and may pass through Mandelion Like A Ghost.’

To Mosca’s mind, Clent did not look as if he had haunted anything but a pantry, but she managed not to say so.

‘When do we go see Mr Toke the hedgehog, then?’

‘Now. Put on your bonnet and follow me.’

Mosca snatched up her bonnet, slipped her outdoor clogs over her leather indoor shoes, and clattered after Clent.

Out in the street, Mosca’s sharp eyes were dazzled by a hundred sights. The sound of hoofs on cobbles was deafening, and Mosca started as a horse’s head appeared directly in front of her, blowing through its nose with a sound like a broken bellows.

‘My good fellow, where might I find the Telling Word?’

A tinker paused in response to Clent’s cry and stared skywards, as if judging the position of the sun.

‘The Telling Word? You’ll find her on Morestraws, just outside the Papermill.’

Clent strode across the cobbles, paying little attention to his secretary, who followed him at a hop, still fastening the buckle of one clog as she struggled to keep up with him.

At last he halted outside a large building with a mighty mill wheel which jolted Mosca with the memory of Chough. From within came a vigorous whoomp! whoomp! whoomp! as if many pairs of giants were playing battledore at once. Several men, stripped to their shirts, were hurrying to and fro with barrows, some full of white rags, others full of coloured rags, rope ends and scraps of sailcloth. This was clearly the Papermill, and the rags were destined to be shredded and pulped and thumped into paper.

Peering through the open window of an adjoining building, Mosca saw two rows of women sorting scraps of cloth with quick, practised fingers, cutting them into pieces and slicing off buttons. Fascinated, she scampered to the next window.

And here, criss-crossed by the diamond-pane light from the window, was a Stationer printing press, its square-shouldered wooden frame standing up straight like a gutted dresser. A large man in his shirtsleeves lowered paper gripped in a hinged frame on to a blackened tray of type, then pushed the tray on rollers into the heart of the press. A mighty heave on a lever, and the machine stressed and pressed the paper down on to the type. Mosca could almost feel the flexing of the metal, forcing words into the world. The lever was raised, the tray dragged out, the frame lifted and the printed page tweaked free. A second man dipped the ends of what looked like fat drumsticks into a pot of ink, and slathered the mix over the type again, in readiness for the next page. The two men glistened with heat and effort. The press glistened with lamp-black and varnish. On the other side of the room an elderly, fox-faced man scanned each page carefully. In one hand he held a stick of wax, which he softened in a candle before drawing a molten splotch in each page corner and stamping it, using a ring with the Stationers’ seal.

Mosca nearly broke her neck turning her head upside down to read the drying sheets. They were posters in big, crumbly-looking capitals, advertising ‘Clashes between the Heraldry Beasts of the Many Monarchs’, to be held at the Grey Mastiff Inn.

Clent, meanwhile, had approached a smaller building across the road, flanking the river. It was unlike anything Mosca had ever seen before.

She knew it was a coffeehouse, for the sign above the door bore the image of an elegant Eastern coffee-pot. Even with her limited knowledge of the world, Mosca had heard of the coffeehouses of the big cities. Many men chose them as a place in which to relax, or cut deals, or talk of high matters with the like-minded. Each coffeehouse had its own character, and usually its own loyal band of customers, close knit as any club.

The walls of this coffeehouse, however, were almost completely hidden under a jostling patchwork of sunbleached, slantwise posters and printed snippets. Along the guttering, newspaper cuttings fluttered loosely like scarecrow rags. Each page bore the red blot of the Stationers’ seal, so that the coffeehouse seemed to be suffering from a slight case of measles.

‘Eponymous Clent, poet,’ Clent declared airily, brandishing his scrawled poetry at a quiver-cheeked man at the door. ‘Here to speak with Mabwick Toke.’ The door swung back, and Mosca followed Clent into the Telling Word.

They entered a large square room filled with tables that bore a startling resemblance to writing desks, complete with ink splashes and glass quill stands. Several customers, indeed, had their own writing boxes open before them, quills and steel pens nestling on the green felt lining. Coffee fumes mixed with the metallic scent of ink, and instead of brisk tavern chatter there was the deadened murmur of voices hushed through habit.

Mosca’s eyes were helplessly drawn to the sheaves of words pinned here and there on the walls, and the advertisements behind glass. Words, words, words. This was her gingerbread cottage. The smell of ink, however, seemed to be dizzying her. From time to time she could swear that the floor was gently dipping and rising.

Mosca and Clent were led to an unsmiling little man of fifty with a gnawed, yellow look like an apple core. The little man’s mouth was a small, bitter V-shape, and seemed designed to say small, bitter things. His wig frightened