Fly By Night

Hearing this, Toke’s eyes glittered. Strangeway was a crooked, covered alley which led all the way to the city wall, and emerged opposite a tavern called the Grey Mastiff.

The Grey Mastiff was famed throughout Mandelion for the quality of the ‘beast fights’ held within its walls every fortnight. For some time, however, Mabwick Toke had suspected that the Grey Mastiff was also used secretly as a Locksmith meeting place and safe house. Several known Locksmiths had been seen to congregate there every time a beast fight was held, and Aramai Goshawk’s supercilious silhouette had been glimpsed at one of the upper windows.

‘They’re not taking him to the Duke, after all. Not straight away anyway. This man Pertellis is hidden there, I’d stake my wig on it,’ Toke muttered to himself as a sedan took him back to the Telling Word. ‘But how to tweak him out?’

Toke had no men who could pick a lock or scale a wall the way Goshawk’s underlings could. But did he need them? He had enough evidence to draw up a warrant for Pertellis’s arrest. Could he not send his men into the Grey Mastiff with the warrant and have them boldly arrest the man and walk out with him?

Toke’s eyes became sharp and hard as a further idea occurred to him.

‘The Duke wants to believe in a radical conspiracy against him, does he?’ he murmured speculatively. ‘Well, let him! I shall make this Pertellis out to be the leader of the conspiracy, the owner of this demon printing press and chief enemy of the Twin Queens, whether he is or isn’t. Then I shall have my men march in and arrest him on the night of the next beast fight, when the Locksmiths have their meeting in the Grey Mastiff. I’ll make sure my men bring a constable with them, so he’ll see the “radical leader” ringed around with Locksmiths. Let’s see how much the Duke trusts Mr Goshawk once he hears reports that the Locksmiths have been discovered hiding the leader of the radicals from the forces of justice…’

The Locksmiths would be disgraced but, importantly, they would not be arrested. None of them would be placed in danger, and so nobody could accuse Toke of breaking the guildsmen’s Rules.

‘I shall have to send in Clent and his bold-eyed girl to spy out the place before we act,’ Toke resolved. If Goshawk had read Clent’s report, he would know the poet’s name, but would probably not recognize his face. In any case, it was better to risk an irrelevant rogue than one of the Stationers’ valued guildsmen. ‘Casualties of war,’ Toke growled, as he picked up a pen to write out Clent’s new orders.

That evening, Toke’s letter lay on the dinner table in front of Clent, liberally smeared with gravy. Toke had given a sparse account of the night’s events, naturally omitting all mention of Clent’s intercepted report. Somehow, as Clent repeated this account to Mosca, it became a tale of breakneck chases and exchanged pistol fire.

Mosca listened, wide-eyed. ‘So… the Locksmiths got Mr Pertellis in this Grey Mastiff, then?’

‘Yes – and in three nights’ time, the Stationers plan to march into the Grey Mastiff and snatch this radical teacher from Goshawk’s very own gloved fingers. Word will reach the Duke that when this firebrand Pertellis was arrested, he was caught in a conspiratorial tableau with the Locksmiths… and the Duke will smite his noble brow with grief at his own blindness, and throw off his Locksmith flatterers. Our task is to spy out the tavern beforehand, and make sure that Hopewood Pertellis is within. A simple matter for two fox-witted souls like ourselves.’

The fox-witted souls bickered cheerfully over the last helping of broth, unaware that in another part of the city Aramai Goshawk was rereading Clent’s report and peering at the names of Eponymous Clent and Mosca Mye.

K is for Kidnapping

‘I want my goose back!’

‘Mosca, while your affection for your anserine accomplice does you credit, I hardly think-’

‘I want my goose back!’

‘I can see that your orphaned state has caused you to regard the bird as a family member, perhaps a particularly beaky uncle-’

‘Mr Clent, I want my goose back!’

‘Have you forgotten that by your own account Mr Partridge is planning to roast my heart in the sun?’ bellowed Clent. The conversation had made little progress over the last half-hour and he was starting to lose his temper.

‘You could give him money. Bet he wouldn’t eat your heart if you give him enough money. Bet the Stationers gave you money for what I found out.’ Clent had been so delighted with Mosca’s discovery of the Floating School that the pair had actually got on tolerably well for two days. However, Mosca had just woken to a gleaming morning, and the sight of Clent trying on a new cravat. Instantly she had guessed that he had been paid without telling her. ‘They did pay you, didn’t they? That’s my money, or near enough anyway.’

‘Read through our “ship’s articles” again, child, if you have not forgotten your letters as well as your duties. You are bound to obey my orders, and you stand to receive a generous salary at the end of the year. Before this explosion of ingratitude, I had even considered recommending that the Stationers grant you a place in a school, as you requested.’ It seemed to occur to Clent that their voices had become rather loud given the thin walls of the marriage house, and his voice dropped to a whisper. ‘If, of course, you would rather throw away all hopes of bettering yourself in favour of buying yourself a mangled old fowl that seems to be harbouring all the demons of fable within his moth-eaten breast, then so be it. The choice is yours.’ Clent folded his arms, and his mouth became an adamant plum.

A place in a Stationer school… Somehow Mosca’s thoughts were not where she had left them; the idea of school had been so real to her. She had imagined the cool of a slate between her fingers, and had seen herself cutting quills for the younger children. She had even puzzled over how she would stop Saracen eating the inkbottles. Now the school seemed a means to an end, and that end was Lady Tamarind and the Eastern Spire.

Two images flitted before Mosca’s eyes.

Mosca saw a woman stepping out of a white carriage, lifting her hem slightly to protect it from contact with the street. Two footmen dusted the cobbles with swans-down brushes so that they could not stain her satin shoes. She swept through a door into a ballroom where the walls were hung with the hides of white tigers. She danced, and, from mahogany tables, stuffed ermine stoats watched her with pearls instead of eyes. She drank from a crystal glass. She was too beautiful to smile or flush, and her eyes were black, black as pepper. They were Mosca’s eyes.

Then Mosca saw the darkened hold of the Mettlesome Maid. Saracen was scrambling unsteadily over a heap of wooden and leaden Beloved, his leathery feet sliding on ridged faces and graven wings. He gave little chuckling noises in his throat, but his neck drooped with weariness and hunger. He nibbled at the pointed nose of the Kind Lady of Fools, and then shook his head disappointedly. Soon, when he was weaker, the sailors would pull up the planks and come after him with spades and boathooks…

‘Well?’ Clent was waiting with a look of satisfaction on his face. ‘Have you recovered your senses and made your choice?’

She had.

‘I Want My Chirfugging Goose Back!’

‘Well, you can’t have it!’ Clent snapped, scarlet-faced.

‘Then you’re a mouldy-mouthed liar an’ a cheat an’ I’m not doing nuffin’ for you no more!’ screamed Mosca. Before she had finished the sentence, Clent had stormed from the room, slamming the door.

His boots made a very satisfying thud as they hit the wall. All Mosca’s strength was not enough to tear the sleeves of his coat from the body, so she settled for stamping his new wig flat until it resembled a terrier that had fallen foul of a dustcart-wheel.

As she was standing, panting, her boots dusted with flour from Clent’s wig, she suddenly saw with absolute clarity what it was that she needed to do. If she could squeeze no reward from Clent and the Stationers, she could think of only one person who might give her money for Saracen’s ransom, and that was Lady Tamarind.

Clent had left paper, quill and inkbottle in the window seat. Snatching them up, she scratched out a quick letter.

Dear Ladyship,