Fly By Night

coracle.

Oh sweet Beloved Spare us Sores, thought Mosca. Look at us, we’re thieves, and mill- burners, and spies, and one of us is a cut-throat as well. We’re Criminals of the Murkiest Hue, and we’re not even very good at it.

‘We would of course be delighted to speak with your admirer, madam,’ Clent assured her with haggard courtesy. ‘Perhaps you will allow us a few minutes to refresh and make ourselves respectable.’ The door closed behind Cakes, leaving Mosca and Clent to furious whispering.

‘Yer wig’s on back to front!’

‘And your eyebrows are smudged down over your nose! And where by the feathered head of St Minch are my… oh, there they are. Turn your apron inside out. The right side looks as if you have been chasing rats up chimneys.’

‘Yer boots are all over mud, Mr Clent…’

‘And a hundred men’s boots will be so in this weather, calm yourself. Wait – bring the ewer and bowl to me. Stand still…’

Mosca’s shoulder blades knotted themselves as Clent dipped his handkerchief in the bowl and dabbed at her face. It took all her willpower to avoid flinching from his hand, as he wiped away her coal-dust eyebrows and carefully drew on a new set with a pencil, his own eyebrows waggling with concentration as he did so.

‘We returned from the beast fight and went directly to bed,’ he muttered as he added the final touches. ‘Nothing woke us, we heard and saw nothing. If we both hold to this, I think we shall brave the storm without capsize.’

Mosca followed Clent down the passage with her heart bursting. Goodlady Syropia regarded her with pitying wooden eyes. Goodman Trybiscuit hardly dared watch her through his painted fingers. Please I need to get away with this please please please…

The constable was a man in his forties with ragged red hair and tired-looking eyes that drooped downwards at the corners. A bottle of gin stood on the table, suggesting that the Cakes had added a nip of comfort to his coffee to take away the chill of his morning walk. He was playfully tossing his hat from one hand to the other as he talked to her, and his laugh only faded into formality when Mosca and Clent entered the room.

‘This is the gentleman who lodges with you regular, then?’

‘I am Eponymous Clent, and the honour is mine. I fear I am unlikely to be of help to you, sir, but any trifling assistance I can offer you is indubitably yours.’

‘That’s very gentlemanly of you, sir.’ The constable seemed a little flabbergasted by Clent’s manner. ‘But I do not know why you should feel you cannot be of help.’

‘Perhaps I have misunderstood,’ Clent began again, quickly. Too quickly, Mr Clent, careful, Mr Clent… Mosca was horrified to find herself trying to advise a murderer to caution in her mind. ‘I apprehended that some blackguards tried and failed to rob this house, and cut the throat of some other poor devil later in the night. I fear that I was in too profound a sleep to have heard anything of use.’

‘Well… I don’t see that they can have failed to get in, sir. There was a boat tied up by the window, you see, sir, and if they didn’t get in that way… then how did they get back to the bank? There’s another thing, sir -’ the constable reached out and broke off a single husk of honesty, and rubbed its papery disc between his thumb and forefinger – ‘there were lots of these in the dead man’s collar and hair. You don’t get them growing round here, not till you’re way downriver to Fainbless. I think our poor devil was in this house not so long ago.’

There was a small noise like a trodden fledgling. Mosca wondered at it for a moment until she realized that she had made it. The constable did not seem to have heard, but Clent gave her a wary glance.

‘Then it would seem that I have tumbled into misapprehension,’ he said with a smile, lowering his weight into a chair and resting his elbows on the table, where his hands began nervously tearing pieces of crust and arranging them in lines. ‘I am of course solicitous to answer your questions, but perhaps I might send the girl away. Her years are rather tender for matters of mortality, and she has her errands to perform.’

Too clever, Mr Clent, too wordy. People don’t like you when you’re too knowing.

‘Can I ask what errands are so urgent that she cannot pause to help track down a murderer?’ The constable’s tone was cold.

Inspiration suddenly bit Mosca like a gnat.

‘I got to deliver a message to Lady Tamarind.’ She spoke reflexively, just as she might have slapped at an insect’s bite. ‘Mr Clent works for Lady Tamarind.’

‘Lady Tamarind…’ The constable was shocked back into courtesy. ‘Can you prove this, sir?’

Clent went pale, then he evidently remembered Lady Tamarind’s letter introducing him as a poet in her employ, and sent Mosca to fetch it. The constable’s face relaxed as he read it, and soon he was wearing his jovial expression again.

He rolled the letter carefully and handed it back with a new respect. ‘Well, good sir, make no delay for me, I would not have Her Ladyship kept waiting on my account.’

‘Then I shall write the message – if you will excuse us a few minutes, good sir.’

The constable nodded, affable once more, and Mosca followed Clent back to their room.

‘Lady Tamarind, Lady Tamarind,’ Clent murmured to himself. ‘It is a thought, a chance at least. I cannot stay here, waiting for the Locksmiths’ men to trace me. If we can only find sanctuary in the Eastern Spire before the storm breaks…’

Mosca fetched paper, ink, pen and sealing wax and stood behind Clent while he wrote.

‘Your most esteemed and radiant Ladyship,

I enclose the first stanzas of your epic, and hope against hope that their humble worth summons your smile for at least an instant, if only in magnanimous pity for my efforts and struggles of the soul.

My lady, I must trespass further upon your good will. The payment you have so generously offered I do not claim, but rather ask that you may find occupation and accommodation within the Eastern Spire for myself and my secretary. Our situation has grown precarious, and my lodgings ill-suited to one blessed with your patronage.

In the name of gratitude I implore you to consent, knowing as you do how this fickle world can knock both high and low on to their axles, and leave them reliant on the assistance of strangers.

Yours in awe and admiration,

Your servant Eponymous Clent

Mosca watched as the hot wax sealed the letter, her heart beating in her ears. As soon as the letter was in her hand she made for the door, blowing on the wax to cool it.

She stepped into a world washed clean, full of newly woken smells. A nervous wind of stammering gusts broke the clouds like bread. The rain had varnished every street sign. Everything promised newness.

Mosca ran. She ran to outpace her ill luck. She had to reach the spire before Clent had time to guess at the treachery in her head. If she could only use the letter to get inside the Honeycomb Courts! Once there, by hook or by crook she would find a way to speak with Lady Tamarind. She would tell the noblewoman the truth about the events at the Grey Mastiff, and beg to be hidden in the Eastern Spire, safe from the Locksmiths… and from Eponymous Clent. If only she dared tell Lady Tamarind about the murder of Partridge! But Mosca herself was steeped too deep in that.

The slouching shops of the riverside yielded to square-shouldered houses with gleaming porticoes. Tall windows arched as if raising their eyebrows to see Mosca run past.

She reached the edge of a broad and busy thoroughfare. On the far side, a row of tall, iron railings held off the curious crowds. The wrought-iron gates were decorated with the outlines of two young women who seemed to be