‘A little guesswork, based on an apron in a herring-barrel. The Stationers must have suspected as much to trail you like that, and I trust them to know their job. So – where is the press?’
‘In the hold of a ragman’s raft. I hid it in the rushes an’ made sure I’d know the place again. I can take you there.’ Mosca paused and swallowed mournfully. ‘Are you going to take it away?’
‘Mosca -’ Kohlrabi’s voice was kind and patient – ‘look at all the hubbub this one printing press has caused in Mandelion. You must see that it is far too important a thing to have it falling into the wrong hands. Now, the Stationers would break it apart, or use it to print dull essays, and I think that would be a waste, don’t you? And other people might use it to print all kinds of stupid things and get themselves in trouble. Someone has to make sure it is used properly and fulfils its destiny.’
‘If there are books there with the press… can I read them?’
Kohlrabi mulled this over for a few moments, his face invisible in the darkness.
‘Perhaps,’ he said at last. ‘Yes. I think, when we take the raft downstream, it would be best if you came with us.’
‘We can’t go downstream, Mr Kohlrabi! That’s what I wanted to tell you about! There’s people comin’ from the coast, an’ they mustn’t catch us. And listen, listen, Mr Kohlrabi, I got to warn you about Lady Tamarind…’
As Mosca’s voice rose in pitch, Kohlrabi turned to stare back through the trees behind him, hushing her. One of his hands slid to his belt, and she remembered his pistol. He held up a hand for silence and spent a few seconds quite motionless, before beckoning to her sharply, and creeping on stealthily as they had at first.
Almost stifling with unspoken words, she followed him as the woods thinned and gave way to fields. She followed him at a crouch along ditches and through hedge shadow, across streams and over drystone walls. By the time they reached the darkness of the woods again, she had taken her new pipe from her pocket and was chewing at the stem while she fended the briars from her face.
‘I think that pipe is twice as loud as our steps,’ Kohlrabi whispered at long last.
His only answer was the sound of wood clicking against the teeth of his companion.
‘You must be hungry, if you are willing to devour wood.’
Mosca said nothing, but continued her champ, champ, champ in the darkness.
‘At this rate you will chew your way right through the stem. I would probably not have given you the pipe if I had known that you would think so hard with it.’
‘I can believe that,’ Mosca muttered.
An opening in the trees allowed the moon to fall upon Kohlrabi’s face. He strode in silence for a few moments, then turned a puzzled smile upon his companion. At least, he would have done so if that companion had still been at his side.
‘Mosca?’ Kohlrabi’s expression see-sawed between a smile and a frown as he looked about him. Then both expressions faded like smoke and he wore only the wide-eyed look of one who is listening very intently.
Hidden behind a fringe of ferns, Mosca lay flat, her cheek against the clammy softness of the dead leaves.
‘Mosca?’
In a Mandelion street, Mosca would have been at the mercy of its flurry and flow, the hurried weaving of stride and barrow. But this was the freckled woodland, where you needed a different set of tricks. Be still where you can, be as silent as you can, let other small sounds drown your steps. If you cannot fool the eye, then fool the brain – stand where you are not expected and you will not be seen. Keep to the highs, keep to the lows, and avoid eye level if the terrain lets you. These were tricks that Mosca knew.
She had abandoned her gleaming white bonnet and cap on the path as she slipped away. Her dark hair was now pulled forward to mask the pale skin of her face. She waited for Kohlrabi to take a few steps in the wrong direction before rising to a crouch. While he turned his back, a light figure beam-balanced its way along the trunk of a felled tree, arms spread for balance, stockinged feet silent on the dank green velvet covering the bark. By the time he looked back, the figure had dropped out of sight with a faint sound like a chestnut falling.
These were tricks that Mosca knew better than Kohlrabi.
Her skirts scooped over one arm, the pipe clamped silently in her mouth, Mosca slipped to the thicket’s edge, and found a feathered sea of reeds before her, shivering moonlight like shot silk. Where was the ragman’s raft? Mosca found a gash in the mud where she had anchored the mooring peg, and she knew that the raft must have pulled loose and floated away. But no – there was a strange, squarish clearing among the reeds. The raft had floated, but not far.
Wading through the reeds, Mosca found the ground growing treacherously moist and cloying, the mud welcoming her feet eagerly and giving an annoyed cluck of its tongue each time she drew them out for another step. At last the unseen ground surpassed itself by suddenly becoming river. Mosca found herself up to her hips in icy water, her descent slowed only by her skirts, which spread about her, the muslin seething with bubbles like egg white in a poaching pan.
Mosca grabbed fistfuls of the reeds and used them to drag herself towards the raft. She reached it just before her skirts became sodden enough to drag her down, and she heaved her torso on to its planks. Using her legs to kick, she pulled at the reeds to drag the raft out towards the river. Only when she reached the very edge of the reed-forest and pulled herself up on to the timbers did Mosca realize why the raft had not floated away. The mooring rope had pulled taut. Somewhere among the reeds the trailing end with the mooring peg had caught on something.
Almost in tears with desperation and cold, Mosca gave the rope several violent tugs, but it held. The mooring rope was fastened to a metal ring on the raft with a knot that made no sense to her, and her fingers were so numb the bristling rope was painful to twist. She was still struggling with it when she looked up and saw that Kohlrabi was standing on the bank.
He was out of breath, as if he had reached the bank at a run. The moon was full on his face, and he still wore an expression of slight puzzlement. He took a step towards Mosca, before looking down at his feet, up at the raft, and then searchingly at the reeds separating him from the raft. Perhaps he had worked out that he was near the brink. Mosca was fairly sure he did not know how near.
In his left hand he carried his hat, as if he had snatched it off in order to run without losing it. He held it casually, but in such a way that it hid his right hand.
‘Little Mosca,’ he called out at last, ‘do you really want to keep the press so much?’
‘I don’t think I want the future we was talkin’ about.’ Mosca did not move a muscle, but stayed crouching with her hands around the knotted rope. ‘I don’t want to work for Lady Tamarind.’
‘To tell the truth, I never intended that you should.’ Kohlrabi smiled, and looked rather relieved. ‘She is a very clever woman, but her aims are rather tawdry.’ A touch of embarrassment crept into his smile, as if he had been caught buying Mosca a nameday present ahead of time. ‘I’m afraid I was always planning to steal you away from her. It’s probably time I explained things properly but, Pale Fates, can you bring the raft in first? If we keep shouting like this we will have the Stationers or worse to deal with.’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Kohlrabi, but I got all these bits and pieces of thoughts. An’ most of ’em are just little, an’ none of ’em proves anything, but they stick into my mind like pine needles in my socks. An’ there’s only one way of lookin’ at ’em all that makes sense.’
Looking at his carefully hovering hat, Mosca knew exactly what Kohlrabi was holding in his hidden right hand.
‘It all makes sense if you’re a Birdcatcher, Mr Kohlrabi.’
Kohlrabi still wore a look of slightly concerned attentiveness. It seemed to Mosca that he was staring at her hands. He could not know if the mooring rope was still fastened, or if Mosca had already loosed it and was simply holding the rope. For all he knew, if she let go, the raft and the printing press would float away down the river and be lost to him.
‘You never swear by the Beloved, never. I mean, I seen you in the cathedral… but in the bit which is still the old church really, with its Heart of the Consequence still there under the shines an’ shimmers.’ Mosca paused, but the figure on the bank remained silent and motionless. ‘An’ you work for Lady Tamarind, an’ Lady Tamarind is working with the Birdcatchers. An’ then there’s you followin’ Mr Clent all around the country, an’ sayin’ it’s cos he’s dangerous an’ got blood on his hands, when all the time he’s a fat, skittered old tomcat with long claws an’ no teeth.
