Fly By Night

‘Count yourselves lucky you have not found her hiding in your writing desks or frolicking in your afternoon stew.’

Eponymous Clent gave a warm gust of laughter, which cooled when everyone else in the room remained stony.

‘We have little enough to laugh about, Clent,’ Toke commented coldly. ‘A few weeks ago, Mandelion was a stable and thriving city, with one problem – an illegal printing press. The Stationers’ Guild called you in to find this press, in exchange for overlooking your past misdemeanours. We did not order you to fling bodies in the river, throw in your lot with radicals, release savage animals in popular alehouses, or investigate the Duke’s family.

‘The Duke himself is stone-cold dead, and with him a decade of our careful diplomacy down the drain. His men have completely lost control of the city, and Mandelion is being run by a common highwayman whom your ballad has turned into the darling of the people. Thanks to you, the people of Mandelion will not be ruled by anyone but their famous Captain Blythe and his gang of radical reprobates.’

‘We might have controlled the Duke, once he had reached an understanding with us,’ Goshawk remarked quietly.

‘From what I seen,’ muttered Mosca, ‘the Duke din’t have much of an understanding at all.’

Clent cast a beseeching look in Mosca’s direction.

‘The Duke was mad,’ Toke conceded, ‘but we knew where we were with him. This man Blythe is another matter. ’

‘Ah now, I quite understand your concern, but I can assure you that beneath that burly, boorish, black-dog exterior lurks a dapper wit and-’

‘Clent!’ Toke’s voice slammed Clent into silence like a gavel. ‘You have talked quite enough already. I hear from my counterpart here -’ he gestured towards the head of the Locksmiths – ‘that you showed every willingness to join his guild when he caught you listening in on his meeting at the Grey Mastiff. Furthermore, the constables tell me that when you were arrested, you happily answered all their questions about our guild secrets, and a few more they lacked the wits to ask. And finally, there was the letter in which you promised me evidence linking Lady Tamarind Avourlace to the printing press and the Birdcatchers. What if we had arrested her on your word, and then found ourselves explaining to the Duke that our only evidence was a black mark on an apron, blurred beyond recognition by a sojourn in a herring barrel?’ Toke’s mouth closed itself into its cold little V. ‘You may count yourself lucky that my men were able to find evidence of forgery and treason in Lady Tamarind’s chambers. Two letters forged to look like the Twin Queens’ handwriting, and a copy of their signet ring, no less.’

‘Of course it may be argued that the lady’s behaviour is evidence enough,’ Goshawk added.

‘What did she do?’ Mosca could not help asking.

‘She set her crocodile on my men,’ Toke snapped. ‘It shook one man around like a sheaf at threshing, then grabbed a second by the ankle. My man Caveat put a bullet in its skull, but by then the lady had her own pistol to his head, and he was forced to escort her to a fast horse. She could be sipping wine in the Capital by now.’

… sipping pale golden wine with the late light in it, pouting her mouth carefully so that the paint on the lips could not wrinkle, pale and perfect as porcelain, with a snow-white guinea pig on a leash at her feet… Part of Mosca’s heart was glad that Lady Tamarind was still free, though something in her soul still roared with hate like a forest fire.

The head of the Watermen turned to Mosca.

‘That other Birdcatcher.’ His tone was low, almost confidential, as if they were the only people in the room. ‘The one who killed the barge captain. Coldrabble?’

‘Linden Kohlrabi,’ Mosca said quietly. Perhaps it had not been his name at all. She supposed that a Birdcatcher would care nothing for the wrath of his nameday god. Maybe he had put names on and off like gloves.

‘Dead, you said?’

‘Yes.’

The Waterman sat quietly nodding, his eyes on her face. His expression was not unfriendly. After all, what was it to the Watermen who ruled Mandelion? They were river-kings, and the Slye still flowed.

‘We might know more of this Birdcatcher plot if we had the printing press,’ Toke continued. ‘The press that you discovered and concealed from the proper authorities. Do you have anything further to say on this?’

‘I told you.’ Mosca met Toke’s gaze boldly and blackly, without blinking. ‘I sunk it.’

‘Sunk it?’ The head of the Watermen cast a questioning glance at Toke.

‘The raft ’ad these little barrels strapped under the planks, for keepin’ her afloat, I’ve seen the kind of thing b’fore. So when I got scared, with me out in the wilds an’ the press just sittin’ there, full of wickedness, I sharpened a stick an’ poked it in the barrels, an’ they bubbled a lot an’ the river sucked up the raft like a mouthful of dry bread.’

A sigh settled upon the room, a sigh of disappointment mixed with relief.

‘Clent, you will stay here and answer more questions,’ Toke dictated crisply. ‘The girl must be taken away and washed – her skin is an incitement to treason.’

Mosca spent the next two hours being scrubbed red and raw by two muscular matrons until not a trace of Birdcatcher doctrine smudged her skin. Just when she felt there was no skin left, she was bundled back into her stolen olive-green dress and brought out into a corridor, where Clent was waiting amid bags and bundles, fretting the ends of his cravat to feather-wisps. His ears were bright red as if they too had been well scrubbed.

Toke emerged, his parchment-yellow face older than ever beneath his glossy, caramel-coloured wig.

‘You, girl.’

Mosca obediently drew closer.

‘Who was your father?’

‘Quillam Mye.’ Mosca could not help speaking his name with pride, as if she expected everyone to know it.

‘I thought so.’ Toke peered at her. ‘I knew him. I knew him well. Your father had a brilliant mind – I have never known a keener. The hardest thing I ever had to do was to give the order for his books to be burned.’ He barked his laugh. ‘And the second hardest was persuading the Guild that they should not burn him as well as his books. Did he ever mention me?’

Mosca shook her head.

‘During the Years of the Birdcatchers, he was the only man I truly trusted. We worked together, fighting the Birdcatchers. I found new recruits for the Resistance, and he wrote tracts that were circulated in secret, giving the people the hope and courage to rise up against the Birdcatchers.

‘I only found out how wild his opinions were once the Birdcatchers were overthrown. He thought that letting the people worship the Beloved freely again would be only the first step. He had fantastical ideas of letting everyone adopt whatever crazed and treasonous views they pleased, and print their own books without limit. He told me that if the Stationers burned books, we were no better than the Birdcatchers and their shrine-burning.

‘He would not be silent, and he would not flee Mandelion. One half of Mandelion called him a monster, the other half a hero. The Guild disowned him, and the Duke sent men to arrest him for spreading sedition. Do you know what happened? An infatuated mob overpowered the Duke’s men, untethered the horses and pulled the carriage themselves through the streets as if he was a war hero, shouting, “Mye and a Free Voice”.’

Mosca could picture this, but in her imagination her father looked embarrassed and annoyed.

‘The Duke ordered his men to fire into the crowd. Dozens were injured, and ten killed outright. That very night I had Quillam kidnapped, and spirited from Mandelion in my personal carriage. It saved his life, but I did not expect him to thank me for it. I think he would have returned to Mandelion if he had not seen the crowd that followed him falling to the Duke’s muskets that night. He did not appear in Mandelion again, but his books did, each wilder and more seditious than the last. We burned every copy we found, but we couldn’t stop men like your friend Pertellis smuggling them in, or copying them by hand, or learning chapters by rote and teaching them to others.’

Toke stared at her, using the knife of his gaze as if he wanted to prise her apart like a walnut shell.

‘Quillam is dead, isn’t he?’

Mosca nodded.

‘I knew that he had to be. I have not seen a new work by Quillam for four years, and only one thing on earth could have stopped him writing.’ Toke looked briefly annoyed, as if the walnut shell was proving more difficult to open than he expected. ‘Tell me, do you have any brothers?’

‘No, nor sisters neither. I’m all there is of him left.’