Fly By Night

‘My father didn’t believe in the Beloved, but he didn’t believe in the Heart of the Consequence either – he wasn’t a Birdcatcher. Mr…’ Mosca had been about to say, Mr Kohlrabi worshipped him but he’d got him all wrong. But she was not ready to think about Kohlrabi yet. When she thought of his name she felt nothing, but she felt nothing in a way that hurt.

‘No, from what you say your father was an atheist, an out-and-out unbeliever. Atheism will see your head spiked on a church spire just as soon as Birdcatchery.’

Mosca was silent for a few moments.

‘But, Mr Clent,’ she said at last, ‘what if he was right? What if it’s true?’

‘I think we will have to leave the clerics and scholars to decide that.’

‘Why?’ Mosca slowed her pace.

‘Who else should?’ Clent gave her a sideways glance. ‘You perhaps? Ah, I foresee frightful things when you are old enough to work your will on the world. Cathedrals torn down, mention of both the Consequence and the Beloved banned from the common speech, and children brought up to believe in an empty, soulless heaven…’

‘No, I…’ They were passing a cluster of shrines. As she watched, a troop of grateful citizens trooped past the shrines, dropping different thanksgiving offerings before each icon. A biscuit for Goodman Blackwhistle. A mackerel for Goodman Sussuratch. A shiny coin for Goodman Greyglory. The little gods looked so good-humoured, sitting side by side, none of them fighting to have all the worshippers to themselves, and Mosca felt a rush of weary tenderness for the Beloved. It was so different from the cold, inhuman zeal of Kohlrabi. Perhaps, as her father had thought, the Beloved were toys that a childish world needed. Perhaps, too, the world was growing up, and even now was starting to put them aside, affectionately but forever.

‘Beloved are all right,’ she murmured gruffly. ‘Wouldn’t want to go burning ’em.’

‘Not even in the service of truth?’

‘That’s not serving truth!’ Mosca thought back to what she’d already said to Kohlrabi, and tried to make sense of her scattered thoughts. ‘I mean… if I told people what to believe, they’d stop thinking. And then they’d be easier to lie to. And… what if I was wrong?’

‘So… if you may not decide what is true, and the men of letters may not, who may?’

‘Nobody. Everybody.’ Mosca looked up at the windows where the jubilant people of Mandelion swung their bells. ‘Clamouring Hour – that’s the only way. Everybody able to stand up and shout what they think, all at once. An’ not just the men of letters, an’ the lords in their full-bottomed wigs, but the streetsellers an’ the porters an’ the bakers. An’ not just the clever men, but the muddle-headed, and the madmen, and the criminals, an’ the children in their infant gowns, an’ the really, really stupid. All of ’em. Even the wicked, Mr Clent. Even the Birdcatchers.’

‘Confusion, madam. The truth would be drowned out and never heard.’

‘Maybe.’

‘People would close their ears and beg to be told what to think.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Terrible ideas would spread like wildfire from tongue to tongue, and nobody would be able to stop them.’

‘Maybe.’

Clent was right, and Mosca knew it. Words were dangerous when loosed. They were more powerful than cannon and more unpredictable than storms. They could turn men’s heads inside out and warp their destinies. They could pick up kingdoms and shake them until they rattled. And this was a good thing, a wonderful thing… and in her heart Mosca was sure that Clent knew this too. Mosca recalled the words she had heard Pertellis reading to the Floating School – words that she now knew had been written by her father, Quillam Mye.

… there is one thing that is more dangerous than Truth. Those who would try to silence Truth’s voice are more destructive by far…

In Suet Street, currant-scented steam eased through a gash in the diamond-paned window of a baker, lighting a flame in Mosca’s stomach and a concern in her mind.

‘What ’appened to the Cakes, Mr Clent?’

‘She lives and thrives, though I fancy she will be busy for a time, tending to that young admirer of hers until his shoulder recovers.’

… the Cakes piling Carmine’s bedside with cinnamon treats and brandy- apple pies, open treacle pastries covered in flourishes of cream, and all the while wearing the pink-faced, bright- eyed look that made her seem less pert and pointed…

‘What ’bout Mr Pertellis an’ the radicals? They won’t be arrested, will they?’

‘I think not. The radicals have spoken with the guilds, and I fancy an uneasy truce will be struck. Neither side will be happy with it, but Man is born to walk this world in misery.’

‘So… really, the Locksmiths an’ the rest will be taking over the city after all?’

‘Ah no – Blythe and his radicals would never allow that, and at the moment he has the backing of the whole city. And I think even when the hubbub has died down he will do well enough with Pertellis and that alarming ladle-wielding ptarmigan to advise him.’

… Blythe sitting uncomfortably in the Duke’s spire and scowling his way through sheaves of papers, while Pertellis patiently leans over his shoulder to point and explain, and Miss Kitely frowning at a map of Mandelion as if it were the pattern for a smock that needed adjusting for a new owner…

‘Hopewood Pertellis asked a great deal about you while we were in the coffeehouse,’ Clent added in a deliberately casual manner.

‘You didn’t tell him I was dragged out of a burning building by a goose, or kidnapped by gypsies, or any of those things?’

‘I was the model of candour. I told him that you were an inscrutable little animal and never told me anything, but that I believed your parents were dead.’

They were crossing the Ashbridge. Unexpectedly, Clent slowed and halted.

‘Mosca, give me the leash for a moment.’ She obeyed, compelled by the unusual seriousness in his manner. ‘The Guildmasters may have banished us, but their displeasure lies chiefly on my shoulders… and perhaps that of the goose. The truth is, they care little where you go. Pertellis has an interest in your welfare, and if you went to him I have no doubt he would take you in.’

It was true, Mosca felt it. And as if she were riffling the years of her life like the pages of her book, she saw in a very few seconds what would happen and how it would all go. Pertellis’s spring-blue eyes would brighten and he would take her in without hesitation or reproach. Miss Kitely would pick out some clothes for her, and she would find herself taking dictation in the Floating School, then teaching the younger children when it was noticed how well she read. In a hundred quiet little ways she would become trusted, and appreciated, and finally necessary. One day Pertellis would look up at her as she marshalled his library, and he would realize that she was not twelve now, she was twenty. And she would marry him, or someone very like him… as her mother had done.

‘No,’ said Mosca.

‘You have a chance of security here – food, shelter, friends, prospects… books…’

‘No.’ Mosca bit her lip and shook her head firmly. Books no longer seemed quite enough. I don’t want a happy ending, I want more story.

‘Mosca… I am not even certain whither I am wending. What can I offer a secretary but a life of sleeping in hedges, chicken-stealing, and climbing out through midnight windows to avoid paying innkeepers in the morning?’

Nothing, except… loose strands of possibility snaking like maypole ribbons. Roads fringed with russet bracken, roads sparkling with frost, hill roads split with the rising sun, forest roads livid with fallen leaves, the Crystalcourt with its million windows throwing tiaras of rainbow colour upon the floor, ladies with legends of days past embroidered along their trains, wine dark as blackberry juice sipped under a green-fringed canopy, accents as strange as a walking cane worn by another hand, estuaries bold with man-o’-war