Twilight Robbery aka Fly Trap

issued from the belly of the clock, and Jayblister receded jerkily into the darkness, to be replaced by the Goodlady Sylphony, made unmistakable by her pink-gold wings and long honey-dipping nose. Yes, she realized dizzily, this would be about the time that the hours sacred to Jayblister yielded to those devoted to Sylphony. Perhaps all the Beloved were hidden in miniature inside that great clock, waiting for their turn to waltz out and smile benignly over this sun-blessed city.

It took a moment or two for Mosca’s dazzled eyes and mind to adjust and see the cracks in the stonework, the many blank and boarded windows. Not a real city, she reminded herself. Not like Mandelion. Just a fat little tick of a town sucking money out of travellers and swelling up all proud. But, she admitted grudgingly to herself, as towns went, Toll did look passing fair right there and then, under the sun.

However, her gaze was soon drawn to the badges worn by every passer-by. A very few had coloured visitors’ badges like the ones she and Clent had been given, and a couple of these were of dark wood like hers. The vast majority, however, were plain-bordered residents’ badges, and these were all of light-coloured wood. The picture on every brooch was different, and she started to make guesses at what each meant. There went a sickle, representing Goodman Uzzleglean, He Who Keeps the Harvesting Tools Sharp. That was the face of a pig, standing for Goodlady Prill, Protector of Pigs. Grey-glory, Upperfit, Syropia… barely a Beloved among them who was not considered auspicious.

Now at last she started to understand why Skellow’s letter had spoken of his Romantic Facilitator having a name ‘good enough for daylight’. People with day names didn’t have to be born by day; they just had to be born under a ‘good’ Beloved.

Everyone who glanced at the fly on Mosca’s own badge would know in an instant that she was born under Goodman Palpitattle, the grinning godling of bitter, buzzing things. She had a bad name, in short. Or to use Kenning’s word, a ‘night’ name. If she had not been a visitor, she would not have seen this street in daylight at all.

Yes, Toll was passing fair in the light of the sun, but she had a shrewd idea that for any who saw it by night it would be anything but fair.

Goodlady Sylphony, Queen of Butterflies

Names were important. You carried your name like a brand. You never lied about it, for fear of angering the god under which you were born.

In theory, there were no unlucky Beloved. All of them had their place in the world, and even those who munched head lice or inspired the artistry of spiders’ webs were useful and to be praised. However, the fact was that some Beloved were seen as luckier, brighter, more trustworthy, more generous, more worthy, and so were those born under them.

As a child of Palpitattle, Mosca was used to seeing noses wrinkle and gazes chill when she admitted to her name. Palpitattle’s job was to keep the flies in order and out of mischief, but this he could do because he was a fly, the emperor of flies. The thinly veiled loathing she was sensing now, however, was something new.

The more devoutly someone worshipped the Beloved, the more seriously they took the lore of names, and the more severe the reaction. Looking around at the Beloved faces carved into every timber beam, and the painted Beloved in the Clock Tower, Mosca could see that the people of Toll took the Beloved very seriously indeed.

‘Let’s go warn this plump heiress, grab the reward and get out of this spittle-kettle,’ she growled.

‘It is true, dispatch is of the essence,’ muttered Clent as he surveyed the crowds. ‘We are a few steps ahead of your friend Skellow for now, thanks to your ingenuity in sending his Romantic Facilitator astray. However… we have received repeated warnings to be off the streets by dusk. Let us strive to have our business finished by then.’

After finding an inn, and reserving a room by flourishing the documents given to them by the Committee of the Hours, Clent, Mosca and Saracen set off to track down the imperilled heiress. Fortunately this proved to be relatively easy. The mere mention of ‘the mayor’s daughter’ brought gleaming smiles to the faces of the guards at the Clock Tower.

‘Ah, you’ll mean his adopted daughter, Miss Beamabeth Marlebourne! Oh, we all know of her, thank you, sir. She’s the Peach of Toll, the Perfectest Peony. Mayor Marlebourne’s family live in old judge’s lodgings, up in the castle courtyard.’ A vague gesture to the north. ‘Ask anyone as you go, they’ll all know where to send you.’

And indeed they did.

‘Ah, you’re going to speak with Miss Marlebourne? Then I envy you, sir, for she is the finest sight within Toll’s walls. Seeing her, you’ll think the Beloved made a person out of honeysuckle…’

‘Miss Beamabeth Marlebourne? Sweetest creature on ten toes. Smile like a spring day. Yes, just take this alley to the end, and you’ll see the brocade curtains she’s hung at her windows, bless her…’

Toll, tucked tight within its walls, had solved the problem of room by building upwards, and cramming as much as it could into a tiny space. Shops were stacked above shops, each with little wooden boardwalks in front of them for wares to sprawl. Some of these walkways even bridged the narrow streets, creating covered alleyways. Mosca soon got used to the creak of clogged and booted feet overhead. There was a smell too, which came as a shock after the chill, clear air of the open meadows, the stifling reek of a lot of people living close together – unwashed clothes, ginslops, last week’s mutton, chamber-pot throwings.

Toll was a hill town, and all its streets knew it. They were a hodgepodge of cobbled ramps, upwards zigzags, sudden flights of brick steps and abrupt drops. By the time Clent and Mosca reached the central plaza, Mosca was out of breath again, and completely, utterly out of patience with the catalogue of Beamabeth Marlebourne’s charms.

The name itself was a bitter pill. Mosca had been born on the cusp between Beloveds, barely half an hour into the eve ruled by Palpitattle. It was an open secret that her nursemaid had suggested that her father pretend she was born a little earlier, under the deeply auspicious Goodman Boniface, He Who Sends the Sun’s Rays to Bless the Earth. And if her father had listened, if he had been an ordinary man instead of a meticulous monster with a mind like a guillotine, right now Mosca would not be Mosca. She would be a ‘child of the Sun’, with a name like Aurora, or Solina… or Beamabeth.

Every time Beamabeth’s name was mentioned, faces lit up as though reflecting some distant radiance. All this love could have been hers. And what had Mosca’s life been as a child of Palpitattle, but a long string of attempts by the world to swat her? Irrationally, Mosca began to feel that this Beamabeth had stolen her name.

By the time they reached the castle grounds, the sun was dipping towards the horizon. Mosca, who had never seen a real castle before, felt some disappointment as she surveyed the ragged line of its perimeter wall and its roofless, lightless towers. The castle was certainly very large, and must have been magnificent many centuries before, but it had been bested by time. The sky had found a thousand ways in, and the turrets had traded their pennants for pigeons.

In the castle’s inner courtyard a market was breaking up with some dispatch, hawkers stacking teetering barrows with bow-headed urgency. One young chicken escaped its crate and, to Mosca’s surprise, its owner stared after for the only the merest moment of indecision before deciding to rattle her goods away instead of chasing it.

The judge’s house was attached to the inside of the castle’s perimeter wall and built of the same bristling grey flint. This was a much younger building, with high gables, perhaps a century old, and here at least the wink of firelight was visible through its stained-glass panes.

‘At last.’ Clent halted at the oaken door and pulled down the frayed hem of his waistcoat. ‘Now, child, let us bring warning to this poor-’

‘Rich,’ corrected Mosca.

‘To this affluent but imperilled girl,’ finished Clent. ‘And do try not to scowl as if you have lemon juice running through your veins, child.’

Mosca settled for stony instead of bitter as Clent rapped the knocker. A few moments later the door opened to