Twilight Robbery aka Fly Trap

needed to sprint for the chimney. If his wits were twisted, could he be dangerous?

‘So – what you doing up here?’ she asked, as quietly and steadily as she could.

‘Luck,’ he muttered in a distracted way. Mosca glanced at him sharply, hoping that he might betray himself with a glance towards the mysterious Luck. He did not. His angular, trembling hands were busy, shaking out a chequered rug and arranging some of the wooden Beloved upon it.

‘For Luck? Did your family put you in here because…’ Mosca hesitated.

… because you were broken-witted and they hoped the Luck would cure you…

‘Here.’ The boy pushed a heap of Beloved towards Mosca. ‘You play this now. You have night, I have day. I want to try the new rules.’

Only when her strange host started pointing out where on the rug she should place ‘her’ Beloved did Mosca understand what he was doing. He had divided the statues into the Beloved that gave daylight names and the ones linked to night-time names. Now he was laying them out like game pieces on the squares of the checked rug.

Playing games with Beloved icons? I fancy the priests would have a thing or two to say about that…

He explained the rules, gabbling some parts in his excitement. Mosca watched him narrowly, cupping Palpitattle in her hands, her wits snicking against each other like sharpening knives.

‘So this is a game?’ Mosca chewed her cheek. ‘Ought to be a prize really, then, shouldn’t there? Anything here worth using as a prize? What’s the most valuable thing here?’

Ah! There it was at last. A small telltale gesture. Her host’s hand crept up and came to rest near his own collarbone.

‘What is it?’ Mosca pursued her advantage. ‘Can I see it? Is it a locket?’

The youth shook his head, wide-eyed, then beamed and tapped at his own chest.

‘What? Where? What is it? Oh.’ Mosca slumped and wiped her face with both hands, leaving a cage-work of soot smudges across her brow. ‘Oh, beechnuts. It’s you, isn’t it? You’re the Luck.’

‘Protector-of-the-walls-guardian-against-disaster.’ The boy’s smile was beatific. ‘I was born under Goodman Lilyflay, He Who Makes Things Whole and Perfect – and so I have a name full of getting-things-right and just-as-it- should-be. The finest, brightest, luckiest name in Toll.’

‘Might ’ave guessed,’ sighed Mosca bitterly. ‘You couldn’t jus’ be a glass cup, could you?’ She sized up the bemused-looking Luck, peered appraisingly at the little hearth, then shook her head wearily. ‘I’d have had a better chance with a bunch of peacocks,’ she muttered. ‘So – what is this brilliant name of yours, Master Luck?’

‘Paragon,’ came the answer, laced with quiet pride.

The word was slightly familiar. ‘Is that like a hexagon?’

‘No!’ He looked angry, and very confused. ‘Paragon is a… an ideal example. It’s… perfect.’

Mosca sniffed at perfection. Perfection had no pulse and no heart.

‘Funny kind of a name.’

‘It is the best name in the town!’ The Luck looked aghast. ‘That is why I was chosen. My parents were night- dwellers, but I was born to higher things, born worthy of the brightest of noonday names. And… and now I stay here and keep the town safe, and hold off disease, and stop the bridge falling into the Langfeather.’ A look of feverish eagerness came into Paragon’s eyes. ‘You come from… out there, do you not? Have you seen my bridge? What do you think of it? Is it as grand and fine as they say?’

‘What? Have you not seen it yourself?’ Mosca stared with new eyes at the little bed, the scraped crockery. ‘How long have you been in here?’

‘Since I was three years old, when the last Luck died. Twelve years and three months and two days.’

‘Twelve years! ’ Mosca briefly forgot to speak quietly, but fortunately the words choked in her throat.

‘Night moves first.’ The Luck had returned his attention to the game. ‘Your move, Soot-girl.’ He looked up at her, face flushed and animated, undisguised entreaty in his eyes. Still stunned, Mosca picked up Goodlady Jabick, moved her to an adjoining square as he had shown her and saw a look of utter bliss pass over her companion’s face.

Twelve years. Twelve years with nothing to do but chew the ends of his hair and invent games, elaborate games of gods with rules that Mosca could barely remember from one moment to the next but which the Luck knew as well as his own fingernails. As they played, his speech became faster and sharper, explaining the mistakes she had made and helping her to find better moves.

Before long, Mosca was facing a terrible truth. The Luck was not a simpleton or a madman. He was clever, and his mind was starving.

‘Do you never go out?’ she could not help asking.

‘No.’ His face drooped. ‘I am too precious. But… they send me tutors sometimes, or papers for me to make my mark on them. And when the clock is working I have charge of the Beloved images -’ he waved a hand at his game pieces – ‘and put the right ones in the wheel each day, for I have a wondrous memory and nobody else is fit to handle them.’

‘But…’ Mosca was still choking on the whole idea. ‘You never get to tread on grass, or see the sky, or… or run? This town is mad as moth soup! Nothing but a great big prison. Some of the cells are nicer than others, that’s all. Precious? You’re a prisoner, like everybody else here. Protect the town, do you? Save its people, do you? Then wave your wand, and magic us all somewhere better.’

The Luck had dropped his gaze and would not look at her, instead stroking at one of the Beloved game pieces as if it was a pet. She was shouting at the wrong person.

Mosca sighed. ‘Not your fault, you big mooncalf.’ By her standards it was almost an apology. ‘How can you know what it’s like out there, with people starving and terrified, half of them ready to sell their own souls to get out of this stinking town? But what about you?’ She felt an unwilling sting of pity. ‘Do you never want to get out of here yourself? Run alongside streams, gaze your fill at the stars?’

The Luck’s face went slack with uncertainty and longing. Perhaps the weight of the stone walls about him had not after all smothered his ability to dream. He was silent for a time, picking at one frayed buttonhole, then his head drooped.

‘I cannot. I am needed. I am… I am the saviour. Protector of the town.’ He clasped his hands together and squirmed his fingers. ‘I am lucky,’ he quavered, defiant but anguished.

Mosca looked around the windowless cell, the person-shaped dent worn into the bed’s mattress, the chest full of undersized clothes.

‘You don’t look too blinkin’ lucky to me,’ she muttered.

Mosca’s return climb was no easier than the first, and a good deal more despondent. The Luck seemed ready to wail with anguish when she tried to leave, and the only way she could make him hush was to promise that she would return or send a friend to talk to him. She knew all too well that she would never be able to keep this promise, and was left with a bitter taste of more than soot.

By the time the dawn bugle had sounded, Mosca was back in her cell and had rubbed the worst of the soot off her face, hair and arms. Her dress covered the dark smudges on her chemise and breeches. A quick swab around cleared up the worst of the soot and ash that had tumbled into the hearth.

Another night with no sleep, and nothing gained. Soon she would have to tell Mistress Bessel that she did not have the Luck. That the Luck was not something that could be conveniently tucked into a pocket or a sleeve. That the Luck was a desperately lonely youth a few hiccups from manhood, raised since his infant years in a room sealed from the world, a room that might as well be an oubliette.

Mistress Bessel would not like that. And Mosca was not at all sure she liked it herself.

Goodlady Nizlemander, Winnower of the Chaff from the Grain

Mistress Bessel arrived a little after breakfast time, or what would have been breakfast time if Mosca had had