Twilight Robbery aka Fly Trap

her fingers and sprinted to join the gaggle clustered about the auctioneer.

The auctioneer had just time to snatch one last paper as the candle flame flared, buckled and died, leaving a faint quill of smoke trailing from its wick.

‘Done! Last bid before the death of the candle…’ The auctioneer unfolded the paper in his hands. ‘… fifteen guineas… sold to Guest Seventy-one.’ A runner trotted over and placed a small wooden token on the desk before Skellow.

The pressure from the knifepoint diminished, and Mosca let out a long breath of relief. The next moment, however, Skellow had taken her by the collar again and tugged her into whisper-range.

‘Write down exactly what I tell you,’ he hissed through the double layer of cloth. ‘You write a word awry and I’ll spike you.’

Mosca nodded and listened, her quill poised.

Dear sir,

You are recommended me on account the Auctioneers say you have a name good enough for daylight. We are wanting you about a matter of a gentleman in the town of Toll who would marry the daughter of the mayor but for the difficulties put in his way by her family who are not being amiable on account of some damage recently done to his good name. And it have been put to him that sometimes the course of true love does not run smooth but needs help, and sometimes a few coins changing hands and a bit of sword-work like. And if you please I would meet with you at the old bastle house on Moordrick’s Fell tonight to discuss how we can come by the lady and have her all safely wedded before she or her family can make any trouble about it. It is best that we discuss it there for it shall be devilish tricky to meet inside Toll. If I do not see you at the bastle house however I shall look for you just after Toll’s dusk bugle in Brotherslain Walk the day after tomorrow. And with this letter you will find moneys for paying of the toll and living comfortable in the city.

Rabilan Skellow

This was the letter that was dictated to Mosca. However, it must be confessed that it was not quite the letter she wrote. That letter, while similar in many respects, was a bit longer and a lot more creative.

Barely five minutes later, a response was brought by one of their black-hooded hosts.

Dear Mr Scragface Pimplenose,

Many thanks for your eloquent epistle. I am sure you cannot possbly be as grotesquely ugly as you claim, and I look forward to making your acquaintance. I always say that a man who can laugh at himself is a man worth knowing.

Your star-crossed lovers sound quite charming, and / would be delighted to help.

One little superstition of mine I hope you will indulge. I never meet with perfect strangers bastle houses or alarmingly named alleyways at twilight. This trifling quirk I developed shortly after acquiring a large number of enemies. I would therefore purpose that, instead of meeting at either of the places you suggest, we meet at nine of the clock by the stocks in Lower Pambrick on goodlady Joljock’s Morn. I shall be wearing a Fainsnow Lily pinned to my pocket.

Your faithful servant

Mosca let her black eyes dart from line to line, then she glanced up at the ominous outline that was Skellow, his pale amber eyes glowing softly through the holes in his mask.

‘I’m not reading this to you,’ she hissed, ‘until I got some certainty that I’m gettin’ out of all this alive.’

‘What? You…’ Skellow winced at the sound of his own voice and looked about nervously, but his squawk of indignation seemed to have gone unnoticed.

The auctioneer appeared to be starting the next auction. ‘Now, we have on sale the services of a lady who has made her name in one of the quick-fingered professions…’ A black-masked messenger had materialized next to Skellow’s desk with the air of one waiting to tidy it. Skellow rose, yanking Mosca to her feet.

‘Outside,’ he spat.

Mosca tensed as they left the cave, looking for a chance to pull her arm loose and sprint to the cold and rain- sodden freedom of the moors. Skellow seemed to have read her mind, however, and kept a cruel grip on her until they were surrounded by his friends once more. A sharp shove sent Mosca back against the rocky face, and she found herself ringed by a set of very damp men who appeared to be losing their sense of humour.

‘Read it!’ Skellow thrust the letter towards her. ‘Or…’ He was no longer making any attempt to hide the knife in his other hand.

‘Or what? You’ll kill me?’ Mosca made fists in an attempt to stop her arms shaking. ‘If you want me to read this letter, I’ll need to be alive.’

‘Yes,’ said Skellow through his teeth, ‘but you won’t need your thumbs.’

There was a small pause during which Mosca realized exactly how fond she was of her thumbs, and considered the many things she would be unable to do without them. These included untying knots and slipping keys out of enemies’ pockets. Biting her lip so hard that it hurt, she snatched the letter back out of his hand.

‘All right,’ she said sullenly, then lowered her eyes to the page again and started to speak.

Occasionally her black gaze would creep up for a furtive glance at the lean, dripping faces of her captors. Did they suspect that the words on the page in front of her were not quite the words she was speaking? No, she thought not.

After she had finished reading, Skellow stood in silence for a while, chewing the inside of his cheek.

‘So – our Romantic Facilitator cannot come to the bastle house tonight, but is happy to meet with me in Brotherslain Walk like I suggested?’

‘Happy as a mouse in a marmalade jar.’ Mosca gritted her teeth and fought to keep her gaze bold and unblinking. If Skellow sensed the lie in her words, he showed no sign of it.

‘All right, then.’ Skellow gave a tick of tongue against teeth. ‘Come on, my boys. We’re leaving.’

Once again, the involuntary scribe found herself bound and bundled, bouncing along on the back of the same wet horse. She tried to twist her hands out of their bonds, but the cold and damp made everything harder and the chafing ropes burned like a brand of ice.

There is no way of measuring time that is filled with nothing but darkness and knocks and cold and the rain’s unending drum roll. This might be the last thing I ever know, was the thought that went around and around Mosca’s head, stretching each heartbeat to an eternity as if her frightened spirit was trying to draw the marrow out of every painful moment and live as hard as it could while it still could. She could not even hope for the ordeal to end, for how could it end well? What was she now? A tool that had served its purpose. Worse still, a tool that could talk.

She felt a tickle against her fingers and reflexively clutched at the bracelet tangled in the cords binding her wrists. The three carved totems that dangled from it were images of the Little Goodkin, the skeletal children said to protect any child endangered and lost in the darkness. Another child would have been chanting Fenfenny, friends defend me, and finding comfort in the rhyme. But Mosca had emptied her darkness of comforting imagined faces, and such words were hollow to her. She clutched at the bracelet because it had been a gift from a coffeehouse mistress named Miss Kitely in a precarious moment and still warmed her with a memory of friendship, but even this was small consolation.

At last the horse slowed and she was dragged off its back. The sack was yanked from her face, and she found that the world had become a darker place than before. Mosca was set on her feet, and her clogless foot instantly sank into cold, wet mud.

Through the clinging mask of her wet hair she could just about see that the horses had been tethered outside a bleak-looking farmhouse set alone on the moorland. It was built from large rough-hewn stones and its arrow-slit windows were chips of darkness. There were two doors, one set at ground level, one ten feet above the earth with a wooden ladder leading up to it.

Mosca knew that this must be the ‘bastle house’ mentioned in Skellow’s letter. A bastle house was a farmhouse designed to be its own little bastion. It was always dangerous to live near a border, what with the risk of invading armies, or raiding parties sneaking across to steal cattle or whatever else they could get their hands upon. The problem with the Realm, of course, was that it was full of borders. Decades before, it had splintered into smaller allegiances, each proclaiming the rights of a different absent claimant to the throne. Nowadays there was less fear of invasion, but along the borders buildings like this remained, some now derelict,