Mosca bit her lip. If the young chocolate-smuggler had already gained the attention of the Locksmiths, then avoiding her sounded like an even better idea.
‘But you know of Brand Appleton?’ she asked. ‘You know where we can find him?’
‘I have a notion. They say he is found at the Bludgeoncourt whenever it is held. But if we go there to look for him… we strike against the second problem. The court is run by the local Beadles – if I take you there, I shall have to bring you before them to let them know that you are staying with me, and in their “parish”.’
‘The… Beadles?’ Mosca was a little surprised to hear that the ominous neighbourhood had law enforcers other than the Locksmiths.
‘Yes. The Sapler’s Yard Beadles, to be precise. They look after this part of town, from Dreg Lane to Muller’s Square. On behalf of…
‘There’s them ’mongst the Locksmiths might recognize my name if it was given to ’em,’ Mosca muttered a little grimly, thinking of Goshawk. Would he remember her name? Would the King of the Ghosts really recall a thin and weaselly twelve-year-old girl of no account? But she had looked him in the face, and Aramai Goshawk had unforgetting eyes. ‘I’m not so keen to be handing my name out to their pets – and I can scarce give ’em a false one, can I?’
‘No, that is rather what I thought.’ The midwife busied herself pulling down boxes from her highest shelves. ‘The third problem is that your dreadful Mr Skellow knows you by sight. We need to disguise you. Fortunately -’ she smiled – ‘I think I have a ruse which will solve all three problems.’
The midwife had a very soothing smile and an extremely persuasive manner. That was the only way Mosca could explain the fact that five minutes later she found herself bathing in what looked and felt a lot like warm gravy.
It was, Mistress Leap explained, a dye made from a mixture of different lichens and leaves, with a few dried blackberries for good measure.
‘Really we should pop some embers under the bath,’ muttered the midwife as she dabbed some of the dye sediment on to Mosca’s face and neck. ‘It always helps to simmer the mix when I’m dying wool-’
‘Mistress Leap, I don’t want to be simmered!’ Mosca already felt a lot like the prime ingredient for orphan stew, and the little blackberries bobbing against her knees did not lessen this impression.
‘Oh, as you please. We can paste it on, and you should come out a lovely oak colour. I think we might say you are from… one of those wild distant places where they wear sequinned boots and eat camel brains? The Peccadilloes? Or the deserts of Seisia? If they think you speak only foreign babblish, then nobody can expect you to give your name.’
When Mistress Leap was satisfied that Mosca was as dyed as she was going to be, she made her stand behind a screen to dry, then the creation of the Seisian costume began. After quarter of an hour of experimentation, Mosca stood awaiting Mistress Leap’s judgement, trying to see herself reflected in the other’s expression.
‘Well… now that we’ve covered it with the cravat,’ the midwife began slowly, ‘I think the willow basket works quite well as a head-dress. Particularly with the feathers. And the shawl looks much more exotic with those beads sewn to it. The main problem is that your face is a little… well, I was aiming for an oaken colour. It’s just a bit more… oak
‘I’m green?’ Mosca gasped.
‘Oh, only a little bit. And Seisians might be green, mightn’t they? I have never met any. Let us hope nobody else has either. Now – those shoes – should we replace them with something more soft and floppy?’
‘I reckon I’ll keep these,’ Mosca answered grimly. ‘Sounds like I might need to do a lot of running.’
Welter listened to his wife’s account of their plan with the air of a man regarding a waiting gallows. ‘Remember later that I said it would all come to disaster,’ he muttered, and shambled off to his workshop.
‘Do not mind him,’ whispered his wife. ‘He has a fine mind, that is all, and needs challenges – being cooped up with me all day and most of the night was bound to wear out his temper. I did so hope that when they started mending the Tower Clock they would call on him, since he is the best clockworker in town, but the Locksmiths brought people in from outside instead, and the poor dear has been sulking ever since.’
Mosca could not help feeling that the ‘poor dear’ might have a point about the likelihood of disaster. Having tasted Toll-by-Night’s moonlit stew of murder, menace, treachery and pursuit, she had fallen wildly in love with the six shabby bolts that held the door shut and the danger out. Her new regalia did not make her feel any better about venturing out either. There was no help for it however. Time was not on their side, and unlike Mistress Leap she could at least recognize Skellow.
‘Tsk, nothing to worry about,’ Mistress Leap said vaguely as she put on her shawl. ‘Murderers get bored terribly easily, I hear, so I am sure the ones chasing us have run off to be murderous somewhere else now. Besides, if I worried about
‘My goose…’ Mosca hesitated at the door. ‘If I leave him here… nobody will sell ’im or eat ’im, will they?’
‘What, after he guarded our doorstep from cut-throats?’ Mistress Leap tutted. ‘Certainly not!’
Goodman Varple, Drinking Partner of the Thief and Vagabond
Stars were now scattered across the sky, as if the white-faced moon had grown bored waiting for something to happen and started spitting gleaming fruit pips.
The streets no longer had the same desolate emptiness. Although the lanes did not throng the way they did by day, muffled figures could be seen hurrying about their business, some with baskets over their arms.
‘This is the busiest time of night,’ murmured Mistress Leap. The first hour or two after dusk are dangerous – most ordinary folks stay inside to avoid running into the Jinglers, or those who prey on newcomers. But now and for a couple of hours everybody scurries about their business quick as they can, before the worst of the cold sets in. Now, keep a tight hold on the knot of my apron with both hands – that way nobody can pluck you away without me knowing.’
This was more necessary than it sounded, for Mosca’s guide proved to be capable of a fearsomely brisk turn of speed. And, Mosca could not help noticing, people did seem to get out of Mistress Leap’s way. Furthermore, they seemed to do so ungrudgingly. A few even gave her a glance and a nod – a curt, quick nod like a sparrow pecking apart a cherry, but a nod nonetheless. The midwife appeared to be a recognized figure.
However, the crowds all the while maintained their mouse-tense hush, their air of urgency. Fear. There was a reek of it everywhere, Mosca realized, in every guarded glance or falsely friendly backslap. A clammy smell, like rotten leaves. And everybody went about their lives in spite of it, because fear was part of their lives.
Flying out behind the midwife like a set of coat tails, Mosca was dragged through slick, clenched alleys, then roofed passages where she briefly exchanged a black-and-silver world for one of rusty shadows and the murky, flickering gold of spitting rushlights and lanterns. At last they came to a halt in the street so suddenly that Mosca flattened her long nose on the midwife’s muslin-clad back, leaving a dark green smudge.
Ahead the street widened to make space for three bare trees, around the base of which were arranged makeshift tents, so that the trees looked like gangly, stiff-backed women with voluminous canvas skirts. Drawing closer, Mosca could see that the tent-cloths were a tattered patchwork of scraps and rags, sailcloth and burlap and leather and linen and blankets, many sporting watermarks and mould rosettes. In one tent she saw a rail of dead rooks, tethered upside down by their feet, in another drab heaps of Grabely wool.
It was a sort of market, and Mosca experienced a throb of relief at the sense of familiarity. Here at least the dreadful hush was less absolute, and there were even raised voices, cries of wares.
‘Owl soup!’ To one side a weedy fire bowed beneath the breeze as it struggled to do service to a dozen pots and cauldrons, which rattled their lids and chuckled steam. ‘Robin and beechnut!’
‘Moss!’ came another call. ‘Dry as a miser’s eye!’ And, yes, there did indeed seem to be a great heap of dried moss, brown and tousled like spaniel hair. More surprisingly, a small crowd had gathered around it. Others were
