Twilight Robbery aka Fly Trap

the keys of his spinet, the other ceasing to drag his bow across the strings of his violin. In spite of their startled paralysis, music could still be clearly heard, and amid it the quavering of an invisible flute and the silvery glissando of an unseen harp. This phantom melody limped on for a few confused bars until the spinet player beat out a panic-stricken tattoo on the back wall with his fist, at which point the sound stumbled to a halt.

‘Sir!’ The violinist was the first to recover. ‘I… We are busy rehearsing, sir!’

‘Oh yes.’ The portly intruder offered him a beatific smile and invited himself into the room. ‘I was rather counting on that.’ He settled himself down on a battered chair and beamed. ‘I hope you will pardon me running you to ground in this irregular fashion, but I have a lifelong passion for the arts. I myself am a poet, but music – ah, music! Without it my soul has no wings. Oh, that I could only understand the way in which talented spirits like yourselves can pluck the very notes from the air…’ He stared about in ecstasy, as though untamed notes were flitting around him like silver fish.

The spinet player attempted a confused, seated half-bow, and the violinist managed a wan smile. Both were making a point of not glancing back at the wall from which the mysterious music had issued.

‘Though I must confess,’ continued the plump intruder in a lower tone, ‘I would be considerably more interested to know how one violin and a spinet can produce five instruments’ worth of melody.’

Both musicians promptly stammered and went crimson, which was more and at the same time less eloquent than they evidently intended.

‘Yes, I saw you perform at the mayor’s house a couple of nights ago. I daresay that in the better circles it is terribly bad form to notice that you two gentlemen are the only members of your troupe actually playing… and yet somehow managing to sound like a five-piece orchestra. Talking of manners, I have quite forgotten mine.’ The stranger pulled off his glove and held out his hand, so that his unbranded right palm was clearly visible. ‘Eponymous Clent.’

Recovering a little, the musicians each shook Clent’s hand, still regarding him warily.

‘I can guess how it happened.’ Clent’s narrowed eyes gleamed like parings from a silver coin. ‘The whole orchestra was made up of dayfolk, am I right? And then over time some of you were reclassified and sent into the night? And since then you have been rehearsing and performing in places where the walls are thin enough that your nightling brethren’s instruments can be heard as well as your own?’ He looked meaningfully towards the back wall, the one against which the spinet player had knocked his signal. From somewhere beyond it there was a stifled sneeze, and a muffled ‘hush’.

The two musicians glanced at one another. Then the violinist gave a small and rueful nod.

‘So you pay some day friends a few pennies to pose with instruments when you perform,’ continued Clent, ‘and most people do not notice, and the few that do turn a blind eye to it. Of course they do. If they did not, then they would have to go without decent music. Now, I am sorry to breach etiquette in this fashion, but the moment I thought about your position properly I realized one important thing.’ Clent leaned forward and dropped his voice. ‘The whole orchestra simply had to meet up from time to time, in a place where you could hear one another. How else would you rehearse, or discuss where you would be performing next? And -’ he raised his voice a little, glancing towards the back wall – ‘if I could only interrupt such a rehearsal, I would have a way of getting a message to somebody in the night town. This is something I must do – as soon as possible.

‘Trust is always a gamble, is it not, my dear fellows? Particularly with a stranger. Can you trust me? Can I trust you? It seems I must. This is a matter of life, death and… remuneration.’

This last word brought a glimmer of light to the musicians’ eyes, and the violinist recovered the use of his voice. ‘Re… remuneration? What kind of remuneration?’

‘Well -’ Clent spread his hands – ‘I fear I have no actual money, but nonetheless I suggest we go and visit some of the town’s better shops. Strangely enough, since it became known that I was staying with the mayor, I have had no trouble acquiring credit throughout town. My dear fellow, money is no substitute for the right kind of friend…’

There was one more conversation that Clent needed, but before he sought it out he took certain pains. He obtained the services of a barber, ‘borrowed’ a cloth rose from a milliner by claiming he wished to compare it for colour to his new waistcoat and pounded some of the dust out of his coat. Hence when he met with Mistress Bessel in the pleasure garden he had all the extra dapperness that haste, eloquence and no money could apply.

She smiled at his flower, with the even smile of one who knows where their purse and wits are, thank you very much, and does not intend to be distracted into losing track of either.

‘I gather that your inestimable qualities have made a considerable impression on a certain esteemed gentleman,’ Clent remarked pleasantly. ‘I should doubtless shoot myself through broken-heartedness, or perhaps shoot him – I am yet to decide which would have greater romantic flourish.’

Mistress Bessel’s smile thinned and her eyebrows raised.

‘Yes… I gather he is particularly impressed by your courage in the face of bereavement,’ Clent continued, finding fascination in his own fingertips. ‘Out of interest, what did your husband die of this time?’

Mistress Bessel bristled like a fat ginger cat with a trodden tail. ‘Eponymous Clent! Have you said anything to the mayor to sour the jam?’

‘No. No, Jen, I would not dream of spoiling any tale of yours.’ Clent gave her a brief glance in which there was enough affection that the spoonful of sadness was almost lost in the mix. ‘Ah, winter is coming, and we cold birds must all feather our nests as best we can, must we not, Jenny-wren?’

The nickname won a small smile from his companion, and something crumpled in her face, making her look both younger and older.

‘And there are few enough feathers to go round,’ she admitted. ‘The mayor says he might need a housekeeper. And take that look off your face, Eponymous Clent! I said a housekeeper.’

‘If you say so, then be it so. And… if in time the mayor should decide to marry his housekeeper…’

‘Then what would you have her do?’ Mistress Bessel demanded crisply. ‘Spit in his eye?’

There was a long pause, during which Clent twirled his false flower between his fingers. ‘No,’ he said at last, placing the flower into her hand. ‘No. You should take everything fine that can be squeezed out of this bitter little life. And I will aid you any way I can. Friends scratch one another’s backs, do they not?’

‘Hold hard – are those the words of a man with an itchy back?’ Mistress Bessel’s brow darkened. ‘I knew it! You want something from me!’

‘A trifle, a morsel, a mere nothing.’ Clent’s hands danced before him, pinching the air into minuscule gobbets. ‘But, ah, an important nothing. You, my dear, are currently a light in the mayor’s darkness, the warm hearth to which he gratefully creeps after the cruelties of life. And if he values you as he seems to, doubtless he takes you into his confidence and gives you the run of the house…’ He trailed off and gave a small shrug. ‘He trusts you, you trust me and the world is richer for the benison of trust.’

‘Ha!’ Mistress Bessel gave a scornful laugh, though her gaze was less barbed than her tone as she pinned the flower to her dress. “Richer”, is it? So is that your pretty way of asking where the mayor keeps his silver? You are a scheming black-hearted dog, Eponymous.’

‘No, dear Jen, not this time.’ Clent’s tone was unusually serious. ‘Believe it or not, I have good reasons for asking this of you. There is a spy in the mayor’s household, and you are better placed to track them down than I. But for the Beloved’s sake be wary – we are playing a game of secrets against very dangerous opponents…’

The sun sank in blood, and all over Toll shadows stretched like waking cats. A bugle sounded. Night swept through the town on chimes of silver. A second bugle sounded. The last true daylight departed the sky, leaving only a bruise of luminosity over the west. The doors of Toll-by-Night opened.

Since an hour before dusk Mosca had been awake. In fact, ‘awake’ was too weak a term. She felt as if she was full of ingrowing spikes of apprehension, like an inside-out hedgehog.

It made her restless, and restless was a very bad idea in a corridor-room as narrow and cluttered as that in which the Leaps lived. Mistress Leap had told her to stay still and touch nothing, and she thought she was staying still and touching nothing, but somehow she managed to fidget a warming pan off a wall-hook, and a stack of fire irons on to the floor. She even elicited a small hiss from Saracen, who had contrarily chosen this time to settle down to sleep.

The sound of the bugle filled her with terror and relief.

‘Mistress Leap! We got to go – the men I told you of, they’ll be waiting by the Twilight Gate! And if we don’t find ’em, then five to one somebody else will.’ Unable to bear inactivity any more, Mosca was on her feet, pulling on her basket-hat and clogs.