Twilight Robbery aka Fly Trap

‘How…?’ Mosca trailed off and left the word to fend for itself. There were so many questions it could begin. How do you know about the letter drop? How did you know I was going there? How did you happen to be here at all? How did you spot the spy? But all these questions paled in comparison to one other: How do I know I can trust you? It was this unasked question that the stranger chose to answer.

‘Eponymous Clent sends his greetings to you and your winged warzone.’ Staring into the darkness, Mosca could now just make out two large eyes, the dark line of a moustache and neatly cropped sideburns. ‘I do hope that means more to you than it does to me.’

It did. ‘Winged warzone’ was just one of Clent’s many tender terms for Saracen, usually uttered in a tone of long-suffering despair. It was not a phrase that many would use.

‘Might do,’ she admitted.

‘Delighted to hear it. Your friend Mr Clent wanted us to warn you that the letter drop was compromised – betrayed, in fact. He believes that somebody in the mayor’s household is spying for the…’ He glanced about him, before mouthing the last word of the sentence. Locksmiths. ‘Now, can I suggest we go somewhere else, and quickly? If we loiter about on a night like this, we are likely to catch our death. Worse… our death might catch us.’

Goodlady Quinnet, Friend of the Willing Pupil

Mosca followed her new guide back along the wall, but kept a distance of three paces between them. She had learned to look every gift horse in the mouth. After all, it was amazing how many of them bit.

When they crossed moon splashes, she took advantage of the instant to examine her companion. He was slightly below average height, deft-gestured and dapper, despite the fact that his tailcoat was more of a collage than a garment, patches of dark wool, leather, linen and curtain fabric nestling in bewildered proximity. Two large, expressive dark eyes kept a watch on the rooftops and corners.

‘Hey!’ She risked a whisper. ‘I got to go to the Twilight Gate. There’s -’

She halted, her mouth still poised to shape the next word. A sound had grazed her ear, a distant croaking cry, so muffled that it could almost have been a raven call or cough. But the ravens were all abed, and no cough could have travelled that far, even through the eerily silent streets.

Ah.’ Somehow Mosca’s mysterious friend managed to put a wealth of meaning into that one, light sound.

That came from the Clock Tower!’ hissed Mosca. ‘They’re in trouble! There are people waiting there for me!’

‘No, I think not,’ came the clipped response. ‘Not by now,

anyway. Trust me. Let us simply withdraw while we have the chance… or… instead… you could run pell-mell towards the sound of the death cry. Wonderful.’ He gave a resigned sigh as Mosca’s sprinting figure disappeared around a distant corner. ‘Yes, let us do that instead.’

To do him credit, the patchwork stranger succeeded in catching up with Mosca a couple of streets later, only slightly out of breath. Mosca was pressed against a corner from which she could gaze out at the Clock Tower, which looked back with all its shadowy bulk, as unruffled as a whale suffering the scrutiny of a damselfish.

Nothing remarkable or bloody appeared to be taking place in the street before the tower. Indeed, it was entirely empty, and would have looked serene to anybody who did not know that six men should have been standing there. To Mosca, that omission was as glaring as the ragged remains of a ripped-out page.

‘They got to be here!’ Mosca gnawed at her fist, fighting down a sickness in her stomach. ‘They got to be here! Nothing works if they’re not! Nothing… they have to…’ She trailed off, gasping.

She jumped when her patchwork guide placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘Listen, my dear, we did promise to warn you of your danger, but nothing was said about joining you in suicidal gallops. Your letter drop was betrayed, as it would seem were your reinforcements.

‘Now, this promenade has been charming and exhilarating, but I fear I must go and practise for a recital tomorrow night. So I shall make my adieus. Steady – steady – can I recommend that you try breathing?’ He patted her arm, then squinted down the street, where one of the shadows had briefly showed signs of movement. ‘A-a-and perhaps running. Yes, my dear. Definitely time for some running.’

Sprinting for ten minutes did nothing to help Mosca recover her breath. She continued running even when she realized that her new guide was no longer at her side. She ran until her legs seemed to become butter and gave out under her, leaving her gulping and shaking against a wall, the feathers on her basket-hat a-quiver. Then Mosca’s mind, which had held together while she needed to remember how to put one foot in front of another, set about unravelling.

The disaster was absolute. The invisible silver lifeline that had linked her to the bright, safe world of day had snapped. The ambush she had planned for Brand Appleton later that night was impossible, for she had no reinforcements. There was nobody to compel him to reveal the kidnappers’ lair. And, she realized with a lurch of the heart, there was no money to pay the tithe for the night of Saint Yacobray.

The very next night there would be nothing to stop the kidnappers from claiming the ransom, and Brand Appleton would spirit his unwilling bride-to-be out of Toll. Then the dreaded Clatterhorse would ride through the streets, and the Leaps would not be ready for it… and so Mosca and the Leaps would be lost.

And she could tell none of this to her day allies because the letter drop was compromised. Did that mean that Clent and his friends were also in danger? Desperately she tried to remember what she had put in her own letter. Had she been cryptic enough? She hoped so.

Mosca closed her eyes, and swallowed, and set about gathering her wits. Reinforcements vanished like smoke. Probably taken by Locksmiths. Probably dead. She muttered a prayer for them under her breath, but could not muster much real feeling. To her the lost men were as faceless as eggs, and there was nothing she could do about that. The crushing sense of dread and panic pushed out everything else. She tried to think of Beamabeth’s kitten- faced plight, but could not help feeling that her own situation was probably worse than that of the mayor’s daughter.

For one thing, Beamabeth was the last person in the world that Brand Appleton would ever hurt. Mosca Mye on the other hand had no such guarantee, and had an appointment with him that she would have to keep alone.

Cooper’s Dark, where Mosca had promised to meet Appleton, turned out to be a nightling version of Cooper’s Lane. A series of second-floor facings had folded down to form a new walkway that ‘roofed’ the street and turned it into a tunnel. The upper walkway was Cooper’s Perch; the lane below, Cooper’s Dark. Fortunately a couple of cloaked figures were being led into the darkness by a lantern-wielding linkboy, and Mosca was able to follow a few paces behind them in less than total pitch.

Appleton had told her to meet him at Harass and Quail’s, opposite the stone trough. Mosca was unsurprised to discover that it was a gin-shop.

Mosca’s hands were shaking, but she could not pause, even to calm her breathing. Hesitation was weakness, fox blood on the heather that hounds would smell out in an instant.

All right, Mosca Mye, we’re going to play a game, she told herself. A game where Sir Feldroll’s reinforcements came through safe and everything’s fine and there’s six men just waiting in the dark by the wall for your signal. Six men all pistolled up to the teeth, with shoulders broad as a barn. Walk like you got an army in your pocket.

She pushed open the door. Within, like most of the night-side buildings, the gin-shop was narrow and clenched, stools of varying heights clustering throughout like a mushroom epidemic. Given her preposterous appearance, she was glad to see that the lanterns were dim and low-placed, making a great deal of the customers’ chins and nose hair and pouches beneath their eyes, but a lot less of their brows and upper cheeks.

Brand Appleton was seated by a wall, beneath a mildewed tapestry of a cavalry charge from the Civil War. Even in the murk, Mosca could see that Appleton’s bruises had reached their full plummy glory. He had taken off his gloves and was busy twisting and torturing them in a fit of frowning impatience. To her relief, he appeared to be alone.

She cleared her throat, and he released the gloves, looking up at her suspicously. She recalled that he had