Twilight Robbery aka Fly Trap

Mosca had a bad feeling about their odds of selling their furniture as soon as she noticed the throngs around the pawnbrokers, hefting everything from fire irons to mattresses. They pushed their way into the shop and found it in uproar. The woman at the front of the queue was gripping the counter, gasping as if she had been dowsed with water.

‘You cannot offer so little! A table like this one… no worm, good joinery…’

‘’Tis a buyer’s market this night, madam,’ the fat little man behind the counter told her, his jewel-glass bulging in his eye. ‘Everybody selling, nobody buying. I tell you, you will get no better for it in all Toll. Now take the money, or make way for those who will.’

The woman’s face crumpled like a rose and her eyes brimmed, but she snatched up the paltry collection of coins on the countertop and shoved her way out to the street. Her place in the throng was filled instantly, fists thrust across the counter gripping bead necklaces, battered skillets, mats woven from grass, embroidered napkins.

As the crowd surged forward Mosca was forced against the wall, nobody paying her the slightest heed as the antlers of someone’s mounted stag head scraped past her face. Her mind filled with rage, but it was not rage towards the frenzied crowd in danger of trampling her. It was anger at all the smug little men like the one behind the counter, who had reckoned the odds and realized that they could squeeze this panicking throng for everything they had. She could not blame the crowd’s desperation. She understood it too well.

Desperation is a millstone. It wears away at the very soul, grinding away pity, kindness, humanity and courage. But sometimes it whets the mind to a sharpened point and creates moments of true brilliance. And standing there, nose tickled by the dusty hide of the stuffed deer head, such a moment visited Mosca Mye.

With difficulty she fought her way out to the street, dragging Welter after her. He did not resist, but regarded her with the quiet loathing usually shown towards scabs or cold sores.

‘It’s hopeless,’ Mosca said when she had recovered her breath. ‘If they’re only payin’ half a sneeze for that table, then what we got here won’t raise more than a sniffle. Even if we sell it all, and our hair and teeth thrown in, we’ll never get enough on this night.’

A gentle melancholy smile eased its way on to Welter Leap’s face. He seemed to be settling into despair like a particularly comfortable armchair.

‘But we’re not done yet,’ Mosca snarled under her breath. ‘How much money we got right now, Mr Leap? Hmm. Well, it’s not much – but it might do. That chubby little leech got it right – this is a night for buyers, not sellers. So we’re not going to sell. We’re going to buy.’

Mistress Leap opened the door to them with a cold cloth clamped to her wounded temple. Her expression, initially a free-for-all skirmish between hope, apprehension and relief, froze slightly as she realized that Mosca and her husband had returned carrying, if anything, more than when they had left the house.

‘What…?’ It was the stuffed stag head in Mosca’s arms that finally seemed to fracture the midwife’s mind. Welter Leap, on the other hand, had a soft moony glow in his eyes, a tender eagerness as he carried his boxes of new acquisitions into his ‘workshop’.

‘I… What… Where did you get these?’

‘They was all going for a pittance, Mistress Leap.’

‘You… you went bargain-hunting?’ whispered the woman faintly as Mosca saw to the bolts. She sank into a seat, her eyes filling with tears, and regarded Mosca with a look of weary disappointment and betrayal. ‘You spent the few coins I managed to scrape together? Then…’ She shook her head, closed her eyes and let her head droop.

‘There was no help for it, Mistress Leap.’ Mosca felt a sting of compassion, but she had already cast the die for all three of them. ‘It’s the only chance we got. Listen! We could have run down every street with your goods on our backs, and got nothing for them but spit and a wink. All this -’ Mosca set down a box of ropes, dry bones and coils of wire – ‘is nothing now, but thanks to your husband’s making ways and cunning hands it’ll be a miracle by the next dusk bugle.’

‘A miracle. Yes, we will need a miracle.’ Mistress Leap sighed.

‘I’ll tell you what kind of miracle, as well,’ Mosca persisted, her eyes black and steady as a coalface. ‘A miracle that will get us our tithe, easy as yawning. Because tomorrow night all the money we need will be right there to be grabbed – just hanging outside everybody’s doors! So we go out and we take it. And nobody will stop us, because if they look out their windows they’ll see just what they expect to see. A Clatter-horse taking the vegetables from outside the houses. Your husband’s going to make us our own Clatterhorse, Mistress Leap.’

‘But…’ Mistress Leap sat bolt upright. ‘But… we cannot! The Locksmiths would-’

‘If we cannot find the chink in time, mistress, the Locksmiths will see us river-fodder anyway,’ Mosca pointed out.

‘But… if we take others’ tithes, then other households will suffer, other families, nobody deserves-’

‘Nobody? What if we take a tithe from outside a pawnbroker’s?’ There was grit and venom in Mosca’s grin. ‘Locksmiths might not trip over ’emselves to attack another guild. And even if those pot-bellied, blood-sucking leeches do end up being chased up and down a few streets by a horse made of bone, I won’t be weeping out my heart’s juice.’

‘If anybody sees us…’ Mistress Leap had her hands pressed to her temples as if her thoughts were trying to fight their way out. ‘If the Locksmiths ever found out… If anybody ever finds out…’

‘The urchin is right,’ called Welter from his workshop, over a rasp of earnest sawing. ‘It is our only chance, Leveretia.’

‘And not just ours,’ added Mosca. ‘In a few hours the mayor will look for a letter to say his daughter has been rescued. If it is not there, then come dusk he will hang the ransom outside his counting house. Then Skellow and Appleton and those other fine boys will dance out and snatch it. And by dawn they’ll be out of Toll and halfway to Mandelion, with Miss Marlebourne slung over one shoulder like a rug.

‘And the only way we can stop them is to prevent them getting the ransom. Gallop there ahead of them. Steal it first.’

The sky paled relentlessly. From black to charcoal, to a greasy grey, to apple-flesh white. Then the Jinglers swept the town, and the nightfolk were sealed away, with nothing more they could do to prepare for the tithe except tear up floorboards and shake furniture in search of stray coins. The day-doors opened, the colours came out to play, and the people of Toll-by-Day emerged to complain about the cold and the price of pepper.

By mid-morning, unbeknown to the populace, a blazing row was taking place at the mayor’s house. Sir Feldroll was doing most of the blazing.

Until now he had taken a good deal of care to be polite and deferential in the mayor’s house. However he was growing increasingly tired of pretending that he was not the heir to a full-blown and powerful city, visiting the petty official of a self-important provincial town. Toll’s power was its position, and its position was starting to drive him steadily insane.

‘My lord mayor, listen to me! No message has been left by the men I sent into the night. None! And no word from Clent’s girl. Nothing! My men are gone, and the girl is probably dead too. They have failed. Are you still determined to leave out that ransom?’

‘Would you have me do otherwise?’ flared the mayor. ‘What is a jewel compared to my daughter?’ The mayor had a groggy, punch-drunk air, though the only blows he had received were loss of his daughter, lack of sleep and the incessant battering ram of his guest’s conversation.

‘Then the kidnappers will flee with both the jewel and Miss Marlebourne as soon as they can. My lord mayor, you must allow me to bring troops through Toll this very day, so that they can be waiting to catch them on the western side! Appleton is a radical – where would he flee but to Mandelion?’

‘If I do this, without charging toll for your troops, then Toll will be declaring war on Mandelion! Your army will march on and lay siege to her, do not deny it! We have always, always, remained neutral -’

‘My lord mayor, with the greatest of respect, neutrality is a luxury you can no longer afford! Mandelion must be crushed, or other radicals like Appleton will be inflamed and inspired! Radicals cannot be wiped out if they have a whole city to flee to whenever they wish to escape the consequences of their crimes!’

The mayor gazed out through his window towards the Clock Tower, now partly hidden by scaffolding for the repairs of the clock, and Sir Feldroll could guess all too well what was in his mind. It was the Luck, the infernal Luck