Twilight Robbery aka Fly Trap

and can you break in for me please before the fire gets here and roasts her like a piglet?’

Whether her story would have been believed if she had been wearing a dark Palpitattle badge will never be known. However with her borrowed day badge and cast-off gown she had magically become a respectable young lady in distress, albeit a slightly sooty one. She watched hungrily as the false front of the house was levered away with a crack to show the stained wall behind. The dingy door gave in to a few solid kicks.

‘Go find your sister.’ One of the men chucked Mosca under the chin, and then the group of them hurried on. Gingerly Mosca pushed open the splintered door, and jumped back just in time to avoid a claw in the face.

It was probably as well that Laylow had not been the first nightling to stagger into daylight. She was doing a very good impression of the dayfolk’s worst nightmare, squinting ominously against the sun, her metal claws raised ready to strike and various bruises and cuts livid on her face.

As she peered at Mosca, however, bemused recognition clouded her eyes.

‘You…’ She peered, and her face hardened. ‘Seisian, is it? “Teacher”, is it? You’re no more a foreigner than I am! You’re one of those visitors I helped get dayside some nights ago! What’s your game?’

‘I scarce know misself any more. But we’ll all lose if we don’t play on the same side. Listen – the mayor’s gone limp, Sir Feldroll’s gone mad, the Locksmiths are taking over and the town’s on fire. Beamabeth Marlebourne is safe, and as long as she is nobody else will be. And now we need to rescue the Luck. Can I come in?’

Goodlady Zanache, Knight of the Glorious Bluff

Gabbling through the truth behind Beamabeth’s actions to Brand Appleton was a grisly and unnerving business, but Mosca could see no way to leave it out of her story. At first he simmered at the slightest insinuation against Beamabeth, but as she went on she could see him taking her words on board, and a terrible lost expression crept over his face. Even Laylow looked away, her blunt features pained and embarrassed.

‘So -’ Laylow crushed the silence as she would have done a poisonous bug – you say you have a plan? A way out of this?’

Mosca nodded. ‘We rescue the Luck.’

Laylow rasped a laugh. ‘From the Jinglers? Are you mad? How would that help us anyway?’

‘It will help – if we save him from everybody. From the Locksmiths, from the mayor, everybody. Get him outside the town walls.’

‘Outside the walls?’ Brand glanced at Laylow, who returned his look of shock, and Mosca remembered that they were born and bred Tollfolk, brought up on stories of the Luck’s protective power.

‘Oh Prill’s snout – don’t tell me you believe the town will fall off the cliff if the Luck steps outside!’ Their expressions

suggested that they might. ‘Well – and what if it does? This town is rotten. All that matters is the people in it, and most of them want to get out of it. Any town that has to keep folk inside it using walls an’ guns an’ fear is wrong to its roots. And if a town needs to lock up some lad just to feel safe, then maybe it don’t deserve to feel safe.

‘Right now, dayfolk are pulling the Locksmiths’ walls down. You know what that means? Just for once nobody’s surprised to see nightfolk running about the streets. You can slip out of this house, maybe head to the gate, and as long as nobody recognizes Mr Appleton people will jus’ think you were let out because your street was burning.

‘There’s panic in Toll-by-Day now, but that’s nothing compared to what there will be if we get the Luck out of the town. The men guarding the walls by day, they’re not like the Locksmiths, they’re just guards belonging to the mayor. Once they know the Luck has left, they’ll be too busy running to stop people leaving the town. Which means that you two can get out. And so can everybody else that wants to.

‘And then… you can even run off to Mandelion if you still want to. Nobody will chase you, because with the Luck gone nobody will trust the bleedin’ bridge.’ Including Sir Feldroll’s troops, Mosca added in the privacy of her own head. A distrusted bridge meant a safe Mandelion.

‘I say we take the risk,’ Brand said after a pause. ‘If we do nothing, it sounds like the Locksmiths take over the town and the sun goes down on Toll forever, trapping everyone in the dark. If Toll falls… it might as well do it with a splash.’

Laylow looked more reluctant, but eventually nodded. ‘So, where is the Luck being held, then?’

‘I was hoping you might know,’ Mosca confessed. ‘You were runnin’ around the streets the hours of Yacobray looking for that radish after the rest of us were hidin’ and prayin’. Laylow – do you remember seeing anybody else out on the streets after we all ran away? Anything that could have been the Luck being kidnapped? Any sign of the Locksmiths doing anything funny?’

Laylow crooked an eyebrow at her.

‘You mean apart from jigging about in a ghostly great horse?’

Mosca blew out her cheeks and raised her eyes to heaven. ‘The horse,’ she muttered. ‘Oh, I might as well sell my brains to a surgeon for all the good they do me. A lamping great horse, big enough to hold a gang of men with swords – and a skinny Luck lad to boot, no doubt. Did you see where the horse went?’

Laylow nodded. ‘Headed north-east. After Brand hit the cobbles, I dragged him back up those steps.’ She shrugged. ‘’Twas all I could think of. The Jinglers’ Clatterhorse was on wheels so it could not follow, and the bravos inside could not get loose to give chase straight away. Bought us just enough time to duck under a bush and lie there mum while they ran about looking for us. I dared a peek though, when the Clatterhorse left at last, saw it heading towards Blithers Yard. Wondered why it wasn’t snatching vegetables as it went.’

‘Probably went there to hide Paragon somewhere first, then came back for the tax-turnips.’ Mosca bit her lip. ‘Well… that narrows it down to Blithers Yard, anyway. Not far from the fires. And if the Locksmiths get the fright like everyone else they might run to pluck Paragon from his hide-hole to take him somewhere safer.’

‘So – this was as far as your plan went.’ Laylow grimaced, and rasped her calloused palm back and forth over her cropped hair. There was no contempt in her tone, however; it was just a blunt statement of the case. ‘All right, we search Blithers Yard, and keep a lookout for the Locksmiths trying to move this lad. I take the roofs, Mosca the streets and Brand stays here. What does this Luck look like?’ She listened intently as Mosca described Paragon.

‘And if you see him before I do,’ Mosca finished, ‘then… tell him the Soot-girl sent you to set him free.’

Laylow, who had put her head out through the door to peer at the roofs, ducked it back in again. ‘We need to shake our shambles and move – this hubbub will not last forever.’ She glanced back at Brand and looked irresolute.

‘I will do very well here,’ Brand reassured her hastily. ‘Go!’

Eponymous Clent had not been quite sure what manner of disaster he would be facing when he approached the walls of Toll under his white flag. If, as her letter suggested, Mosca had approached Aramai Goshawk about returning to Toll in order to revenge herself upon Beamabeth Marlebourne, he did not give much for her chances. Even in the unlikely event that Goshawk had let her live and helped her inside the town, he thought it most probable that by now Beamabeth had used her silken influence to have Mosca thrown into prison, possibly for the ‘theft’ of a lilac gown. For this reason he had asked to re-enter the town as an ambassador, who could not be so easily imprisoned, to see whether words would extricate his wayward secretary.

She is an insufferable burden, he had muttered to himself, but I suppose I cannot leave her trapped in a cell in a burning town.

However, the escort that met him at the gates made no mention of Mosca having been hauled off to the Grovels, and Clent started to wonder whether his uncharacteristic impulse of loyalty had been a blind and futile one. Unfortunately his escort did not seem inclined to let him bob them a bow and duck out of the town gates again, and instead insisted on escorting him through the streets, which Clent could not help noticing were filled with a good deal of smoke and noise.

He reached the castle courtyard to find the mayor in the middle of a stand-up row with a number of subordinates and in no temper to talk to ambassadors.