Twilight Robbery aka Fly Trap

‘Tearing the faces off the houses? Well, stop them! We cannot have nightlings running around the streets! There is no danger of anyone burning to death! The Luck will protect the town. Tell everybody to go back to their homes and behave in a civilized fashion!’ Tiny furry fragments of ash chased through the grass at his feet.

Seated by the door with her sketchbook was Beamabeth, who flinched very slightly when she saw Clent, and then gave him her usual sweet smile, but there was something flat about the expression in her eyes, something appraising. He made haste to her side.

‘Miss Marlebourne, what luck!’ He thought she winced almost imperceptibly at the word ‘luck’. ‘I was afraid I might miss you.’

‘Mr Clent! I thought you had left town.’

‘Without bidding farewell to Toll’s most precious jewel? Unthinkable. We owe you at least that much.’

Clent had the satisfaction of seeing a glimmer of unease and uncertainty pass through Beamabeth Marlebourne’s eyes.

She was confused by his return, he guessed. She was gauging him, trying to work out what cards he had up his sleeve. For now he might be able to keep her off balance by smiling meaningfully and dropping hints, delaying the moment in which she realized that she held all the cards, and that his well-brushed sleeves held nothing but his arms.

‘Wait – this door has been broken in already. Have the people left?’

Brand, who had lolled back on to his mattress in a state of helpless torpor, fought to open his eyes and look towards the voice. He could just make out two dark and fuzzy silhouettes against the door. Perhaps they would not see him.

‘Look, over on the bed! An invalid! We cannot leave him here – the wind is so changeable. Let us take him to the surgeon.’

The one time Brand needed daylighters to be callous, here they were rescuing him from the dark safety of his stop-hole and dragging him into the daylight where he could be recognized. He tried to protest when strong arms lifted him and his mattress, but his voice and limbs were too weak to prevent them bearing him outside.

He flinched as a shaft of daylight fell across his face. There was a gasp from one of his mattress bearers.

‘Wait – I have seen him before – this is Appleton! The radical! The man who kidnapped Miss Beamabeth!’

The mattress was set down roughly on the cobbles, and Brand opened his eyes to find himself confronted by the uncomfortable ends of a bill-hook, a rake, a cleaver and a chisel. The terror in his enemies’ faces suddenly tickled him unbearably, and despite the pain in his side he started to laugh, so breathlessly and helplessly that the other four took a step back, evidently fearing madness.

‘Yes,’ he choked. ‘The radical. The terrible radical.’ The absurdity was too much for him. ‘Bravo! You have captured the great Brand Appleton, the King of the Radicals! The mayor will be very proud of you. Ow.’ He clasped his hand to his side as his laughter threatened to reopen his wound. The very hopelessness of his position made him feel free and giddy all of a sudden. He was at death’s door, but his captors were the ones that seemed terrified.

‘We should take him to the mayor,’ whispered the billhook wielder.

‘Yes, to the mayor and his saintly daughter.’ Brand gave them a bruised and crazed grin. ‘What are you waiting for? Take me to them – do you think I will tell anyone but the mayor about my crimes? All these flames – that was me too, did you not know?’

‘What? You… you cur!’

‘Blame my birth.’ Brand winced as he was roughly dragged to his feet, his arms slung over two sets of shoulders so that he could be carried. ‘Blame Sparkentress, the wicked minx. Blame the mayor for sending me to Toll-by-Night, where I could mix freely with others of my seditious kind, plotting his overthrow and the destruction of Toll!’

Ah, so it ends, he thought, as he was dragged along the streets by his captors. And it seems I will be visiting the mayor and his daughter again after all.

He would see Beamabeth one last time. And yet when he thought of her he could only remember a set of golden ringlets and a warm glow, with no actual face. Instead he found himself thinking of a surly, crop-headed figure with a cut lip, and thanking the Beloved that Laylow had not been caught up in his arrest.

Let us hope Laylow and Mosca find the Luck. I am all out of luck, it seems. But perhaps I can help them… by forcing the Locksmiths’ hand. If I can persuade everybody that the town catching fire is a sign that the Luck is dead, then the Locksmiths will probably have to bring him out of his hiding place to prove he is still alive. That might give Mosca and Laylow their chance…

‘You are all closer to death than I!’ he declaimed, in a carrying and manic tone, ‘I have already doomed you all! There is nothing to stop the flames now, nothing! Last night I slew the Luck myself!’

Let us see the Locksmiths ignore that.

The reaction to his pronouncement was all he could have hoped for and more.

Toll-by-Day was blinding, and Laylow could barely keep her eyes open. As far as she was concerned, the whole world might just as well have been aflame. The colours burned, from the murky green of the yews to the red cloaks of respectable housewives. Even her good friends the roofs had developed leeringly bright patterns of moss and scratch tracery. The sky was an ache, and the sun a searing, shapeless hole, so different from the gleaming penny of the moon. The air smelt different as well, and not just because of the smoke.

Her own hands as she found holds on ledges and chimneys looked strange to her, the callouses yellow, the scars snail-white. She felt exposed, as if everyone must be able to see her every instant. In actual fact, however, most people were too busy with thoughts of the fire to wonder whether a claw-gloved girl might be running along the rooftops.

There was a lot more noise in the streets than she was used to in the night town, but some fragments floated up to her.

‘… says the Luck is gone! Flames spreading because the Luck is gone!’

‘… captured Appleton and says he cut the Luck into pieces and threw them over different walls…’

Laylow stiffened, and her claw-tips made squeaky sounds as they etched tiny white marks into a roof tile. Brand had been captured. He was a prisoner, and had come up with exactly the sort of mad defiant lie that would see him torn apart by a hysterical crowd. Did he want to die?

For a little while she could not breathe, and thought about running to the jail to find him. But what good could she do against armed guards and a tower of stone? None.

What now? Would rescuing the Luck help her save Brand? It was so hard to think in this blazing, clattering daylight. If she was lucky it would somehow. She pushed on towards what she prayed was Blithers Yard.

Looking down she saw two men stop dead and exchange glances as they overheard the report of the murder of the Luck. Both were wearing gloves. They conversed hurriedly, then broke into a run. Face puckering in concentration, Laylow set off along the rooftops, keeping pace with them.

She had to hope that these men were going to check on the Luck, make sure that he was still alive and well, and to report the rumours circulating. She almost knew where she was now. Laylow knew the Jinglers’ favourite shortcuts to most places, having conned them by rote when planning her chocolate delivery routes.

In an alley, the two men met with two more, also in gloves, and Laylow craned to hear something of their furtive conversation.

‘… says we should move him… breaking into all the houses down there… move him further from the fire…’

And on they went, now as a foursome. Jingle-jing, jingle-jing, the faintest silvery sound of hidden keys chiming as they ran.

No doors had been beaten in yet in Pritter’s Lane, but the house-tearers were only a street away. Casting quick glances up and down the lane, the gloved men fumbled quickly with the locks on a house-facing and slid it aside to show a small red door. This was opened, and after more conference two figures came out, a large and burly man and a boy in his teens. Laylow could not tell how closely he matched Mosca’s description of the Luck because there was a thick cloth draped over his head, as if to protect him from smoke.

If she did not act, they would lead him to another part of the town, pull him in through another door, fasten it and vanish. But there were five of them and only one Laylow. What could she do?

Only one thing.

The five Locksmiths were on the alert. Two kept an eye up and down Pritter’s Lane. One was casually keeping