badges. The only enemy was the fire.
The fire was not ready for this solidarity, and as the wind dropped it grew dispirited. It let itself be cornered, drenched, covered in wet hides. It waited for another wild wind, a chance to show the town what it could do. But the wind did not come, and a lane at a time it was beaten back.
It was then, while the frontline troops were gasping and soot-stained, hammers and axes still in hand, that word came through. The mayor had ordered the destruction of every Locksmith barrier and lock in the town. Why? Nobody cared. With a new and wild intoxication bolts were yanked from their frames, locks burst, walls cloven. No terrible Locksmith vengeance ensued. The townspeople plunged on with the glee a very young child feels the first time they realize that their parents are not all-seeing and that plates break very easily.
Then another whisper rushed through the town, like a cold rain through a desert wasteland.
‘The gates! The gates are open!’
Most of the newly released nightlings responded to this news with admirable promptness. The resourceful ran home, seized their belongings and fled through the eastern gate, heading for the plumper, richer counties around Waymakem and Chanderind. The even more resourceful did the same but with other people’s belongings.
The shivering shanty town on the western bank of the Langfeather was only slightly slower. Abandoning their makeshift shacks, they hoisted their packs on their backs and were through the portcullis of the western gate, across the bridge, through Toll and out through the eastern gate before you could say ‘starvation’. On the Luck’s insistence, the western gate guards followed them across the bridge, so that nobody now guarded the portcullis. Laylow was hunched next to Paragon, ready to slash out at anybody who made a lunge for her or for the Luck. Everybody gave them a wide berth.
On Paragon’s orders all prisoners were released, including the weary, lank-limbed members of the toil-gangs and everyone in the Clock Tower jail.
‘And… Brand Appleton has to be brought here. To
The hushed crowd had to wait for two solid minutes while the mayor emitted sounds like a man gargling with starlings. Then he made a choked ‘gah!’ noise and gave a wave of his arm, which his guards correctly took as a sign of consent. Five minutes later a bruised, battered, red-haired man of eighteen years limped on to the bridge, one hand gripping his clumsily bandaged flank. When he drew level with the two fugitives, Laylow stepped out to join him and placed a supporting arm around him.
‘Mandelion better be all you say,’ she muttered. She gave Paragon a glance of concern, but he cackled and capered, waving her away towards the unguarded gate.
The mayor could only glare helplessly as Brand limped across the bridge, supported by Laylow, and vanished through the gate to a world beyond his control.
At last there was only Paragon Collymoddle on the bridge. The sun had gone in, extinguishing the rainbows, and he was shivering with the chill of the wind and the drenching from the spray.
‘Cold now,’ he said through chattering teeth.
The mayor came down to the bridge and ventured out on to it. His steps were slow, for he was acutely aware that nobody now stood between the Luck and the open portcullis.
‘Come, boy,’ he said, not without kindness and some reverence, for was this not the Luck? ‘Enough is enough. You are not used to this light or this cold, are you?’
Paragon shook his head. He pulled himself up enough to hug the head of Goodman Fullock as if his arms had grown tired of the strain.
‘It is all over. We will take you and make you warm and safe. No more troubles. No more dangers.’ The mayor cautiously took step after step. ‘Just… take my hand and come home. You are needed here. You have a job. You know that, do you not?’
The boy laid his cheek against the wooden head of the Beloved as if suddenly tired, and nodded. ‘Yes. Job. Save everyone,’ he murmured. Then he laughed, waved at somebody in the crowds behind the mayor, and with the same unexpected speed he had shown before swung himself back on to the bridge and broke into a run.
‘Quick!’ spluttered the mayor. ‘Shoot… leg… something…!’
Musketfire vented in a patter like applause, but Paragon’s run was lolloping and unpractised, and so lopsided that the bullets missed him. He leaped through the arch of the gateway and was gone.
‘After him!’ shouted the mayor.
Nobody moved but for one guard bolder than the rest, who darted forward on to the bridge and sprinted past the gesticulating mayor who was already retreating back to the safety of land himself. Two steps later, however, there was a splintering crack and one of the planks of the famous unshakeable bridge of Toll gave under the guard’s feet, so that he dropped halfway through the hole. Desperately clutching at the boards, he was able to halt his fall and managed to haul himself back up and drag himself to safety.
There was a deathly hush, of just the sort that never lasts.
‘Flee! The Luck has run out! The Luck has flown away! The bridge is falling down! Flee the town!’
With such cries all around, the mayor glanced behind him to see who the Luck had waved to before his flight. But there was only a heaving crowd full of faces made anonymous by fear. And in the corner of his eye just a fleeting glimpse of a lilac-coloured gown.
Goodman Doublethread, King of Consequences
Toll emptied with surprising speed. The inhabitants of Toll-by-Night had needed little prompting, and now that their Luck was gone those of Toll-by-Day had lost their golden sense of self-assurance. People took what they could carry push or drag, and they left. By dawn the next day, the town was entirely empty.
Of all those who had been within its walls the preceding dawn, only three were left from the western side, namely Brand Appleton, Laylow and Paragon himself. It was widely supposed that Brand and Laylow had headed to Mandelion. As for Paragon, nobody had any idea where he had gone or even intended to go. He had plunged into uncertainty at a gallop, and the moors kept his secrets for him.
Everyone else had poured out of the east gate to the bemusement of Sir Feldroll, who saw more people pouring out of Toll than he had reason to believe lived there. Worse still, he found that his armies absolutely refused to advance across what they all now firmly believed to be a cursed bridge. They were not alone. As a matter of fact, virtually nobody was willing to go near it.
There are, of course, exceptions to every rule.
In the grey of dawn, at what would once have been first bugle time, a solitary figure could be seen stepping on to the eastern end of the bridge of Toll. As a matter of fact it did not simply step, it stamped. Then it put its full weight on the board, jumped up and down with all its might and moved on to the next.
Mosca had her shawl wrapped tightly around her to shield her from the wind, and her pipe clamped hard between her teeth. She slammed her clogs into the weatherbeaten timbers as hard as she could.
When she had seen the guard put his foot through the bridge, just for a moment Mosca’s convictions had been shaken into a jumble. Briefly she had believed that Paragon must have been the real Luck of Toll after all, and that his flight had left nothing holding up the bridge or protecting the town. Even when she had gone to sleep that night on a blanket loaned by one of Sir Feldroll’s soldiers, she had still half believed it. And she knew that if she left things at that she would always partly believe it.
‘All right,’ she said through the teeth clenched about her pipe, ‘show me how cursed you are, then. Show me that it wasn’t just a plank getting weak because hundreds of people came crowding across the bridge all at once. Go on, drop me, then.’
She was so caught up in her experiment that she did not notice another figure walking, a good deal more quietly, towards her from the other end of the bridge. Thus it was only when she caught sight of a pair of boots in the corner of her vision that she stopped mid-clump, slowly straightened and looked Aramai Goshawk in the eye.
He was dressed in the same simple black she had seen him wear before, but with a travelling cloak over the top, and cream-coloured kid gloves.
