‘I had hoped, Lady Tamarind, that you might hire me to write an epic tale of your family’s fortunes. The rise of the dukes of Avourlace, their wise rulership of Mandelion over the centuries, their tragic exile during the war and the Years of the Birdcatchers, and then your brother’s triumphant return to reclaim his ancestral rights . . .’
Mosca’s eyes became round as she realized she was staring at the sister of the Duke of Mandelion.
‘Very well.’ Lady Tamarind’s words were soft and as crisp as a fox-print in snow. ‘You shall write it, and you shall be paid for it. I assume I need not read it.’
‘And . . . ah . . .’ Creak, crick went Clent’s hat brim, his eyes bodkin-eager. ‘Ah . . . I would request a letter of introduction, that I might mix with the, ah, better sort of personage.’ Mosca felt immediately that the letter meant more to him than the money.
‘In Mandelion the high and the fashionable may be met with in the Honeycomb Courts, which surround my residence in the Eastern Spire.’ Lady Tamarind paused, as if con-sidering. ‘I shall send you a letter vouching for your character and advising that you be allowed into the Lower Honeycomb Courts. I will do no more for a man I know so little.’
Clent gave a little exhalation of satisfaction.
Silence followed. The rattle of rain and the crack of stones under the wheels had no power to keep Mosca awake. Her eyelids drooped.
She tried to plan ahead, but thoughts gave under her feet and became dreams. She dreamed that she had found her father in Mandelion. He had been running a school there for years, and had not really died at all, and it turned out that Mosca had lots of brothers and sisters, and they were all studying at the school and waiting to meet her. It was time for her to attend her first day at that school, but Mosca was terrified, because when she tried to touch anything it burst into flames. She knew that there was a pair of white gloves that she had to wear which would make her safe, but Clent had stolen them, and she could not find them. She tried to explain everything to her father, but he would not look at her or speak to her. Instead, she ran to Clent and demanded her gloves back, but he sat there, smirking and smoothing the white gloves over his large hands, until she itched to grab him by the jowls and char him to a cinder.
The carriage wall rapped reprovingly on the back of Mosca’s head, and she found herself staring at the deeply sleeping Clent, the dream so vivid in her mind that she felt sparks might leap from her eyes and settle on his cravat.
‘Hate has its uses, but it will serve you ill if you wear it so openly.’
The quiet voice jarred Mosca into wakefulness. Lady Tamarind was looking directly at her and, snatching for a fistful of her wits, she struggled to explain.
‘He—’
‘Your grievances do not interest me. Your master’s request does. Why is he so keen to mix above his station?’
Sparks of hate crackled in Mosca’s mind.
‘Spying,’ she hissed recklessly. ‘He’s a mangy old nook-gazin’ spy. ’S got papers, signed by the Stationers – I
seen
’em.’
Lady Tamarind’s immaculate mask of a face hung in the dusk of the coach and looked at Mosca. For several moments her features showed not the slightest motion. Perhaps she disapproved of Mosca’s indiscretion. Perhaps she did not believe her.
‘A Stationer spy,’ she murmured at last, very quietly and without rancour. ‘What is his name?’
‘Eponymous Clent.’
‘Eponymous Clent.’ There was an odd, distant note in Tamarind’s voice that Mosca did not understand. ‘How a name changes everything!’ Her gaze never moved from Mosca’s face. ‘A man’s face tells you nothing,’ Tamarind continued in her usual tone, ‘but through his name you . . . know him. Eponymous. A name suited to the hero of a tall tale. But such heroes are seldom to be trusted. And you – are you a spy, like your master?’
‘Not me, he din’t even mean me to see them papers.’
Mosca stiffened as one of Clent’s snores became a nasal hiccup. Then his sonorous breathing resumed, and she relaxed again. ‘I’m jus’ his secretary till I got something better. I’m going to school,’ she added. ‘I can read.’
Now Lady Tamarind’s arctic stare held real interest. When she spoke again it was in a softened, urgent tone that reminded Mosca of velvet rubbed the wrong way.
‘You seem interested in my pearls, girl. Would you like to have one?’
Mosca suddenly felt that to win just one of them she would willingly burn down Chough in its entirety, mill and malthouse, kiln and kitchen. She wanted to keep it, stare into it like a tiny, eider-grey crystal ball, and understand this strange new whiteness before it slipped out of her life again. She shrugged, not meeting the lady’s eye.
‘If you do something for me, and do it well, you may have a pearl, and perhaps “something better”. How much courage do you have, girl?’
‘Enough to pluck the tail of the Devil’s horse, but not enough to ride ’im.’ Mosca whispered the old Chough adage automatically.
‘What is your name?’ The lady sounded as if she might be pleased.
‘Mosca Mye.’ As soon as the words were out of Mosca’s mouth she remembered that she was a fugitive from justice. But how could she refuse to answer this snow queen? Giving a false name was unthinkable. Nobody ever lied about their name. Names were what you
were
. ‘And . . . you’re Lady Tamarind. The sister of the Duke. The Duke of Mandelion.’
‘I am. What would you say if I told you that even the sister of the Duke has powerful enemies? Dangerous enemies.’
Mosca remembered the conversation in the Halberd.
‘Locksmiths!’ she breathed excitedly. Lady Tamarind’s fingertip paused in its stroking of the stoat’s forehead. Mosca hurried on, ‘Heard the bargemen talking at the Halberd. Yestereve, when they thought I was drowsed. ’Bout how the Locksmiths wanted to take over Mandelion . . . like they did Scurrey . . . but how you’d never let ’em. Who are the Locksmiths?’
‘Probably the most feared guild in the Realm,’ said Lady Tamarind, after a hesitation. ‘Once they only made locks and strongboxes, but all the guilds have grown stronger and more powerful since the days when there was a king. Tell me, child, have you ever heard of the Thief-takers?’
‘Yeah.’ The Thief-takers had been mentioned in many of the
Hangman’s Histories
. ‘They’re the ones what you call in to catch thieves when the constables can’t find ’em, aren’t they?’
‘That is only a part of the truth. Listen well, girl. The Thief-takers are no better than the villains they seize. All Thief-takers answer to the Locksmiths, and their real task is to make sure that there are no criminals at large . . . except those that work for the Locksmiths themselves. The Locksmiths run the criminal underworld in four major cities, and are a rising force in the others. Do you understand now why I say I have dangerous enemies?’
Mosca’s jaw fell open.
‘If you are to work for me, you must speak of it to nobody, and we can never be seen together.’
Mosca nodded.
‘Good. The Locksmiths are on the rise, and if I cannot stop them, Mandelion will be theirs. I must know if others mean to act against the Locksmiths. The Stationers, in particular.’ Tamarind leaned forward and dropped her whisper, so that it was scarcely more than a tingle on the eardrum. ‘I cannot be seen to be plotting, but I must know their plans.’
‘You want me to spy on the Stationers?’ Mosca sanded her lips with a dry tongue-tip.
‘You will stay with your master, and find out more about him. He will bring you into contact with other Stationers, and can probably find you a place in a Stationer school. And once you have been schooled properly . . . it will seem less remarkable if a person of eminence should choose to employ you. When you have information for me, seek out the city Plumery. You will find a patch of pheasant feathers planted in front of the statue of Goodman Claspkin. Hide your letter inside the quill of one of these, and place it back in the earth. It will reach me.’
Mosca blinked hard, trying to commit everything to memory.
‘Now listen, for your own safety’s sake. Beware men who wear gloves even indoors and at luncheon. Keep a close guard on your pockets and purse – the Thief-takers sometimes serve an enemy by planting stolen goods upon them. And, girl? If you think that you are suspected . . . beware of accidents . . .’
Clent drew a long, waking breath. His eyes fluttered open, and stared unseeing and glassy at the carriage roof. Tamarind drew back against her seat with impeccable composure. Mosca curled away from Clent, closing her eyes and feigning sleep.
It seemed to Mosca that she had spent barely five minutes leaning against the window frame and counting her employer’s breaths when the carriage lurched and woke her. The woman in white was staring out of the window, the scar dead white in the stony light. Mosca wondered if she had dreamed the strange conversation.
Mosca dozed, and woke, and found that villages had sprung up at the roadside. She dozed, and woke, and found that the road was running alongside the river, and above the bristle of sails quivered some half-dozen craft-dragging kites which bore the insignia of the Watermen, a silver pond-skater against a black background. She dozed, and woke, and found that the sky was dim and a harsh crosswind was flattening the curtain against the roof.
The carriage was crossing a bridge. Houses clustered along the bridge-side as if to peer back at Mosca, and between them Mosca glimpsed a stretch of water so wide that at first she took it for a lake. But no, there were the far banks, curving away to clasp hands at the horizon. This was still the River Slye, and on the far side of the bridge the city of Mandelion smoked and sprawled and scored the sky with spires.
Helpless with excitement, Mosca wriggled to the edge of her seat, leaning out through the window for a better view. To the east and the west two spires rose above the rest, and the city stretched between them. Behind a long piecrust of crumbling wall clustered a mosaic of roofs, and a great dome that seemed in the dull light to be as glossy and ethereal as a soap bubble. To the west along the waterside unfinished ships bared ribcages of stripped wood to the sky. The creak and crack of the shipyard was as faint as a cricket orchestra.
The wind roared with an estuary freshness. It carried the smell of sandflats and sea-poppies, and the pale wails of wading birds, and the clammy, silver-eyed dreams of fish. Although she had never known the coastlands, Mosca felt with a thrill that somewhere beyond the edge of sight the ocean hugged its unthinkable deeps and dragged its tides in shrug after monumental shrug.
The carriage reached the end of the bridge, and now the tallest buildings Mosca had ever seen flanked the road. Evening had swallowed their black timbers and left their white plaster faces floating in the air like flags. To Mosca it seemed that they must in some fashion belong to the lady in the white dress, for they too were white. The gleaming white sails on the river had to belong to the lady. The fat white moon, sitting on a sliver of cloud like a clot of cream on the blade of a knife, had to belong to the lady.
‘Tell the driver where you would like to be set down, Mr Clent,’ remarked Lady Tamarind.
‘I believe our, ah, friends reside in East Straddle Street, my lady.’ The carriage steered around a squabble of hansoms and took a riverside road, the gleam of water occasionally visible between the buildings.
At last it drew up alongside a shuttered shop. Unwillingly Mosca let Clent guide her out on to the street.
‘Your Ladyship, the, ah, the, ah, letter . . .’
‘. . . will be sent to you at these lodgings shortly.’ There was a chill finality in the childlike tones as the porcelain face faded behind the curtain. The carriage lurched back into motion. Clent, hiding his disappointment, turned to knock at the door of the shop.
Mosca stared up at the hanging sign above the door. It depicted a man’s hand clasping that of a woman.
‘Mr Clent . . . why we stoppin’ at a marriage house?’
Before Clent could answer, the door was opened by a man as squat as a pepper pot, wearing the broad-brimmed hat of a chaplain and an expression that seemed to be a compromise between piety and a suppressed sneeze. A few whispered words from Clent, however, and the man’s face broke into a broad, badger’s grin, revealing a fine array of caramel-coloured teeth.
‘Ah, Mistress Bessel give you my name, did she? If you’re a friend of Jen, come in and be welcomed by Bockerby. You must take a pinch of snuff with me before you sleep.’ His every sentence began in a deep, sonorous, church-bell voice, and ended in a chatty, rough-cut tone like a pedlar’s shamble.
Mosca and Clent were led through a cramped, ill-swept corridor into a cramped, ill-swept parlour. The tabletop was crowded with vases. These were filled not with flowers but with bunches of dried, branching honesty plants, crowned with glossy seedpods the size of sovereigns and the colour of jaded paper. On a stand stood a name-day book, so that each couple who came to the marriage house could see if a match between their names was auspicious.
A host of tiny Beloved idols sat in rough-cut recesses in the wall, rather as if the little gods had gouged out their own homes like nesting birds. Many of the Beloved shown were unfamiliar to Mosca, but with some apprehension she recognized Goodlady Mauget of the Almost-Truth, Goodman Happendabbit of the Repented Oath, St Leasey, He Who Lends His Cloak to the Sly-in-the-Night, and Goodlady Judin of the Borrowed Face. The largest shrines were to Leampho of the One Wakeful Eye, a goodman who according to legend would smile upon contracts and unions that Torquest the Joiner of Hands would not touch with the tiniest finger of his steel-gloved hand.