Mortal terror, like most things, is relative. Mosca was right in thinking that the majority of people in Toll-by-Night lived in fear, but some lived with more of it than others. And at that moment one man was living with about as much of it as a person could stand without shaking themselves into pieces.
A short while ago this unfortunate individual had been the leader of half a dozen men sent by Sir Feldroll to find Beamabeth Marlebourne. Now he was just a terrified, two-legged jelly. His mind was full of the ferocity of the wind that buffeted and swayed him, and the prickle of sweat droplets as they traced a course along his back and neck, then out of his collar and up into his hair. Or, to put it more accurately,
down
into his hair, since that was currently the lowermost thing about him.
When ambushed and captured, he had prayed to the Beloved with all his might and main that he would live long enough to find himself outside the walls of Toll. Being dangled upside down from one of the coffin-chutes in the western wall above the precipitous Langfeather gorge had not been exactly what he had meant.
His knucklebone dice fell out of his pocket and bounced off the underside of his chin, and he could only watch as his
luck and the favour of his Beloved plunged towards the half-visible roar that was the Langfeather. Wind-bitten scraps of a conversation above him reached his ears.
‘What
are
you doing?’ A rasping voice like pumice that he had not heard before.
‘One of the spies, Master Guildsman.’ A matter-of-fact sparrow-chatter voice, belonging to the man who had fastened the rope about the captive’s ankles. ‘Weren’t too talkative, so I thought maybe something was stuck in his throat. If you turn ’em upside down and shake ’em, all sorts of things fall out.’
‘We have no time for this kind of game.’ The first voice again, impatient, cold. ‘One of his fellows has already told us more than enough of their mission. This man is an unnecessary waste of our time. You had better . . . let him go’.
The spirits of the suspended man soared skywards, and just as quickly yo-yoed back down again as it occurred to him that right now the last thing he wanted was for somebody to ‘let him go’. Worse still, he could feel hands busy with the ropes around his ankles, confirming his worst fears. This could be his last moment.
‘Wait! Stop! I can tell you more than the others! I was the one that received our orders from Sir Feldroll! Please! Stop!’
A short pause, and then the captive felt himself being hauled back up the chute an inch at a time. Tears of relief and humiliation flooded his eyes and ran up his forehead.
Ten minutes later Aramai Goshawk knew everything the terrified man could tell him. As a matter of fact he had known most of it already, since the other five captives had been subjected to exactly the same ordeal and offhand-sounding conversation and had cracked with equal speed.
When it became clear that there would be nothing more from this prisoner but sobbing and expressions of his wish to see his family again, Goshawk had him locked up. It was, after all, still just possible that a use might be found for him and his fellows. Goshawk was not surprised that he had broken – like most desperate men, he had leaped for the only chink of hope he could see. The important thing, Goshawk knew, was to make sure that there
was
a chink of hope. Men who despaired, who were
truly
desperate, became dangerous. The night of Saint Yacobray, for example, was a carefully judged exercise in fear. Most people would manage to pay the tithe, and only a tiny minority would fail – and these could serve as warnings to the others.
To look into the pale eyes of Aramai Goshawk was to peer into a winter forest. Stark, wakeful, birdless, colourless, all its paths hidden beneath a smothering of white. You could stagger through it for leagues until you gave up hope, and your every footstep would be remembered, preserved and analysed by the unforgiving snow.
He understood fear too well to allow it a foothold in his mind. If you had pointed a pistol at his head, he would have looked at it with interest, noting every visible detail of its construction, because he knew that everything around him, even the weapons of his enemies, were tools waiting for him to use them. It was almost impossible to frighten him, but with a little work it was possible to annoy him.
Right now, he was downright irritated. In the world according to Goshawk, if somebody wanted something stolen, they should come to him. And if they wanted to recover something that had been stolen, they should come to him.
He mulled over what he had learned from his prisoners, from the two cryptic letters that had been found in the secret drop in the town wall, from the reports of his spy placed close to the mayor. A set of amateurs in Toll-by-Night,
his
town, had set their minds on a theft of a valuable young heiress, and they had not come to him, nor to the Locksmiths at all. Instead they had managed the matter themselves without as much offering the Locksmiths a cut or tithe.
Worse still, the mayor had not approached the Locksmiths about recovering his daughter. Nor had he told the Locksmiths that he was sending in armed men to rescue her. That was worse than rude, that was
trespassing
.
Last but not least, two familiar names had been brought to his attention. For some reason the charlatan poet Eponymous Clent and his girl Mye had become involved in the mayor’s business. Was Clent still spying for the Stationers’ Company as he had been in Mandelion, or was he working to his own agenda? If Clent did have his own scheme, Goshawk suspected that it would be small-minded, selfish and poorly planned, but he had noticed that Clent had a tiresome talent for entangling himself in more important matters. Eponymous Clent would need to be watched.
So – how could the whole situation be turned to his advantage? It seemed from his captives’ whimpering that a ransom was soon to be paid, though they could not say exactly what, when or where. Well, let it be paid. Even with the money the kidnappers could not leave the night town without his permission. If they did not offer the Locksmiths a suitably tempting deal, then why not capture them
and
their ransom, then bargain with the mayor for a reward for finding the girl?
Nobody but the Locksmiths, therefore, should be allowed to return the heiress to her father. The immediate threat had been defeated with the ambush of Sir Feldroll’s men. The child Mye had not appeared at the rendezvous point and had thus escaped capture, but that did not worry Goshawk greatly. If she was not already dead, then she had undoubtedly been scared into going to ground. She would be alone, unaided and incapable of receiving further orders from her scheming employer, so Goshawk could not imagine that she would cause further trouble.
However annoying this amateur kidnap was, however, Goshawk had larger fish to fry. He could not afford to be distracted from the imminent culmination of his own plans.
The mayor suspects nothing
, he reflected,
and by this time tomorrow night the mayor should be ready to do whatever I say . . .
‘Mistress Leap! Let me in!’
The front door opened a crack, allowing a greenish
foreigner, a groggy midwife and an emerald goose a sliver-view
of each other, and then was opened properly so that Mosca
could enter.
‘You still don’t look too well, Mistress Leap.’
‘Oh, no, no, it’s nothing serious.’ The midwife gave a slightly cross-eyed smile and dropped into her favourite chair. ‘Nothing that a little rest won’t hedgehog.’
This answer was not as reassuring as it was clearly meant to be, and Mosca insisted in finding a cup of ‘kill-grief’ for her hostess before sitting down.
‘Mistress Leap,’ she began at last, ‘we’re in a lot of trouble. The men who were going to help us were snatched by the Locksmiths right by the Twilight Gate. So we got no money and no reinforcements . . . and I can’t get word to my dayside friends. We’re . . .’
Plucked, stuffed and spitted
, Palpitattle helpfully suggested in Mosca’s head.
‘We’re . . . going to have to think of something else,’ Mosca said instead. ‘Really, really fast.’
Unfortunately, Mosca and the Leaps were not alone in their desperation. Everybody in Toll-by-Night had a wild and panicky look, as if they could hear the Clatterhorse snapping its dry teeth an inch behind their necks. Nobody was in the mood to give or lend. A few parents with newborns dug out coins for Mistress Leap through gratitude, but it was a tiny fraction of the amount needed.
An hour later, therefore, Mosca and Welter Leap were shoving their way through the unusually crowded streets, loaded down with every rickety, moth-eaten stick of furniture that could be spared.
An outing with the morose and quietly bitter Welter Leap was not a prospect that filled Mosca with joy, but carrying the furniture clearly required two people, and she was fairly certain that Mistress Leap should not be on her feet right now. In the end she had left Saracen behind to guard the midwife again.
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—’