Frances Hardinge - Twilight Robbery aka Fly Trap

As the sound of the blasts faded, she could hear in all the surrounding streets frightened cries filling the air, like a cloud of birds startled from a field by a gunshot.

It was the easiest thing in the world to follow those running from the pleasure garden and join the confused muddle in the narrow streets. Staring up past the tall houses at the ragged band of sky, she could see two faint trails of smoke adrift, and a sooty cloud rising a little way to the east.

Toll-by-Day had limited experience of emergencies, and the double explosion had confused them. They could not tell which way they should be fleeing, if indeed they should be fleeing at all. Some had run out of their houses to gawp and ask each other pointless questions.

But this was bewilderment, not panic, confusion, not chaos. Mosca’s black eyes flicked around the street, taking in face after face, all doped with uncertainty. Then she took a very deep breath.

‘FIRE!’ she screamed, pointing a skinny finger towards the miasma of rising black smoke.

Half a second later there were rather a lot of other people doing exactly the same thing.

It was clear from the roll of Saracen’s strut that, for him, finding a military camp was like coming home. There were people bellowing, and buff coats that tasted of cow-hide when you chewed them. Best of all, it turned out that hardened cavalry horses, inured to explosions, gunshots, screams and the smell of blood, could be thrown into fits of hysterical rearing by small flapping things in their peripheral vision, such as wind-chased papers or an unexpected fluttering of white wings.

For now he was happy turning his beak to and fro to watch as two of the tall not-Moscas of his acquaintance took it in turns to shout loudly at each other over the wonderful clicks, rumbles and yells of the camp.

‘That was all she said!’ explained Mistress Leap. ‘She handed me this letter to give to you, told me to look after the goose while she was gone, and said she would try to be back by dusk.’

‘Songs of the celestial!’ Clent shook the paper in his hand, covered in Mosca’s scrawl. ‘Do you know what the child has done? She has absconded to talk to Aramai Goshawk and ask him to let her back into the town!’

There were a lot of other words that Clent used after this, mostly to describe his opinion of Mosca’s conduct. None of them were profane, but all of them were long and highly specific, and Mistress Leap might as well have been a goose for all the sense she could make of them.

Over Toll, the gunpowder-scented smoke that had been rising lazily was suddenly tugged and pulled apart like a dragged cobweb. Birds who had been beating their wings spread them and soared, washing lines came to life and the town’s few weathervanes started awake with a quiver and swung to point the opposite way.

Outside the town, Sir Feldroll twitched, stared about him, then wetted his forefinger and lifted it into the rising wind.

‘Hellfeathers! The wind has risen again, and now it is blowing from the south! Where did those mortars land?’ From the trails of smoke it was clear that one had, in any case, landed closer to the centre than intended. Mortars were hard to aim at the best of times, and on such uneven ground the times were anything but best. ‘Have our diplomats gone in yet to negotiate the mayor’s surrender? No? Good. Hold them back until we can see whether the fires in the town get out of control.’

Eponymous Clent puffed into earshot just in time to catch Sir Feldroll’s words.

‘Sir Feldroll – am I to understand that the town is now in real danger of burning?’

‘The wind changed direction,’ snapped Sir Feldroll. He had been shaken by this new lesson in the imprecision of war. He was many things, but an experienced soldier he was not. ‘But the townspeople must have arrangements for such…’ He did not finish his sentence. Perhaps, like Clent, he was thinking of Toll’s complacent reliance on their Luck to defend them against calamity.

‘Sir Feldroll, I…’ Clent closed his eyes as if in pain, made a few grimaced attempts to continue, then pressed his fingertips together and steeled himself. ‘I would like,’ he went on, with an expression that indicated the very opposite of liking, ‘to volunteer to take the place of your diplomats and approach the mayor for you. Fate… fate has clearly allotted me this role. After all, I belong to neither of your cities – what better intermediary could you choose?’

‘Mr Clent!’ Sir Feldroll stared at him, his features managing a remarkable tug of war between gratitude and suspicion. ‘After all that has happened, you are happy to go as my ambassador into Toll?’

‘Happy? No. Willing? Barely. Compelled by some pustule of honour I shall lance if I survive the day? So it would seem.’

One of the canisters had rattled down to street level, where it had blown in shutters, shattered windows and left its fragments smoking on the cobbles and a little stream of flaming liquid running down the kennel ditch at the centre of the street. But the second had lodged in a cluster of chimneys, where its explosion had scattered burning oil over tile and thatch. Now the wind was stroking the young flames, and dozens of tiny red-gold sparks were taking wing like thistledown.

They blew out across a town full of timber and plaster, covered in facings of wood light enough to be moved at dusk and dawn. A crowded town where flames might leap from house to house and never be made to halt. A town just waiting to be burned.

‘Fire! Fire!’ Mosca ran from street to street, screaming it at the top of her voice, and heard it echoed everywhere. ‘We got to stop it spreading! We got to tear houses down so it cannot spread along the rows!’

That was what had been done in the Ravens, the soot-blackened neighbourhood where Clent had met with Skellow in Brotherslain Walk. There had been a fire, and in spite of all their rules about who should be locked indoors at which times of day, the people of Toll had grabbed something heavy and torn down houses, locked doors and all, to stop the spread of the flames.

Mosca was counting on them doing the same now, if she could fill them with enough panic. Brand and Laylow were on the wrong side of a locked door, and so was the Luck. She could only reach them if the barriers started to fall. Everybody was terrified of the Locksmiths, but you could fight fear with fear. If there was anything that the townspeople would fear more than the Locksmiths, it would be fire. And it didn’t matter whether it was a dangerous fire, providing everybody thought it was.

‘Fire! F-’

Mosca smelt smoke, turned a corner into a wave of unexpected warmth and gaped at a blazing street. Windowpanes were popping, plaster blackening, black smoke churning between timber joints. This was no smoke display. Sir Feldroll’s ‘warning’ had decided to carry itself out in good earnest.

‘Oh dungbuckets!’ she exclaimed breathlessly, then turned to yell at other fleeing figures. ‘Hey! HEY! Come back! We got to tear down these houses! There are people locked in there!’

‘Lass! Come away!’ A tall man in a smithy’s apron ran out and seized her by the arm, dragging her away from a large shower of sparks. ‘Lass, what-’

He stopped dead. Now that he had joined Mosca in the street, he could hear what she could hear: a chorus of thin, muffled cries from behind the plasterwork of the buildings.

‘Goodlady Syropia’s mercy! The nightlings!’ His honest features contorted with indecision as his eyes flicked between the blazing timberwork and the gleaming Locksmith locks just visible at the edges of the facings. She could see the agony of fear and superstition, and she thought for a moment he would flee and pretend he had not heard the cries. Then he spun Mosca around and took her by the shoulders. ‘Run down to my forge – corner of Tattle Street – and find my brothers. Tell them to bring as many hammers as they can, and rally some strong arms willing to wield ’em.’