Frances Hardinge - Fly By Night

‘Fancy,’ Clent said with a faint, desolate laugh. ‘The child wishes to leave all this.’ He glanced around at the dripping trees, the bone-white stones and the cold colours of the distant village.

‘I want to travel,’ Mosca declared. ‘The sooner the better,’ she added, with an apprehensive look over her shoulder.

‘Do you even have the first idea of what my profession entails?’

‘Yes,’ said Mosca. ‘You tell lies for money.’

‘Ah. Aha. My child, you have a flawed grasp of the nature of myth-making. I am a poet and storyteller, a creator of ballads and sagas. Pray do not confuse the exercise of the imagination with mere mendacity. I am a master of the mysteries of words, their meanings and music and mellifluous magic.’

Mendacity , thought Mosca. Mellifluous . She did not know what they meant, but the words had shapes in her mind. She memorized them, and stroked them in her thoughts like the curved backs of cats. Words, words, wonderful words. But lies too.

‘I hear you told theWidow a story ’bout how you was the son of a duke and was going to marry her when you came into your lands, but how you needed to borrow money so you could hire a lawyer and make your claim.’

‘Ah. A very… emotional woman. Tended to take, ah, figures of speech very literally.’

‘And I heard you told the magistrate a story ’bout how there was this cure for his aches which you just needed to send for, but which cost lots of money. And I heard you told all the shopkeepers a story ’bout how your secretary was coming any day and bringing all your trunks and the rest of your money so you could pay all your bills then.’

‘Yes… er… quite true… can’t imagine what can have happened to the fellow…’

‘They brand thieves’ hands, don’t they?’ Mosca added suddenly. ‘S’pose they’ll brand your tongue for lying. S’pose it stands to reason.’

Everything was very quiet for a few moments except for the rattle of water on rock and the sound of Clent swallowing drily.

‘Yes, I… I have quite lost patience with that secretary of mine. I suppose I must let him go, which means that I have a vacancy. Do you… do you have any qualifications or assets to offer as a secretary, may I ask?’

‘I got these.’ Mosca jangled the keys.

‘Hmm. A practical outlook and a concise way of speaking. Both very useful qualities. Very well, you may unlock me.’

Mosca slid down from her stone throne and scrambled up the craggy pedestal to slot the key into the lock.

‘Purely out of interest,’ Clent asked as he watched her, upside down, ‘what so bewitches you about the idea of the travelling life?’

There were many answers Mosca could have given him. She dreamed of a world without the eternal sounds of glass beads being shaken in a sieve and goblins chuckling in the ravines. She dreamed of a world where her best friend did not have feathers and a beak the colour of pumpkin peel. She dreamed of a world where books did not rot or give way to greenblot, where words and ideas were not things you were despised for treasuring. She dreamed of a world in which her stockings were not always wet.

There was another, more pressing reason though. Mosca raised her head, and stared up the hillside towards the ragged treeline. The sky was warmed by a gentle redness, suggesting a soft but radiant dawn. The true dawn was still some three hours away.

‘Very soon,’ Mosca said quietly, ‘my uncle will wake up. An’ when he does… he’s likely to notice that I’ve burned down his mill.’

Mosca was almost certain that setting fire to the mill had not been part of her plan when she had decided to rescue Clent. She had escaped from the locked mill through the hole in its roof with the ease of long practice. The malthouse wall, however, had presented more of an obstacle. She had known she would need Saracen to frighten off Brackle and Grabspite on the Whitewater plain, but the wall was too high to climb with a goose under one arm. It had made perfect sense to grab armfuls from the gorse stacks which the village used as fuel, and pile them against the wall. And when she had clambered up to the top of the wall, ignoring the sweet smell of dying summer and the stems which prickled against her face, it had made sense to light an oil lamp.

She did not remember deciding to drop the lamp, but nor did she remember it exactly slipping from her grasp. What she did remember was watching it fall away from her hand, and bounce so softly from one stack to another that it seemed impossible that it should break. She remembered seeing the wrecked lamp sketch a faint letter in white smoke shortly before the dry stems around it started to blacken and a hesitant flame wavered first blue, then gold… and she remembered a rushing thrill of terror as she realized that there was no going back to her old life.

Now, as Mosca and Clent fled Chough, the wind followed them like a helpful stranger, offering them the smell of smoke from the burning mill as if it thought it might belong to them.

At four o’clock the feverish wind sighed and settled. Mosca had always enjoyed clambering the cliff paths at this hour, watching the frogs bulging on their rocky pulpits while the trees lost their roots among the early-morning mist. When their path crossed the track down to Hummel, she halted nervously, but it was too early for any of Hummel’s red-scarfed women to be hefting sacks of grain to Chough’s mills.

‘I suppose there is a good reason why you have paused to take in nature’s marvels? Perhaps your goose has entreated a moment to lay an egg for our breakfast?’ For one of such portly build, Clent had kept a fast pace along the treacherous path.

Mosca stared at Clent.

‘He’s a gander,’ she exclaimed. She could not have been more amazed if Clent had mistaken Saracen for a cat.

‘Really?’ Clent pulled a shabby pair of chamois gloves from his waistcoat pocket, and used them to flick a few burrs from his shoulder. ‘Well, in that case, I recommend that you wring the bird’s neck and have done with it. It would be a pretty pass if our dinner were to get away from us, would it not? Besides, you will find a dead bird easier to carry and simpler to hide.’

Saracen shifted in Mosca’s grasp, and made small noises in his throat like water being poured from a jug. He understood nothing of Clent’s suggestion, but he resented the way Mosca’s arms were tightening around him.

‘Saracen isn’t dinner.’

‘Really? Then perhaps I may venture to ask what he is? Our guide through the mountains, perhaps? A bewitched relation? Or does our route cross a toll bridge where a payment must be made in waterfowl? May I point out that our provisions will be exhausted all the faster with an extra beak to feed?’

Mosca flushed.

Clent turned his head away slightly and examined her sideways along his cheek. Someone lean, clever and watchful seemed to be peering out of his eyes. ‘I assume we do have provisions? I am sure that my new secretary would not have made fugitives of us without bringing more than an inedible goose? No? I see. Very well then, this way, if you please.’

He led her uphill along a tiny path that ended before a brightly painted shrine no bigger than a kennel. Beneath its sloping roof a wooden statue of a man held out his hands in stiff benediction.

‘Mr Clent!’ Mosca reached the shrine in time to see her new employer scooping a handful of fat, golden berries from the pewter offering-bowl.

‘No need to become shrill, girl.’ Clent peeled a piece of damp leaf mould from the side of the statue’s head. ‘I am merely borrowing a few provisions, which we will of course repay in the fullness of time. This good fellow…’