Fly by Night (20 page)

‘. . . and you want me to send a pair of plumpers to give him an alibi?’ The Locksmiths employed many ‘plumpers’, men who would perjure themselves for money. ‘I can do this. But first . . . I would like to see some evidence of your loyalty to us.’

A plan was forming in Goshawk’s mind. His eye slid over Clent’s report. In spite of his guild’s attempts to intimidate them, the Stationers had not halted their efforts to investigate the Locksmiths. Their interference did not frighten him – but it was an annoying distraction. Goshawk needed all his resources for a battle of wits that he was waging with a very different and more powerful enemy.

For months he had been fighting the Duke’s sister, Lady Tamarind, for control of Mandelion. Influencing the Duke was like trying to grab a fistful of maddened bees, but he was sure that he would have succeeded by now, were it not for Tamarind whispering in the Duke’s ear. Her network of spies seemed the equal of Goshawk’s own. The agents he sent to break into her apartments in search of her correspondence were almost invariably mauled by her monstrous pet collection. Worse still, their battle of wits seemed to have become tavern gossip, and crooks that should have flocked to join him hung back leerily, waiting to see who would win. Goshawk frowned. He could ill afford to let the underworld suspect that he was dancing daggers with the Stationers as well.

‘The Stationers need to be frightened, that is all, and they will back down,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘They are too afraid of an open guild war to risk a confrontation with us. Let us see. Their investigation has led them to this Pertellis, on whom they seem to place great value . . .’

He looked up at the waiting thief.

‘Let us see how skilled your men are. By dusk I want to you to find a man of letters named Pertellis.’

Meanwhile, blithely unaware how famous he had become in two short days, the young lawyer Hopewood Pertellis spent the afternoon at the Mandelion prison, speaking with a farmer he was due to defend at the upcoming Assizes for non-payment of the Duke’s harsh new taxes. He thought of nothing but the case as he walked home, and as he absently munched through the potage that his patient housekeeper left by his elbow.

The rooms of Pertellis’s house were unusually dark. In Mandelion, as in most cities, a tax was paid for every window, and only the well-off opted to pay for their daylight. Pertellis worked hard, but the clients he chose were seldom rich, and over the years he had boarded up most of his windows. The cheap candles he used gave off a smoky, sulky light and smelt like a mutton joint that had been left out in the rain. Nonetheless, like many quiet men, Pertellis had a stubborn streak wider than the Slye, and that night found him working late on the farmer’s case, squinting painfully in the dim light.

At the moment when his study door opened, he had just taken off his glasses to rest his aching eyes. So it was that, when he raised his head to discover the source of a furtive wooden creak, he saw only five or so dark shapes which were born from the shadow of the doorway and moved towards him without a sound.

At midnight a young linkboy, patrolling the darker docks of Whickerback Point with his lantern in search of someone who might need guiding home, chanced to hear a sneeze. By the light of his lantern he discovered the hanging sedan, and within it the shivering Caveat.

A helpful beadle brought Caveat back to the
Telling Word
. Thus Toke learned of Caveat’s ordeal, and the contents of Clent’s report concerning Pertellis and the Floating School.

He quickly roused three Stationers in the
Telling Word
from their coffee-haunted dreams, waving aside their reluctance to go chasing teachers in the middle of the night.

‘Stop mewling, and find your coats,’ Toke snapped. ‘Many of the Birdcatchers were teachers too, never forget that. Teachers to the sons of important men, secretly twisting their infant minds. The boys grew up and became powerful, with the seeds of Birdcatchery lodged in their heads, and nobody knew, until it was too late, how
many
of them there were. No, children must be taught by Stationers or not at all, or we shall have the same problem again in twenty years. When a head is too full of the wrong ideas, there is no option but to remove it – far better to stop the ideas getting there in the first place.’

Once ashore, Toke woke the high constable, who recognized Pertellis’s name. The young lawyer had been arrested twice on suspicion of sedition, but acquitted for lack of evidence. His address was included in the records of the trials.

An hour later, accompanied by his three Stationers and two petty constables, Toke stood before the door to Pertellis’s house and knew instantly that he was too late.

The locks of front door, back door, closet and writing desk had been picked without leaving so much as a scratch. The housekeeper was found, trussed and gagged, in the metal bath, her muslin cap pulled down over her face. Pertellis was gone. The whole thing had been managed without waking the neighbours, or even the dog that slept in the hallway.

In the pantry Toke found several hollowed bread loaves, with a different forbidden book hidden in each one. The Stationers now had evidence against Pertellis, but no Pertellis.

Mabwick Toke knew a Locksmith break-in when he saw one. But why had they taken Hopewood Pertellis? If Toke was correct, the Locksmiths themselves were responsible for printing the pamphlets vilifying the Duke. But if the Duke believed that
radicals
were running the secret printing press – perhaps the Locksmiths meant to present Pertellis to the Duke in chains as the radicals’ leader, and so win his trust and gratitude. Or could it be that the Locksmiths themselves had been using Pertellis as a cat’s-paw to run the printing press, and were afraid that he might talk if the Stationers caught him?

‘In any case,’ Toke muttered to himself, ‘if the Locksmiths think him worth grabbing, he
must
be important. And I shall snatch him back, Mr Goshawk, just you see if I don’t. I’ve never sought a war with you, but I won’t flinch from one either. I fought the Birdcatchers when they held the country in the palm of their hand, and if
they
couldn’t frighten me, Aramai Goshawk, then you shan’t.’

He looked around at the pale, sleep-starved countenances of the other Stationers.

‘Gape any wider, and you will yawn your faces inside out. All of you, go into the streets and shout out for a linkboy. Bring back as many as you can find!’

Within a short time there were half a dozen linkboys in Pertellis’s front hall. Surveying their sly and spotted faces, Toke thought it no wonder that they should welcome the veil of darkness in their nightly work.

Using a little sharp questioning and careful bribery, he soon learned that the youngest linkboy had seen five gentlemen ‘helping a friend home’. The boy had offered his lantern, but had been told to ‘sling his hook’.

‘Followed ’em as far as the Drimps in case they changed their mind,’ the boy added, then gave a gap-toothed grin as Toke put a coin in his hand.

On the narrow street known as the Drimps lived a blind tallow-maker who always slept with his shutters open. When Toke visited him the next morning, he was able to recall that, a little after second bell, he had heard half a dozen men moving with haste along the Drimps, and down Strangeway.

Hearing this, Toke’s eyes glittered. Strangeway was a crooked, covered alley which led all the way to the city wall, and emerged opposite a tavern called the Grey Mastiff.

The Grey Mastiff was famed throughout Mandelion for the quality of the ‘beast fights’ held within its walls every fortnight. For some time, however, Mabwick Toke had suspected that the Grey Mastiff was also used secretly as a Locksmith meeting place and safe house. Several known Locksmiths had been seen to congregate there every time a beast fight was held, and Aramai Goshawk’s supercilious silhouette had been glimpsed at one of the upper windows.

‘They’re not taking him to the Duke, after all. Not straight away anyway. This man Pertellis is hidden there, I’d stake my wig on it,’ Toke muttered to himself as a sedan took him back to the
Telling Word
. ‘But how to tweak him out?’

Toke had no men who could pick a lock or scale a wall the way Goshawk’s underlings could. But did he need them? He had enough evidence to draw up a warrant for Pertellis’s arrest. Could he not send his men into the Grey Mastiff with the warrant and have them boldly arrest the man and walk out with him?

Toke’s eyes became sharp and hard as a further idea occurred to him.

‘The Duke wants to believe in a radical conspiracy against him, does he?’ he murmured speculatively. ‘Well, let him! I shall make this Pertellis out to be the leader of the conspiracy, the owner of this demon printing press and chief enemy of the Twin Queens, whether he is or isn’t. Then I shall have my men march in and arrest him on the night of the next beast fight, when the Locksmiths have their meeting in the Grey Mastiff. I’ll make sure my men bring a constable with them, so he’ll see the “radical leader” ringed around with Locksmiths. Let’s see how much the Duke trusts Mr Goshawk once he hears reports that the Locksmiths have been discovered hiding the leader of the radicals from the forces of justice . . .’

The Locksmiths would be disgraced but, importantly, they would not be arrested. None of them would be placed in danger, and so nobody could accuse Toke of breaking the guildsmen’s Rules.

‘I shall have to send in Clent and his bold-eyed girl to spy out the place before we act,’ Toke resolved. If Goshawk had read Clent’s report, he would know the poet’s name, but would probably not recognize his face. In any case, it was better to risk an irrelevant rogue than one of the Stationers’ valued guildsmen. ‘Casualties of war,’ Toke growled, as he picked up a pen to write out Clent’s new orders.

That evening, Toke’s letter lay on the dinner table in front of Clent, liberally smeared with gravy. Toke had given a sparse account of the night’s events, naturally omitting all mention of Clent’s intercepted report. Somehow, as Clent repeated this account to Mosca, it became a tale of breakneck chases and exchanged pistol fire.

Mosca listened, wide-eyed. ‘So . . . the Locksmiths got Mr Pertellis in this Grey Mastiff, then?’

‘Yes – and in three nights’ time, the Stationers plan to march into the Grey Mastiff and snatch this radical teacher from Goshawk’s very own gloved fingers. Word will reach the Duke that when this firebrand Pertellis was arrested, he was caught in a conspiratorial tableau with the Locksmiths . . . and the Duke will smite his noble brow with grief at his own blindness, and throw off his Locksmith flatterers. Our task is to spy out the tavern beforehand, and make sure that Hopewood Pertellis is within. A simple matter for two fox-witted souls like ourselves.’

The fox-witted souls bickered cheerfully over the last helping of broth, unaware that in another part of the city Aramai Goshawk was rereading Clent’s report and peering at the names of Eponymous Clent and Mosca Mye.

K is for Kidnapping

‘I want my goose back!’

‘Mosca, while your affection for your anserine accomplice does you credit, I hardly think—’

‘I want my goose back!’

‘I can see that your orphaned state has caused you to regard the bird as a family member, perhaps a particularly beaky uncle—’

‘Mr Clent, I want my goose back!’

‘Have you forgotten that by your own account Mr Partridge is planning to roast my heart in the sun?’ bellowed Clent. The conversation had made little progress over the last half-hour and he was starting to lose his temper.

‘You could give him money. Bet he wouldn’t eat your heart if you give him enough money. Bet the Stationers gave
you
money for what I found out.’ Clent had been so delighted with Mosca’s discovery of the Floating School that the pair had actually got on tolerably well for two days. However, Mosca had just woken to a gleaming morning, and the sight of Clent trying on a new cravat. Instantly she had guessed that he had been paid without telling her. ‘They did pay you, didn’t they? That’s my money, or near enough anyway.’

‘Read through our “ship’s articles” again, child, if you have not forgotten your letters as well as your duties. You are bound to obey my orders, and you stand to receive a generous salary at the end of the year. Before this explosion of ingratitude, I had even
considered
recommending that the Stationers grant you a place in a school, as you requested.’ It seemed to occur to Clent that their voices had become rather loud given the thin walls of the marriage house, and his voice dropped to a whisper. ‘If, of course, you would rather throw away all hopes of bettering yourself in favour of buying yourself a mangled old fowl that seems to be harbouring all the demons of fable within his moth-eaten breast, then so be it. The choice is yours.’ Clent folded his arms, and his mouth became an adamant plum.