‘You weren’t much help,’ she murmured bitterly. ‘Why didn’t you tell me anything about all this?’
‘If you want someone to tell you what to think,’ the phantom answered briskly, without looking up, ‘you will never be short of people willing to do so.’ There. She had it at long last, his voice and manner exactly. Quillam Mye paused to polish his pince-nez, and then squinted at his daughter through them for a long while, as if mildly surprised that she had grown up so much while his attention was elsewhere. ‘Come now,’ he said at last, ‘you can hardly claim that I have left you ignorant. I taught you to read, did I not?’
V is for Verdict
As Mosca found out later, the distant booming she had heard reverberating between the hills was not a buzzing in her stricken eardrums. It was cannonfire.
On receiving Toke’s warning, the Watermen had sent all available boats downstream in two flotillas, one made of swift-skimming vessels, the other of larger, slower vessels, to intercept the ship carrying Lady Tamarind’s troops.
In the short term this meant that a boatload of highly disgruntled Locksmith troops, who had been trying to act upon the orders of their guildmaster in Mandelion to reach the city with all speed, were finally able to sail on without being stopped at every bend in the river by good-natured Watermen who insisted on ‘searching the boat for Captain Blythe’. They reached Mandelion, and found the city in a state of celebratory riot. Disembarking, they were mistaken for reinforcements of Duke’s men, were overwhelmed by the jubilant crowd, and stripped of their weapons and clothes.
The fast Watermen flotilla, meanwhile, reached Fainbless before the moon rose. There was barely time to put men ashore on the bank and a mid-river island before a solitary ship was spied, a three-masted lugger with eight cannon. She flew no colours.
From a tower in Fainbless, the Watermen hailed the unknown ship, waving brands to signal her to shore. Their only answer was an echo, and the crack of gunfire.
Three Watermen were lost as the tower collapsed, and their comrades were not slow to touch off their cannon. The crew of the strange ship knew nothing of the Watermen hidden on the island until a flaming ‘carcass’ arc’d from among the trees and landed mid-deck.
The little Watermen boats flitted and slipped around the great ship like dogs at a baiting, but her muskets and riflemen were too numerous to risk a close approach. Even at long range her cannon ripped their sails.
Just as it seemed that nothing could be done to stop her passing out of range of the Fainbless cannon, the second Watermen flotilla arrived. In desperation a boat was fired and the flaming vessel sent towards the lugger, which steered wildly from its path and grounded itself in unsuspected shallows.
Pelted with carcasses, the lugger slowly burned to the waterline. There was no call for aid from on board, however. No boats were lowered, no survivors were fished out of the water. A superstitious fear settled, and some whispered that the the unknown ship might as well have been crewed and captained by the dead.
It was during the journey back to Mandelion that a sharp-eyed sculler spotted a chilled and feverish Mosca Mye huddled on one bank in the middle of a nest of rags.
Two days later, in a secret antechamber of what had once been the Duke’s Western Spire, Mosca and Clent found themselves standing before a group of quietly insistent men in very clean but well-worn overalls. Some of them wore pince-nez and ink-spattered cravats, and had thick pen-callouses on their third fingers. Some wore gloves and chatelaines of keys, and their colourless eyes watched the world narrowly, like oysters peeping from their shells. Some were tanned brown as conkers, and wore sashes bearing the design of a silver pond-skater against a black background.
‘What amazes me,’ declared Mabwick Toke in a wormwood tone, ‘is that two human beetles of this sort should have played such a large part in creating this diabolical mess.’
Mosca used her free hand to wipe her nose, which was still sore and runny after her recent cold. Her right arm was being held captive by Aramai Goshawk of the Locksmiths’ Guild, while he tried to make out the faint print on her skin.
‘How did this child come by so many bruises? I can hardly read the words.’
‘As I hear it, she has been clambering into, over and under anything that would permit it.’ Toke barked a laugh. ‘Count yourselves lucky you have not found her hiding in your writing desks or frolicking in your afternoon stew.’
Eponymous Clent gave a warm gust of laughter, which cooled when everyone else in the room remained stony.
‘We have little enough to laugh about, Clent,’ Toke commented coldly. ‘A few weeks ago, Mandelion was a stable and thriving city, with one problem – an illegal printing press. The Stationers’ Guild called you in to find this press, in exchange for overlooking your past misdemeanours. We did not order you to fling bodies in the river, throw in your lot with radicals, release savage animals in popular alehouses, or investigate the Duke’s family.
‘The Duke himself is stone-cold dead, and with him a decade of our careful diplomacy down the drain. His men have completely lost control of the city, and Mandelion is being run by a common highwayman whom your ballad has turned into the darling of the people. Thanks to you, the people of Mandelion will not be ruled by anyone but their famous Captain Blythe and his gang of radical reprobates.’
‘We might have controlled the Duke, once he had reached an understanding with us,’ Goshawk remarked quietly.
‘From what I seen,’ muttered Mosca, ‘the Duke din’t have much of an understanding at all.’
Clent cast a beseeching look in Mosca’s direction.
‘The Duke was mad,’ Toke conceded, ‘but we knew where we were with him. This man Blythe is another matter. ’
‘Ah now, I quite understand your concern, but I can assure you that beneath that burly, boorish, black-dog exterior lurks a dapper wit and-’
‘Clent!’ Toke’s voice slammed Clent into silence like a gavel. ‘You have talked quite enough already. I hear from my counterpart here -’ he gestured towards the head of the Locksmiths – ‘that you showed every willingness to join his guild when he caught you listening in on his meeting at the Grey Mastiff. Furthermore, the constables tell me that when you were arrested, you happily answered all their questions about our guild secrets, and a few more they lacked the wits to ask. And finally, there was the letter in which you promised me evidence linking Lady Tamarind Avourlace to the printing press and the Birdcatchers. What if we had arrested her on your word, and then found ourselves explaining to the Duke that our only evidence was a black mark on an apron, blurred beyond recognition by a sojourn in a herring barrel?’ Toke’s mouth closed itself into its cold little V. ‘You may count yourself lucky that my men were able to find evidence of forgery and treason in Lady Tamarind’s chambers. Two letters forged to look like the Twin Queens’ handwriting, and a copy of their signet ring, no less.’
‘Of course it may be argued that the lady’s behaviour is evidence enough,’ Goshawk added.
‘What did she do?’ Mosca could not help asking.
‘She set her crocodile on my men,’ Toke snapped. ‘It shook one man around like a sheaf at threshing, then grabbed a second by the ankle. My man Caveat put a bullet in its skull, but by then the lady had her own pistol to his head, and he was forced to escort her to a fast horse. She could be sipping wine in the Capital by now.’
… sipping pale golden wine with the late light in it, pouting her mouth carefully so that the paint on the lips could not wrinkle, pale and perfect as porcelain, with a snow-white guinea pig on a leash at her feet… Part of Mosca’s heart was glad that Lady Tamarind was still free, though something in her soul still roared with hate like a forest fire.