Even as she gave words to this thought, her bare sole settled on a ledge that turned out to be harbouring a family of ember-hot cinders. She swore and jerked her foot away, then dragged desperately at the sooty walls with hooked fingers as her other foot lost its grip. She tumbled down the rest of the flue, buffeted by the back wall, the air filling with soot clouds, and then a stone floor struck her in the bottom, bringing her to a halt with an agonizing jolt. For a few seconds she could only lie there, winded and mewling in pain, her legs in the air. Then she opened her eyes again, and froze.
She was in a room twice as large as the one she had just left, the walls draped with rich but faded tapestries. The floor was choked with dusty russet-coloured rugs and cluttered with wooden images of the Beloved, some of whom had been arranged in lines like troops. In a corner stood a small four-poster with a chipped chamber pot beside it. A cluster of candlesticks was glued to the top of a low table by their own wax, one candle still lit and casting a slanted radiance over the whole room.
Standing directly over Mosca herself was a youth of about fifteen years, his jaw slack, his eyes popping with surprise.
His pallor reminded Mosca of the bluish wanness of the inhabitants of Toll-by-Night. His clothes, on the other hand, were lavish, although apparently designed for someone a few years younger. The sleeves of his green velvet frock coat ended several inches short of his bony wrists. His waistcoat was elaborately embroidered, but many threads had been pulled loose. No effort had been made to tie back his long dark hair. Fuzzy dark brows met over his nose.
For a moment or two Mosca was paralysed. The stranger, however, did not call for help or move to the door, but seemed if anything more flabbergasted and terrified by her sudden apparition than she was.
Mosca put her finger to lips and gave an intimidating hiss, that turned into more of an intimidating splutter as soot caught in her throat. She struggled to her feet, soot-stained and inexplicable.
‘Who…?’ The boy’s voice was a squeak.
‘I am a… a Figure of Calamity!’ hissed Mosca. ‘Sent by the Beloved to… to punish them that… do not pray enough.’
There was a short pause in which the stranger’s pale gaze wavered down Mosca’s scraped and blackened form and back to her face again.
‘What kind of calamity?’ he whispered.
‘Fire,’ answered Mosca promptly, her heart beating a tattoo. ‘And… hunger. And crime. And really bad moods. Now, keep your ugly trap shut, or I’ll blight you.’
The youth stared at her, then extended one trembling hand towards Mosca’s face, and with great care and deliberation poked her in the eye.
She gave a short yelp and slapped his hand away. He spent a few moments staring at his sooty fingertip, and then broke into a long loud laugh. It was an embarrassing laugh, the sort of unformed, yodelling noise that Mosca would have expected to hear from a toddler or a village simpleton. Mosca crouched back towards the fireplace and glanced nervously at the door, but the braying laughter summoned nobody.
‘You are not a calamity,’ he said. ‘Your cheek is squashy.’
There was something odd about his speech, at once childlike and formal. It reminded Mosca of a very small child reading lines for a play. He had other infantile tricks of manner too, the way he let his jaw hang open, and breathed loudly through it, the way he fumbled at his own buttons, and scratched himself in ways most people didn’t when anyone was watching.
So. Someone had been left to watch the Luck. The idiot son of some high-ranking daylighter, to judge by appearances. And if he was an idiot… then perhaps all was not lost. Perhaps he would be too addle-pated to give a good account of her, if she crept back up the chimney to her own cell. Perhaps he would not even notice her scooping up the Luck…
Heart pounding, Mosca willed herself to think. Where was the Luck? Was it that silver plate heaped with dried raisins? That glass decanter with purple tidemarks left by wine? That ivory-handled candle snuffer?
The stranger was examining her again with a new, keen interest, looking in wonderment at her breeches and chemise.
‘Where is your badge?’
Mosca clutched reflexively at the place where it had been, before remembering that it had been pinned to the dress she had left in her cell.
‘I…’ She swallowed. ‘I must have dropped it somewhere – don’t look at me like that!’
‘But – everybody has to have a badge! Having no badge is against -’ The boy broke off suddenly, and for the first time looked alarmed and cast a glance towards the door. But instead of running to it to summon help, he turned back to Mosca and put a clumsy hand over her mouth.
‘Talk quietly,’ he said, ‘or they will take you away.’
He took her by the arm, led her to the dark wall furthest from the door and sat down on the rug in a jumble of angular limbs. Mosca dropped into a crouch a yard from him, all the while keeping her feet under her, in case she needed to sprint for the chimney. If his wits were twisted, could he be dangerous?
‘So – what you doing up here?’ she asked, as quietly and steadily as she could.
‘Luck,’ he muttered in a distracted way. Mosca glanced at him sharply, hoping that he might betray himself with a glance towards the mysterious Luck. He did not. His angular, trembling hands were busy, shaking out a chequered rug and arranging some of the wooden Beloved upon it.
‘For Luck? Did your family put you in here because…’ Mosca hesitated.
… because you were broken-witted and they hoped the Luck would cure you…
‘Here.’ The boy pushed a heap of Beloved towards Mosca. ‘You play this now. You have night, I have day. I want to try the new rules.’
Only when her strange host started pointing out where on the rug she should place ‘her’ Beloved did Mosca understand what he was doing. He had divided the statues into the Beloved that gave daylight names and the ones linked to night-time names. Now he was laying them out like game pieces on the squares of the checked rug.
Playing games with Beloved icons? I fancy the priests would have a thing or two to say about that…
He explained the rules, gabbling some parts in his excitement. Mosca watched him narrowly, cupping Palpitattle in her hands, her wits snicking against each other like sharpening knives.
‘So this is a game?’ Mosca chewed her cheek. ‘Ought to be a prize really, then, shouldn’t there? Anything here worth using as a prize? What’s the most valuable thing here?’
Ah! There it was at last. A small telltale gesture. Her host’s hand crept up and came to rest near his own collarbone.
‘What is it?’ Mosca pursued her advantage. ‘Can I see it? Is it a locket?’
The youth shook his head, wide-eyed, then beamed and tapped at his own chest.
‘What? Where? What is it? Oh.’ Mosca slumped and wiped her face with both hands, leaving a cage-work of soot smudges across her brow. ‘Oh, beechnuts. It’s you, isn’t it? You’re the Luck.’
‘Protector-of-the-walls-guardian-against-disaster.’ The boy’s smile was beatific. ‘I was born under Goodman Lilyflay, He Who Makes Things Whole and Perfect – and so I have a name full of getting-things-right and just-as-it-should-be. The finest, brightest, luckiest name in Toll.’
‘Might ’ave guessed,’ sighed Mosca bitterly. ‘You couldn’t jus’ be a glass cup, could you?’ She sized up the bemused-looking Luck, peered appraisingly at the little hearth, then shook her head wearily. ‘I’d have had a better chance with a bunch of peacocks,’ she muttered. ‘So – what is this brilliant name of yours, Master Luck?’
‘Paragon,’ came the answer, laced with quiet pride.
The word was slightly familiar. ‘Is that like a hexagon?’