Read Online Fly by Night by Frances Hardinge - Free Book Online Page B

now.’
    Clent looked around him at the unsmiling hauliers, and he seemed to be reckoning the odds. His mouth grew as small and round as an unripe plum.
    Before Mosca could react, he had seized her around the middle, pinning her arms to her sides.
    ‘Keep the goose,’ he called over his shoulder, and he bodily dragged his young secretary from the barge, ignoring her kicks and spirited attempts to break his fingers.
    Mosca had time to see Saracen lifting his head quizzically to observe her unceremonious departure, before her bonnet fell over her face again.
    It was five minutes before her weight wearied Clent’s arms, and his ankles tired of her accurate kicks, and he dropped her in a heap amid the bracken. When she found her feet, the wincing sunlight, the ragged gorse and the slow-blinking wings of the moths were witness to an epic Trade in Exotic Terms.
    Mosca’s opening offer was a number of cant words she had heard pedlars use, words for the drool hanging from a dog’s jaw, words for the greenish sheen on a mouldering strip of bacon.
    Eponymous Clent responded with some choice descriptions of ungrateful and treacherous women, culled from ballad and classic myth.
    Mosca countered with some from her secret hoard of hidden words, the terms used by smugglers for tell-alls, and soldiers’ words for the worst kind of keyholestooping spy.
    Clent answered with crushing and high-sounding examples from the best essays on the natural depravity of unguided youth.
    Mosca lowered the bucket deep, and spat out long-winded aspersions which long ago she had discovered in her father’s books, before her uncle had over-zealously burned them all.
    Clent stared at her.
    ‘This is absurd. I refuse to believe that you have even the faintest idea what an “ethically pusillanimous compromise” is, let alone how one would . . .’ Clent’s voice trailed away as his eyes fixed on something beyond Mosca’s shoulder.
    They could hear the racket of crude wheels over rough stones. In the distance, beyond the banks of gorse, could be seen the tottering crest of a high-loaded cart.
    In an instant, the pair abandoned use of their tongues and took to their legs. Through thick grass and ragged brush they plunged after the cart, Mosca with her skirts scooped thigh-high, Clent whistling to catch the driver’s attention.
    The cart was little more than a family of creaks on wheels, bound together with rope. The driver, a tiny, tanned imp of a man, was champing on a piece of bread, leaving the reins slack and trusting his ponderouslooking bay to follow her own head.
    ‘Lookin’ for a lift to Mandelion, are you? Clamber on up if you can find a space. Go easy, though – my wares has teeths, they does.’
    Drawing back the covering cloth, Mosca’s gaze was met by two dozen metal grins, as if the false teeth of a dozen iron beasts had been stolen while they slept.
    ‘Traps. Any kind of traps you needs, I got. Traps for taking the toes off a trespasser, traps for taking the nose off a badger.’
    Mosca replaced the cloth, and nervously clambered up to sit on the assembled heap, hearing the occasional spring sing and jaw snap.
    Traps in Clent’s bed, Mosca thought. Traps in Clent’s soup. She hugged herself into bitter thinness, and said nothing. A Stationer spy would have enemies, she was sure of it. She would bide her time until Mandelion, and then somebody would pay good money for what she knew about Clent. And then a purse for her belt, a shilling to buy back Saracen, a fee for the school and a trap, a trap for the Stationer spy . . .
    ‘I makes them all myself, you know. Traps for the belt, in case someone tries to fork you of your purse . . .’
    ‘How ingenious,’ Clent remarked. ‘Have you thought of having posters made? Perhaps making it clear that this is a limited opportunity to buy, since a Coalition of Criminals has declared you their Mortal Foe due to your Effect upon their Livelihoods . . .’
    The little trap-pedlar started to