Free Fly by Night by Frances Hardinge

laugh, with a sound like a cat coughing up furballs. ‘Ah now, I does like the way you talks in capitals,’ he remarked. ‘It’s as good as . . . well, now, will you look at that? It’s another of ’em fell foul of the Trollhole.’
    Ahead, the road took a sudden dip. The dip had clearly been rather too sudden for the large wheels of the biggest and most elegant carriage Mosca had ever seen. It blocked the road, tilting in a fashion that could only mean a wheel had come off. Two white horses grazed upon the gorse while two white-clad footmen were stooping to examine the damage. The white box of the carriage perched in fringed splendour on a frame of curling metal tendrils so slender that it almost seemed to float in the air on its own. The entire equipage looked far too fine and fairy-like for the real world, Mosca thought, and the rugged road clearly thought so too.
    ‘Bit of business,’ smiled the pedlar, and lowered himself off the cart.
    The little pedlar, it seemed, fancied that he had the tools to fix the wheel. The footmen were glad to hear this, and agreed with him that he should be paid handsomely for such a service. There was some disagreement as to what constituted ‘handsome’, however. The discussion of the attractiveness of various sums looked set to continue for some time.
    Mosca sighed and Clent blinked as a single raindrop tapped him peremptorily between the eyes. They clambered down from the cart and approached the bargainers.
    ‘For five minutes’ work? That’s daylight robbery!’ the carriage driver was exclaiming.
    ‘Ah,’ Clent intoned ominously, ‘better daylight robbery of this consenting sort than something bloodier, would you not say? After all, you would hardly care to be stranded out here come twilight, what with –’ he paused dramatically – ‘Black Captain Blythe on the loose.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Ah, I dare say you know him by a different name. The Widowmaker, probably.’
    ‘Or the Devil’s Friend,’ Mosca added quickly. A number of eyes turned to her questioningly, two of them belonging to Clent. ‘Yeah, he’s so uncanny with the things he knows, some people say he’s got an imp given him by the Dark Gentleman, who tells him things. Like, when he attacks he always seems to know who’s carrying a pistol, and he shoots them before they can draw.’ She had the satisfaction of seeing the carriage driver and one of the footmen go white. ‘Right through the gullet,’ she added cheerfully.
    Clent raised his eyebrows slightly, and gave the tiniest nod of approval.
    At the carriage window the breeze set a curtain of fine lace quivering as if in alarm. The movement caught Mosca’s attention. A single muddy droplet hung from the top of the window. The wind rolled it gently to and fro, then it became too self-important, and fell. It sank greedily into a sleeve like snow, leaving a spot the colour of coffee. A white handkerchief appeared in a slender, white-gloved hand and smoothed at the stain, smoothed and smoothed until it was no more. Mosca’s gaze followed the glove as it withdrew into the shadow of the carriage, and she looked in on a world of white.
    Until this moment Mosca had thought she understood white. White was old, white was ugly, white was something that had been left in the water too long.
    Until this moment Mosca had thought that she understood riches. Riches was the smell of goose fat, riches was a red roll of fat on belly and jowl that kept out the chill.
    This strange new world held a multitude of clinging raindrops, but each drop was a pearl.
    Mosca had never seen pearls before. And there were so many of them, playing ring-a-lilies across fields of spotless silk, hanging in long strings from the wrist and throat of the carriage’s single occupant.
    A face hung in the darkness, porcelain-pale and perfect. Above it rose an intricate mound of whorls and curls, pinned in place and powdered until the whole might have been carved out of marble. If there had