Free Twilight Robbery by Frances Hardinge

other ninety-nine paled beside Aramai Goshawk. No, they would not be going back to the rebel city.
    Mosca watched Clent for a few seconds, and gnawed her knuckles, while Saracen adjusted his unwieldly bulk on her lap.
    ‘Mr Clent,’ she said at last, ‘there’s only one place we can go, isn’t there? Toll.’
    Clent did not answer, but nor did he look particularly surprised. Instead he closed his book, sighed and nodded.
    ‘I fear so. If we remain between the rivers, then sooner or later we will starve or be caught, unless we can make ourselves invisible to the beadles or learn to eat stones. We cannot travel to Mandelion and so . . . Toll. It is the only way across the Langfeather. I suppose you know that travellers must pay to enter the town on one side of the river, and again to leave it on the far side?’ He lowered his tone. ‘I do not suppose that capacious pocket of yours conceals enough money to pay two tolls apiece?’
    Mosca chewed her cheek and kicked her heels for a few seconds. Then she delved into her skirt pocket and slowly pulled out four cambric handkerchiefs. She shrugged.
    ‘Mistress Bessel had a handkerchief for each day of the week, so . . .’
    ‘. . . so that admirable viper in female form will now only be able to blow her nose on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Not bad, but I doubt these little leavings will muster enough funds to enter Toll, let alone leave it again.’
    ‘No,’ Mosca muttered, ‘that’s what I thought. Which is why I took her stockings too.’
    Clent’s eyes widened as Mosca dropped two much-darned stockings between them. One bulged strangely about the foot, and hit the wood with a promisingly coin-like clink.
    ‘Might be enough, Mr Clent. To get into Toll, anyway. Didn’t have time to count, cos she was coming back up the stairs.’
    ‘Yes. I see. How enterprising.’ Clent cleared his throat. ‘So . . . in the wake of various thefts, frauds and goose-related blasphemies, is there anyone in Grabely who will not want to see us hanged?’
    ‘Nobody springs to mind, Mr Clent.’
    There was a short pause.
    ‘Toll!’ declared Clent briskly, and with sudden zeal. ‘What a gleaming sound that town has! What a peal of polished bronze resonates in the mere word!’
    He pondered, and then gave Mosca a sharp look.
    ‘Child – you are forgetting something though, are you not? Toll . . . That is where your kidnappers were heading. The brigands who appear determined to kill you?’ The whole sour tale of the kidnap had been related to Clent during the hasty flight from Grabely.
    ‘I haven’t forgot any of that.’ Mosca jutted her chin and stared at the distant trees.
    I haven’t forgot how I was tricked and tied up and carried off and poked with a knife and used as a scribe and thrown in a cellar and marked out for death like a chicken for a pot of stew. I haven’t forgot how all this was done cos I didn’t matter. Well, I’ll matter all right. I’ll matter so hard I’ll make them think the sky’s fallen on their heads.
    Clent regarded her shrewdly.
    ‘Revenge is a luxury reserved for the powerful, rich or unusually vicious.’ He broke into her thoughts. ‘We cannot afford it. Mosca, be grateful that you have escaped this adventure with your skin.’
    But I don’t want to be grateful. I’m tired of being kicked about like a pebble, and told that I have to be happy that it’s no worse. I’ve had enough. It’s time the pebble kicked back.
    ‘Mr Clent.’ Mosca turned wide, black, guileless eyes on her companion. ‘We got a duty, don’t we? To that poor girl with all the money – the one that Skellow and his boys are going to kidnap. Don’t we?’
    ‘Ah.’ Clent fiddled with his cravat ends. ‘Ah.’
    Mosca knew that his mind was skipping nimbly to the thought of rewards. It occurred to her that she and Clent were a good deal like clock hands, one large and one small, often pointing and striving in opposite directions, but always linked and bound to