Fly by Night by Frances Hardinge Read Free Book Online Page A

were new to Mosca and sounded quite interesting. She memorized them for future use.
    At last she raised the broad bonnet brim and gazed cautiously out into the shop. The floor was awash with the chalky shrapnel of shattered leaves and shivered ribbons. Through the debris swaggered Saracen, trailing a hessian rug like a cloak, a sprinkling of stone dust across his orange beak. Farthingale had taken refuge behind the wreckage of the counter, and was cupping one hand over his bloodied nose. Mistress Bessel had scrambled on to a rickety chair, her skirts hitched. The wood beneath her portly weight creaked nervously as the goose strutted barely a yard from her feet.
    Mosca emerged, carefully grabbed an armful of goose, and bobbed a hurried, inelegant curtsey to her hostess.
    ‘I am very sorry, Mistress Bessel,’ she explained hurriedly. ‘Saracen has an antipathy to strangers.’ She had long treasured the word ‘antipathy’, and was glad of a chance to use it.
    She left the shop at a weak-legged walk. It surely could not be long before Mistress Bessel sent a constable after her anyway, but if she ran the woman might think to shout ‘Stop, thief!’, and then she would have the whole street at her heels.
    Amid the forest of swaying masts, she spied a yellow flag upon which rippled the Grouse Rampant, the heraldic device of King Hazard. The Mettlesome Maid was a hayboat, and a heavily loaded one at that. The crew were doing their best to cover the bales with sacking, while the gulls tugged and scattered the hay across the deck.
    Pulling her mob cap down to hide her white eyebrows, Mosca struggled through the crowd of impatient hauliers. A heated discussion appeared to be taking place on deck.
    ‘. . . a degree of haste would be appreciated.’ Clent’s tones were unmistakable.
    ‘Not for that price. After all, I run the risk. If the Watermen find out I’m carrying passengers ’gainst their rules, they’ll hole my boat as sure as rocks.’
    ‘Uncle Eponymous!’ squeaked Mosca, and reddened as a number of tanned faces turned grins upon her that glittered like hot tar. ‘I spoke to the wherry captain and he’ll take us for your price . . .’
    The captain of the barge looked a little taken aback, but this was nothing compared to Eponymous’s start at being greeted by his ‘niece’.
    ‘Your niece?’ The captain seemed to be reckoning the odds of losing his passenger. ‘Well, can’t leave a lass standing on the wharfside wi’ these villains. Your price, then, and sixpence more for the girl, and we’ll leave it at that.’
    Mosca was handed aboard, and delicately seated herself on a bale next to her ‘uncle’.
    ‘How resourceful of you,’ he murmured under his breath. ‘I was just arranging our . . . er . . . I see you have your . . .’ His eyes dropped to Saracen.
    ‘Mistress Bessel decided she didn’t want him after all,’ Mosca said carefully. As she spoke Mistress Bessel’s name, she recalled the interesting words she had heard Farthingale yelling at the top of his voice. ‘Mr Clent,’ she asked meekly, ‘what does “pixelated” mean?’
    ‘Deranged. Having had one’s senses stolen by the fairies,’ Clent replied promptly.
    ‘And pyewhacked feathrin?’
    ‘I believe that is meant to suggest a bird possessed by the devil.’
    ‘And chirfugging?’
    ‘Ahem. I think I shall tell you that when you are a little older.’
    For the first mile or so, Mosca sat tensely among the bales, expecting every moment to hear cries from the bank. She felt sure that the barge would be ordered ashore by the river police of the Watermen’s Guild, and she would find herself dragged back to Kempe Teetering for arson and goose-theft and hanged without delay. Clent, she had no doubt, would sell her out immediately to the constables if they were apprehended.
    Somehow, though, as the barge eased its way through the lapping leagues, the sun started to seep into her head, and it began to seem possible, just possible,