1. Summary of Plot

2. Factions

3. Characters

4. References

5. External links

Twilight Robbery by Frances Hardinge, is a children's or young adults' comic fantasy novel by Frances Hardinge, published on 4 March 2011 by Macmillan in the UK, and by Harper Collins in the USA. It was shortlisted for the 2011 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize. It is the sequel to Fly by Night, featuring the same protagonist Mosca Mye. It is set in the same grotesque fantasy world of The Realm, which Hardinge describes as bearing some similarity to early 18th century England. The people follow the cult of numerous small deities, known as the Beloved, each sacred in just a few hours in the year. Everyone is named according to the Beloved in whose time they are born.

The novel is mostly located in the town of Toll, which has the only surviving bridge over the Langfeather gorge. Toll’s unique character comes from its division into Toll-by-Day and Toll-by-Night, the two towns time-sharing the same physical space. Residents are assigned to day or night according to their name, aligned to the Beloved they are born under, and must wear a badge showing their classification. For example, Mosca has a night name. Babies must be transferred and adopted if their birth time means their name type will not match their parents’.

Twice a day, at dawn and dusk, the bugle sounds for the 15 minute day/night changeover. The Jinglers lock one population into their sleeping quarters, and then release the other. Doors and trade-signs, even the street pattern, are reorganised at the changeover by use of moving panels. It is traditional that on Saint Yacobray’s night a Clatterhorse roams the town collecting vegetables hung on people’s doors. Nightlings must pay the Jinglers’ tax by putting money in the vegetables.

Toll charges a steep entry toll and separate exit toll, only affordable by the well-off. Exit from Toll-by-Night is twice the day charge. Visitors who pay for entry may stay three days in Toll-by-Day, regardless of their name. If they do not pay for exit, they become residents, and must live in Toll-by-Day or Toll-by-Night according to their name.

Toll has been stable through the political upheavals in the Realm, and its bridge has survived. Most dayfolk superstitiously believe that a charm called the Luck, held in a room at the top of the Clock Tower, keeps them safe. But the mayor relates it to the confinement of troublesome people to Toll-by-Night, supervised by the Locksmiths.

Summary of Plot

At the end of Fly By Night, Mosca and her goose have left the city of Mandelion for life on the road with conman Eponymous Clent. At the beginning of Twilight Robbery, winter is approaching and Clent is locked in a debtors prison in Grabely. Cold and hungry, Mosca leaves town to look for better pickings elsewhere.

Skellow, being illiterate as most people are, abducts Mosca to write bids at a Pawnbrokers’ auction. There he buys the services of the Romantic Facilitator to force a marriage on a maiden of Toll. Mosca conceals from him the true content of the letters exchanged to make arrangements.

Mosca escapes Skellow into the protection of Mrs Bessel. They return to Grabely, and Mosca pulls off a con to release Clent. Mosca and Clent leave in a hurry, and go to Toll to take try to get a reward for revealing Skellow’s plot. They realise the target must be the Mayor’s daughter, Beamabeth, who broke off her engagement to Appleton Brand when he was reclassified as nightling. Mrs Bessel catches up with them, and offers to overlook her losses if they will cooperate with her dangerous scheme to steal the Luck, but they turn her down.

Clent exposes Skellow’s plot to the Mayor, but the Mayor dismisses it as an invention to con money out of him. To demonstrate the truth of it, Clent poses as the Romantic Facilitator and meets Skellow at the dusk rendezvous that Mosca has misled Skellow about. Afterwards, they are too slow to get to their inn and become stranded in Toll-by-Night, where they are not safe. They gain sanctuary with Mrs Leap, a midwife, and her sharp young friend Laylow helps them return to Toll-by-Day. Bessel gains influence with the Mayor, and helps promote Clent’s scheme. They set a trap for Skellow, but they are outwitted and Beamabeth is abducted. The kidnappers demand a ransom of the city’s largest jewel, to be placed in a radish for collection on St Yacobray’s night.

With this setback, life quickly becomes much more dangerous for Mosca. First she has to cooperate with Bessel’s scheme to steal the Luck, and then must go into Toll-by-Night to assist in Beamabeth’s rescue.

Eventually Mosca and Clent earn their reward from the Mayor, but the situation remains dangerous and they must leave Toll. The Locksmiths are poised to take over Toll-by-Day, and a Waymakem army is camped outside town, threatening to force their way through to get to Mandelion. Mosca is unwilling to accept either of these outcomes and decides to go back into Toll with a scheme to prevent them, with momentous consequences.

Factions

• Toll dayfolk – residents of Toll-by-Day, superstitious believers in the protective power of the Luck. They are afraid of the nightlings who they perceive as dirty and dangerous.
• Toll nightlings – residents of Toll-by-Night, made to do the dirty jobs that keep Toll-by-Day clean and running smoothly. Poverty means many nightlings turn to crime to get by. Thieves' cant is widely spoken.
• Guild of Locksmiths – known as the Jinglers in Toll. Once they only made locks and strongboxes, but now operate as a mafia providing a wider range of security services. A Locksmith always wears gloves as the outline of a key is branded on his right palm. The head of each cell wears a chatelaine at his waist which match the brands of all the men that answer to him.
• Guild of Pawnbrokers – have expanded from money-lending into fencing stolen property and facilitating other criminal transactions
• Radicals – believers in freedom of speech and religion, who have taken power in Mandelion
• Aristocrats – rulers of most of the city states of the Realm, who desire to contain the spread of radicalism. They have cut off trade with Mandelion, and are contemplating sending an army to overturn the regime.

Characters

• Mosca Mye – our hero, a 12-yr-old dark-eyed orphan, book-lover, and accomplished liar
• Saracen – her pet goose of violent inclination
• Eponymous Clent – travelling wordsmith and conman, who has formed a working partnership with Mosca
• Jennifer Bessel – businesswoman friend of Clent, who wears gloves to conceal her thief brand
• Graywing Marlebourne – mayor of Toll, but his power mainly runs to control Toll-by-Day
• Thrope Foely – the Night Steward, the Mayor’s official representative in Toll-by-Night
• Aramai Goshawk – senior agent of the Locksmiths, the effective power in Toll-by-Night
• Beamabeth Marlebourne – 16-yr-old adopted daughter of the Mayor, darling of the people and chocolate lover
• Appleton Brand – ex-suitor of Beamabeth, discredited for radicalism his name has been reclassified as nightling
• Sir Feldroll of Millepoyse –Beamabeth’s new suitor, governor of the major city of Waymakem
• Rabilan Skellow – a shady character who abducts Mosca to write bids at a Pawnbrokers’ auction
• The Romantic Facilitator – mysterious criminal who offers assistance with forced marriages
• Leveretia Leap – a nightling midwife, who attended Beamabeth’s birth
• Laylow – a nightling chocolate smuggler, who wears metal claws on one hand
• Quince – a musician, whose band somehow includes both dayfolk and nightlings
• Paragon Mollycoddle – a pale boy confined to the Clock Tower through no fault of his own

References

External links

• Frances Hardinge's homepage
• [https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/frances-hardinge/twilight-robbery/9781509842346&Category= Macmillan entry for Twlight Robbery]

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