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In the world of the Fractured Realm, a kingdom without a king and long divided, guilds run the government, if it could be called that. The two most powerful guilds are the Company of Stationers, headed by the papery Mabwick Toke, which controls all the printing presses in the realm and therefore has say over all books and things related to reading - such as education, and the Company of Locksmiths, lead by Aramai Goshawk, the guild of key and lock makers. No door can be locked against them and they are powerful because of this. Mosca Mye's father Quillam was a Stationer. When he died of an illness, the people of the village of Chough, (pronounced Chuff) where Mye was spending a semi-self imposed exile from Mandelion because he did not support the burning of books, burned every book in his library. "Everybody knew that books were dangerous. Read the wrong book, it was said, and the words crawled around your brains on black legs and drove you mad, wicked mad."

However, Quillam taught his daughter Mosca to read and she yearns for words, for years she has been, "buying them from peddlers and carving them secretly onto bits of bark so I wouldn't forget them..." This is enough to prompt her to sneak out of her aunt and uncle's home and accidentally burn down their mill as she steals the magistrate's keys in order to free Eponymous Clent, a man with such a way with words that he charmed money from widows and goods from merchants with his elaborate stories. Mosca offers to free him if he will take her, and her ferocious goose, Saracen, with him. After some thought, Clent agrees and the two make their way to Mandelion. From there begins a story of intrigue - spies, contraband broadsheets, murder, movable secret schools, a floating illegal printing press, crocodile watch-dogs and the Honeycomb Court of Lady Tamarind, sister of the pixilated Duke Vocado Avourlace who mourns the end of his romance with the twin exiled princesses, Meriel and Peri, and spends all of the people's money on duplicate shrines to them. Mosca and Clent, who is working as a spy for the Stationers in an effort to find the illegal printing press, assist Lady Tamarind as she is about to be robbed by the highwayman Captain Blythe. In return for their safety, Clent agrees to write him a chapbook that will ensure his fame - be it earned or not and Lady Tamarind agrees to give Clent a letter of introduction into society.

Once in the city of Mandelion, after they have traveled in a barge filled with the stolen, black market cargo of statues of the Beloved, Mosca and Clent take lodging in a Marriage House run by the affable Bockerby and his daughter, The Cakes, the nuptials cake maker. Mosca, looking for the "ragged school" her father promised to send her to, a school that she has been dreaming of, instead finds a pile of rubble and the roving school taught by Hopewood Petrellis. While following Petrellis to his floating coffee house the Laurel Bower, with its crested kites flying high above to signal its location on the river Slye, Mosca runs into Partridge, the captain of the barge they traveled on - and left Saracen on - that is now being held hostage by the goose. In an effort to escape Partidge, Mosa is literally taken under the wing/cape of Linden Kholrabi, confidant of Lady Tamarind. With every new person Mosca meets, she finds she must question their intentions and their honesty. She is often drawn in by words of kindness or the gauzy lace of a lady's dress only to find all is not what it seems. Mosca retrieves Saracen from the barge only to find herself knee deep in rags and ink as she stumbles upon the illegal printing press and finds incendiary words printed all over her arms, legs and dress.

The divisions amongst the people, guilds and nobility of the Fractured Realm are both political and religious. One of Hardinge's most amazing feats in this book is the creation of a religion that accounts for the ten bloodiest years in the time of the Realm. Much like the Catholic saints, with a saint, a name and a protective quality for each day, are the Beloved, as Harding refers to them. For every day day there is a different Beloved, some believe there is even a different religion that accompanies each Beloved, and children are named based on this. The prelude to Fly By Night begins with the naming of Mosca. The nursemaid was born on a day sacred to "Cramflick, She Who Keeps the Vegetables of the Garden Crisp," and thus was given the name Celery. Celery wants Quillam to fudge the infant's time of birth by halh an hour so that she can be born on the day of Goodman Boniface and be a child of the sun with a name like Aurora or Solina. But, she has been born on the day of Goodman Palpitattle, He Who Keeps the Flies Out of Jams and Butter Churns and thus she is named Mosca, which is Italian for fly. The Beloved have shrines everywhere and are worshipped openly, but this wasn't always so. Once, every church was built with a hole high on one wall which was fitted with a heart-shaped birdcage and filled with newly captured birds. "The throb of their wings gave the Heart a beat to remind people of the Consequence." This came about after someone saw the heart of a Beloved statue beat three times, signaling that all religions should become one. The unifying force that joined the Beloved together was then known as the Consequence. The priests who captured the birds were then known as the Birdcatchers and they became the custodians of the sacred texts, spending all their time gazing in the White Heart of the Consequence. They became fanatical, and spread their beliefs all over the country since they, along with the Stationers Guild had control of the printing presses. The Birdcatchers began doing away with the Beloved and eventually the worshippers themselves, in an effort to control the population. After ten years, though, the population rose up against them and rid the country of the Birdcatchers, burning all their books and returning control of the printing presses to the Stationers alone. The people became suspicious of the printed word and happy to live without it.