“Perhaps . . .” Clent held up a finger, and peered at a point over Mosca’s head, trying to stare his thoughts into clarity. “Perhaps if you truly wish it we will retrieve this winged war zone you call a goose. But.” He waved his finger. “But. The goose must earn his keep. If it becomes necessary, he must be considered a . . . an Agent of the Stationers’ Company, and committed to their cause.”

Mosca stared at him, uncertain whether to feel relieved or suspicious. Clent seemed to have gone slightly mad, but mad in her favor. Lady Tamarind might not pay her for a day or two—why not take advantage of Clent’s change of heart?

“S’pose that’d be all right,” she agreed warily.

“Splendid. Make my wig and coat ready, and we shall brave Mr. Partridge after breakfast.”

The wig!

Clent strode down to order breakfast.

A few minutes later, Mosca was knocking at the Cakes’s door with a muffled, rapid urgency. There was a tiny noise within that she took to be a call to enter. She had flung open the door and taken two steps into the room before she realized it had been nothing of the sort. The Cakes was on her knees by her bed, a piece of embroidered cambric gripped in both hands and her mouth making a loose, rubbery shape as if she were about to cry.

Apologies did not come naturally to Mosca, so she did not make one. Instead, she ruefully held up the wig by way of explanation.

“It’s Mr. Clent’s . . . I . . . stepped on it.”

The Cakes sniffed, and her face sharpened into its usual businesslike expression.

“Looks like most of the Mandelion militia stepped on it an’ all.” She stood up, biting in both her lips, and walked over, taking the wig from Mosca’s hand. “Here, I got a brush for this kind of thing. We rent out wigs to grooms as can’t afford it and you should see the state we get some of ’em back in . . .”

Mosca watched as the other girl made little fussy, twitching gestures with the brush, which somehow seemed to tease curls out of their tangle, so that they sprang back into their intended shapes.

“So . . . Bockerby beats you a lot, then?” As far as Mosca was concerned, crying alone meant one thing.

“What? Oh no, almost never . . . it’s just weddings. I always cry at weddings.”

Mosca stared.

“What—at all of ’em? But you live in a marriage house! No wonder you’re so thin—you must be all dried up inside with squeezin’ out tears.”