Mosca wet her lips, took a breath, and began to speak. She pulled out rags of wedding words she had heard by listening through the thin marriage-house walls. She patched them with pompous-sounding phrases from her father’s books. She stitched the whole together with the scarlet thread of her own imagination.

In an alcove on the wall, a porcelain Leampho stood with one eye closed, as if winking to let Mosca know that he was on to her. The Cakes, on the other hand, snuffled her way through the ceremony, and at the end had to wipe her eyes with the shawl.

“It must be a real wedding,” she said at last, “or I wouldn’t be crying.”

Mosca put the cravat in her hand and left the Cakes to enjoy her tears.

Mosca retired to her trundle bed, where she lay in a state of happy sleeplessness for almost an hour, listening to the brook-like sounds of Saracen chuckling himself to sleep. It seemed that at last things were turning out as they should.

At the very moment when Mosca slipped into sleep, Tamarind was waiting for an audience with her brother. It was a peculiar and unsociable hour for an interview, but the Duke’s whims had become more irregular recently. Her face powder hid any sleepless circles around her eyes.

Most visitors to the Duke’s residence in the Western Spire found themselves trying to blink away double vision, and pinching the bridge of their nose to clear a headache. Every desk, every shelf, every chair, every stair, everything here had its twin. Tamarind, however, was accustomed to the obsessive symmetry, even the window-shaped alcoves painted with matching views in place of the recalcitrant countryside.

“Beautiful Tammy!”

Resplendent in an emerald-green dressing gown, the Duke strode forward to take his sister’s hands in greeting. Like many of his line, Vocado Avourlace was a handsome man. When he had first arrived back to reclaim his family’s ancient rule over Mandelion, he had seemed the very picture of the hero come to usher in brighter times.

At first only Tamarind had noticed the awkward, disquieting way his expressions changed, as if a puppeteer were pulling wires to move his face muscles, and doing it rather badly. Nowadays she saw the fear in everybody’s eyes. Her brother was going out of tune like an old piano, and nobody would come to retune his strings. Dukes and kings may go mad at their leisure, for nobody has enough power to stop them.

“Come and sit down, I have wonderful news.”

Tamarind seated herself.

“Your good news, Vocado,” she prompted him gently, with the same quiet, level tone she used for her pet crocodile. The Duke’s eyes were large and brown, but dull and lifeless. He blinked, and for a moment they became very bright, like pebbles licked over by a wave. After a second they dulled again, as if drying in the sun.