. . . In Mandelion the Year of the Dead Letter will be forever remembered for the so-called Book Riots, where murders and mischief were committed by a deluded mob, spurred on by the words of one Quillam Mye . . .

Mosca felt as if someone had filled her head with gunpowder and then blown sparks into her ear.

. . . After the fall of the Birdcatchers the Stationers decreed that all books should be hunted out and brought to them. All those that bore no Stationer seal or that smacked of Birdcatchery were piled high in the marketplace and burned while children danced around the pyres with much merriment . . .

. . . a celebrated Stationer named Quillam Mye condemned the Book Burnings. He wrote Pamphlets commanding all free men to defend their books, and made Speeches from atop the Unlit Pyres. Inflamed and deceived by his words, a vast Mob took to the streets, offering outrage to the Duke’s men, breaking Windows without number, and bloodily striking down all who would not join them in shouting Mye’s name . . .

. . . it is said that Quillam Mye used witchcraft to escape Mandelion before justice could befall him, so that he might spread Birdcatchery and trouble in other cities . . .

“You’re all pixilated!” Mosca gasped aloud. “Witchcraft my socks! If he was a witch he’d have witched us out of Chough in three winks! And as for Birdcatchery . . .”

Her father had hated the Birdcatchers. Of course he had. Hadn’t he? It suddenly seemed to her that when talking of the Birdcatchers her father had nearly always given her facts, not opinions.

She desperately tried to remember him ranting against the Birdcatchers the way everybody else did. Instead, she recalled that once she had asked him who had started the rebellion against the Birdcatchers.

“Unwise people,” had been his only answer, though he had looked at her with unusual warmth. Unwise people. What did that mean? Her eyes dropped to the page again.

. . . Panople Twine, Headmaster of the Ragged School, had sided with Mye, and after Mye’s disappearance the Duke in his wisdom had the walls of the Ragged School battered down. Twine’s tears fell as fast as the bricks, and he died soon after of a broken heart . . .

“You broke the school,” she whispered aloud. Somehow this was the only part of the tale that she could feel and understand. Her father had broken the school.

But how could it be the same Quillam Mye? Mosca could not accept it. Try as she might, Mosca still could not imagine her father frothing at the head of a deluded mob. Then again, looking around at the green lawns, the marble fountains, the gentry having their likenesses painted in the Playing Card Makers’ pagodas, it was hard to imagine Mandelion the scene of shrieks and blood and discharged muskets. But clearly the city was not as calm and sane as it seemed.