Clent fished out the sixpence casually, as if it would not leave a hole in his purse to pain him, and the ostler tied a piece of red yarn around their wrists to show that they were trainers. They entered the Gray Mastiff Inn, Saracen reluctantly releasing the ostler’s leg.

From the high rafters dangled tiny wooden medallions, each with its own royal crest painted on it. Smoke had darkened the earth-colored murals on the walls, where cream-colored hounds clustered around a muscled bear on its hind legs. The animals were painted with fearsomely puckered muzzles and glaring, lopsided eyes that looked almost human.

A blackened oak door was flung wide now and again as serving men pushed through, holding great plates of roast pigeons and tartlets above their heads. The air from this door roared with heat and dripped with the smell of roasting beef. Above the door jutted a gallery along which sat a dozen or so figures in daintier dress, their faces and wigs thick with powder, their handkerchiefs held to cherry-painted mouths to keep away the chimney smoke.

For a moment Mosca took one of the ladies for Lady Tamarind, and something clutched at her stomach. The lady’s dress was a cascade of foam exactly like the one that Mosca had seen in the carriage. Her wig was styled in the same way as Tamarind’s, and a star had been painted on one cheek in the same place as Tamarind’s scar. However, her mouth was too large and clumsy, and she laughed too loudly and too often. There was also a black mark on the cuff which Mosca was sure Lady Tamarind would never have tolerated. It was several inches across, and shaped like the heart on a playing card.

In one corner, a little counter with a fringed canopy brimmed with pewter pots and was backed with barrels. Behind the counter a woman darted back and forth like a wasp war-dancing, grabbing pots, filling them, slapping them on counters with little eruptions of foam, and snatching coins from a reaching forest of hands.

“Wattleebeezer?” It took a moment for Mosca to run the woman’s question through her head a second time and hear it as “What’ll it be, sir?”

“A pot of three threads, and half a pot of cider for my young companion.”

“Potthreethreadarfpotcidrcominup.” The woman winked at Mosca. As she did so, her cheek joined in the wink by bunching, like cloth puckered by a tugged thread. “Thin’else?”

“We are entering this noble animal into the beast fights. Where may we find the training rooms so we can refresh and prepare?”

“Dorntrite.” Only the woman’s pointing finger gave her two customers to understand that she had intended to say, “Door on the right.”