On one side of the pit a crate had been lowered. Mosca thought she heard Saracen’s characteristic chuckling sounds from within. On the other side, a sack slowly descended. It sagged shapelessly, and it was hard to tell the size of the animal inside. Not very much larger than a cat, Mosca thought and hoped.

“Two shillings on the civet!” shouted the fat man next to Mosca.

“Ten shillings on the civet!” someone else called out.

Not many people seemed keen to bet on the Star-Crested Eagle. Mosca had a clammy feeling that they knew more about civets than she did.

The neck of the sack was prodded open, and an ugly smell seeped into the air. For a moment a set of dull, gray claws appeared through the sackcloth, and then from the darkness inside the sack two eyes glimmered like mother-of-pearl. Then part of a face pushed at the opening, a tapering face mottled in grays like a decaying mushroom.

The lid of the crate was knocked aside with a long-handled pole, and Saracen’s head appeared above the rim. His star had slid downward, so that he now appeared to have a black ribbon bow decorating his forehead and a yellow spiky beard adorning what could loosely be called his chin. The crate rocked on its base as Saracen exploded from it in a lather of white wings.

Saracen was obviously annoyed. Something was tickling his neck, and someone had put him in a crate, and somehow he had fallen into the earth, and now the heavens were bellowing at him and spattering him with ale foam. And there was only one creature in front of him that might be responsible, a creature deftly wriggling from a sack. A brindled animal with a ridge down its back and fur in wet-weather colors. A beast with eyes full of night, and a reek like a rotting forest.

To the delight of the audience, Saracen lowered his head, holding his neck level to the ground, and hissed. There was a cheer from some followers of King Prael.

The civet lifted one paw, as if to wash it like an embarrassed cat, then a thrown mutton bone hit it behind the scruff, and it flattened its ears. It began edging sideways, its head turned to one side. Mosca had seen cats turn their heads that way when angling for a bite.

Beak agape, Saracen made a rapid run at the civet, his neck extended like a knight’s lance. At the last moment the civet twisted like a flag in a gust and sprang sideways, landing with its speckled paws spread. It darted forward to bat softly at Saracen, then backed away at a crouch.