She watched as Clent folded Partridge’s errant limbs into the chest. He closed the lid, crouched, gripped one end, and then looked up at Mosca expectantly. It took a few seconds for her to understand his meaning, then she crouched and managed to slide her fingers under the chest.

The box was even heavier than she expected, and she had to drop her end onto her knee. In a disorganized, improvised way the pair of them tilted and wobbled the chest between them until Clent was supporting most of the weight. They proceeded from the room one clumsy step at a time, a strange, four-legged creature with a wooden body, Mosca walking backward.

At any moment someone would open the door, and there they would be. “Thieves” would be the cry. Bockerby would fling open the chest, and the cry would change to “Murderers.” Mosca suddenly felt how the cold wind would whip her clothes about her as she stood upon the scaffold. And the universities would cut her heart out to see how black it was.

Please, Mosca prayed silently to each and every Beloved, please let me get away with this. I’ll never ask for anything else, I promise, and if I get away with this, then someday I’ll make myself rich and give all the money to the shrines, but please, please, I need to get away with this. Otherwise I’ll be strung up, and hung up on a gibbet and ate by crows and then I can’t do nothing for any of you.

In the shrine of Leampho, Clent bit off bitter words under his breath. “We will never get the box through the window. We shall have to sit him between us with a coat over his head.”

Saracen stared up from the boat as Mosca climbed down from the sill, and he offered no comment. A moment later, Partridge’s dead face appeared through the window, framed by the ivy. Then Clent could be seen with his arms around the river captain’s waist, heaving him through the hole.

Mosca tried to slow Partridge’s descent, but her hands seemed able to grip only feebly, and in the end the dead man fell into the boat with a crash and a splash. Mosca sank to a crouch to stop herself falling overboard as the boat bucked, and watched as one of Partridge’s boots floated away down the river, filling with water as it went.

“Keep your eyes open. Our lives depend upon your perspicacity.” Clent climbed down into the boat, the creeper crackling under his weight. He took up the oars and steered the boat carefully along the wall, dipping the oars silently and drawing slowly. He paused by the bank to scrabble up some slick, fist-sized stones with his plump fingers, and then he heaved on the oars again, and the bank swung away and abandoned them.