“Your Ladyship!” Mosca hooked her fingers into the stone lattice and hung on in a quicksilver rush of madness. “Your Ladyship!” Everything she wanted was beyond the wall.

The Duke turned to look at Mosca, and her stomach jolted as she met his dead brown eyes. She remembered a fox she had once seen flopping about in a strange sickness. Don’t go too close, it’ll bite yer . . .

“A radical spy,” he said, in a tone with the same meaningless music to it.

“No.” The white lady gazed into Mosca’s urgent, contorted face with eyes the color of mist. “Merely an errand girl. She wants to bother me for money. Give her a shilling and throw her out.”

The young man beside Tamarind raised his gaze to look at Mosca, and his chestnut eyebrows rose in surprise. Although his hair was now brushed and carefully fastened into a pigtail, and though he now wore a smart but simple coat of dark-blue wool, Mosca immediately recognized Linden Kohlrabi, the man who had helped her by hiding her under his traveling cloak.

Mosca’s fingers lost their strength. The footman dragged her from the wall and carried her back the way she had come. She had no spirit to fight. She did not blame Tamarind for the way she had spoken—how could she? Instead, she hated herself with a leaden anguish. Tamarind had been busy with something really important, probably something to do with saving the city from the guild war and the Locksmiths. Mosca had blundered in, shouting like a lunatic in front of the Duke, in spite of Tamarind telling her never to seek her out. Talking to Tamarind had seemed like her only chance, but now she realized she had spoiled everything. Lady Tamarind would never forgive her.

“It’s all right.” A quiet voice behind her. “You don’t have to throttle the girl. She’ll be coming with me.” Mosca was lowered to her feet, and she reached up a trembling hand to straighten the ribbons the lavender girl had tied so carefully. She did not look into Kohlrabi’s face, but she fell into step with him as he walked back through the gates to the thoroughfare.

There was a great crowd in front of the Honeycomb Courts and Courthouse, but beyond them the streets were all but empty. As the crowd thinned around them, Mosca stole a glance at Kohlrabi.

“You work for Lady Tamarind.” Mosca had not intended it to sound like an accusation.

“And you, it would seem, work for Eponymous Clent.” Kohlrabi’s tone was tired and a little wary.

“She told you that?”

“Lady Tamarind told me that I was to see you safely outside the gates, and tell you that she could not be seen speaking to you, but she would arrange an interview with you once the Assizes had run their course. Until then, she says, you should continue as before.”