Mosca’s heart felt a small surge of hope. She had not been abandoned after all, perhaps. Could she and Clent survive until after the Assizes?

“I do not know what your dealings are,” Kohlrabi continued, “but I know that Her Ladyship seldom does anything without a reason. Why did you come to the Courts, Mosca? Did Eponymous Clent send you?”

There was a hint of sharpness in his tone, and Mosca gave him a narrow look.

“You don’t like Mr. Clent.”

“No. I know too much about him to like him. How much do you know about your employer, Mosca?”

Mosca nibbled at her fingertips and stared at him mulishly. “I’m just working for him right now, that’s all. I don’t know nothing about him, and I don’t look to.”

“Mosca . . .” Kohlrabi stopped, closed his eyes for a moment and sighed. “You may not believe me, but I am duty bound to warn you—Eponymous Clent is a very dangerous man. I know what I am talking about—I have spent the last month trailing him from post to post, observing the disaster in his wake.”

Mosca’s eyes widened as a memory stirred. Suddenly her nose was filled once again with the smell of damp, and rot, and dove droppings and windblown smoke. Suddenly she knew where she had heard Kohlrabi’s name before, and she remembered words spoken by a young voice, a reassuring voice like warm milk . . .

“You were in Chough, talkin’ to the magistrate!” The words were out before she could stop them.

“Dry Stones and Thistles,” Kholrabi murmured. “I wondered where I had heard your accent before. Chough. How could I be so stupid? Of course—you must be the little girl who burned down the mill.” Mosca must have looked terrified, because he put out a hand soothingly and gave a slight laugh. “It’s all right, it’s all right. I have no thought of handing you over for your most heinous crime. But in the name of the most holy, Mosca, of all the people you could have taken up with, why Eponymous Clent?”

Because I’d been hoarding words for years, buying them from peddlers and carving them secretly onto bits of bark so I wouldn’t forget them, and then he turned up using words like “epiphany” and “amaranth.” Because I heard him talking in the marketplace, laying out sentences like a merchant rolling out rich silks. Because he made words and ideas dance like flames and something that was damp and dying came alive in my mind, the way it hadn’t since they burned my father’s books. Because he walked into Chough with stories from exciting places tangled around him like maypole streamers . . .

Mosca shrugged.

“He’s got a way with words.”