“There is blood on that man’s hands,” Kohlrabi added quietly. “I haven’t found proof yet, but I don’t doubt it is there to be found.” Mosca could not speak, but watched him with eyes as hard and shiny as obsidian coins. Kohlrabi leaned toward her. “Mosca—do listen to me when I say this. No one is as they seem, particularly in Mandelion. You may see them day after day, until their every gesture becomes as familiar as the song of the birds, but still you do not know them.

“Perhaps I can explain what I mean with a story. As you know, twenty years ago the Birdcatchers were chased into hiding, and those that were caught were hanged or burned. In one parish the congregation gathered every year in their church to celebrate their victory over the Birdcatchers. One night, when the celebration was at its height, someone smelled smoke and found that the church was on fire. No one had time to do anything about it, though, because a moment later the flame reached the gunpowder stored in the vault. Later the few survivors worked out that the man they had hired to sweep out the crypts had been buying and smuggling in gunpowder for over four years. He was a Birdcatcher waiting for vengeance, and no one had guessed.” Kohlrabi smiled wryly. “I . . . tend to remember this well. My father was lost in the explosion—you might say that it was rather a formative incident.”

“My father just died one day. He went into his study sayin’ he had a headache, an’ then when I brung in potage he was dead, so I went an’ hid in the Chimes’s kiln. I would have stuck there in the study if I’d thought everyone was goin’ to burn his books. All of them . . . all. I’d never even had the chance to read most of ’em.” Mosca frowned to keep her face from crumpling.

“Do you have anything of his?”

“I had his pipe.” Mosca sniffed, thinking regretfully of the much-chewed pipe in Jen Bessel’s hand. “I used to chew on the stem, ’cause then I could taste his pipe smoke. I couldn’t make his voice in my head. I mean, if you know someone well, you can sort of make them say things they’d say in your head, an’ I can do Palpitattle anytime I like, but I can’t do my father. Still, when I could taste his pipe smoke, it was sort of like he’s there at a desk next to me, an’ we’re both too busy to talk, but I’m there in the study with the books an’ I can think clearly . . . He didn’t like Chough, I know he didn’t.”

“It wasn’t much of a place for a scholarly man, if that’s what he was.”