“Now, that is a solemn face to be wearing when our salvation is within reach. Child, I quite understand your reservations, but trust me—no one will be able to disprove your story, and I doubt they will even try. Come now. If we tarry, that will look like conspiracy.”

Mosca followed Clent through the streets like a sleepwalker. After all, would it be such a big lie? And besides, what choice did she have? If Clent hanged, he would see to it that she hanged beside him. Suddenly Mosca wished that she had told Kohlrabi everything after all.

“Look at that,” Clent murmured under his breath, gesturing with his cane at a ballad seller near the bridge. “I write one ballad on Captain Blythe, and now every penny-a-page scribbler has a song about him. If they are to be believed, our poor friend Blythe spends his every working hour defending young maidens from unwanted advances, and giving money to starving beggars and helping unfortunate farmers to escape from the beadles who would drag them to debtors’ prison. And apparently all the while he is a perfect picture of a gentleman with gallantries for every lady—I wonder where he finds the time to groom his horse and practice his gavotte.”

Clent’s mood seemed to have recovered miraculously.

“Mosca, you must remind me to pick up some fresh quills on the way back. I have a mind to compose that letter you requested, recommending you to Lady Tamarind’s employ. Would you prefer to be painted as a loyal character with a soul as pure and true as diamond, or an able-witted, adaptable, quicksilver sort of animal? No matter, I am sure I can contrive a union of the two. You know, it is the most curious thing, but . . . I believe I shall actually miss you, Mosca.”

By a potter’s brick kiln, a waif-faced boy with a knuckle-shaped coal smudge on his cheekbone paused to watch Mosca go past, a glowing pot gripped forgotten in his long tongs. His face was narrow and unforgiving.

“It is strange to admit it now,” Clent continued, “but there was a time when I felt that your companionship would be something of a burden to me. I was entirely mistaken, I confess it—you have proved a worth far beyond your years and the limits of your education. If your mind were not so set upon working for Lady Tamarind . . . ah, but I know that in that lofty castle dwells your dearest dream.”

The gray Eastern Spire rose in the distance like a finger admonishing silence. In the dark doorway of a wigmakers’ a young girl in a bent yellow bonnet imitated the gesture, bidding her younger brother be quiet with a finger to her lips, and then pointing across the street at Mosca and whispering.