“As for myself, I feel a yearning to see the Capital again. It is all very well to be such a notable figure and so sought after, but sometimes it is more relaxing to be just one minnow in a great iridescent school. And when you are well established with Her Ladyship, as I have no doubt you shall be, you must persuade her to take you with her to the Capital to see the Crystal Court. Every one of its million windows is thinner than your finger, and filled with a shard of glass cut cunningly so as to throw tiaras of rainbow color upon the floor. Some of the ladies have trains so long that whole legends of days past can be embroidered scene by scene along their lengths. And when your mistress can spare you, I shall show you the Dizzyfeather Club, where one may sit beneath a green-fringed canopy and sip wine as dark as blackberry juice from glasses narrow as thorns. And there is no sight to equal the gilded barges along the Pettygall . . .”

There was no sight to equal the grim swing of the gibbet as crows nipped at its links. Or the old watch house, round and battered brown as a peaked pie, with the high walls of the jail behind it. In front of the watch house the redheaded constable shared his pipe tobacco with a tall man in Watermen’s colors, but when he saw Clent and Mosca his eyes darkened, and he muttered a farewell to his smoking companion.

“You found her, then?” he called out.

“Fairly found, safe and sound, and filled with a tale which will gladden your heart, I think, sir,” Clent called back cheerfully. “Might we step inside?”

“You might.” The constable was clearly somewhat perplexed by Clent’s change of mood.

They followed him in through a heavy oaken door into a poorly lit room where a tousled deerhound lay upon the stone flags, its flanks twitching in sleep. The room smelled of cold suppers and boredom. Mosca had never realized before that boredom smelled so much like egg custard. The constable ruffled the hound’s belly with his booted toe, and leaned back against the wall, his pipe bowl cradled in his palm.

“Go on, then.” He looked expectantly at Mosca, and she found she could not speak. Not that it mattered much, for Clent was uncurling the colored ribbons of his story before she could draw breath.

“Perhaps you are unaware of it, but a week ago this child was the Undoing of a Wild and Notorious Radical, known as Hopewood Pertellis. It was she who first reported him to the Stationers, having witnessed him presiding over the Infamous Floating School, where he cast Seeds of Evil into minds as pink and innocent as baby clams. It was she who informed them where they might find his Forbidden Books of Infamy. For you see, this man Pertellis—”