Clent allowed himself to be led away, staring down at his hands as if they held the broken pieces of his perfect story.

“And as for the girl . . . just get her out of my sight.”

Mosca found her own way to the door, and she ran until the river’s edge stopped her. A sharp wind was blowing from the distant sea, and she stood and heaved it into her lungs. She felt as if she had forgotten to breathe for a week, and had only just remembered how to do it.

P Is for Prison

P
IS FOR PRISON

What now?

High above Mosca’s head, a small kite broke free. The larger, older kites tugged and trembled on their leashes, but they understood that if they did not go where they were pulled, their story would be one long fall with a soggy ending. The little kite only knew that it could not bear the wires anymore. Now it was a bird with harlequin plumage rising to steal ribbons of blue from the sky.

Seeing a pale, thin girl squatting on a jetty, observers would not have guessed that Mosca’s soul was rising to do battle with the clouds. Her mind was cold and in a place full of dazzling and terrible perspectives, but it was free. She had been sleepwalking, letting Clent lead her every step, and now she could do whatever she liked. She was dabbling her feet in the icy water of the river to prove it.

What now? Staying alive seemed to be the most important thing for the moment. She would deal with everything else later. Mosca’s feet were wrinkled, and she was not sure how long she had been sitting there. She pulled them out of the water, and scrabbled for her stockings and shoes.

Word of what had happened would reach the marriage house before long, she suspected. Mosca had to get there before Word did, or her version of events would be lost. But the truth seemed to have rushed out of her too fast and washed away her strength. Her legs wobbled as she clambered to her feet.

Three men were lounging by the watch house, one whittling a spoon, two playing at cards. When a constable left the watch house, they abandoned these pastimes and trotted alongside him, like dogs flanking a chef with a joint. They caught at his sleeve and he relented, tossing them a few sentences like scraps. They looked sharply at one another, clapped the constable on the back, and then sprinted to the jetty.

The Word was already on the move, and it was not weak like Mosca, it was keen and as strong as a deerhound.