“No need to become shrill, girl.” Clent peeled a piece of damp leaf mold from the side of the statue’s head. “I am merely borrowing a few provisions, which we will of course repay in the fullness of time. This good fellow . . .”

“Goodman Postrophe,” Mosca added automatically.

“. . . Goodman Postrophe is an old friend of mine. He has been looking after some trifles for me.” Clent’s large, trimly manicured hand reached into the darkness of the shrine, and reappeared gripping an oblong bundle bound in burlap.

“But . . .” Mosca stopped, suddenly afraid that she would sound childish and superstitious.

But, she thought desperately, if we take the Goodman’s mellowberries, how will he defend the village from the wandering dead? How will he squeeze the juice into their eyes so that they cannot see the way home? To be sure, none of the bodies in Chough’s graveyard had yet done anything as interesting as rising from the ground and returning home to screech down the chimneys. But perhaps, Mosca reasoned, Goodman Postrophe had kept them at bay until now.

“I am surprised to find you squeamish, given your obvious penchant for felony.” Wrapping the berries in his handkerchief, Clent slid them into a capacious pocket. “Arson, indeed . . . a nasty business. Little better than high seas piracy as far as the courts are concerned . . . Whatever possessed you to start setting fire to mills?”

A series of pictures chased each other across Mosca’s tired brain as she thought of the mill burning. She imagined the string of the old switch broom that had often blistered her hands burning through and spilling its sticks. She imagined the tapers she had been scolded for squandering souping into a yellow puddle. She imagined her uncle and aunt shrieking as they strove to rescue sacks of bubbling flour from the blaze, without thinking to look for a charred niece.

“It was an ugly sort of a mill,” was all Mosca said.

“I once saw a boy of about ten hanged for setting fire to a schoolhouse,” Clent added in a matter-of-fact tone. “Everyone pitied him, but, with a crime so severe, what was the magistrate to do? I recall his family wailing piteously as the cart took him to Blitheangel Square.” Clent gave Mosca a calculating glance. “Of course, arson cases are all tried in the Capital, and when the hanging is over they give the body to the university to be dissected. I hear they cut out the hearts and examine them, to see if they are colder and blacker than the hearts of ordinary men.”