In her upper-room eyrie, Mosca pulled the stoppers out of her ears. One by one the bells lost breath and hushed, until one lone, monotonous bell rang without ceasing. Hugging her knees in the window seat, Mosca listened in an agony of suspense to running feet, shouted queries.

Two hours passed before Kohlrabi returned. Mosca’s heart plummeted when she saw his expression.

“What is it?”

“Mosca, I don’t want you to be worried or upset . . .”

Mosca was instantly worried and upset.

“What’s happened? Something’s happened! I’m going to be arrested! You’re going to be arrested! Something’s happened to Lady Tamarind!”

“No, steady, Mosca, none of those. But . . . there’s been a prison break.”

At first Mosca thought of Pertellis, perhaps being carried out by a mob of pistol-wielding children. Then another possibility occurred to her.

“Mr. Clent!”

“Yes, it seems he has escaped . . . but that’s only a part of the truth. The fact is, the entire prison has been broken out. Every single convict. All of them.” Kohlrabi gave a wry smile. “That, I suspect, is what comes of trying to keep Locksmiths under lock and key.”

This is what had happened.

Just after the start of Clamoring Hour, when all petty constables unlucky enough to be on duty in the streets had wads of cotton in their ears, a cart parading Stationers’ colors had sauntered up to the jail. Because so many pamphlets from the illegal press had been found, the sheriff had ordered a small furnace to be built by the jail, so that they could be burned quickly. The Stationers themselves had taken to bringing little cartloads of suspicious papers to burn in this furnace, and the guards had grown used to turning their faces away, as if they were plague carts carrying the dead.

The guards at the gate of the jail said later that the driver of the cart seemed to be shouting something to them, and gesturing with a sheaf of parchments, none of them bearing the Stationers’ seal. Then the wind rose, the driver gestured too freely, and the papers escaped, capering and spiraling upon the breeze.

The guards had, of course, reacted with horror. One paper wrapped itself playfully around a man’s leg, and he had buckled up as if it scalded him. One was chased around the corner of the wall by two tumbling sheets, which seemed to flank him like hounds pursuing a deer. The third man curled into a little ball, and was in no position to stop someone coshing him neatly on the head.