Ordinary life did not stop just because kings rose and fell, Mosca realized. People adapted. If the world turned upside down, everyone ran and hid in their houses, but a very short while later, if all seemed quiet, they came out again and started selling each other potatoes.

The old marketplace within the city walls had been too far east for the Duke’s sense of symmetry, so he had given orders for a new street to be run through it, and the foundations laid for a set of new houses. He had found a nice new site for the marketplace, which was much nearer the city center. Unfortunately the new site was full of ungrateful and unreasonable people who liked their houses and did not care that knocking them down would make the maps look neater. While the Duke’s men struggled to evict these people from their homes, the morning market had moved by unspoken consent to a space of grazing land south of the Ashbridge.

The river was still oozing mist as Mosca walked across the Ashbridge, which was so named because of the sheer number of times it had been burned by pirates, robber barons, and, finally, Parliamentarians.

At the far side the marketplace spread out like a fan, vivid with stalls of fruit and spices.

There was no sign of the Cakes among the stalls. However, the market did not end where the water began.

For the first hour after the market bell rang, the Water Market appeared as if from nowhere. Like a cluster of lily pads, a rocking plain of little boats gathered around the island of Goodman Sussuratch, tethered the one to the other, the farthest indistinct in the mist. Those with a little more money to spare shared a crammed wherry to the island, and leaned over the side to barter and buy. Many chose instead a more precarious route.

Starting at the base of the bridge, and tracing a winding path to the island, a line of boats was strung, each linked to the next by grappling chains. Little gangplanks bridged the gaps between them. The housewives hitched their skirts up and sidled carefully along the planks, their baskets and carrying yokes slung over their shoulders. Sometimes, where the boats were laden low and the mist was thick, they appeared to be walking upon the surface of the river itself.

“Pretty,” said the old woman in the first boat, looping two nooses of scarlet ribbon over Mosca’s arm. “Make you look pretty as a May morning, these will.” Mosca tottered, disentangled herself, and continued along the dipping plank walk.