“You weren’t supposed to sell that dress, were you?” hissed Mosca.

“What? What dress?” The lavender girl was still too bewildered to pull the apron from her face.

“Lady Tamarind give you a snow-white dress, foaming with lace and all over pearls, with a heart-shaped stain on the sleeve. You was told to burn it, weren’t you? But you didn’t—that’s stealing, that is. They’re holding an Assizes right now for people like you.”

The lavender girl gave a whimper.

“Her Ladyship didn’t say it had to be burned—she said it was all right to sell it, I just had to cut the cuffs off first. But . . . they were such fine cuffs, with real Meidermill lace, and I thought she couldn’t really mean it. And the lady I sold the dress to said she thought the little heart looked rather pretty—like what poets say about wearing your heart on your sleeve. It wasn’t really stealing, it wasn’t, really it wasn’t . . .”

“All right.” Mosca gave the prisoner one more pinch for luck. “You tell nobody ’bout our parley, an’ I’ll tell nobody ’bout the dress.” She clapped the Cakes on the shoulder, and the red-haired girl followed her out of the alley at a run, leaving the lavender girl quivering under her apron.

“Did we have to do that?” the Cakes asked when she caught up.

Mosca shrugged. “Don’t have much time, do we?”

“I suppose not,” the Cakes answered uncertainly. “So . . . your ’spicion was right, then?”

“Yes.” Mosca clapped both hands behind her bonnet, and leaned back to stare up at the Eastern Spire. “Lady Tamarind got everyone running mulberry bush after that printing press: the Duke chasing after radicals, the Stationers chasing after Locksmiths. An’ all the time it was hers.”

“So . . . that mark on her dress came from the printing press?”

“Yes. It wasn’t enough seeing all the hurly-burly she was causing. She couldn’t help herself, she had to go and look at the press.”

“Why?” The Cakes blinked, nonplussed.

“Power.” Mosca surprised herself at her own certainty. “The press just sits there grinning at you with its metal teeth, like it’s telling you it can turn cities upside down and send dukes mad and cause riots and wars. An’ the thing about power is, it makes you want to get close to it, an’ breathe it in, an’ be part of it.”

She knew now that it was power that had hypnotized her when she met Lady Tamarind. Lady Tamarind wore power, the way other ladies of the court wore jasmine perfume. Mosca had sensed it—a white, glowing, invisible essence that hung in the air around Tamarind—and she had wanted it without knowing what it was.