Pertellis looked far more like an invalid, although he seemed to have recovered a little since Mosca had seen him in the watch house. He was muffled to the chin in a woolen kerchief, but although he was still pale, his skin was less patchy, and he was clean-shaven.

There seemed to be a large number of men in the room, some unshaven, some sporting bandages. If these were Pertellis’s radical conspirators, they didn’t look like the leaders of a revolution. Mosca could not help noticing a smaller group that stood apart from the rest. They all wore gloves and had chatelaines dangling conspicuously at their belts. They accepted dishes of coffee from the serving girls with reflexive courtesy, but the wary politeness between the two groups spoke of uneasy alliance rather than trust. They all avoided the seated figure of Eponymous Clent in a corner, his head bowed as if happy to avoid notice. Eponymous Clent, crumpled and crestfallen . . . but seemingly uninjured.

There were a lot of eyes resting on Mosca’s face as she stepped forward to breast the wave.

“I am Mosca Mye, and I . . . want to fix everything.”

“Really?” Pertellis’s forehead crinkled as he smiled ruefully. “I suppose that makes two of us. Oh, pardon me, about fifteen of us, within this house alone. It’s all right, come and sit down. Miss Kitely has brought you up a dish of chocolate.”

Mosca took a dish from the lady of the house in silence. So this was a nest of radicals. She thought a hotbed of sedition would involve more gunpowder and secret handshakes, and less shuffling of feet and passing the sugar.

“I understand you know something about this printing press?”

“I found it. It’s in a hidden hold on one of the old ragmen’s rafts, only I had to get out again quick.” Mosca pulled a crumpled mass of linen out of one of her pockets and passed it to Pertellis.

“What’s this?” He shook it out across the table.

“My old apron.”

Pertellis pulled a chipped monocle out of his waistcoat pocket and held it a few inches from his eye so as to peer at the letters. Then he slowly straightened, and his hand strayed back to his waistcoat, where it made three or four uncoordinated attempts to slide the monocle back into its pocket. His forehead was puckered and he was blinking very fast.

“My word,” he murmured.

“Birdcatchers.” Mosca voiced the unspoken.

There was a hush, and then the word took wing and fluttered, frightened, from mouth to mouth, stirring up questions and exclamations and fear and incredulity.

“I cannot believe it.” There was something in Pertellis’s expression like that of a young child understanding about death for the first time. “Can there really be a man or woman on this beloved earth who would wish those days of horror back upon us? Who would do this?”