“I can tell you that right enough,” Mosca answered grimly. Feeling their eyes pressing upon her, she told the story of Lady Tamarind’s dress.

There was an appalled silence.

“I find it hard to believe that a lady like . . .” Pertellis hesitated, and coughed. “There is something elevated in the female spirit that will always hold a woman back from the coldest and most vicious forms of villainy.”

“No, there isn’t,” Miss Kitely said kindly but firmly, as she set a dish in his hand. “Drink your chocolate, Mr. Pertellis.”

“I believe I can perceive the lady’s strategy, Pertellis.” One of the Locksmiths spoke with a soft rasp, as if through a mouthful of chalk powder. He was seated in a dark corner of the coffeehouse, and his face was all but lost in the murk. One slender ray of light fell across the tiny, gloved hands that lay, clasped, upon his knee.

Goshawk, thought Mosca. She could just make out light pooling palely where his eyes had to be.

“Ruling Mandelion is a matter of pulling the Duke’s strings. That much must be obvious to all of you. And if you know what a man wants most, and fears most, and which lies he tells himself, then you may puppet-dance him for your pleasure until the end of his days.”

Several of Pertellis’s companions bristled slightly at these sentiments, but Goshawk continued unabashed.

“Lady Tamarind has twisted her brother around her little finger since she was a child, and she would have done so forever if we had not appeared on the scene. For nearly six months we have been fighting her for control of the Duke—and slowly but surely we were winning.

“His great, mad dream is to see the Twin Queens return to the Realm to rule Mandelion. We encouraged him to believe it could happen. More than anything, he fears men like you, Pertellis—dangerous idealists who cannot be frightened or bribed into being sensible. So we stoked the flames of his fear, and taught him to see a great and bloody radical conspiracy in every paltry highway robber, every drunken riot, every rumor of a Floating School.”

“It sounds as if you were so busy trying to frame us, you did not notice Her Ladyship setting out to frame you.” The speaker was a young man whose bright brown eyes made him look twice as awake as everyone else, and three times as angry. Mosca recognized the “colt harness” voice she had heard while eavesdropping.