“Dead, you said?”

“Yes.”

The Waterman sat quietly nodding, his eyes on her face. His expression was not unfriendly. After all, what was it to the Watermen who ruled Mandelion? They were river kings, and the Slye still flowed.

“We might know more of this Birdcatcher plot if we had the printing press,” Toke continued. “The press that you discovered and concealed from the proper authorities. Do you have anything further to say on this?”

“I told you.” Mosca met Toke’s gaze boldly and blackly, without blinking. “I sunk it.”

“Sunk it?” The head of the Watermen cast a questioning glance at Toke.

“The raft ’ad these little barrels strapped under the planks, for keepin’ her afloat, I’ve seen the kind of thing b’fore. So when I got scared, with me out in the wilds an’ the press just sittin’ there, full of wickedness, I sharpened a stick an’ poked it in the barrels, an’ they bubbled a lot an’ the river sucked up the raft like a mouthful of dry bread.”

A sigh settled upon the room, a sigh of disappointment mixed with relief.

“Clent, you will stay here and answer more questions,” Toke dictated crisply. “The girl must be taken away and washed—her skin is an incitement to treason.”

Mosca spent the next two hours being scrubbed red and raw by two muscular matrons until not a trace of Birdcatcher doctrine smudged her skin. Just when she felt there was no skin left, she was bundled back into her stolen olive-green dress and brought out into a corridor, where Clent was waiting amid bags and bundles, fretting the ends of his cravat to feather wisps. His ears were bright red as if they too had been well scrubbed.

Toke emerged, his parchment-yellow face older than ever beneath his glossy, caramel-colored wig.

“You, girl.”

Mosca obediently drew closer.

“Who was your father?”

“Quillam Mye.” Mosca could not help speaking his name with pride, as if she expected everyone to know it.

“I thought so.” Toke peered at her. “I knew him. I knew him well. Your father had a brilliant mind—I have never known a keener. The hardest thing I ever had to do was to give the order for his books to be burned.” He barked his laugh. “And the second hardest was persuading the Guild that they should not burn him as well as his books. Did he ever mention me?”

Mosca shook her head.

“During the Years of the Birdcatchers, he was the only man I truly trusted. We worked together, fighting the Birdcatchers. I found new recruits for the Resistance, and he wrote tracts that were circulated in secret, giving the people the hope and courage to rise up against the Birdcatchers.