“I only found out how wild his opinions were once the Birdcatchers were overthrown. He thought that letting the people worship the Beloved freely again would be only the first step. He had fantastical ideas of letting everyone adopt whatever crazed and treasonous views they pleased, and print their own books without limit. He told me that if the Stationers burned books, we were no better than the Birdcatchers and their shrine burning.

“He would not be silent, and he would not flee Mandelion. One half of Mandelion called him a monster, the other half a hero. The Guild disowned him, and the Duke sent men to arrest him for spreading sedition. Do you know what happened? An infatuated mob overpowered the Duke’s men, untethered the horses, and pulled the carriage themselves through the streets as if he were a war hero, shouting, ‘Mye and a Free Voice.’”

Mosca could picture this, but in her imagination her father looked embarrassed and annoyed.

“The Duke ordered his men to fire into the crowd. Dozens were injured, and ten killed outright. That very night I had Quillam kidnapped, and spirited from Mandelion in my personal carriage. It saved his life, but I did not expect him to thank me for it. I think he would have returned to Mandelion if he had not seen the crowd that followed him falling to the Duke’s muskets that night. He did not appear in Mandelion again, but his books did, each wilder and more seditious than the last. We burned every copy we found, but we couldn’t stop men like your friend Pertellis smuggling them in, or copying them by hand, or learning chapters by rote and teaching them to others.”

Toke stared at her, using the knife of his gaze as if he wanted to pry her apart like a walnut shell.

“Quillam is dead, isn’t he?”

Mosca nodded.

“I knew that he had to be. I have not seen a new work by Quillam for four years, and only one thing on earth could have stopped him writing.” Toke looked briefly annoyed, as if the walnut shell were proving more difficult to open than he expected. “Tell me, do you have any brothers?”

“No, nor sisters neither. I’m all there is of him left.”

“Good. If Quillam had sons, they would grow up too much like him, and cause no end of trouble.”

Mosca Mye said nothing, and Mabwick Toke looked into her smoked-glass eyes and saw a mind full of nothing he could understand.

Toke started to turn away, then paused. “Caveat!”

The quiver-cheeked guildsman entered the corridor. From his hand trailed a leash. At the end of the leash a leather muzzle was fastened about a beak the color of pumpkin peel. Saracen had lost a few feathers around the shoulders, and there was a black bar across one wing which looked like a powder burn, but he was as puffed and pugnacious as ever.