Perhaps the Heart would have given a sense of oneness and completeness that the rabble of reinstated Beloved did not provide. The Heart would have given one the chance to lose oneself in staring away and away into a brilliant nothingness. Perhaps that would have been something worth believing in, Mosca thought dangerously, giddy with her own treason.

A thin wind blew through the gap and chased straw in circles around the floor. Mosca gave a sharp wriggle of her shoulders, and shrugged off her unease. She pulled out the purse, felt it for weight, and then opened it. A moment later she was running from the church, banging her shoulder against the door in her hurry.

The purse contained only a farthing, two pieces of slate, and a jumble of metal scraps and mellowberry pips. With the keen instincts of the unloved, Mosca knew that Clent had contrived this errand so that he could abandon her in Kempe Teetering.

C Is for Contraband

C
IS FOR CONTRABAND

Mistress Bessel looked up quickly as Mosca clattered into her shop, and did not seem surprised to see her agitated and out of breath. She peered down at the jumble of oddments in Mosca’s palm and tutted.

“Well, that was a mean trick to play. I thought he would at least leave you with a little money in your pocket. Still”—she sighed in a motherly way—“you’re not far from home, so I daresay you can make your way back to Chough having learned a lesson, and no harm done.” Mistress Bessel’s shrewd blue eyes moved across Mosca’s face as if she were itching to ask whether any harm had been done.

Mosca clenched her mouth shut, biting back the words that were buzzing to be released.

“There now,” said Mistress Bessel, mistaking Mosca’s silent rage for distress. “Has he . . . taken something from you, blossom?”

Mosca gave her a dark, furtive glance, came to a quick decision, and nodded.

“Well, that is a little too bad of him, but you should have known better than to put your faith in a scapegrace like Eponymous Clent. Did you really mean to traipse all the way to Mandelion at his heels?”

So, Clent did have a destination in mind . . . he had sent her away so that he could make his arrangements . . . and he was headed for Mandelion, the very city where her father had once lived . . .

“He’s taking a boat downriver, then,” Mosca said, her hot, black eyes fixed on Mistress Bessel’s face, “an’ he won’t want to hire a Waterman.”

The Company of Watermen, originally a guild of boatmen carrying passengers, had long since taken on the task of policing the river. If Clent was nervous enough to change his clothes, he would probably avoid the Watermen.

“You know which boat he means to take.” Slowly Mosca uncurled her fist again, and separated the farthing from the other scraps.