“You do not need to answer,” Clent cut in helpfully. “I can do that for you. The answer is: not as often as the holes merit. I can see a hole the size of a sovereign where your big toe is pushing out its head to test the wind. And why? I can answer that too. When your pockets are merry with coins, do you scurry first to the cobbler, and then to the tailor, and have yourself stitched and made watertight? No! That first night you and your comrades find a tavern, and you drink to every king or queen that has ever been toasted, and then you drink to kings that rule only the lands of your own imaginations, and then you drink until you are kings, and no laws can touch you.

“And the next day you must be poor and prudent again, and cannot afford to cobble your boots. But that night!” Clent spread his arms wide, embracingly. “What a gesture! You are shouting to the world, ‘I may be wicked, but I will not be mean; I may be wild, but I will not be small; the mud may creep in at my boots but it will not stain my soul . . .’”

After a moment’s dramatic pause, Clent let his arms drop.

“I am a writer of ballads—I value gestures. I understand them. I know what I can do with them. Let us suppose, for example, that you allowed this young woman to stay in her carriage, handed her back her money, and wished her and her people godspeed back to Mandelion so that she could find a physician who might save her life—ah, what I could do with that!”

Blythe’s eyes asked silently what Clent could do with that.

“I could write a ballad that would make proverbial the chivalry of Clamoring Captain Blythe. When you rode the cold cobbles of a midnight street, you would hear it sung in the taverns you passed, to give you more warmth than that thin coat of yours. When you were hunted across the moors by the constables, hundreds would lie sleepless, hoping that brave Captain Blythe still ran free.

“And when at night you lay on your bed of earth under your dripping roof of bracken, with no company but the wind and your horse champing moss near your head, you would know that in a glittering banquet hall somewhere, some young lady of birth would be thinking of you.

“That is what you stand to lose.”

Blythe was as wide-eyed as a sleepwalker. He made several attempts to speak before he managed to get the words out. At last he cleared his throat, and took the purse out of Clent’s hand, tested the weight of it, and then returned it to him.