To work for Lady Tamarind! Sooner or later Lady Tamarind’s strange white wealth and power must surely rub off on Mosca like powdered snow . . . and Mosca would become . . . she could not clearly see what she would become. The thought seemed to pass on soft wings behind her, close enough to stir her neck hairs with the breeze of its passage. There was the faintest sensation of little golden drops of venom trailed across her skin, like those bled by a bee after the sting.

At six o’clock the market bell rang, and hawkers gradually filled the streets. With a sense of infinite luxury, Mosca gazed down at the step to watch pewter being polished by someone other than herself. By the time she followed a carefully spruced Clent down to a late breakfast, she could not imagine why she would wish to be anywhere else. Bockerby greeted them in the parlor with a new wariness and crispness that made Mosca realize he had been drunk the night before.

“Ah, yes—I recall you saying that you are a friend of Jen—how is dear Jen?” Bockerby asked as they all sat down.

“Brown and bonny as a wren, and becoming quite the mistress of means. She is growing plump on it, and has taken on two apprentices.”

“Ah, plump now, is she? She always had a hungry wit—I was surprised to hear she’d retired. Ah, all of us respectable nowadays . . . even Jen.”

“She lost a taste for the profession after a magistrate . . . gave her a strongly worded letter, you might say.” Clent gave a wince of a smile.

Bockerby grinned mirthlessly, and touched each of his teeth in turn with his tongue tip, as if counting them.

“That’d be a letter ‘T,’ then,” said Mosca through a mouthful of bread.

Bockerby looked at Mosca as if she had appeared from nowhere. After scrutinizing her briefly, he looked sharply to Clent. “Is this one flash?” he asked, nodding toward her.

Clent inclined his head in something between a nod and a shrug. “Safe enough, for immediate purposes.”

Bockerby gave a wordless murmur of dissatisfaction.

“How old is she? Ah, it cannot be more than thirteen years . . . a bit green, a bit green. Still”—Bockerby hacked himself another piece of bread—“if I were you I’d marry her anyway. They’re often more pliable, you know, once they bear your name.”

“Have you traded your sense for pence?” Clent’s outrage was deafening. Somewhere beyond the fragile wall, the drone of a marriage ceremony halted briefly, before continuing more hesitantly. “I am little enough pleased to find myself having to think for two, without shackling myself in perpetuity.”

Bockerby shrugged and wafted his glass over the jug before drinking, in honor of King Prael.