A silence fell across the room, as if everybody there had expected his words but had hushed out of respect for the gravity of the announcement. One or two of the eavesdropping Stationers clutched reflexively at little Beloved talismans on chatelaines for reassurance. Clent raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips in a silent whistle, as if he had been told that Mandelion sat on a layer of gunpowder. Only the child of Chough thought that a printing press did not seem half so exciting after meeting a real live highwayman.

“Caveat! The printed villainy!” The quiver-cheeked young man approached with a step as rapid as a stutter, carrying a mahogany box as if he thought it contained live vipers.

“Mandelion has been flooded with pamphlets.” Toke unlocked the box to reveal a small square of brownish printed paper which seemed to have been torn from some larger sheet. Using a pair of tongs, Toke lifted the fragment and extended it toward Clent, whose eyebrows climbed as he read.

“Madness, and mischief, and menaces of murder,” Clent muttered under his breath. “Radicals, I assume.”

Mosca had heard a little about radicals from chapbooks about the trials of traitors. She had a fuzzy idea that most radicals shouted a lot, and threw grenades at anybody rich or powerful, and tried to stir people with hoes into charging at people with muskets. All the would-be kings agreed that they were mad and dangerous, and radicals could be prosecuted for treason in any part of the Realm.

“It reads like the ranting of a radical,” Toke said, taking back the paper. “There is the usual canting about equality for all, and suggestions of how many plowmen’s families could be housed in the Duke’s private residence. But these pamphlets also reveal the Duke’s precise plans for rebuilding the city more symmetrically; for example, the fact that everything from Midmackle Street to the Crockles is to be leveled to make room for a new marketplace. Those streets are now in uproar. When the last pamphlet came out a week ago, there was a riot, sir.”

Mosca remembered what Bockerby had said the night before about riots in Mandelion.

“People are often excitable about losing their homes,” Clent murmured.

“That is not the point. No street ranter could have known of these plans. Only someone at court, and close to the Duke,” continued Toke. “I believe that somebody has tried to make these pamphlets look like the work of radicals, and has tried too hard. I see the hand of the Locksmiths in this. Aramai Goshawk is in Mandelion.”

The name was strange to Mosca, but she noticed that Clent had gone completely white.

“But . . . I have heard no reports that he had left Scurrey . . .”