The thief was almost out of sight. Mosca took another impulsive pace forward, and was knocked off her feet as the haberdasher’s apprentice stepped quickly to block her. There was a hot ache in her jaw where his arm had hit her, there was a bruised shock in her hip from her fall, there was a prickle of rage about her heart and fingertips. She had no doubt that her attacker was blocking her path so that the thief could escape. On all fours, Mosca crawled away from him, then rose to her knees, wiping the mud from her hands.

It was while she was recovering her breath that Mosca witnessed something rather extraordinary.

The three boys who had been thrown the hornbook suddenly stiffened like dogs at a scent. With an air of purpose they darted across the road, and laid hands upon a young man wearing a chocolate-brown tricorn. They seemed set upon dragging the unfortunate man to the nearest alley, and Mosca assumed that they must be young gonophs determined to strip him of all his valuables. Curiously, however, their victim seemed neither worried nor surprised. He allowed himself to be manhandled out of the street, and disappeared from sight.

Near this alley rose a ragged wall where flints bulged and brandished, where arrow slits showed slivers of sky. Any native of Mandelion would have known that this was the old city wall, breached many centuries before during half-forgotten feuds over blood and money. Mosca knew only that this was something she could climb.

Carts splashed her hem as she slipped across the road, ducking her head so that the clothier’s apprentice would lose track of her in the crowd. She wriggled through a fissure in the wall. Blush-petaled daisies quivered in every crack and tickled her fingertips as she climbed.

The wall rose over an alleyway where the young man was recovering his composure. He wore a dusty coat and a wig so misshapen it seemed some absentminded soul had used it as a tea cozy. He blinked at the world about him through a pair of tiny spectacles tinted the gentle blue of a spring morning. In one hand he carried a walking cane, and under his free arm was tucked a large loaf of bread.

A group of children were playing at marbles in the alleyway. A sharp whistle raised their heads, and their game was abandoned with extraordinary casualness. There was a fumbling in jacket and skirt pocket, and each fetched out a roll of paper, an ink bottle, and a quill. The girl with the bent yellow bonnet was there, wiping rust from her scavenged pen. The last child to join the group was the clothier’s apprentice. At the mouth of the alley he paused to cast a glance up the street as if still looking for Mosca, then moved to take his place next to a slim girl with a frayed, white lace shawl over her head.