If any of them had thought to look up, they might have noticed a hole halfway up the flint wall. It had for a time served as a station for a small cannon. Now it provided a crouching place for a short figure who hunched herself against the wind like a starling, frowning with her fierce new eyebrows of coal.

“Ah . . . good morning.” The man in blue-tinted glasses adjusted his hold on his bread, and tore it in two. It divided easily, and Mosca could see that a small and battered book lay within the crust. “From the place where we left off yesterday. Ah, yes . . . ‘the responsibility of government is to protect the rights of the low from the tyranny of the high and not the property of the high from the desperation of the low.’ . . . Oh good heavens, my apologies, we covered that already, did we not?” He crinkled his nose and adjusted his spectacles as he leafed through the book. Each of the dozen or so children seemed to be faithfully noting down his every word, including his hesitations and self-interruptions.

It was a school, a school! A back-alley school of stolen moments and stolen pens, but a school. Mosca could have wept tears of blood at finding herself forced to watch at a distance. All her life, her bookishness had made her a freak and an outcast, and other children had treated her with scorn and mistrust. Now it seemed clear that she would find no brothers and sisters even among schooled children like herself. She was an outcast still, and if she tried to approach, they would chase her away like a pack of young dogs snarling off an intruding stray.

“Ah, here we are. Ah—A Colloquy on Truth, thought to be by the same author.” The teacher cleared his throat and raised his head, and somehow the mist of absentmindedness seemed to clear behind his little spectacles. “On Truth.” He started to read:

“Truth is dangerous. It topples palaces and kills kings. It stirs gentle men to rage and bids them take up arms. It wakes old grievances and opens forgotten wounds. It is the mother of the sleepless night and the hag-ridden day. And yet there is one thing that is more dangerous than Truth. Those who would silence Truth’s voice are more destructive by far.

“It is most perilous to be a speaker of Truth. Sometimes one must choose to be silent, or be silenced. But if a truth cannot be spoken, it must at least be known. Even if you dare not speak truth to others, never lie to yourself.