He thinks I’m a pickpocket or a stowaway or a runaway apprentice or a murderer . . .

Mosca could only look up at the stranger with terrified appeal, and shake her head.

Partridge stroked his jaw, took a few hasty steps toward the coffeehouse . . . and disappeared, taking the world with him, as Mosca was swallowed by a total blackness. The darkness was warm and smelled of wet roads and grass seeds. It took Mosca several panic-stricken seconds to realize that the stranger had swept his cloak around her.

“Keep pace if you can.” The voice was low and slightly muffled by the cloth. “Try not to stumble, and maybe he will not notice the extra pair of feet.”

Walking at half a crouch, she tried to stay as close to her unexpected savior as she could without jostling him. Nonetheless, she was continually bumped and buffeted, presumably by other walkers who tried to push through the billowing slack of the cloak without realizing that it was full of crouching, terrified girl.

The sound of the wind had faded a little by the time the cloak pulled back and returned Mosca to a world of sunlight. She shifted her skewed mobcap onto the back of her head, and blew loose hair out of her eyes. She was standing with the stranger in an alley between a sandstone wall and the cold, high flank of the cathedral.

“So—to what terrible act have I just become an accessory?” Her rescuer smiled, and folded his arms. When he smiled, his eyebrows rose into two neat chestnut crescents, as if they knew the world was destined to surprise them again and again, and were determined to believe in pleasant surprises. Not gentlemanlike enough to be handsome, thought Mosca. He wore no wig for one thing, just his own unpowdered red-brown hair, tied back with black ribbon. Instead of fashionable pallor, his face was tanned to a tea stain. And yet somehow he did not have a manservant’s careful self-importance. He had the modest assurance of someone who carries the world in his watchcase.

Mosca flushed. Some impulse of gratitude compelled her to attempt the truth.

“My goose sort of stole that man’s boat, but he didn’t mean to—he was prob’ly just frightened. An’ now he’s angry an’ wants to put everyone’s hearts on spikes an’ cook an’ eat them.”

The young man in the cloak pressed his lips firmly together, and stared intently at the ground. He nodded twice very slowly, as if this answer were just what he had expected.