“We’ve sent two different apprentices to pick up the reports,” Mabwick Toke had declared angrily that morning. “Neither of them got there. Tittle was jostled under a cart, and is still in the care of the barber-surgeon. We don’t even know what happened to Weft. No, this time we’ll send a full guildsman—the Locksmiths can’t harm him without breaking the Rules and openly declaring guild war. Even Aramai Goshawk would not dare do that. Caveat! You’ll do.”

Toke opened the door of the coffeehouse. “The Clamoring Hour is nearly over, so go quickly while the streets are empty.” The many sects of the many Beloved had very different ideas about how the bells should be rung for worship, and it had become customary to let them battle it out through the metal of their bells for an hour every other day. Every church, shrine, and cathedral became a scene of cacophony as bells chimed and clanged and tolled and jingled in every pitch from baritone to baby-chick squeak. Worshippers of more obscure Beloved would sometimes buy bells and hang out of upper windows with cotton in their ears, adding their own music to the general chaos. Most people preferred to hide indoors until the Hour was over, with their windows firmly closed. Caveat sat hunched in the sedan with his fingers in his ears as discordant peals assaulted the morning air of Mandelion.

Mr. Toke always. Knows what he is doing, Caveat told himself, as he ducked into the bookbinder’s shop. But how. Can we be sure that the. Locksmiths. Care about the Rules when we have not. Heard from anyone in Scurrey for so long anything. Might be going on in there.

Two minutes later Caveat emerged onto Pell-mell, tucking Clent’s report into his waistcoat. Although he stop-started his way through spoken sentences, he could read faster than a hummingbird flies, and he had taken in Clent’s three pages of curling prose in as many glances. His eyebrows, which had been dancing like frightened caterpillars, were now dancing like excited caterpillars.

“The Telling Word!” he called sharply to the chairmen, raising his voice to be heard through their cloth-rag earplugs. He clambered back into the waiting sedan. Short phrases were easier to shout all of a piece. “Be quick!”

The chairmen obediently set off at a jog. Caveat was just settling back in his seat when there was a thump from ahead, and the front of the sedan swayed and dipped.

“What? What was that?” Caveat was almost sure the foremost of the two chairmen had called out something.

A series of thuds and crashes came from behind, and a muffled “Oh!” as if someone had just remembered something very important. The rear of the sedan dropped sharply and bounced on the cobbles, so that Caveat fell backward, his wig down over his nose and his feet skyward.