patterned with eyes like those on butterflies’ wings. It could only be the Duke.
‘Goshawk has escaped,’ Tamarind continued in the same level, urgent voice. ‘He has almost certainly sent for that boat of Locksmith troops waiting upstream. The Watermen have agreed to delay them, but that buys us only a little time. The ship with my troops is some distance down the coast, and the roads to the ocean are slow and overgrown. Even if we send a messenger now, it will take ten days for the ship to reach us. Vocado – we must send for them
‘Very well, Tammy. I shall sign the order.’ The Duke’s voice was light and musical, but somehow a little off- key.
A young man tripped forward and held out a scroll while the Duke signed it. Mosca was just wondering why he looked familiar when two strong arms seized her round the middle.
‘Your Ladyship!’ Mosca hooked her fingers into the stone lattice and hung on in a quicksilver rush of madness. ‘Your Ladyship!’ Everything she wanted was beyond the wall.
The Duke turned to look at Mosca, and her stomach jolted as she met his dead brown eyes. She remembered a fox she had once seen flopping about in a strange sickness.
‘A radical spy,’ he said, in a tone with the same meaningless music to it.
‘No.’ The white lady gazed into Mosca’s urgent, contorted face with eyes the colour of mist. ‘Merely an errand girl. She wants to bother me for money. Give her a shilling and throw her out.’
The young man beside Tamarind raised his gaze to look at Mosca, and his chestnut eyebrows rose in surprise. Although his hair was now brushed and carefully fastened into a pigtail, and though he now wore a smart but simple coat of dark blue wool, Mosca immediately recognized Linden Kohlrabi, the man who had helped her by hiding her under his travelling cloak.
Mosca’s fingers lost their strength. The footman dragged her from the wall and carried her back the way she had come. She had no spirit to fight. She did not blame Tamarind for the way she had spoken – how could she? Instead, she hated herself with a leaden anguish. Tamarind had been busy with something really important, probably something to do with saving the city from the guild war and the Locksmiths. Mosca had blundered in, shouting like a lunatic in front of the Duke, in spite of Tamarind telling her never to seek her out. Talking to Tamarind had seemed like her only chance, but now she realized she had spoilt everything. Lady Tamarind would never forgive her.
‘It’s all right.’ A quiet voice behind her. ‘You don’t have to throttle the girl. She’ll be coming with me.’ Mosca was lowered to her feet, and she reached up a trembling hand to straighten the ribbons the lavender girl had tied so carefully. She did not look into Kohlrabi’s face, but she fell into step with him as he walked back through the gates to the thoroughfare.
There was a great crowd in front of the Honeycomb Courts and Courthouse, but beyond them the streets were all but empty. As the crowd thinned around them, Mosca stole a glance at Kohlrabi.
‘You work for Lady Tamarind.’ Mosca had not intended it to sound like an accusation.
‘And you, it would seem, work for Eponymous Clent.’ Kohlrabi’s tone was tired and a little wary.
‘She told you that?’
‘Lady Tamarind told me that I was to see you safely outside the gates, and tell you that she could not be seen speaking to you, but she would arrange an interview with you once the Assizes had run their course. Until then, she says you should continue as before.’
Mosca’s felt a small surge of hope. She had not been abandoned after all, perhaps. Could she and Clent survive until after the Assizes?
‘I do not know what your dealings are,’ Kohlrabi continued, ‘but I know that Her Ladyship seldom does anything without a reason. Why did you come to the Courts, Mosca? Did Eponymous Clent send you?’
There was a hint of sharpness in his tone, and Mosca gave him a narrow look.
‘You don’t like Mr Clent.’
‘No. I know too much about him to like him. How much do
Mosca nibbled at her fingertips and stared at him mulishly. ‘I’m just working for him right now, that’s all. I don’t know nothing about him, and I don’t look to.’
‘Mosca…’ Kohlrabi stopped, closed his eyes for a moment, and sighed. ‘You may not believe me, but I am duty bound to warn you – Eponymous Clent is a very dangerous man. I know what I am talking about – I have spent the last month trailing him from post to post, observing the disaster in his wake.’
Mosca’s eyes widened as a memory stirred. Suddenly her nose was filled once again with the smell of damp, and rot, and dove-droppings, and wind-blown smoke. Suddenly she knew where she had heard Kohlrabi’s name before, and she remembered words spoken by a young voice, a reassuring voice like warm milk…
‘You were in Chough, talkin’ to the magistrate!’ The words were out before she could stop them.
‘Dry Stones and Thistles,’ Kholrabi murmured. ‘I wondered where I had heard your accent before. Chough. How could I be so stupid? Of course – you must be the little girl who burned down the mill.’ Mosca must have looked terrified, because he put out a hand soothingly and gave a slight laugh. ‘It’s all right, it’s all right. I have no thought of handing you over for your most heinous crime. But in the name of the most holy, Mosca, of all the people you could have taken up with, why Eponymous Clent?’
Mosca shrugged.
‘He’s got a way with words.’
‘You caused quite a sensation, disappearing like that. For a while they thought you had burned to death in the mill, until they found the magistrate’s keys missing and Clent gone. You should go home, you know – I’m sure your family will understand that the fire was an accident. They’ll just be glad to have you home again.’
Mosca gave a little crow-cough of a laugh.
‘You didn’t meet my uncle and aunt, did you?’
Kohlrabi studied Mosca’s face.
‘No, I didn’t.’ He didn’t ask her any more about her family.
They had come to a halt at the edge of a square in which a gibbet dripped sullenly and a set of scaffolds swayed their ropes in the breeze, a patient motion like the swing of a cat’s tail as it waits by a mousehole.
‘What’s wrong, Mosca? You look ill. Come, the wind is chill, and we should get indoors soon anyway, before the Clamouring Hour.’
As they approached, the landlady of the nearest alehouse had fastened her shutters and was closing the door, but she took pity on them and let them slip inside before she barred it closed.
There was very little conversation in the alehouse, partly because all the patrons had pushed little wads of linen or leather into their ears.
From some distant bell came a series of rapid chimes, not unlike someone sounding a dinner gong.
‘Ah, that sounds like Goodlady Winterblossom’s fanfare,’ Kohlrabi murmured. ‘She always likes to get her word in first. The others won’t be far behind. Well, I suppose we have privacy of a sort. No one is listening.’ Kohlrabi smiled at Mosca. It felt oddly exciting to be part of a little faction daring enough to leave their ears unblocked.
‘So why were you followin’ Mr Clent?’
‘I was in Long Pursing on an errand for Lady Tamarind when I first heard his name. He had vanished overnight, leaving ruinous debts to about a dozen tradesmen. That same night the landlord he owed two months’ rent apparently fell into his own well and drowned. I promised the dead man’s son that I would listen out for word of Clent, and that promise has led me a ragged route from hostelry to hamlet, following his trail. I lost track of him in Chough… only to find when I returned to Mandelion that Clent was already here.’
Mosca thought of herself snatching Clent from beneath the nose of the patiently pursuing Kohlrabi, and little prickles came and went across her face.
‘There is blood on that man’s hands,’ Kohlrabi added quietly. ‘I haven’t found proof yet, but I don’t doubt it is
