Masseter nodded. “I think it’s vital to mention the reason why she took whatever it was she took the last time. Because I don’t really think the knave was a villain, do you?”
“She took things,” Maisie said helplessly. “They weren’t hers, and she knew she wasn’t supposed to do it.”
“Yes, and she tried not to, didn’t she? But then, you know, she was also growing up. And I imagine at last she said to herself, I’m not a child anymore. I can help. I can be useful. So perhaps the final time she took—which was it, the last time?”
“The sword.” The words were so quiet, they were almost inaudible.
“I see. Yes, I was wondering if perhaps, that last time, she took it intending to show the kings how careful she could be, and how responsible. To prove she could be trusted, even if she had to break a rule to demonstrate it.” He and Maisie looked at each other for a moment. “Did she get hurt?”
“Yes,” Maisie whispered. “It wasn’t a sword, really, but a long knife, sharp on both sides. She—she didn’t realize how heavy it would be.”
“And after that, the kings sent her away. For her own safety, I imagine; probably just until some particularly dangerous encounter was finished.”
Maisie started to protest. She pressed her lips together with a mutinous expression for a moment; then she sighed. “Yes.”
The peddler nodded again. He scratched his head. “Those are all the questions I had. This is very helpful. I felt certain the knave wasn’t a villain, nor was she just marooned without a plan to ever bring her back. Still, without all these details, one could easily get confusing ideas about it.” He straightened unceremoniously and went to the sideboard to pour himself another whiskey. “It was a good story, I thought.”
Maisie watched the peddler’s back, awash with emotion and curiosity. “But how did you know all that?”
Masseter capped the bottle and tucked it back into its place. “What do you mean? I merely asked a few questions.”
But Maisie was a girl, not a fool. “You didn’t. You knew. You worked all that out yourself. Then you asked so I could tell you that you got it right. But how did you know?”
The peddler faced her again and took a long sip of his drink. “Because, my dear, the answers to the questions were already there. Your story fit a pattern—most things do. I merely connected the dots you left.”
“I didn’t leave any dots!” Maisie argued. “If there was a pattern, I’d know! It was my story!”
“Ah, well.” Amalgam cleared his throat delicately. “Storytellers often don’t know what the hell they’re talking about, Maisie, my dear. A troublesome truth it’s taken me a lifetime to come to terms with.”
“By contrast . . .” Masseter took another drink—less a sip this time than a slug. He reached into his watch pocket and produced something small and gleaming from it: a silvery brooch in the shape of a flower, enameled in red and green and indigo, which he tucked into the palm with the firework scars without appearing to notice he was doing it. “By contrast,” he said as he clenched and unclenched his fist against the sharp edges of the metal flower, “I am cursed to spot patterns and understand systems. I cannot not see them. And that, young lady, is how I caught the things you had left out, and knew how they would change your tale.”
“Useful skill, that,” Amalgam observed. “I wouldn’t mind having a bit of that curse.”
“You might think so,” Masseter agreed, but his voice was grim. “Until you can see things in complete systems, you have no way of knowing how the smallest change in flow or sink will alter one, to say nothing of all the other intangibles that act upon things. So take this room, on this night. There’s the rain and the tide working against the soil and rock and riverbed outside, yes. But.” He nodded gallantly at Sorcha. “Also at work there is the particular geometry of the logs in a fire. There is the movement through the room of bodies around a house of cards.” He glanced at Petra and raised an eyebrow. “There is the telling of a particular tale at a particular time.”
“And what is this system you’re describing?” Petra said with a grin.
“Well, that’s so often the difficulty with them,” Masseter replied with a bow of his head. “It’s hard to know where one ends and another begins. Small systems feed into bigger ones like tributaries.” His green eye flashed closed and open again, a strange, hard-edged wink. “They’re rather like stories that way, in fact.”
Petra stood and went over to refill her own glass. “I wonder. You know, it might be your turn, Mr. Masseter. Have you got a story to tell yourself?”
Masseter stood by as Petra reached past him for a bottle. “It’s rather come to that, hasn’t it?” he said quietly. “It’s down to you and me.” She smiled up at him in perfect innocence; there was a glitter in her eye that he thought was not from the fire. “Fine.” He darted a glare across the parlor at Maisie. “The knave is not a villain.”
“Hear, hear,” Captain Frost pronounced from across the room, folding his arms across his chest.
“He’s right,” Tesserian whispered as he reached over to hand Maisie the queen of puppets.
She took the card in one hand, then remembered she still held the little handmade book in the other. “Wait.” She offered it back to Negret.
But the bookbinding twin shook his head. “No, keep it,” he said, taking Forel’s roll of tools from his pocket and nodding at the stack of paper and the awl that already sat on the table beside his chair. “I can make another.” Mrs. Haypotten pursed her lips hard, eyeing the sharp implements in the roll as Negret began straightening the papers into a stack, but she said nothing.
“Thank you.” Maisie tucked the book in the pocket of her
