Fly By Night

F is for Fair Mark

It was impossible that Mosca the Housefly could be sitting in a carriage on a cushion of white watered silk. It was impossible that the highwaymen should be letting them leave – she could hear Blythe outside telling the carriage driver what secret signals he should give if other men in the same gang accosted the coach. She felt sure that at any moment Clent’s words would slide off the highwayman like magic dew, leaving him clearheaded and choleric.

The coachman gave the horses a long, looping whistle. The carriage rocked on its wheels, then rumbled into motion. Someone thumped goodwill and a farewell into the wall by Mosca’s head, making her jump.

It was impossible that she and Clent were to arrive in Mandelion in a carriage, flanked by footmen, cushioned in white velvet like two horse chestnuts in down-lined shells. No doubt the pair of them would wake up and find themselves sleeping under a sycamore sacred to Dorace of the Whimsical Dream. Or the carriage would try to cross running water, and would collapse into a pile of dandelion seeds while their hostess spread swan’s wings and took to the sky.

Two pearls were watching her. In the lap of the lady in white lay an embroidered box, the lid adorned with a stuffed ermine stoat whose arched back served as a handle. Instead of glass eyes, small pearls had been placed in the sockets. As the rain lashed the lace curtain, the lady gently stroked at the fur along its back with a gloved fingertip, as if it was a living pet.

‘Remarkable.’

The lady did not raise her eyes, and for a moment Mosca thought she was addressing the stoat. It was a moment before Clent found his voice.

‘Ah, it was of course a labour of delight to be of service to Your Ladyship, and, if I may say so without offence, my oratory was inspired by the thought of one whose beauty might, ah, give voices to the very pebbles…’ There was something about Clent’s hopeful expression that made Mosca uncomfortable. His beaver hat offered little complaints as he bent the brim this way, that way.

‘Really? I thought that you were inspired by the prospect of employment and preferment. Come now, sir. Make your requests plainly.’

‘I had hoped, Lady Tamarind, that you might hire me to write an epic tale of your family’s fortunes. The rise of the dukes of Avourlace, their wise rulership of Mandelion over the centuries, their tragic exile during the war and the Years of the Birdcatchers, and then your brother’s triumphant return to reclaim his ancestral rights…’

Mosca’s eyes became round as she realized she was staring at the sister of the Duke of Mandelion.

‘Very well.’ Lady Tamarind’s words were soft and as crisp as a fox-print in snow. ‘You shall write it, and you shall be paid for it. I assume I need not read it.’

‘And… ah…’ Creak, crick went Clent’s hat brim, his eyes bodkin-eager. ‘Ah… I would request a letter of introduction, that I might mix with the, ah, better sort of personage.’ Mosca felt immediately that the letter meant more to him than the money.

‘In Mandelion the high and the fashionable may be met with in the Honeycomb Courts, which surround my residence in the Eastern Spire.’ Lady Tamarind paused, as if con-sidering. ‘I shall send you a letter vouching for your character and advising that you be allowed into the Lower Honeycomb Courts. I will do no more for a man I know so little.’

Clent gave a little exhalation of satisfaction.

Silence followed. The rattle of rain and the crack of stones under the wheels had no power to keep Mosca awake. Her eyelids drooped.

She tried to plan ahead, but thoughts gave under her feet and became dreams. She dreamed that she had found her father in Mandelion. He had been running a school there for years, and had not really died at all, and it turned out that Mosca had lots of brothers and sisters, and they were all studying at the school and waiting to meet her. It was time for her to attend her first day at that school, but Mosca was terrified, because when she tried to touch anything it burst into flames. She knew that there was a pair of white gloves that she had to wear which would make her safe, but Clent had stolen them, and she could not find them. She tried to explain everything to her father, but he would not look at her or speak to her. Instead, she ran to Clent and demanded her gloves back, but he sat there, smirking and smoothing the white gloves over his large hands, until she itched to grab him by the jowls and char him to a cinder.

The carriage wall rapped reprovingly on the back of Mosca’s head, and she found herself staring at the deeply sleeping Clent, the dream so vivid in her mind that she felt sparks might leap from her eyes and settle on his cravat.

‘Hate has its uses, but it will serve you ill if you wear it so openly.’

The quiet voice jarred Mosca into wakefulness. Lady Tamarind was looking directly at her and, snatching for a fistful of her wits, she struggled to explain.

‘He-’

‘Your grievances do not interest me. Your master’s request does. Why is he so keen to mix above his station?’

Sparks of hate crackled in Mosca’s mind.

‘Spying,’ she hissed recklessly. ‘He’s a mangy old nook-gazin’ spy. ’S got papers, signed by the Stationers – I seen ’em.’

Lady Tamarind’s immaculate mask of a face hung in the dusk of the coach and looked at Mosca. For several moments her features showed not the slightest motion. Perhaps she disapproved of Mosca’s indiscretion. Perhaps she did not believe her.

‘A Stationer spy,’ she murmured at last, very quietly and without rancour. ‘What is his name?’

‘Eponymous Clent.’

‘Eponymous Clent.’ There was an odd, distant note in Tamarind’s voice that Mosca did not understand. ‘How a name changes everything!’ Her gaze never moved from Mosca’s face. ‘A man’s face tells you nothing,’ Tamarind continued in her usual tone, ‘but through his name you… know him. Eponymous. A name suited to the hero of a tall tale. But such heroes are seldom to be trusted. And you – are you a spy, like your master?’

‘Not me, he din’t even mean me to see them papers.’

Mosca stiffened as one of Clent’s snores became a nasal hiccup. Then his sonorous breathing resumed, and she relaxed again. ‘I’m jus’ his secretary till I got something better. I’m going to school,’ she added. ‘I can read.’

Now Lady Tamarind’s arctic stare held real interest. When she spoke again it was in a softened, urgent tone that reminded Mosca of velvet rubbed the wrong way.

‘You seem interested in my pearls, girl. Would you like to have one?’

Mosca suddenly felt that to win just one of them she would willingly burn down Chough in its entirety, mill and malthouse, kiln and kitchen. She wanted to keep it, stare into it like a tiny, eider-grey crystal ball, and understand this strange new whiteness before it slipped out of her life again. She shrugged, not meeting the lady’s eye.

‘If you do something for me, and do it well, you may have a pearl, and perhaps “something better”. How much courage do you have, girl?’

‘Enough to pluck the tail of the Devil’s horse, but not enough to ride ’im.’ Mosca whispered the old Chough adage automatically.

‘What is your name?’ The lady sounded as if she might be pleased.

‘Mosca Mye.’ As soon as the words were out of Mosca’s mouth she remembered that she was a fugitive from justice. But how could she refuse to answer this snow queen? Giving a false name was unthinkable. Nobody ever lied about their name. Names were what you were. ‘And… you’re Lady Tamarind. The sister of the Duke. The Duke of Mandelion.’

‘I am. What would you say if I told you that even the sister of the Duke has powerful enemies? Dangerous enemies.’

Mosca remembered the conversation in the Halberd.

‘Locksmiths!’ she breathed excitedly. Lady Tamarind’s fingertip paused in its stroking of the stoat’s forehead. Mosca hurried on, ‘Heard the bargemen talking at the Halberd. Yestereve, when they thought I was drowsed. ’Bout how the Locksmiths wanted to take over Mandelion… like they did Scurrey… but how you’d never let ’em. Who are the Locksmiths?’

‘Probably the most feared guild in the Realm,’ said Lady Tamarind, after a hesitation. ‘Once they only made locks and strongboxes, but all the guilds have grown stronger and more powerful since the days when there was a king. Tell me, child, have you ever heard of the Thief-takers?’

‘Yeah.’ The Thief-takers had been mentioned in many of the Hangman’s Histories. ‘They’re the ones what you call in to catch thieves when the constables can’t find ’em, aren’t they?’

‘That is only a part of the truth. Listen well, girl. The Thief-takers are no better than the villains they seize. All Thief-takers answer to the Locksmiths, and their real task is to make sure that there are no criminals at large… except those that work for the Locksmiths themselves. The Locksmiths run the criminal underworld in four major cities, and are a rising force in the others. Do you understand now why I say I have dangerous enemies?’

Mosca’s jaw fell open.

‘If you are to work for me, you must speak of it to nobody, and we can never be seen together.’

Mosca nodded.

‘Good. The Locksmiths are on the rise, and if I cannot stop them, Mandelion will be theirs. I must know if others mean to act against the Locksmiths. The Stationers, in particular.’ Tamarind leaned forward and dropped her whisper, so that it was scarcely more than a tingle on the eardrum. ‘I cannot be seen to be plotting, but I must know their plans.’

‘You want me to spy on the Stationers?’ Mosca sanded her lips with a dry tongue-tip.

‘You will stay with your master, and find out more about him. He will bring you into contact with other Stationers, and can probably find you a place in a Stationer school. And once you have been schooled properly… it will seem less remarkable if a person of eminence should choose to employ you. When you have information for me, seek out the city Plumery. You will find a patch of pheasant feathers planted in front of the statue of Goodman Claspkin. Hide your letter inside the quill of one of these, and place it back in the earth. It will reach me.’

Mosca blinked hard, trying to commit everything to memory.

‘Now listen, for your own safety’s sake. Beware men who wear gloves even indoors and at luncheon. Keep a close guard on your pockets and purse – the Thief-takers sometimes serve an enemy by planting stolen goods upon them. And, girl? If you think that you are suspected… beware of accidents…’

Clent drew a long, waking breath. His eyes fluttered open, and stared unseeing and glassy at the carriage roof. Tamarind drew back against her seat with impeccable composure. Mosca curled away from Clent, closing her eyes and feigning sleep.

It seemed to Mosca that she had spent barely five minutes leaning against the window frame and counting her employer’s breaths when the carriage lurched and woke her. The woman in white was staring out of the window, the scar dead white in the stony light. Mosca wondered if she had dreamed the strange conversation.

Mosca dozed, and woke, and found that villages had sprung up at the roadside. She dozed, and woke, and found that the road was running alongside the river, and above the bristle of sails quivered some half-dozen craft-dragging kites which bore the insignia of the Watermen, a silver pond-skater against a black background. She dozed, and woke, and found that the sky was dim and a harsh crosswind was flattening the curtain against the roof.

The carriage was crossing a bridge. Houses clustered along the bridge-side as if to peer back at Mosca, and between them Mosca glimpsed a stretch of water so wide that at first she took it for a lake. But no, there were the far banks, curving away to clasp hands at the horizon. This was still the River Slye, and on the far side of the bridge the city of Mandelion smoked and sprawled and scored the sky with spires.

Helpless with excitement, Mosca wriggled to the edge of her seat, leaning out through the window for a better view. To the east and the west two spires rose above the rest, and the city stretched between them. Behind a long piecrust of crumbling wall clustered a mosaic of roofs, and a great dome that seemed in the dull light to be as glossy and ethereal as a soap bubble. To the west along the waterside unfinished ships bared ribcages of stripped wood to the sky. The creak and crack of the shipyard was as faint as a cricket orchestra.

The wind roared with an estuary freshness. It carried the smell of sandflats and sea-poppies, and the pale wails of wading birds, and the clammy, silver-eyed dreams of fish. Although she had never known the coastlands, Mosca felt with a thrill that somewhere beyond the edge of sight the ocean hugged its unthinkable deeps and dragged its tides in shrug after monumental shrug.

The carriage reached the end of the bridge, and now the tallest buildings Mosca had ever seen flanked the road. Evening had swallowed their black timbers and left their white plaster faces floating in the air like flags. To Mosca it seemed that they must in some fashion belong to the lady in the white dress, for they too were white. The gleaming white sails on the river had to belong to the lady. The fat white moon, sitting on a sliver of cloud like a clot of cream on the blade of a knife, had to belong to the lady.

‘Tell the driver where you would like to be set down, Mr Clent,’ remarked Lady Tamarind.

‘I believe our, ah, friends reside in East Straddle Street, my lady.’ The carriage steered around a squabble of hansoms and took a riverside road, the gleam of water occasionally visible between the buildings.

At last it drew up alongside a shuttered shop. Unwillingly Mosca let Clent guide her out on to the street.

‘Your Ladyship, the, ah, the, ah, letter…’

‘… will be sent to you at these lodgings shortly.’ There was a chill finality in the childlike tones as the porcelain face faded behind the curtain. The carriage lurched back into motion. Clent, hiding his disappointment, turned to knock at the door of the shop.

Mosca stared up at the hanging sign above the door. It depicted a man’s hand clasping that of a woman.

‘Mr Clent… why we stoppin’ at a marriage house?’

Before Clent could answer, the door was opened by a man as squat as a pepper pot, wearing the broad-brimmed hat of a chaplain and an expression that seemed to be a compromise between piety and a suppressed sneeze. A few whispered words from Clent, however, and the man’s face broke into a broad, badger’s grin, revealing a fine array of caramel-coloured teeth.

‘Ah, Mistress Bessel give you my name, did she? If you’re a friend of Jen, come in and be welcomed by Bockerby. You must take a pinch of snuff with me before you sleep.’ His every sentence began in a deep, sonorous, church-bell voice, and ended in a chatty, rough-cut tone like a pedlar’s shamble.

Mosca and Clent were led through a cramped, ill-swept corridor into a cramped, ill-swept parlour. The tabletop was crowded with vases. These were filled not with flowers but with bunches of dried, branching honesty plants, crowned with glossy seedpods the size of sovereigns and the colour of jaded paper. On a stand stood a name-day book, so that each couple who came to the marriage house could see if a match between their names was auspicious.

A host of tiny Beloved idols sat in rough-cut recesses in the wall, rather as if the little gods had gouged out their own homes like nesting birds. Many of the Beloved shown were unfamiliar to Mosca, but with some apprehension she recognized Goodlady Mauget of the Almost-Truth, Goodman Happendabbit of the Repented Oath, St Leasey, He Who Lends His Cloak to the Sly-in-the-Night, and Goodlady Judin of the Borrowed Face. The largest shrines were to Leampho of the One Wakeful Eye, a goodman who according to legend would smile upon contracts and unions that Torquest the Joiner of Hands would not touch with the tiniest finger of his steel-gloved hand.

Mosca knew that all respectable weddings took place in church, but for couples with too little money or too much to hide there were the marriage houses. Girls with child, forbidden love matches, would-be bigamists, anyone who did not want their affairs boomed to the congregation – all of these could creep with their sweethearts to a marriage house, and have a licence for a handful of shillings. To judge by his outfit, Bockerby served as cleric and master of ceremonies for this establishment.

Bockerby had fetched a mahogany box from the mantel, and now he offered it to Clent, who placed the daintiest pinch at the base of his thumb, before lowering his nose to his wrist and taking an energetic sniff.

‘So -’ Clent settled in a large rocking chair and gestured Mosca towards a stool by the wall – ‘what news in your brave city, Mr Bockerby?’

‘Been here before, sir? No?’ Bockerby gave a one-shouldered shrug and drew in a pinch of snuff, creasing his brow into a map. ‘Ah… truth is, Mr Clent, you find us in a bit of a hubble-bubble.’

‘I noticed your city wall was badly burned.’

‘Mostly old fires, Mr Clent. Yus, Mandelion’s a battered old nell.’

‘The old war?’

‘The old war. And then… the Birdcatchers. We was hit bad, worse than most. I was only about eleven when they took over, but I remember it, clear as clarion.’

Mosca waited for Clent and Bockerby to glance at her and drop into vagueness, but to her surprise neither of them did. Somehow, without noticing, Mosca had become old enough to hear about such things.

‘First thing they did was ban the whelkmaids’ dances on St Squeakle’s Day. Any they caught “devilish frolicking”, as they put it, had their toes tied together so tightly they could hardly walk. Then came the purges. I remember seeing whole family pews empty, and no one telling me why.’ Bockerby laughed, and Mosca wondered why so many people laughed at memories, even the ones that weren’t funny. ‘Right little clinger I was when it came to questions then. Real little crab.’ He made stubborn pincer-motions with his thumb and forefinger. ‘What I remember clearest is stealing off to fish downriver by the Leaps, and coming home in the dark. No moon, all pitch.

‘The windmills along the bank all tick and creak different as their sails turn, so I always used the sound to tell my way, but this one night I could hear not so much as a click to guide me. I was just starting to think I was witched and would never find my way home when I saw two little lights a-bobbing, and I realized it was the lantern of a linkboy crossing the Ashbridge over his reflection. I was so blanched by the dark and the silence, I stayed on the bridge till morning, and when the dawn came I saw why the windmills were silent.

‘From the sails of every mill wooden birdcages were hanging, each the size of a puncheon, but full of people instead of ale. Men, women, children, all dressed for the festival of St Jarry. The Birdcatchers had surprised them during the midnight candle-walk, wrung their necks, and winged them.’

‘Winged them?’ Clent asked cautiously.

‘Perhaps they never did that outside Mandelion. See, they put long pins in the quills of feathers, and then they stuck the sharp ends of the pins into…’ At last Bockerby seemed to remember Mosca, glanced at her, and gave a small gesture as if pushing away a memory. ‘You can imagine how glad everyone was when the present Duke came back from Jottland with his sister.’

‘How is the Duke?’ Clent asked carefully, as if asking after an illness of a delicate nature.

‘He’s… not what he was.’ Bockerby seemed to be choosing his words carefully. ‘When he first come back from exile, seventeen years past, just after we’d kicked out the Birdcatchers, we was all flags and smiles and thrown hats. Then a couple of years later there was that rumpus during the Year of the Dead Letter, when the Stationers were fighting among ’emselves. The Duke put those riots down hard, an’ nobody saw him the same way after.

‘Now we got new riots, folk fear he’ll put musketmen out on the streets again. I don’t speak against him, mind. His… funny little ways get funnier every year, but that’s all trim for a duke. Show me a man with blue blood, an’ I’ll show you a man with a bonnetful of bees.’

Clent sighed. ‘Well, Beloved preserve the wits of the mighty, and spare the skins of the small! Good Mr Bockerby, I fear we droop upon sleep’s altar. If you might show us our rooms…’ He flicked sharply at Mosca’s nose to rouse her to alertness.

Bockerby took the candle and led them from the parlour. Mosca shambled after Clent through another corridor to a little chamber with a desk, a closet, and a smell of long-forgotten mouse-adventures.

When Bockerby had gone, Mosca gratefully collapsed into a truckle bed at the foot of the main bed, but her mind was no longer quite ready for sleep. Strangely, her betrayal of Clent’s secret to Lady Tamarind had taken some sting out of her hatred. Too much newness had broken like a wave against her mind and, odious as he was, Clent’s presence was almost comforting.

‘Is the Duke pixelated, Mr Clent?’

Clent shuddered. ‘That is a judgement upon me for seeking to extend your vocabulary. If I hear you using such words to describe a duke in my hearing again, I shall put you on a diet of dry verbs and water until you have learned to speak more wisely. In Mandelion, an illchosen word in the wrong company may cost you your neck.’

‘Well, if he’s not pixelated, what’s all this ’bout bees an’ bonnets an’ pairs, then?’

‘Ah,’ Clent said significantly. ‘Pairs.’ He settled himself comfortably on the sill. ‘The Duke’s love of pairs dates from his sojourn with Queens Meriel and Peri. You have heard of the Twin Queens?’

‘They’re granddaughters of the last throned king?’

‘Very good. And do you know why their portraits always show them in long, trailing sleeves?’

Mosca, who had never seen a picture of the Twin Queens, shook her head.

‘All twins are born together, but the Twin Queens were born hand in hand. The outside edge of Meriel’s right hand was joined fast to the edge of Peri’s left. Between their little fingers grew an extra finger, which both sisters could move at will.

‘When they were five, it was decided that this strange bond had to be broken. Meriel was allowed custody of the extra finger, but ever since they were divided the queens have taken to wearing gloves and long lace sleeves to hide their difference. The superstitious say that both sisters can still move the finger, even though it grows on Meriel’s hand.

‘Our current Duke of Mandelion, Vocado Avourlace, and his sister, Lady Tamarind, were born in exile in Jottland, where their family had loyally followed the Twin Queens and their mother. As a youth he spent much time in the company of the young queens, and when he came of age he began wooing them with zeal. The problem was that he was unmistakably courting them both, for in truth there was little to choose between them.

‘At last the sisters made it clear that he must pick one bride. He chose Peri, and at first there was general rejoicing. However, Peri wanted to know why she had been chosen, and the Duke admitted that he had chosen Peri because Meriel’s extra finger frightened him. After this confession, Peri ended the engagement. Some say that she was angry at the slight to her sister, but others say that she still felt the finger to be part of her, and would not marry a man who could not accept it.

‘Even now, back in his homeland, it is said that the Duke spends every waking moment dwelling on thoughts of the Twin Queens. At mealtimes he arranges his chicken bones and cherry stones into pairs, and he sighs over the coins that display the queens’ identical heads: Meriel on one side, facing right, Peri on the other, facing left. And he still dreams that if he rebuilds Mandelion with a beautiful symmetry worthy of the Twin Queens, they will forgive him, and come to rule the Realm with Mandelion as their capital.’

‘Will they ever come to Mandelion, do you think?’ Mosca asked.

‘Perhaps, on a day when the sun turns to soup,’ Clent remarked drily. ‘In the meantime, it looks ill for the Duke’s line, for he will marry none but they.’

‘But Lady Tamarind might have children! Is she married?’

Clent gave Mosca an astute glance, and she blushed, fearing that he would see how the noblewoman had left her spellbound.

‘No, nor can I find that she has any suitor or favourite.’

‘Why? Is it because of her scar?’

‘Lady Tamarind wears her scar like a flower,’ Clent said softly. ‘If she is unwed, it is because she would have it so.’

‘Where did Lady Tamarind get her scar?’

‘That I do not know, though I believe she was already marked when she came back from Jottland as a child of thirteen.’

Lady Tamarind was at that very moment nearing the end of her long journey home from the Capital to Mandelion’s Eastern Spire. She had disembarked from her carriage, and a sedan now bore her through the Honeycomb Courts towards the spire. Although she was quite unconscious that she was the subject of fascinated discussion in the marriage house, her thoughts also happened to be focused upon the scar that marked her cheek.

The scar was not something she could easily ignore. On the few occasions when she smiled, it pulled taut against her cheek, as if trying to pull her back into solemnity. In winter she could feel the cold through it, as if a real snowflake had landed on her skin. The nearest she knew to fear was a throbbing flutter behind her scar, and as she recalled the events of the carriage ride she could feel it, like a moth’s wing beating at her cheek. Ah, she thought without emotion, I suppose that episode must have frightened me.

As one footman handed her from the sedan, his fellows busied themselves with unfastening the six great locks to the door of the Eastern Spire.

‘My business in the Capital is concluded,’ Tamarind explained. ‘Kindly send a letter to Mr Kohlrabi’s lodgings, telling him that I require his presence as soon as he is back in the city, then bring me a dish of tea, the latest issue of the Gazette and a bag of dead cats.’ Five minutes later her ladies-in-waiting were at her side with the requested items, and together they entered the spire.

One by one the locks slid to behind her with smooth, liquid clicks. The great locks bore the Guarantee of the Locksmiths. This meant that they were of the very finest quality. It meant that if they were broken, the Locksmiths would pay a small fortune in recompense. It meant that word had been put out across the underworld that the Eastern Spire was a no-go area, so that no clear-thinking thief would consider milling the locks, in case the Locksmiths’ dreaded Thief-takers were sent after him.

All of this might have reassured Lady Tamarind, if she had been hoping to lock out anyone but the Locksmiths themselves. She had resorted to other measures to make sure that the Locksmiths could not wander into her apartments and search them at will.

As she climbed the stairs she slid on a long leather glove that reached to her shoulder. At the door of the salon she paused, then drew out one of the dead cats by the tail and carefully flung it towards the middle of the floor. There was a rasp, like the hiss of sand through a straw, and a low, leatherbound river of wickedness snaked out from the darkness below the harpsichord. Its jaw opened impossibly wide, like a lean book crowded with teeth, and caught the cat before it could touch the ground.

The two ladies-in-waiting stayed at the door while Tamarind advanced to examine her pet. With satisfaction she noted its distinguishing features, the dirt-coloured dent above its left eye, and one flattened tooth jutting out from its fellows.

Originally her rooms had been guarded by a Shrieking Foxhawk that would lunge for the eyes of any but herself. One day she had returned to find the hawk strangely docile, and slightly larger than before. Next, she had bought a savage wolfhound to keep intruders from searching her apartments, but she became aware that there had been another switch when Tartar unexpectedly bore puppies. It had taken longer for the Gravyscale Python to be replaced, and after that she had resorted to ever more exotic animals. By the look of things, the Locksmiths had not yet succeeded in finding themselves a substitute crocodile.

As the animal snapped at the carcass with a soft rip like a spade biting through turf, Tamarind settled herself on the window seat and opened her stoat-handled embroidered box. The signet ring she had brought all the way from the Capital was still within, safe from the bloodied hands of highwaymen and the gloved fingers of Locksmiths. The ring had been expensive to fashion in secret. She was all too aware of the consequences, should it be discovered in her possession.

Below her window, Mandelion spread itself like a butterfly of brick and slate. Even from this angle the extraordinary symmetry of the city’s design was obvious. The Eastern Spire had its match in the west, where the Duke of Mandelion kept his quarters.

The thought of her brother’s obsession caused a pulse to flutter beneath Tamarind’s scar. I must be feeling something, she thought. Could it be fear? No, it is not fear. She moved to another window and gazed down towards the pillory and gibbet in the yard.

Far below in the courtyard, a man was on his knees. The constable was selecting a long branding iron from the fire, and considerately dipping it in water before pulling the felon’s hand towards him. Maybe the brand was a ‘T’ for thief, or an ‘F’ for forger. It would be quicker and simpler to hang them outright, Tamarind reflected. Brand a man as a thief and no one will ever hire him for honest labour – he will be a hardened robber within weeks. The brand does not reveal a person’s nature, it shapes it.

With a tip of one long finger she traced a tiny circle around the snowflake on her cheek. Could it be fear? No, not fear.

The house in Jottland where she had been born and spent her childhood had looked over a glade that was set aside for badminton. Too clearly she recalled the last time she had ever played the game. She remembered the glistening of the rain-stricken garden as she dragged her elder brother by the sleeve with all her thirteen-year-old might. She had only hazily understood how deeply his rejection by Queen Peri had cut him. However, she had known that it could not be good for him to sit for hours in his closet, staring at coins, or at two faces in a locket. She had known that it was her task to distract Vocado and draw him out of himself.

Her brother had winced as if the birdsong gave him toothache, and had swiped at the shuttlecock, first listlessly, then so savagely that the fronds enmeshed themselves in the strings of the racket. Tamarind had run to help him disentangle them, but he had shaken off her hand. At her feet, water was puddled in the hollows of the lawn and her reflection had regarded her with delight and surprise.

‘Look, Vocado!’ She had pointed at her reflection. ‘I have a twin!’

A twin. Nothing could have triggered Vocado’s anguish like those innocent words. She had looked to her brother for a smile, just as his racket completed its savage swing at her face…

Down in the courtyard, the constable was lifting his brand away from the felon’s hand, and turning to face the judge. In the spire room one could hear no screams, feel no heat, smell no burning, but Tamarind knew that the constable would be speaking the traditional words as he displayed his handiwork to the gathering.

‘A fair mark, my lord.’