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that’s not your fault, of course. Are you injured in any way? I know an excellent physician, Dr
Farquhar—’
    ‘No real damage done,’ said the fellow, backing off. He spoke slowly, rolling his
r
s, and Citrine now saw that he was not that much older than she. He picked up what looked
like a long leather cylinder with a strap, akin to a bowman’s quiver, and shrugged it back on his shoulder. ‘All my timbers are in order.’
    ‘Your timbers?’
    ‘I mean, I am not hurt.’
    ‘You must allow me to take you home,’ she suggested. ‘It’s the least I can do. I have a Trikuklos.’
    He looked at her vehicle and shook his head. ‘There’s no need, miss. Worse things happen at sea.’
    Citrine was a little disconcerted at the lad’s apparent lack of concern for his well-being. ‘Oh dear, then, please, for my own peace of mind, let me give you a sequentury, as
compensation for your clothes. Your trousers are torn, after all.’
    ‘All right, kew very much,’ he said after a brief pause, and, head bowed, he allowed Citrine to press a coin into his calloused palm.
    ‘And here’s your Brinepurse,’ said Citrine, stooping to pick it up from where it had fallen. He reached back to take it and hurried off, covering the ground quickly with long
strides.
    ‘At least tell me your name,’ she called after him.
    ‘They call me Jonah Scrimshander.’
    ‘I’m Citrine,’ she began, but he was already gone. She climbed into the Trikuklos, still a little shaky from the encounter, and realized with dismay that her own Brinepurse was
gone. The string had been cut. She looked down the empty street, but then remembered the other boy, the one outside Suma Dartson’s wagon and how he had brushed against her. She had thought it
odd at the time and now she knew why.
    ‘Why, the cheek of the boy! Pretending to be interested in my Trikuklos to steal from me.’ She tutted. ‘So, the cards were right.’ She hoped that was the worst of it.
    Still mulling over the cards and the collision, Citrine pushed down hard on the pedalators and coasted silently up to the imposing white boundary wall of the Capodel Townhouse.
It was one of the largest residences in Degringolade and stood out from the other houses on the hill just as the Kronometer stood out in Mercator Square. She hoped fervently that Edgar was still
away. He strongly disapproved of her interest in the cards. As far as he was concerned, card-spreading was not the sort of skill a young lady of her standing should wish to acquire. Rich, educated
people did not engage in such practices; they paid others to do it for them. If Edgar found out that she had been to visit Suma there was no telling what he might do. He had once threatened to lock
her in her room. It was bad enough being confined to the house, without that as well.
    Citrine slipped inside and crept up the servants’ stairs to the main hall. It was a large open space with a galleried landing three-quarters of the way around it. The walls were hung with
portraits of many generations of Capodels. Citrine looked up at the one of her mother. She did not remember her, she had died when Citrine was a baby, but she had inherited her vibrantly coloured
hair and green eyes. Beside it was the most recent portrait, completed just before her father disappeared, of the three of them: Father, Citrine and Edgar. Edgar had the hint of a smile on his
face; Citrine knew well that the artist had taken liberties with his sneer.
    Citrine worried sometimes that she might be growing immune to the wealth and luxury that surrounded her, taking it for granted. She thought of the sequentury she had given Jonah, the victim of
her own carelessness, and felt guilty that she hadn’t offered more. She resolved to make it up to him if she ever saw him again. Then she caught sight of a royal-blue caped coat draped over
the arm of one of the trio of French upholstered couches that were arranged around the fountain in the centre of the