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up against the crumbling brick wall to keep him from squirming away. He was a gutterboy, barefoot, dressed in tattery trousers and a man’s nightshirt tied with a rope ’round his waist.
    “What’s the matter?” Rowan asked. She had her hand on the hilt of her sword, under her coat.
    “Get anything?” I asked the gutterboy.
    He looked down at his hand. A couple of lockpick wires. That’s what he’d gotten for his trouble. He looked blankly at them and dropped them to the ground. Stupid. A swagshop would’ve given him a copper lock for them. Oh well; he was probably being stupid because he was hungry.
    “If you’re going to pick pockets,” I said, “you have to have quick hands.”
    The gutterboy looked up at me; then his glance skittered over to Rowan, who was watching over my shoulder. He had watery blue eyes and teeth that stuck out. “Huh?” he said.
    “Or you’re going to get caught with your hand in somebody’s pocket.” And he’d get the fluff beaten out of him if he did. “Look.” I took a step away from him. “You come up from behind. Make your feet feathers so the mark doesn’t hear you. Then quick-hands in, nick the purse string, and out clean.” I turned to Rowan and lifted the purse string from her pocket to show him how.
    “Uh-huh,” he said.
    He didn’t get it. But he’d get it eventually, or he’d get caught again.
    Rowan held out her hand, and I gave her money back. “I’ll let you go,” I said to the gutterboy, “if you’ll help us find somebody.”
    “Give me a couple of copper locks, then,” he said.
    “Here,” Rowan said. She pulled out her pursestring again and gave him a few copper lock coins.
    “Now yours,” he said to me.
    “I don’t have a couple of coppers,” I said.
    “Give me one copper, then,” he said.
    “I don’t have any money,” I said.
    “You have to give me something, too.”
    I didn’t have anything he’d want. Except maybe my coat. Drats. I took it off. “I’ll give you this if you’ll help us.”
    He looked at it. “Don’t want it.”
    “You don’t want it now ,” I said, “but winter will come in not too long, and you’ll really want it then.”
    He stared blankly at me.
    I sighed. “If you take it to a used clothes shop, the shop lady will give you money for it, all right?”
    He nodded.
    “I’m looking for somebody who sells explosives,” I said.
    “Give me the coat first,” the boy said.
    Right. I handed it over. He put it on; the sleeveshung down over his hands.
    “I don’t know what explosives is,” he said.
    Beside me, Rowan laughed.
    “Things that blow up,” I said. His face stayed blank. “Boom!” I shouted.
    “Oh.” He nodded and picked his nose, then wiped his finger down the front of my coat. His coat. “Sparks.”
    “Yes, sparks,” I said, bending to pick up my lockpick wires; I didn’t want to be without them. “D’you know anybody who makes sparks?”
    He nodded again. “Sparks makes sparks.”
    Right. Got it. “Where does Sparks live?”
    “I could show you,” the boy said.
    He led us back toward the river, beyond the docks and warehouses and ratty taverns that clustered in the shadow of the bridge. As we walked, the rain started, just a drizzle, and my hair hung down damp in my eyes. A chilly early-autumn breeze blew off the river. Rowan turned up the collar of her long coat. We walked for a long time,out to the mudflats, past the shacks where the mudlarks lived. I’d never been this far out from the center of the city. The magic was weaker here. Usually I felt it protecting me, like a warm blanket in the wintertime, but here the air felt thin. Most people wouldn’t want to live out here, away from the magic. I guessed the pyrotechnist did because otherwise the magic would set off the materials used to make explosions, because the magic liked explosions.
    “Here,” the gutterboy said. He pointed at a long, windowless shack with a tar-paper roof and flapping tar paper tacked to its