“It sounds to me as if you and my sister will get along like two sister-mares in a herd,” Delia said, smiling a little.

“Well, we’re probably both lead-mares, so that’s just fine,” the Healer proclaimed, and raised her head and sniffed the air. “Is that chicken I smell?”

“Your nose must be phenomenal!” Delia exclaimed. “It probably is. We have country-supper, which is soup and things for our evening meal. Our cook makes an amazing chicken soup.”

“It’s another reason why I won’t go near the Capital,” the Healer said. “The stink. ‘The City of Smoke and Hate,’ I call it. And chicken soup? I’d have walked here for a good chicken soup.” She put her heels to her mule, who, seeing and scenting a stable nearby, this time willingly picked up his pace, as did the two carrying her luggage and gear.

They arrived exactly when supper was served, which gave them just time to wash up before joining the rest. She and Ivar enlivened the entire High Table with stories, and the entire room eavesdropped without shame. If there was ever a great distraction and an utter boredom for a spy, this is it, Delia thought, and she was very, very sure that this was exactly what Alberdina and Ivar intended. A mage scrying would have been asleep before they all packed up, and Isla gathered up the four of them with her eyes and indicated they were to follow.

They did, and Hakkon came along.

She had expected them to go down to the cellars, but they went to the common room of the Circle’s Tower. There were more mages there tonight—none of them as old or as eccentric as the Circle, but there were a great many crammed into the usually capacious space.

The mage-lights around the room were a peculiar hue, one that Delia had never seen before. A sort of pale purple. She settled on the floor—most of the seating here was either on stools or on the floor, and she didn’t want to take an actual seat from someone who physically could not sit on the floor—out of the way of the people she suspected were actually important enough to speak.

But not before she passed the note back to Isla, who took it, nodded, and—it ignited in her hand, going up in a sudden burst of blue flame.

When everyone had settled, and there was no one coming in the door anymore, Ponu cleared his throat and the muttering died away to nothing.