Each booth had at least three lanterns suspended over the goods, and even the most mundane or tawdry objects tended to sparkle and gleam enticingly in their light. As Abi drifted along with the crowd, she kept her ears tuned for scraps of conversation that had nothing to do with commerce. Her training in the day Fair had been mostly preparation for this.

Somewhere Perry was prowling as well, but more than likely, he was slipping like a shadow in the spaces behind the booths.

“. . . can find better gemstone beads from Hollistown,” said a man with a faint accent, dismissively.

Both the accent and the words alerted her. Hollistown produced apples and applewood, and there were no mines, of gems or anything else there. And the accent could only come from the southeastern Border of Valdemar. And that was the Border shared with Karse.

She almost rolled her eyes. When would they ever stop trying?

On the twelfth of never.

She slipped both hands into her pockets and lightly squeezed a sponge filled with an odorless, clear, colorless liquid her father extracted from urine. Well, it was colorless to humans. . . .

She timed her move exquisitely, so that when she stepped in between two people trying to get around the booth, one of them stumbled into her, sending her stumbling into the man who had spoken. “Bloody hell!” she swore, as she grabbed the edge of the booth table and the drape over it in her left hand, and steadied herself against the man with her right, leaving invisible palm-prints on both.

“I beg your pardon!” she said to the booth owner and the man she had tagged. Both of them assessed her clothing—which was commensurate with that of a young man of means—and their expressions changed. The merchant’s became dismissive; the speaker’s, sour, but no longer angry. “Damned crowds, don’t you know! Pardon!” And she moved on.

“Puppy’ll have his pocket picked before the night’s half over,” the merchant said to the speaker, as she moved on.

Got it. That was not her thoughts. That was her father’s Mindvoice in her head, for Mags’ Gift was strong enough he could make almost anyone hear him, whether or not they were Gifted. The only ones he couldn’t reach were the very rare souls with natural Shields that were as strong as his Gift. Sending Larral and Perry to shadow them.

The liquid might be colorless to humans, but not to Larral. Perry would mark the booth from the rear in some subtle fashion that humans could see, and then follow the speaker wherever he went, while another of Mags’ agents would set up a watch on the booth. If the speaker stayed on past the Fair, he’d already have been marked as a spy, and before a sennight was over, every one of Mags’ operatives in Haven would know his face.