It was, all in all, a highly efficient operation. It was also unique to Mags and his family—but Abi supposed that her grandfather Herald Nikolas had had his own unique operation, and whoever came after Mags—probably Perry—would have his. The business of being the King’s Spy meant you had to be flexible and adaptable, after all.

Abi worked her way around the vendors without encountering anything else that aroused her suspicions. She ignored the food tents; they were all staffed and owned by local people. If they were running a huge tavernlike operation, Mags already had one or more operatives working there as servers. If it was a simple one-food booth, Mags already knew whether they were someone that should have an eye kept on them.

Larral and Perry had been given their targets, so they’d be busy; that meant it was time for her to prowl the entertainment tents.

Specifically, the “mens’ shows.”

There were many licensed houses of pleasure in Haven, and the proprietors would absolutely brook no competition from a lot of outsiders with no accountability and no reputation. And those houses sent enough of the girls down to the Fair at night to ensure that no one would successfully freelance for long. But since the pleasure houses were in the business of sex rather than entertainment, they had no problem whatsoever with shows that offered titillation without satisfaction. In fact, many of the pleasure houses had agreements with the shows to allow their girls in for free. Everyone won; the performers didn’t get pawed or mauled, and the girls got customers.

That might have seemed unlikely, but the girls in these shows were performing from sundown to almost dawn, continuously, and they had no time or energy for prostitution. And the proprietors made more money offering dancing than they would have done offering sex. The per-head admission fee might not be much, but the men were packed in shoulder to shoulder, so the owners more than made their money on quantity of customers.

The shows were a good place for agents to meet and pass on information, however. When a performer had just dropped her last veil, eyes and ears would be on her, and miss one man slipping a sheaf of papers to another in the crowd.

“Tha’s why I want you there, Abi,” her father had said, grinning. “I know you won’ be distracted.”

Well, that was not altogether true . . . there were a couple of girls who performed feats of unclothed acrobatics that had Abi both startled and envious of their flexibility. But for the most part, her father was completely correct about her ability to remain undistracted.