She smiled in the darkness. “I think I said the same thing to Jicks before dinner.”

•   •   •

In the morning, she put on the single skirt she had brought with her, a shirt, and a modest bodice, and after a cheap breakfast of bread and butter and the same thin ale as last night, went out to meet the ladies of Gescony.

She joined the thin crowd of onlookers who were watching a crew of local men move the stones away from the wall and arrange them in neat rows out of the way. It was already warm, although the morning was young, and about half the men were shirtless, so many young ladies were in the crowd, using any excuse they could think of to loiter. Using her talent of being unobtrusive, she joined a knot of women about her age who were off to one side, gossiping. Mostly she learned about which of these men the young ladies admired most, but she did glean the location of the washing well nearest the breech in the wall.

Having learned that, she went back to the wagon, gathered up her own laundry and soap, borrowed a basket, and sought it out.

Now, her clothing was definitely different from the local women, and there was nothing that she could do about that—their blouses had square necks finished with embroidery, while hers had a drawstring neck, they had loose, bell-shaped sleeves, she had tighter ones, their bodices were embroidered black canvas, hers was brown leather, their skirts were black, worn with white aprons, hers was brown, with no apron. But she was fairly sure that if she appeared to keep herself to herself, and seemed to be concentrating on scrubbing, after a while they’d speak freely in front of her. Very likely they’d assume she didn’t understand them.

And after a candlemark or so, they did, indeed, start to gossip, as she had hoped.

For three candlemarks of hard scrubbing, wrinkled hands, and a wet blouse, she had learned the following. There had been four of the strangers, and they had not been accompanied by anyone like a servant. They had ridden into and out of town on ordinary horses. None of them had claimed to be, or dressed as, a Herald.

And one of them had stood back while the others had saturated the mortar of the wall with their “curative” liquid. Not doing anything. Just apparently watching.

Had this one been the Mage? Had he been ensuring that the water penetrated deeply into the mortar, using that trick Steen had used at the dam?

It seemed very likely.

The strangers had all spoken the local tongue like natives—so the Mage had probably been able to do for them what Steen had done for the real party from Valdemar.