She carried her basket of heavy, wet clothing back to the Town Hall, got some rope from the wagon, and when Jicks returned to their bedroom from whatever she had been doing, she was greeted by a zig-zag of rope festooned with drying clothing. She regarded the transformed room from the doorway for a moment, hands on hips.

“Sorry,” Abi said from the far side of the room, where she was just draping the last pair of stockings over the line. “I didn’t expect you back so soon.”

“Gathering information at the washing well?” Jicks asked.

Abi once again felt a moment of commonality with the mercenary. “You think there’s more to the story too, don’t you?”

“It’s enemy action, as far as I’m concerned,” Jicks replied, but very quietly so her voice didn’t carry beyond the room. “There aren’t that many people who knew we were going to be doing this, and most of ’em are in Valdemar. There was no reason to specifically pose as us, if all this group wanted was to weaken the wall for an attack or an invasion later. But if the main goal was to discredit Valdemar . . . this may be the first time we’ve caught them at it, but I’ll bet it isn’t going to be the last.”

“What possible motive could there be, though?” Abi asked. Not that she didn’t have her own share of speculations, but she wanted to hear what Jicks had to say.

“Could be someone local to this town that doesn’t want to be gobbled up by Valdemar,” Jicks replied, ducking under the clothesline to get to Abi. “But my gut says it’s bigger than that. My gut says it’s someone who doesn’t want this whole strip of territory to join up. And that still could be someone local; someone who wants to consolidate this area for himself, or someone who’s anxious that all these little towns and villages remain disunited and easy pickings. But my gut doesn’t think that’s right either.”

“So what does your gut tell you?” Abi asked.

“That I haven’t guessed the right answer,” Jicks said, her jaw set. “But there is one thing my gut knows for certain. We haven’t seen the last of them.”

15

“Well, there’s our problem,” said Master Padrick, prodding a soggy patch of ground with his toe. Now that the blocks of stone had been cleared away and the ground had been revealed, all four of them were making faces.

The ground dipped here. It was already at the bottom of the hill. And the ground was . . . wet. Wet ground was shifty ground; it only took one part of the wall being a trifle heavier than the other to have caused that initial crack that had brought the fake Valdemarans here in the first place.