“Fine, fine, whatever.” Vance waved a dismissive hand at all three of them. “Go investigate your mystery. I’ll see you back at the Town Hall. Jicks said she’s going to have a word with the people at the inn that’s supplying us. Maybe that will bring an improvement in the food.”

He and the other two Masters stalked off in the direction of their host building. Korlak drifted over to the wall, looking down for a moment at the excavation with bemusement.

“What, exactly, are you going to do here?” he asked.

“The ground’s wet here, and it’s unstable. That’s why the wall cracked in the first place. We’re making a stable platform for the stones of the wall out of something called”—she used the Valdemaran word—“cement. It will fill this form and harden as tough as a stone.”

He eyed the extent of the form, which extended into dry ground on either side. “Would a single stone slab have worked as well?”

“Do you people have stone slabs that size lying around here?” she countered. “Do you have the means to transport blocks of that size and place them without cracking them?”

“Well, yes, I mean, we have the means and the men to cut and transport something of that nature, but the mayor won’t pay the stonemasons for a job that complicated,” Korlak admitted. “Even with all the men he threw at you, this isn’t costing him a fraction of the price of a job that size. This lot is all unskilled labor, and they cost coppers, not silver.”

“I’m glad the Masters aren’t here to hear that,” Stev put in. “The way their tempers are right now, if they knew all of this could have been done by getting a big enough slab of stone in, there’d have been an explosion.” Abi nodded.

“Why don’t you have a look at the wall,” Abi suggested to the Mage.

Korlak picked his way around stones and got to the wall itself. He put both hands on the section still standing, closed his eyes, and his head sagged. The crow on his shoulder froze, not moving a feather.

They stood like that for some time, long enough for the lengthening shadows to make considerable progress and for all the men except the ones manning the kiln overnight to go off home. Abi and Stev sat down on two of the stones. The sounds of the city reached them faintly; the murmur of voices (now and then one raised, shouting something incoherent), the noise of hoofbeats and rolling cart wheels, the steps of the guard on their section of the wall, approaching, then receding.

“Sweet Mother of Kernos!” Korlak shrieked.

Stev actually fell off his stone. Abi leaped to her feet, daggers out.