“That mean’s they’re scrying,” Korlak proclaimed. He closed his eyes, frowning in concentration. “Yes, they definitely are.”

Abi was not inclined to doubt him, though Stev looked skeptical.

He was probably thinking that Korlak had seemingly been the worst Mage in the city, and now he suddenly was claiming to be able to do, or learn to do quickly, all manner of magics. That either Korlak was lying, or he was another Karsite agent.

He doesn’t have my experience. Abi had been taught how to see and analyze the smallest details of people and their behavior. Korlak wasn’t lying, and he wasn’t an agent. For the first time in a very long time, Korlak had gotten regular meals, as much as he wanted to eat, and suddenly his mind, numbed by starvation, had sprung to life again.

Stev was good, but he wasn’t a son of Mags.

“Go back out and come back to us when you don’t feel the scrying anymore, please,” Korlak said to his crow, who bobbed his head, and flew off in quite another direction than the wagon. And, eventually, a crow appeared, coming from the opposite direction in which it had disappeared, to land on the wagon in a slightly different spot.

It wasn’t there long. Whatever examination the Karsites were making, it had to be a cursory one. The crow roused, as if from a stupor, shook its feathers, and flew directly back to them.

“Now,” Jicks said with satisfaction, “we set up our ambush.”

She directed them to put the hinnies on a much lighter line, something that, if they got too hungry or thirsty, they could snap by all pulling in the same direction—which they would. Then they carried their burlap disguises out into the bracken past the wagon, putting the wagon between themselves and where the Karsites would be coming from, according to the daggers.

“Now comes the hard part,” Jicks said, her voice muffled by the camouflage. “Trying not to die of boredom or bug bites before they show up.”

Abi had tucked the edges of her cloth in under existing plants, which was probably an unnecessary detail, but it gave her something to do. Following Jicks’s orders, she cut two eye flaps out of the side facing where the Karsites would come from. And after that . . . it was just waiting.

18

It was surprisingly warm under all that grass and bracken. On Jicks’s instructions, they had all cut eyeholes in the front of their hides, and she had a fine view of the wagon and the field beyond. Now it was a matter of waiting.

She was glad she’d had a good night’s sleep, or she’d have nodded out under all this.

Should I have negotiated with Jicks to abandon the ambush? she wondered. If they come here and don’t find anything, wouldn’t it be better to just let them go?