Abi kept her pace to the flow of traffic, waiting patiently when a bottleneck occurred, casually appearing to examine everything in the booths and tents on her side of the path, but all the while actually watching both the merchants and the people around her. This was oddly relaxing, and she found she had a tiny, satisfied smile on her face after a candlemark or so. I guess this is fun. More fun than standing around in a page’s tabard during a closed Council meeting, anyway.

She really didn’t expect anything to leap out at her immediately, although she did catch a couple of instances of merchants shortchanging their customers and suspected that many of the goods on offer were not what they were being touted as being. But those problems weren’t her business. That was the business of the Fair-Wards, who policed the merchants and entertainers. And as for the thieves and cutpurses—those were the job of the Watch. Each of the Watch Houses was supposed to send at least two of their number down to the Fair every day to handle ordinary crime.

No, on this pass, what she was looking for was far more subtle. A merchant selling his goods at too low a price, for instance, which indicated he wasn’t here to make money and didn’t have a good idea of what his offerings should cost. Or a merchant who displayed things no one actually wanted, yet was showing no distress at all at his lack of customers. Either of those could mean the “merchant” was actually a foreign spy or a contact for spies already in place in Haven.

Or a contact for some other criminal activity that was far beyond the scope of the Watch.

“Remember who and what you are and live every moment as that person. You’re fourteen,” said her grandfather in her mind as he helped her establish a persona for this sort of work. “You’re a chandler’s apprentice as you have been for two years. What little money you have is not in your pocket nor in a belt pouch, because you are from lower-class Haven and wise to the ways of cutpurses. It’s in a bag around your neck tucked into your bodice. You will look and look and look again at everything, not just because you will ponder any potential purchase against the possibility that your mistress could dismiss you and that money will be all that stands between you and starvation until you get another place, but also because your mistress will quiz you when you return to the shop about things she might like to have.”

In her head, her father agreed. “Nobody’ll look at ye twice. Yer th’ last person any’un’s gonna think suspicious thoughts ’bout. You an’ yer brother be my eyes an’ ears down there.”