Booth tenders either huddled with potential customers or cried their wares aloud. Mags ignored this for the most part, until a few words caught his ear.

“. . . the finest of yellow topaz . . .”

Topaz . . . that, he had learned, was what his “yellow sparklies” had been called. Feeling a morbid interest in seeing just what became of those bits of glitter so laboriously chipped out of the rock, Mags worked his way in the direction of the voice.

He squeezed between two giggling young women to find himself abruptly at the side of an older man in a sober brown cloak, as both of them stood before what must have been a jeweler’s booth. But there was just one problem with the velvet trays of rings, brooches, and necklaces. They were not what the man was claiming them to be.

His “finest yellow topaz” was inferior stuff carefully cut to hide the flaws, but Mags, who had learned to judge to a hair the stones that would get him the most bread, could spot them. And he could not help it. His mouth opened, and the words came out before he could stop them, tinged with scorn.

“Ain’t so fine as all that.”

The jeweler started, and glared down at him. The man who was examining the ring looked at him with interest.

“Be off with you!” the jeweler barked. “This is none of your business!”

“ ’Tis if you be makin’ claims that ain’t stric’ly true,” Mags retorted, quaking a little inside, but determined to stand his ground.

The jeweler glowered. “Go back up the hill, before I call my man—”

“Now, now, I should like to hear what the Trainee has to say,” the man in brown interrupted, the emphasis on Trainee to drive the point home to the jeweler that this was not just some random boy in gray clothing. He turned to Mags. “Now why do you say that this stone is not so fine?”

“Turn her sideway, and tilt her a bit. Ye’ll see the flaw. He’s cut it t’ hide it, but it’s there. ’Tis a pretty stone, and ’tis cut well, I reckon, but ‘finest,’ it ain’t.” Mags shrugged.

“By the Havens, there it is . . .” The man stopped peering at the stone to look down at Mags. “However did you know?”

“Useter mine them things,” Mags replied, and would have slipped away, had the man not detained him with a hand on his shoulder.

“Thank you, my young friend. Please stay here a moment.” He turned back to the jeweler. “Now, as it happens, I like the stone and the setting, and I know my niece will as well, regardless of the flaw. “So what would be a fair price for a flawed stone?”

Deflated, the merchant named a price, there was a little haggling, and the merchant placed the ring in a small satin bag and handed it over in exchange for several coins.