Arianya visited every grange in Fin Panir that afternoon, with much the same conversation at each. Marshal Padlin, near the lower market, said he’d had to break up a fight. “They was hittin’ and kickin’ and sayin’ the weaver’s girl was a mage for some trick. I told ’em off myself and had my yeoman-marshal give all the young ones a good talking to about makin’ up lies about people—”

“What was the trick?” Arianya asked.

“Lightin’ a candle without a spill,” Marshal Padlin said. “She said it was a spell she’d learned from a wizard in Tsaia a summer ago when she stayed with her great-aunt downriver. I asked the family; they said she’d been sent there, right enough, because she’d been feverish. Her great-aunt knew herb-lore. Came home healthy, with some tricks she’d learned.”

“I must see her,” Arianya said.

“Down Weavers’ Lane, third door,” Marshal Padlin said. “Light-haired girl, about so high—” He held out his hand. “Her name’s Dalyin. Never any trouble in the grange until now. Family’s old Girdish, been here since whenever.”

Arianya found the house easily enough. Outside, on benches set either side of the door, four children were busy: a small boy struggling with a mass of wool he was trying to card, a slightly older girl instructing him while herself weaving a square on a lap loom, a girl about the size Dalyin should be spinning a smooth thread, and an older boy shaping a piece of wood into something that looked like the treadle for a loom. Through the door came the regular rattle and clack of looms at work.

“Are you Dalyin?” Arianya asked. “I’m Marshal-General Arianya.”

“It’s not her fault,” the older boy said. “It was them kids—”

“I’m not here to blame anyone,” Arianya said. “Dalyin, are your parents home? I’d like to speak to them—and to you.”

The lower room held two looms; Dalyin’s parents were as light-haired as their children. One was weaving plain Girdish blue, and the other a blue and cream stripe. Their faces were tight with worry. “She’s done nothin’ wrong,” the woman said, reaching out to pull Dalyin close. “She’s a good girl, she is.”

“I heard she was set on,” Arianya said, spreading her hands.

“She was,” the man said. “Cruel mean, those boys are. She’s not the only one they set on.”

“I heard you were sick last summer,” Arianya said, looking at the girl. The girl looked up at her mother before nodding silently.

“We sent her to my wife’s aunt, just over the border to Tsaia, is all,” the man said. “She’s good with fevers, and we had a new ’un in the house, didn’t want fever here.”

“What did she do for you?” Arianya asked, looking at Dalyin again.