She glanced over her shoulder. Her Days, a tiny woman with dark hair and a perpetually clenched jaw, was listening. Standing quietly just outside the gate, petting a lanky yellow kitten that she held. Iome could read no reaction on the Days’ face. Perhaps the Days already knew who this spy was, knew who sent him. Yet the Days always claimed to remain completely neutral of political affairs. They would answer no questions.

Iome considered. Corporal Clewes was probably right. The merchant was a spy. Her father had his own spies in the Indhopalese Kingdoms.

But if the killer was a spy, it might be impossible to prove. Still, he’d killed two of the City Guard, and wounded Dreys, a sergeant of the King’s Guard—and for that, by all rights, the merchant should die.

But in Muyyatin a man who committed a crime in a drunken stupor, even the crime of murder, could not be executed.

Which meant that if her father gave the death sentence, the Muyyatin—and all their Indhopalese kinsmen—would bridle at the injustice of the execution.

So they threatened a ban.

Iome considered the implications of such a ban. The Southern traders primarily sold spices—pepper, mace, and salt for curing meats; curry, saffron, cinnamon, and others for use in foods; medicinal herbs. But the traders brought much more: alum for use in dyeing and tanning hides, along with indigo and various other dyes needed for Heredon’s wool. And they carried other precious goods—ivory, silks, sugar, platinum, blood metal.

If these traders called a ban on the fair, they’d deal a fearsome blow to at least a dozen industries. Even worse, without the spices to preserve food, Heredon’s poor would not fare well through the winter.

So this year’s Master of the Fair, Guildmaster Hollicks—who, as Master of the Dyers’ Guild, stood to lose a fortune if a ban succeeded—was suing for a reconciliation. Iome didn’t like Hollicks. Too often he’d asked the King to raise the import taxes on foreign cloth, hoping thus to bolster his own sales. But even Hollicks needed the merchandise the Indhopalese brought to trade.

Just as desperately, the merchants here in Heredon needed to sell their own wool and linen and fine steel to the foreigners. Most of the bourgeois traders had large amounts of money that they both borrowed and loaned. If a ban were enforced, hundreds of wealthy families would go bankrupt. And it was the wealthy families of Heredon who paid taxes to support King Sylvarresta’s knights.

Indeed, Sylvarresta had his hand in dozens of trading deals himself. Even he could not afford a ban.

Iome’s blood felt as if it would boil. She tried to resign herself to the inevitable. Her father would be forced to release the spy, make a reconciliation. But she would not like it.