Eye Spy

by Mercedes Lackey

  It sounded cruel and callous, but Abi knew that the journey itself had been a test for the girl. If the roads hadn’t been safe for a girl alone, the Bard would have escorted her himself, or found a safer way for her to get here—but since they were, finding her own way here was test of how badly she wanted the life of a Bard. It was a test she had obviously passed.

  One by one the girls at their table excused themselves and went off to studies or a little leisure before bedtime, and Kat and Abi made their way back up to the Palace.

  “You seemed deep in conversation,” Kat said. “What was so interesting?”

  “That Bardic Trainee. I was just giving her some advice so she can make some pocket money; her people don’t have any to spare.” Abi considered Lee a bit more. “She’s smart and tough. All she needed was some information.”

  “She might make a good recruit for your father, then,” Kat observed.

  Abi chuckled. “You’d make a good recruiter.”

  Kat raised an eyebrow. “What makes you think I’m not already?”

  “If you were, I’d know.” Abi laughed as Kat stuck her tongue out at her. “I would, and you know it!”

  “Well, it’s not for lack of looking, I just haven’t found anyone outside of the Heraldic Trainees I’d trust enough,” Kat admitted. “And your father doesn’t need agents among the Trainees, he needs a couple among the houses on the Hill.”

  “’Struth,” she replied as they got to her door. “Coming in?”

  “Not tonight. I have an exam in the morning. I’m a Princess, you’d think they’d just pass me without the work, but no!”

  Abi laughed. “All right then, good night. Don’t make your head explode with studying!”

  “Small chance of that,” Kat grinned back and went on down the hall to the door to the Royal Suite at the end of it.

  Now, let’s see how much farther ahead I can get than the rest of my class, so I can get as much time off during the Fair as possible. I have the feeling I might need it.

  6

  By dint of a lot of candle-burning and serious study, Abi managed to get a whole week ahead of the rest of the Blues in her class—and made sure her father knew about this. So when the first day of the Fair dawned, he had managed to wrangle a week’s worth of time off for her, citing “family matters.”

  She and Perry went down together; their initial project was to memorize the layout of the Fair, which differed slightly every year, due to the placement of the large entertainment and food tents. They spent the entire first day just walking the Fair over and over, so that both of them knew the entire Fair as well as they knew the layout of the Palace, the Collegia, and the Great Houses on the Hill.

  Having done that, they split up for the second day. This time, instead of concentrating on the Fair itself, they concentrated on the fairgoers. Both of them were dressed so as to be as inconspicuous and unmemorable as possible. They both wore simple outfits of a linen shirt, canvas trews that were well-worn but not shabby, and a canvas tunic that didn’t match the trews. This outfit was not so good that it would attract the attention of a thief, but also did not signal poverty and thus might attract the attention of the Watch and suspicion from vendors. Insofar as the Watch was concerned, they wanted to avoid being trailed by a large, armed uniform fellow wearing a warning frown, because that would just draw unwanted scrutiny.

  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.”

  It certainly was no great chore, being set loose to roam the Fair all day, stopping now and again when someone was selling a treat actually worth the money, listening to musicians and watching the snippets of free entertainment.

  The Fair kept going until midnight at night too—but there would be no chandler’s apprentices here after dark, and she would be conspicuous—and worse. After sunset, an unaccompanied female of any age could be presumed to be available for whatever a man wanted from her. Boys too. She knew this because Mags believed in telling his children about things they were old enough to be affected by so that they weren’t blindsided by them. Not that the Fair at night was dangerous, if you kept your wits about you. It could be quite fun, in fact, with shows taking advantage of the darkness to use lighting effects and one of the large entertainment tents hosting a nightly masked ball. But it was no place for anyone like Abi unless she was openly accompanied by Perry. Night was the time Mags or his adult agents would move through the pathways of the Fair.

  Most likely it will be Papa’s agents. He’s got no need to be down here unless they find something interesting, and the fellows from the pawn shop would probably enjoy doing what I’m doing now as much as I am.

  So far she had turned up absolutely nothing out of the ordinary, but it was a lot of fun looking. The people who placed booths had done a very cunning thing; they’d mixed everything up. So if, say, you were looking for glass beads, you would have to wander the entire grounds to find all of the vendors. Rather than being able to compare stocks and prices easily, this made it much more difficult. And that encouraged people to buy as soon as they found something like what they were looking for, even if the ideal item was at another booth. Because you never knew, and when you got back to the other vendor, what you wanted might be gone.

  It was good for the food vendors too. Having food vendors mixed throughout the Fair meant that if a food had a tasty aroma, that smell wouldn’t get trampled on by another food-vendor’s wares. And encountering a good scent out of nowhere made people hungry, and inclined to buy.

 
It even had that effect on Abi, and she knew she was being manipulated!

  You just ate, she reminded herself, as she was struck by the scent of fried dough and honey. And that’s just bread. You can get that for free in the kitchen. A lot of Fair food was “just bread” and no surprise there. Bread was the cheapest thing you could make. Most bread down at the Fair was fried, though, since baking took a long time and needed an oven and a lot of fuel, but frying took mere moments. Now, it was true that the bread tended to be enhanced with herbs or spices, dotted with dried fruit or nuts, stuffed with a bite of cheese or sausage, glazed with salt or honey. So it wasn’t “just” bread to most people, it was a seldom encountered treat.

  Still, it’s just bread.

  It was at a spot where two of the paths through the Fair intersected, and she smelled pancakes (just bread!) that she heard the sound of shepherd’s pipes playing a jig. Following her ears and nose, both led her to a booth beside which she found Lee, the Bardic Trainee she had advised a few days ago, vigorously playing her pipes to the delight of both the pancake-maker and his customers. By the nice layer of coppers in the straw hat she had put out, Lee had found a very receptive audience.

  Abi smiled to herself, and faded back out of sight. Then, since her stomach protested that it was almost lunchtime, she went looking for a fruit vendor. Fruit would be food and drink and she wouldn’t have to trust to the cleanliness of someone else’s cups. If she was still hungry after that . . . well, maybe some bread after all.

  By midafternoon she hadn’t consciously noticed anything she needed to bring to her father’s attention, and she’d encountered Perry twice. By that point she had the entire maze of the Fair memorized, she was hot and tired, and ready to make the trip back up the Hill. By the time she got there, it would be supper time, and she wouldn’t have wasted her money on bread.

  It was a long trudge, but once she was clear of the Fair, she made sure she was taking the route that the wagons taking Trainees to and from the Collegia also took. When she caught up with one on its way back, she flagged it down, showed the driver the little brass “pass” that all the Blues had to allow them in and out of the gates, and took her seat in the half-filled wagon. She didn’t know any of the Trainees in it—they were mostly Healers—so she merely gave a friendly nod that included all of them and settled into the straw filling the wagon to rest.

  After a quick wash at the pump outside the Companions’ Stable, she headed for the dining hall and literally bumped into Trainee Lee.

  “Abi!” the young woman exclaimed with pleasure, her eyes sparkling, despite the fact that she looked tired and there was definitely dust in her hair. “I was hoping I would be able to thank you!”

  “For what?” Abi replied, heading for an empty table, and bringing Lee along by the elbow. It was light fare tonight, soup (and bread), since the kitchen staff assumed correctly that many of the Trainees would have stuffed themselves at the Fair and not be in the mood for anything substantial. Abi helped herself from the big bowl and platter in the middle of the table and waited for Lee to do the same.

  “I wanted to thank you for your advice about the Fair, of course,” Lee replied, when they had both provisioned themselves. “It worked wonderfully! And the booth owner asked me to come back any time.”

  “Take that with a caution,” Abi replied. “Don’t go back after dark without a boy. Girls alone are assumed to be available.”

  “Available for what?” Lee asked naively and blushed when Abi told her—bluntly. “Oh. Dear. I owe you thanks all over again!”

  Abi drank off her entire mug of cold tea at a gulp and refilled it from the common pitcher. “You’ll be fine by day. Just be back before the sun goes down, or have a nice strong boy along.” Then she smiled. “I take it you had a profitable day.”

  “More money than I’ve ever had before at one time!” Lee said with glee, and with Abi listening attentively, she chattered for some time (between bites) about her success and some of the people who had enjoyed her playing. “Oh! And the best part!” she ended. “I met someone in the advanced classes whose partner just became a full Bard and is leaving! They had a similar duo, they already had a tavern spot once a week; she liked my playing and wants to partner with me!”

  Abi smiled. “It sounds as if you have sorted everything out you need to do to earn your money. At least, until you make full Bard. Then you probably won’t have to worry ever again.”

  “Yes, and if it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t have known how!” She sighed happily. “I owe you a very big favor now.”

  And I just might collect it by asking you to be one of Papa’s agents, she thought with amusement. Lee’s next question surprised her, though.

  “You’re in the Artificers, so you know all about buildings and things right?” she asked.

  “Not everything,” Abi corrected. “But quite a bit.”

  “Well, I have a silly question, but it’s not about the Fair. It’s something that’s been bothering me since I got here.” Now Lee looked very embarrassed.

  “Say on.”

  “So . . . you know about the indoor latrines?” The last word was whispered.

  Well, this has taken an interesting turn . . . “What about them?”

  “Where does . . . it . . . go? I mean, at home, we have cesspits under our latrines, but you don’t exactly seem to have that here—” Since she seemed perfectly earnest, Abi gave her the exact answer.

  “They’re all connected up to brick-lined sewer tunnels,” Abi replied with authority. “The mansions and big homes on the Hill are connected to the same system. We send rainwater down it too, to keep it flushed out. From there it goes to a collection pond where it gets turned into fertilizer—I don’t know how that’s done, I just know that it is.”

  “What about down in Haven?” she asked.

  “That depends entirely on where you live. There’s another sewer system but not everyone is on it. Some people depend on cesspits, some on chamber pots and closed-stools. In either case there are collectors for it that come around every morning. It’s valuable, especially if you’re poor. Tanners need urine, and the rest can go as fertilizer. Or people who have their own small gardens keep the dung—and anything they can get off the street from passing animals—and compost it for their gardens.” Abi realized that she was actually enjoying this, showing off what she knew.

  “Why not just send it all into the river?” Lee asked innocently.

  Abi raised an eyebrow at her. “People drink from the river,” she pointed out. “And Haven has a lot of people in it. That’s a lot of sewage you don’t want going into your source of drinking water.”

  “. . . oh.”

  “Anyway, it’s quite an impressive feat of work, the sewer system,” Abi concluded. “Or so I’m told. I’m not sure I could be persuaded to go down there, ever, but I am told that the tunnels are more than tall enough for a man to stand in them and that there is a crew in charge of making sure they stay in working order.”

  Lee shuddered.

  “I would not mind at all being asked to design and build a system like that,” Abi continued to muse aloud. “Think of all the good it does!”

  Lee just shook her head, and as they were joined by other Trainees, the conversation turned to other things—most especially, what entertainers were at the Fair this year. Abi wasn’t really listening to this, until one phrase caught her attention.

  “. . . all those children running loose. What are their parents thinking? Are they just giving them a penny and sending them to the Fair alone?” That was a Healer Trainee, and Abi blinked, suddenly realizing that he was right—there had been a lot more—a magnitude more—of children that were just running wild through the crowds. She hadn’t paid any attention to them because they weren’t what she’d been watching for. And that had been a mistake.

  Why do we use Auntie Minda’s littles? Why do
es Papa use us? Because no one notices children.

  Now that she was combing through her recent memories . . . not only had there been far too many children moving swiftly through the crowd, they had all been dressed more or less alike. All of them in drab clothing slightly too big for them, with trews and loose tunics belted at the waist, with long, loose sleeves gathered at the wrist. All of them barefoot. Barefoot—for sure-footed running? Or because they were too poor for shoes?

  The only reason she had noted them at all, and the only reason she remembered them now, was their behavior. Children, even poor children, didn’t go running through the Fair. They stopped and stared. They sniffed hungrily at the treats. Poor ones, when the Watch or Fair-Wards weren’t about, would try to beg. The only reason a child would be running would be if someone in charge of him had told him to run.

  Now, this was a common practice for cutpurses and pickpockets—to have a distraction, such as a child running past the victim—to distract the victim while the thief made off with the goods. But so many children matching that pattern meant this was something out of the ordinary. This was an organized effort. And that was far past the authority of the Watch. Although this had nothing to do with enemy agents, this was something that came under her father’s purview. The Watch would just arrest one or two thieves, knowing nothing about the rest. Her father would round up the whole gang.

  She shook herself out of her thoughts in time to answer whatever Lee had just said satisfactorily. I need to talk to Perry.

  A new influx of happy, tired Trainees came in at that moment, including some of Lee’s fellows in Bardic. They carried her off to another table, leaving Abi free to make her way upstairs to see if her brother was there.

  She caught him just leaving, in the hallway outside the suite. “Are you going back down to the Fair?” she asked.

  “Papa’s got me working with his group tonight,” he replied with pride.