Eye Spy

by Mercedes Lackey

“Well, I need your ear a second.” Quickly, she described what she had noticed and what she thought it implied. He pursed his lips and nodded.

  “Seems sound,” he agreed. “Let’s go back in and relay to Papa.”

  By that he meant, of course, they would tell their mother, she in turn would tell Rolan, who would contact Mags. They could go through Larral, but this was surer and faster. So he and Larral turned around and they went back in together. Amily looked surprised to see her son again, but quickly understood why when she heard what Abi had to say.

  Then it was just a matter of whiling away the time until Mags turned up.

  It was dusk when he did, and he listened carefully to Abi’s observations. “It do sound like a organized effort,” he agreed. “What d’you think ye wanta do next?”

  “I was thinking I could play bait,” Abi replied, having given the situation a lot of thought while they were waiting for their father. “If I dress really well, I’ll make a good target. I’ll have a belt-pouch I’ve soaked with some sort of scent; Larral can pick that up and track it. If there is an organized theft ring operating, they’re probably bringing their prizes to their leaders. Once we know where that is, you can tell the Watch.”

  “That’s a good plan,” Mags said with approval. “Perry, I’m taking you off duty tonight so you and Abi can work this plan tomorrow.”

  Perry looked a bit disappointed but nodded. Abi thought that Larral looked more relieved than disappointed. “Come help me pick something out to wear,” Abi said to her brother. “You have a better eye for disguise than I do.”

  “I have a better idea,” he suggested. “Let’s get Kat.”

  Kat was only too happy to participate when they pulled her away from her studies. The moment Perry had suggested enlisting her aid, Abi had known he was right. Queen Lydia’s family came of a long line of fabric merchants, and Lydia’s uncanny eye for fabric and fashion had rubbed off on her daughter.

  “Who are you?” Kat wanted to know immediately. Abi looked to her brother for that answer.

  “We want someone rich enough to be a fat target, someone who’ll go boo-hooing to her Papa and get another purse full of spending money—but not someone so rich that there will be Watch or a private guard keeping an eye on her,” Perry said decisively. “Any poorer than that, though, and she’d be likely to fight for her pouch or run after the thief herself instead of running to Papa for more money.”

  One of the several rooms around the central living area was a storeroom. Mags had his own costume stash down in Haven, and Perry kept some of his own disguises down there as well, but now that Abi was helping, they’d added a wardrobe for her up here. Kat surveyed what was on offer.

  “This chemise, this dress, and this set of sleeves,” she said, picking them out. “This girdle, you can hang this pouch from it and you’ll be a walking target.”

  The chemise was very fine linen, the dress was a plain twilled linen in a dull blue, laced up the bodice in front. The sleeves, however, were absolutely the latest in fashion, in two tight parts, an upper and a lower arm, both meant to allow the chemise to make attractive puffs at the shoulder, elbow and wrist. The girdle was heavily embroidered and had “hangers,” loops of twill tape that allowed the wearer to suspend things from it. In this case, that would be a purse, a drawstring pouch, whose cords would make a mighty temptation for a cutpurse. Except for the girdle, the outfit looked quite plain—

  But then again, Abi was more used to the clothing worn by the highborn and wealthy up here on the Hill, or the disguises she wore that would make her forgettable. She didn’t have much experience with anything in-between.

  “I could do this,” Kat said wistfully. “It doesn’t take any skill at all to play bait.”

  “Except you’re the Princess,” Perry reminded her. “I’m sorry, but—” Then he paused, then shook his head. “No, that won’t work either. I need Abi free to help me and Larral, and if you play bait while she bodyguards you, she won’t be free to do that. Sorry, Kat.”

  “Princesses don’t get to have any fun,” Kat grumbled.

  “I doubt this is going to be fun,” Abi replied, collecting the pieces of her disguise and draping them over her arm. “If these thieves are as good as we think they are, you wouldn’t even notice the purse was missing until both the one playing thief and the one playing distraction were long gone.”

  “And once Larral tracks the purse to its destination, you absolutely would not be allowed anywhere near the next part of the job, which will be waiting and watching to make sure the criminals don’t get away before we can bring the Watch down on them. Thanks a lot for your help, though!” Perry added, “Want to stay and play a game?”

  But Kat shook her head. “I have a lot of reading to do for tomorrow. But I want to hear everything once you’ve caught the thieves!”

  “I absolutely promise,” Abi swore. “Everything!”

  * * *

  • • •

  Abi even got the loan of a pony from the Royal Stables for this ruse, so she could ride down into Haven on an appropriate mount. Once she reached the Fair, there were tent stables for people who’d come from farther away than Haven—or were the sort that would not even consider walking—and she left the pony there, taking a chit in exchange for her fee and tucking it into the little bag around her neck that nestled in her cleavage where she was keeping money and anything else she actually needed to hold safely. Perry would be around this tent somewhere, waiting for her arrival, but she didn’t bother looking for him. He and Larral both were extremely good at keeping themselves from being seen. An ordinary person would laugh at the notion that an animal bigger than a wolfhound could hide himself in a place like the Faire—or at least, he would laugh until he tried to spot the kyree, and failed. It was amazing how good Larral was—every bit as good as Perry or Papa.

  So now Abi played the part of a rich, spoiled merchant’s daughter. She spent a ridiculous amount of time looking over merchandise she had no interest in—jewelry and embroidered or brocaded purses, sets of sleeves like the ones she was wearing, hair ornaments, and utterly useless trinkets. She even bought a thing or two—making sure as she bargained to do the very opposite of what she normally would have done, which was to be inconspicuous. She wanted these merchants to remember her, and remember what she’d bought, because when the thieves were caught, that would form part of the evidence against them. If a merchant could say “Yes, I sold such-and-such to a girl in a blue gown,” and the item turned up in the thieves’ loot, it would cement the case.

  So she bought an odd little hair ornament of a carved bone frog, stained green, clinging to the end of a hairstick, making quite a delighted fuss over it. And she bought a tiny doll also carved of bone, half the length of her little finger, perfectly made and cleverly jointed, with real human hair glued to its head, dressed in a gown of a blue that matched hers. She bought a very odd purple glass scent vial, with a stopper shaped like a coiled snake. It looked as if it must have been in the merchant’s inventory for a decade and he’d despaired of ever getting rid of it, because it was half the price of any of the other vials on his table. Each time she made a purchase, she also took her time about lifting up the belt pouch attached to her girdle, getting out more money than was needed, putting back the excess, and then adding the change and her purchase to the pouch before letting it fall to her side again.

  It was right after she’d bought herself a very nice pear and was eating it that she caught sight of one of those children, speeding toward her, dodging through the crowd to her right. As she’d expected, the child careened into her—enough to make her stumble, not enough to make her fall—and darted off again. And at the same time as the collision, she felt the weight of the belt pouch leave her side.

  That belt pouch had been soaked last night in a solution of alcohol and oakmoss oil, then left to dry. Although it was used extensively in scentmaking, o
akmoss was almost never used as a scent alone, and none of the scent vendors here sold it in its pure form, only as part of a formulated perfume. Larral should be able to track it easily.

  Just to keep the guise up, Abi finished her pear, then made a show of looking for her pouch, dismay at finding it gone, and distress. She hurried to the Watch Tent through the crowd, a not unreasonable response to having found herself robbed.

  Mags had warned the Watch this morning what was going on and that she’d be coming. She darted in through the open flaps of the tent and found herself facing a grizzled veteran of the Watch sitting at a “table” made of a board atop a pair of sawhorses.

  He looked up at her. “Magpie,” she said, before he could ask anything.

  Without a word, he waved her to the back of the tent, where there was a canvas divider. The other half of the tent served as a place for Watchmen off duty to get a bit of a drink and a place to lounge. There was no one there at the moment, and she stripped off sleeves, gown and chemise to reveal the light shirt and breeches she’d worn under it all. She left her disguise neatly folded atop a barrel that seemed to be serving no other purpose at the moment. Her father would collect the gown and its accessories later.

  She came back out again. The grizzled man had already gotten a sheet of paper and had a quill pen in his hand, an open bottle of ink next to him. “Blue embroidered linen drawstring purse,” she said succinctly as he took her words down, laboriously writing them out. “Embroidered with a wreath of forget-me-nots around the initials JCS. Contains 10 bits, 5 copper pieces, eleven silver, a small bone doll from Eiron Edleson about this long—” she measured it for him on the paper “—dressed in a blue gown, with yellow hair. Also a purple glass scent vial with a coiled serpent stopper from Passal’s Glasswork, and a hairstick with a green-stained bone frog on the top from Saveena’s Fancies.”

  The Watchman finished writing it down and looked up at her with a wry smile. “Snake vial? Frog ornament? Little poppet for sticking pins in? Sounds like the girl who bought all that is a budding witch.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Don’t read too much into that,” she replied. “I was trying to pick things the merchants would remember, and remember me.”

  “Then ye won’t mind if I warn me girls not to go a-flirtin’ with yer lad,” the Watchman teased.

  Why does everyone think I need to have a ‘lad’? “Not at all,” she replied, just to get it over with. Then before the man could blink, she whipped out one of her small concealed throwing knives and flipped it up and in the air so that it landed right beside his quill hand. “Though she’d have a lot more to fear from my knife skills than any witchery.”

  The Watchman’s eyes bulged. “Wish I had more with yer skills on the Watch,” he managed, finally, as she retrieved her blade and put it back where it belonged.

  He didn’t get a chance to say anything else; Larral shoved his huge head inside the flap and snorted at her. “Re’s ro,” he said. Her heart leaped. Larral had the target!

  The Watchman’s jaw dropped. “Did . . . thet dog just talk?”

  “Yes,” she said, and hurried to catch up with the kyree.

  Larral ducked down a space between a couple of booths, and she followed him, discovering that he had brought her into a kind of back-passage that led behind the booths. The going was much faster here, and they needed to thread their way across and through the crowds only when they passed from one back-passage to another and had to cross one of the lanes. It was a lot less dusty; the grass on the field where the Fair was built had been pounded into earth by all the feet passing along those lanes. Her nose told her that they were nearing the stockyards, her eyes that the structures here weren’t booths now, but simple tents for camping rather than dual-purpose living and selling spaces. Smart, to have your “headquarters” here. People were coming and going at all hours in the stockyard, and children were common.

  Suddenly Larral dropped to the ground and began crawling on his belly; she did the same, very glad that there was grass here and not bare ground. Her heart sped up with excitement; this was the first time she’d actually been involved in a capture! Every other time she’d helped her father, she’d been left at home when the climax came and only told about it when everything was over.

  She and Larral edged from one bit of cover to the next—here a pile of crates, there a corner of a tent, until they ended up next to Perry, who was flat on his stomach behind a water barrel, watching the side of a particularly big tent up ahead of them.

  “Larral says that’s where the purse went,” he whispered. “Got any ideas how we can get closer?”

  She spotted a couple of boxes not far from their target. What we need is an excuse to wander up to those openly and sit down on them and loiter. “We’re right near the stockyards,” she whispered back. “Let’s get over there and see if we can find some halters that need mending.”

  They crawled out backward until they were out of sight of the tent, then followed their noses and ears to the stockyard itself, picking the section for oxen, horses, donkeys, and mules.

  It didn’t take much persuasion to get a couple of people to part with halters in dire need of fixing for a couple of coppers. And that wasn’t an odd request. Younglings like the two of them often bought bits of harness in need of fixing, mended them, and resold them again at a small profit. It was one of the few ways by which someone whose only skills were as an animal tender could make a little extra money to spend at the Fair.

  They returned to the back passage between the tents openly this time, casting about as if looking for a place to sit. “There!” she said aloud, pointing. “We can work there, and in the shade, too.”

  Larral was nowhere in sight, but that just meant he’d found a good place to hide. Unless someone decided to attack them, he’d remain in hiding. Perry could talk to him via Animal Mindspeech, and Larral in turn was talking to their father, keeping him apprised of what was going on.

  No sooner had they plunked themselves down on the crates and begun to take the halters apart than there was a slight commotion in the tent at their backs. They kept their heads down as if they were concentrating on the work in their hands, just in case someone was somehow watching, but it didn’t take much effort to make out the sounds of whimpering children.

  “Shurrup an’ mind yer manners!” someone growled. “Marster’ll be ’ere soon!” The hair rose on the back of Abi’s neck. She glanced over at her brother; he caught her eyes and nodded slightly. So, Mags knew. She hoped that he had gathered the Watch and was surrounding this tent! This might be their only chance to catch the actual head of this operation!

  There was the sound of flesh smacking flesh, and the whimpering stopped. There was a little more commotion, then the sound of the flap at the front of the tent opening—

  “I trust you have my money, Shackle,” said a voice . . . one she knew!

  It was Dudley Remp’s father!

  “Always, Marster.” There came the chink of coins. “There be some goods too, as usual.”

  “And as usual I give you leave to dispose of them.” Of course, Remp would have no idea how or where to dispose of stolen goods, and the few coins to be made out of them were not worth his time or effort.

  “The rats been givin’ me some trouble, Marster,” Shackle continued. “Reckon ye c’n spare a word to ’em?”

  A heavy sigh. “If I must.” Remp cleared his throat ostentatiously. “Listen, you miserable little brats. You know who I am. Allow me to remind you why you are here. You are here to work off the debt your parents have to me. That means they owe me money, and I could have many bad things happen to them because of it if you don’t obey. Now, you can do what Shackle tells you to, and at the end of the Fair, you can go back to your parents, and your parents will not be wandering the streets without a home. Or you can be ungrateful little wretches, disobey, and your families will find themselves sleep
ing in alleys with nothing more than what they have on their backs. And that’s if they’re lucky and I am feeling generous. If they’re not, and I’m angry at your disobedience, they’ll find themselves in gaol for debt, or in one of my workhouses, and once in one of those, they will never leave, you will all be separated, and you will never see each other again. Do you understand me?”

  Silence, which seemed to be what he wanted.

  “Very well then,” Remp said, sounding bored. “Is there anything else I need to know?”

  “Nothin’ Marster,” Shackle began. But he never got farther than that.

  “Stand where you are! This is the Watch!”

  The call came from somewhere near the front of the tent—and of course obeying that order was the very last thing that Remp was going to do. But Mags was no fool, as his children knew very well. They were already on their feet and scrambling out of the way as three Watchmen rushed for the back of the tent, and as Remp ran out a back flap, he ran straight into their arms.

  * * *

  • • •

  “An’ we got all th’ littles back t’their families,” Mags concluded, as Amily and Perry gathered up the supper dishes and left them outside the door to be collected. “Thet’s what I call a good day’s work. Abi, iff’n ye hadn’t spotted thet all them littles was dressed alike an’ runnin’ a cantin’ crew on th’ same bung nipper, nobody’d have known it was organized. Well done. Perry, you an’ Abi run a fine bait-an’-trap. An’ Larral, good trackin’.”

  “Ran roo,” Larral said politely from beneath the table, then went back to gnawing on his bone.

  “What’s going to happen to Remp now?” Abi wanted to know.

  “That will depend on the King, I think,” said her mother. “Someone as wealthy as Remp shouldn’t be handled by the City Courts. Sedric will probably convene a High Court to try him, so he can’t claim he’s not being judged by a jury of his peers.”

  “Is that a good idea, though?” Abi persisted. “Brice said that Remp lends out money to important people so they owe him favors.”