One thing sprang instantly to mind. At the Midwinter Festival, he had overheard a conversation with a Master Goldsmith. If he recalled this correctly, the man had been recounting—with great pleasure—the long negotiation he was having with a particular gem trader who had decided to overwinter in Haven purely to keep the bargaining going. So gold and gem merchants would remain... particularly if staying would get them a really good bargain.
They was sportin’ a mort’o sparklies, he recalled. Huh. I wunner if they was like t’ sell any on ’em? If so, the gems they were selling would lend verisimilitude to pretending to be gem traders. And no one thought twice about gem traders being foreign. In fact, if he had been in their shoes, and had not established an alternate safe house down in Haven, that would be exactly what he would do. Well, unless he thought of something even safer.
Well, that gave him an outline for another course of action. Investigate the inns—and there couldn’t be many—where the goldsmiths were. That could be a bit difficult in his current disguise, but not impossible.
Do wool sellers overwinter? It would be easy enough to find that out with a day or so of lingering in that part of the city.
Horse and cattle traders—no. There were horse fairs from Midsummer on, but they stopped at the first snow. There was a cattle fair for weaned calves at Midsummer, then nothing until the fall, but by the time the first snow fell, cattle traders were safely back home. No use looking there. Same for sheep and other livestock. Besides, aside from exotic breeds of horses, like Shin’a’in, the sellers were all Valdemaran.
Spices, dyes and medicines... maybe. He’d have to lurk again.
Grain... no, and anyway all sellers would again be Valdemaran, not foreign.
He wracked his brain. A merchant that was foreign would have to be selling something exotic and very expensive, and in order to overwinter, he would either have planned to be here, or got caught by surprise.
All right. That narrowed things down quite a bit.
Weapons... no. That would make them stand out, which was something that they wouldn’t want to do.
What about a reason for being in Haven that had nothing to do with selling anything?
Aha. Scholars. Virtually every Temple had a library and archives. Now that might be the answer. If they were pretending to be scholars, they could move from inn to inn without causing comment, and only needed to go out “to study” during the day to keep up the ruse. No one thought twice about scholars being foreign, peculiar, or reclusive.
And that led to another, sobering thought. What if all those trips down into Haven on the part of the bodyguards had NOT been to get drunk, but to scout out potential places where they could all go should they need to abandon the Court?
He hoped that Nikolas had thought of that.
Never mind. Concentrate on what he could do; that was the important thing right now.
He picked up his begging bowl and held his staff out in front of him, sweeping it back and forth in little arcs to “feel” his way. Which he wasn’t actually doing, of course, he was using other peoples’ glimpses of him to figure out where he was going. It could have been disorienting had he not gotten used to it while he sat in his corner this afternoon; it was a bit difficult to do, but not disorienting—like trying to thread a needle by looking at it in the mirror.
That only made him go slowly, and with the appearance of fumbling a bit, which was all to the good; it added to the realism of his performance. It amused him a little to think that all he needed now would be for some kind-hearted soul to take his elbow and offer to lead him where he wanted to go.
He had made sure to get up and move only when the crowds had thinned out so as not to inconvenience folk too much. No one appeared terribly irritated by him, and most simply cleared out of his way with no fuss.
Since the last place that his quarry had been was that section of inns on the Trade Road, that was where he headed; his first position hadn’t been too far from there, so that was all to the good. It took him about a candlemark to slowly walk there, find a reasonable place to set up—visible, but out of traffic—and settle in. He thinned his mental shields a little more, this time hoping to pick something up specifically about his quarry. A few moments later, he heard someone speaking—to him.
“What happened to you?”
The tone sounded more suspicious than concerned. He re-focused on the nearer stray thoughts, and got an image from people around him as well as the man himself. Ah, the person in question was a City Constable, checking to be sure that he was an “honest” beggar. He hadn’t known that they checked on beggars; good thing that he had made his preparations!
“Burnt, sir,” he said softly, and slipped his bandage a little. It was dusk, and what looked passable by daylight was hideously convincing by twilight. “Accident.”
He felt the man’s involuntary recoil and had to suppress a smile of satisfaction. He pulled the bandage back up.
“I’m sorry for you, lad. You can set up here,” the man said, and Mags heard his footsteps going off.
Once again, Mags set to listening in on unguarded, errant thoughts. It was a lot like working in the mine, actually. A lot of tedious chipping and sifting through things you couldn’t use and didn’t want, hoping for a sparklie.
The Constable returned—this must have been a regular patrol for him—and paused. Through the eyes of a curious passer-by, Mags watched him lean down and felt something warm placed in his hand; a chance thought from the Constable himself told him what it was—a meat pie!
“Oh, thankee, sir!” he said, his voice warm with very real gratitude. It had been a very long time since that half pie this morning, and this was what some of the inns called a “Drover’s Pie,” twice the size of the normal ones, with meat in one half and apple in the other. “Been a good bit since brekky.”
“Eh, inns on the Row feed Guards and Constables free,” the man said with a trace of embarrassment. “They give us too much, and I thought you could use it.”
“A kindness still be a kindness, sir,” Mags replied. “Ye took thought, aye? Many wouldn’t. Thankee.”
The man was pleased, if still embarrassed, and moved off on his rounds.
Mags savored the aroma of the pie; it was a good one. He bit into it, by purest chance getting the meat end, and slowly chewed and swallowed. It was a very good pie, made all the better by the fact of the Constable’s kindness.
:Damn,: Dallen muttered sleepily.
:What?:
:I’m not there to get the apple end.:
Mags almost laughed.
He stayed there until long after dark, “listening,” waiting, patient. A few more coins dropped into his bowl, he got some tantalizing hints about his quarry when someone asked about the increased patrols and the inn servants talked about horde of Guard and Heralds that had descended on an inn further down the road.
:Dallen, did th’ foreigners leave anythin’ behind when they scarpered off?:
:Nothing but the Lunatic,: Dallen replied. :Otherwise the place was scoured clean.:
So whatever it was that—damn it, he had to give his quarry a name.
Temper, he decided. For the man certainly was in a towering temper.
. . . whatever it was that Temper had left behind, it hadn’t been at the last inn. And he learned that the Constables and the Guard had been to every inn on the row with descriptions of the foreigners, asking if they had stayed there. They had, of course. But again, they had left nothing behind. In fact, they were careful not to leave so much as a stray hair or a nail paring behind, which had struck the innkeeper whose thoughts Mags was watching as being odd.