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to them. This sort of thing only happens at the really big Fairs.”
    “I like that idea,” Mags declared. “What about the rest of you?”
    “I’m game,” Bear nodded. And the girls agreed.
    There was a music tent too, but no one suggested going to it. After all, when you lived at the Collegia, you had the music from Bardic all around you all the time. It would be very difficult to find any sort of music that was a novelty.
    The wagon dropped them all off at the edge of the Fair, very near the first of the booths marked on Amily’s map. This was where the commons started, at the edge of the city itself—mostly “waste” ground that people used to graze beasts they could keep in their tiny back yards, like goats or geese, or their donkeys if they had them. People were free to harvest the grass here to feed rabbits as well. Otherwise, anyone could use it for almost any reason as it was land held in common for anyone living in the city. Sometimes travelers or trading caravans camped here, and always the Fairs and Markets were held here. It looked as if a second city of tents had sprung up outside the first one.
    Merchants generally lived in these tents as well as sold their wares or displayed their skills in them. Some were scarcely large enough to have room for a collapsible counter and a bedroll. Some were enormous, big enough to contain a hundred or more people at a time. All were laid out in a gridwork pattern, like houses with small spaces behind them. This had been the custom for hundreds of years, and was the business of a man called the Master of the Fairs, whose entire job was to make sure that each Fair and Market was put together in a sensible fashion, with proper care taken for sanitation and cleanliness.
    Here, the tents were all small; a few were quite sumptuous, with canvas painted and even ornamented with touches of gold or silver. Some were small and plain. There was a faint hint of sweet and spice on the breeze, as if the very canvas of the tents had over the years soaked in the redolent aromas of the owners’ wares. Since this was the area designated for herbalists, perfumers, chymists, and the like, it was highly likely that this was exactly what had happened. A well-made tent could serve several generations of merchant, after all.
    Well, both Bear and Lydia wanted things here. This was as good a place as any to start.
    Bear went with Amily to find Lydia’s tinctures and Bear’s herbs, leaving Lena with Mags to seek out the perfumer.
    The tents had been placed in no particular order. Some quite plain ones selling dried herbs were right next to tents beautifully painted with flowers or geometric designs that sold expensive scents. The herbalists’ wares were mostly packed away in sealed jars or airtight boxes, although they advertised by having bunches of fragrant things like rosemary and lavender hanging from their front “doors.” The most expensive perfumers only needed their exquisite, tiny glass bottles, each one cut, and sparkling, like a gem.
    The lesser lights of this profession sold their fragrances in bottles of stone or tiny pots; they didn’t confine their fragrances to perfume, though, but also dispensed oils, creams, soaps, and pomades. There were even a few chandlers, which surprised Mags, until he saw that their candles were of scented wax that was molded or carved and colored like works of art. He couldn’t imagine how anyone could bear to burn something like that, though he supposed that was the point. If you were wealthy enough to want to be ostentatious, this was the epitome of “burning money.”
    The perfumer they sought was one of the middling ones. His glass bottles were all plain dark amber in color and all the same shape. He dispensed not only perfume but other scented products as well. He was a tall, thin man, very pale, with hair so pale a color it was almost white.
    His clothing was very different from anything that Mags had seen before. He wore a red linen shirt