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robbed?” Hedion frowned, clearly still trying to make sense of the puzzle.
    Of the three at the table entitled to wear the colors of one of the schools of the Collegium, only Meran was dressed in accordance with his rank. Everyone—even Elade—had been firmly against Hedion wearing his Healer’s tunic here. Summerfair was supposed to be a holiday for all of them, Hedion most of all. Even now—a full sennight after the last Mindhealing he’d performed—Hedion’s face was pinched and drawn, and he clenched his hands to stop their constant trembling when he thought no one saw. Meran knew, without having to be told, that left to himself, Hedion would pit his strength against the impossible task he’d set himself until he dropped from exhaustion. No one man could stem the tide of damage the Karsite demon-callers caused. But Hedion Mindhealer would try. If not for Gaurane, Meran knew, Hedion would have broken beneath his burden already.
    “She swore someone must have taken it,” Meran said. “The scentseller told her she’d handed it to her servant—”
    “But she swore she had no servant,” Gaurane finished, in the tones of one who knows how the tale ends.
    Meran nodded in agreement. “She was quite indignant about it, too,” he said dryly.
    “So he could hardly have been her partner,” Hedion said. “She loses her coin, she doesn’t buy the scentseller’s wares, and the man escapes. A mystery.”
    “The only mystery I’m interested in solving is how long I am to stare at the bottom of my tankard before it is full again,” Gaurane said.
     
    It was certainly a mystery, but hardly one they were likely to solve. The Heralds of Valdemar were charged with keeping the peace and meting out justice, but Gaurane insisted he was no Herald, Rhoses’ presence notwithstanding. Meran doubted the man still owned a traveling uniform, much less a set of formal Whites. As for Rhoses’ saddle and silver-belled bridle . . .
    . . . there were some things it was better not to wonder about.
    No, they could hardly look to Gaurane to hunt their quarry. But Meran disliked thieves. It was one thing to steal when you had to steal or starve—he’d done that often enough, before Bard Meloree found him. It was another thing to steal for sport or out of greed. The man he’d seen with Mistress Theret’s purse looked well fed (and clean, which was more to the point), and his clothes had been of good quality and in good condition.
     
    “If you want to be a Guardsman, I’m sure they’d take you on,” Elade said in a low voice.
    “You didn’t have to come with me,” Meran answered.
    “Easier than buying you out of the stocks. Gaurane would complain about the waste of coin, and Hedion would worry.”
    “If you can get Hedion to worry, you’re doing better than Gaurane is,” he said absently, his gaze never leaving the crowds around them.
    “Hedion worries,” Elade said. “As long as it’s about somebody else. I’m sure even you notice that.”
    “Point,” Meran said.
    He didn’t know what he was looking for—or rather, he did know, but he wasn’t sure he’d see it. Anywhere there was money, there was thievery, but the style of thievery varied from city to countryside. There might be a few cutpurses working a crowd like this, but it was unlikely the experts at that craft would travel all the way to Goldendale to ply their trade. Here you were more likely to find snatch-and-grab artists, horse traders selling spavined nags as sound, or even an old-fashioned mugging or two. What he’d seen the day before didn’t fit any of those categories. It was trickery, but what kind?
    “There. See him? That’s the man.”
    Meran kept his voice low—though there was no possibility of being overheard in the crowd’s noise—and nodded toward a pieseller’s stall. As he watched, the same man he’d seen yesterday walked up to the table and pointed toward the shelves. The pieman reached back and took down a pie. He handed it