He shook his head at her. “This is something that re quires my attention, my dear. You have a problem of your own to solve just now.”

She frowned up at him. “I suppose so, but—,” She looked at Pasco, then back at her great-uncle.

The duke leaned down to cup her cheek in one hand and spoke too quietly for Pasco to hear. She replied, her voice just as soft; he spoke again. At last—very reluc tantly, it seemed to Pasco—she nodded, and stood back. Immediately a man and a woman detached themselves from the squad of guards, moving their horses to stand by hers. They looked at Pasco, Osa, and Grandmother Netmender in a tough, memorizing way that Pasco knew very well. Hey seen it often enough on the faces of his own family: that habit of weighing people they’d met to decide who might be trouble, and who might not.

“Join me when you have concluded your business here, Sandry,” the duke told her.

To the messenger he said, “Come along.” He rode off, the boy and the squad of guards at his heels. A barrel-chested man who sported a sergeant’s twin yellow arrowheads on his sleeve caught Sandry’s eye and nodded to her before he followed the duke.”

Pasco watched them go, thinking of what he’d over heard, Murder at Rokat House was a serious matter. He crossed his fingers and flicked them at the departing riders, sending luck for Uncle Isman in their wake. He would need all the luck he could get, particularly once Summersea’s rich folk heard of the death of one of their own,.

Sandry looked at Pasco thoughtfully as her uncle rode off. There were no two ways about it—something would have to be done with this boy. Untrained magic broke out in uncontrollable ways and could do consider able damage. She’d had that lesson drummed into her head over the past four years. From the glow of magic she’d seen as Pasco danced, his power wasn’t such that it might flare up ‘without warning, but that could change at any moment.

Sandry was no stranger to the ways of charming, clever boys. This one would bolt the moment he thought he could do so without offending a noble, and he wouldn’t come back unless she did something to make him. Besides, she had the duke to think of. She did not want him putting his hard-won health in danger again, not on his first day outside Duke’s Citadel.

“Murder at Rokat House,” Pasco murmured. “That’s got a jagged edge to it.” How would Papa look into it? he wondered. Who might have done such a crime? There were all kinds of possibilities, as he knew from listening to the harriers in the family talk about their work. There were all sorts of angles to consider.

“How so?” asked Sandry. She needed to decide what she could do about the boy right at this moment and what she could put off to another, more convenient time.

“Only that Rokat House is the biggest importer of myrrh around the Pebbled Sea,”

Pasco explained, thinking aloud. Working it out as he’d been taught, he briefly forgot her nobility and her prettiness. “They’re from Bihan, but they’ve houses in every big port. That’s serious coin, and headaches for the harriers—,”

“Harriers?” she interrupted. “What does that mean?”

“Provost’s Guards are called harriers,” he told her, still trying to remember his lessons on crime. “For the brown leather and the blue shirts they wear. Folk say it’s a bit like some harrier hawks. And the watch-houses, in each district, they’re called coops.”

Sandry nodded, to show her understanding. This was an aspect of town life that she had never considered.

“Anyway, they got to get right to the case and catch who done Jamar. Killed him, that is. The other Rokats here in Summersea’ll be on his grace like pods on peas till the murderers gathered up. Begging your ladyship’s pardon.” He yawned, and excused himself again. “Not that you need worry. Like as not, they’ll have the killer in a cat’s whisker.”

Sandry looked at him, amused. “You sound very sure of that.”

Pasco shrugged. “Mostways, a murderers known to the one they killed—that’s what my kinfolk say. Family, a friend. It’s easy enough to track ‘em down.”

“So are you going to take up provost’s work, too?” Sandry inquired.

The boy grimaced. “Both sides of my family are in it. It’s not like I have a choice.”

“If you were a mage, you’d have a choice,” Sandry remarked slyly. If she could make learning magic attractive to him

Pasco shook his head, his face set. “Lady, you don’t know my family. The only kind of mage they’d want me to be is a harrier-mage, one that tracks blood back to the one that shed it. One that can lay a truth-spell on folk I never heard of no harrier mages dancing what they do. I never heard of no dancing mages, either, not ever”

Sandry fidgeted. She had to catch up to her uncle. Before she could do that, she had to make this boy understand what had happened to him and his need for study.

He didn’t seem very convinced. If she could prove he was a mage, though, he would have to give in. “Make a bargain with me,” she suggested.

“A bargain for what?” he asked warily.

“I’ll meet you here, tonight, when the boats come in,” she said. “If their catch is better than it’s been in the last month or so, will you agree to talk some more about magic?”

He shook his head. “And I’m telling you, lady, you’re plain mistook. I’ve got no magic.”

Sandry frowned. “You say the word like it’s a disease.”