The staring contest stretched well past the point where either of us could pretend it was accidental. A full minute, perhaps slightly more, neither of us apparently willing to be the one to concede it. Then Reichert gave a small, unhurried nod — the measured acknowledgement of someone who has decided to end a thing on his own terms rather than lose it outright — and returned his attention to his guild's stall.
I turned away and walked on.
"I can see why," Gayathri said, her voice entirely conversational, her eyes still directed at a point somewhere ahead of us that had nothing to do with silver-haired merchant guild leader. "He is a remarkably handsome man. And those light-coloured eyes — that has always been Rewathi's particular weakness. It's why she chose Niwara's third brother in the first place. He has grey eyes from his mother's side, and a fairer complexion than his older brothers. At least her preferences have remained consistent over the years. I will give her that."
"But she was born into the wrong family for it," she continued, as we moved further along the stalls. "The Herela family has a well-known obsession with bloodline purity. They would go to considerable lengths to prevent her from marrying a foreigner. Ironic, given the situation."
"They must object to my union with Arvid on the same grounds," I said.
Gayathri hesitated — just briefly, a small pause that she covered smoothly. "There are families like that, yes. Traditional. Conservative. They hold their views sincerely, even when those views are inconvenient. But objecting to the emperor's marriage is a very different thing from acting on that objection, and they are sensible enough to understand the distinction. You don't need to concern yourself with them, your Majesty. They will grumble and then adjust, as people always do."
She was right. There was no arrangement in the world that satisfied everyone. That was simply the nature of the world, and spending energy on it accomplished nothing.
I let out a quiet breath and followed her around the corner of the stall row.
She led me to one end of the fair grounds where something I hadn't anticipated had been constructed: an outdoor restaurant, modest in scale but thoughtfully designed, shaded against the force of the southern sun by a broad canopy that filtered the light to something bearable. Tables and chairs were arranged beneath it, and from the look of things, the space was already in active use — merchants from the various guilds occupying seats with cold drinks in front of them, taking brief refuge from the heat of their construction work.
"This was my idea," Gayathri said, with the quiet satisfaction of someone whose practical instincts have been vindicated. "I thought the noble ladies would need somewhere to rest after spending a full day walking through the fair. I finished the construction a few days early deliberately, so it could serve the merchants in the meantime. All earnings go to the imperial treasury, naturally." She paused. "Since we're already here, shall I bring something to drink? Please sit — I'll be right back."
She was moving toward the counter before I could respond.
I shook my head at her retreating back, somewhat fond of her efficiency, and settled into the nearest chair. My entourage today was small — Rora, and two guards. Arvid had been unequivocal about the matter of unaccompanied outings, citing court etiquette with the brisk finality of someone who may or may not have had additional reasons beyond the etiquette. I had stopped arguing the point. The guards were very good at becoming functionally invisible — folding themselves into the background with a practiced unobtrusiveness that made them easy to forget — and I had largely learned to work around them.
"Get something for yourselves as well," I told Rora, nodding toward the counter.
She relayed this to the guards, gathered their preferences, and went.
I sat alone for a moment — or as alone as I ever was anymore — and thought about the problem of Reichert.
This was not, I had concluded, an ideal venue for discussing surveillance arrangements. Too many people within earshot, and some of those people might report back to Arvid before I had decided whether I wanted him to know about this. Asking Gayathri to arrange something would require explaining what I was looking for and why, and I wasn't ready to do that yet.
The problem was turning itself over in my mind without producing useful solutions when Gayathri returned, set a tall glass of cold lemonade in front of me, and took the seat across the table.
Rora arrived a moment later and immediately reached for the small wooden case she carried — the poison detection kit, a silver needle and a silver spoon, meticulously maintained. Arvid had insisted on the protocol despite my objections, and when I had pressed him on it, his response had been characteristically concise.
"Southerners love to poison you," he had said, as though this were simply an established fact of regional culture that required no further elaboration.
He was not entirely wrong. I had accepted the protocol, even after becoming a dragon — because dragons, I had discovered, had their own vulnerabilities on that front. They did not die of poison, generally, but certain substances could render them temporarily incapacitated, and a single alcoholic drink, absorbed through a magically conjured human form, could produce an embarrassing degree of intoxication. The testing was reasonable.
Rora completed the check and stepped back. I took a sip.
It was extraordinarily good. Cold in a way that registered as genuinely cold rather than merely not-warm — one of the smaller pleasures of a hot afternoon.
My eyes, of their own accord, drifted across the construction grounds.
He was not difficult to find. He was the tallest person in his immediate vicinity by a visible margin, and his silver-blond hair, damp at the edges from the heat, caught enough light to serve as a marker even at a distance. He was speaking to one of his guild members, directing the man's attention to something with one extended arm. The guild member nodded and moved off to address whatever it was, and Reichert turned to the work in front of him — a wooden block on a stump — picked up the long-handled axe leaning against it, raised it cleanly, and brought it down.
The motion was efficient and entirely unhurried. The muscles across his back and shoulders moved with the unthinking coordination of someone who has done physical work enough that it no longer requires conscious direction.
I took another sip of lemonade.
"Is it usual," I asked, keeping my tone pleasantly idle, "for a guild master to be quite so involved in the manual work? I would have thought the position came with the privilege of directing rather than doing."
Gayathri followed my line of sight and produced a small sound of recognition.
"Under ordinary circumstances, no — you're absolutely right. A guild master would typically oversee and instruct rather than get his hands dirty alongside the crew." She settled back in her chair with the air of someone sharing useful context. "But the Silver Eagle guild has had rather an unfortunate run this week. Several of their members have been struck down by heat sickness — apparently they're not accustomed to the southern climate, and the weather has been particularly merciless. It's reduced their workforce considerably, which has forced everyone, including the guild master, to contribute more directly to the physical work." She paused. "They've tried to hire local help. A few people came and worked for a few hours, then left. The language barrier is part of it, but from what I've heard, the guild master also has very particular standards, which does not simplify matters when you're trying to bring in people quickly."
She looked at Reichert with her gaze lingering a beat longer than was strictly informational.
"I've been trying to find reliable temporary workers without success. But—" she took a long sip of her own lemonade — "I confess I'm not losing sleep over the situation. The view from here is, as it turns out, rather magnificent."
I looked at the axe coming down again, clean and precise.
And then a thought arrived, quiet and fully formed, slipping into place with the particular ease of an idea that is either very clever or very reckless and hasn't yet decided which.
I had to attend the fair on its opening day. After that, for much of the week, my schedule was considerably more open. I could not ask anyone else to watch him without either explaining more than I was ready to explain or risking the information reaching Arvid before I was ready for that either. But if the Silver Eagle guild needed temporary workers — local workers, the kind who came and went without attracting particular notice —
I could do that myself. I had a shapeshifting ability I was growing more fluent in by the day. A local labourer was not a complicated form to hold.
It was, by any objective measure, a reckless plan. It was also the most practical one I had come up with.
I took another sip of lemonade and watched the axe rise and fall, and said nothing to Gayathri, and kept the plan quietly to myself.
The view, as she had observed, was in the meantime rather magnificent.