"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."