the narrow, upland vale nestled between the shouldering walls of the Lady Range and the granite cliff of the main mass of the Mountains of the Sun: sheep country, green and empty of trees, crisscrossed with low stone fences and crystal-cold despite the deceitful brilliance of the sun. Tally pulled the long featherwork shawl more closely about her shoulders and shivered.
She went on, “I’ve thought before this that my desk was being searched, my letters read. Last week when I went into Yekkan I bought a powder from a Hand-Pricker, which will cling to a human hand and leave purple stains on whatever it touches, stains that appear only hours later. I found such stains not only on the papers of my desk, but on the sheets of my bed, and around the fireplace, and on brooms and rags in the servants’ hall...”
“You went to a Hand-Pricker?” Marc caught her by the arm in a crushing grip, and she saw, not anger, but fear in his dark eyes. Then he cast a swift look behind him, at his stablemaster who was training another of his dark, thick-necked two-year-old colts in the first of the elaborate carousel figures that would be required in the mounted fêtes of the capital that winter, and drew Tally closer to the yellow sandstone wall that flanked the paddock on that side, so that his horse stood between them and any possibility of being seen from the yard. “My lady...” he said warningly.
She shook her head, baffled by how much he was making of it. “Everyone goes to Hand-Prickers.”
“Not everyone,” he whispered hoarsely. “In fact it’s far fewer than most people believe.”
“That’s nonsense,” she said, still puzzled at the look in his eyes. “If nobody goes how do they make the kind of living they do—and what does it matter anyway? What matters is that one of my servants is searching my rooms...”
“Hand-Prickers make their living as poisoners, as abortionists, as everyone knows—by transmuting base metals into gold...”
“Marc.” Tally pulled a little away from him, shocked at hearing this kind of thing from him. From Damson, last June, it was to have been expected—she was close to the inner circles of Agon’s cult and would promulgate their oversimplifications whether she believed them or not. But with all the years Marc had been at her father’s court he had to have known better. “You know as well as I do that they can’t make base metals into gold without expending more energy than it’s possibly worth.”
Marc shook his head. “They only say that.” He placed his big hands on her shoulders and looked gravely down into her eyes. Out of court costume, in the plain green tunic and close-fitting sleeves of a country squire and with his hair braided back, he seemed both older and more approachable than he did in Bragenmere, where the ceremonial of her father’s household gave them the ability to distance themselves from one another. Here at Erralswan, though the summer had not been an easy one, she had remembered why she had always liked the big, easygoing young man whom she had part bullied, part bribed, part begged to marry her seven years ago.
“It’s only a story they put around,” Marc said, in a still lower whisper, as if he feared that some wizard would overhear, “to keep the secret of their wealth to themselves—so they can buy the influence of powerful nobles. My lady, these days it doesn’t pay to be seen having anything to do with people like that, particularly for you.”
Behind them the horse, bored, tossed its head. Past the low sandstone wall of the paddock Kir’s voice could be heard, raised in a joyous shout as he led a pack of the half-dozen pages of the household in a charge down one of the long arbored walks that connected the main house with its several attendant pavilions. Tally caught a glimpse of them through the latticework of the vines, now nearly bare of their summer leaves, and felt a cold little dart of fear.
Carefully she said, “Why ‘particularly’ for me?”
“My lady,” her husband said quietly, using the honorific in which he had always addressed her, “the days are past when you, or anyone, could be seen associating with... well, with just anyone. They’re finding out things about wizards, and how they work...”
“Who is finding out ‘things’?” Tally insisted warily. “What kind of ‘things’?”
“About what they do to people who come within their power.” Marc glanced around him again,