Wymar shook his head, paler than ever, and Rathe’s eyes narrowed. Something wasn’t right there, and he made a note to send Sohier around to check on the stallholder’s papers. He thought he could guess what she would find.

“Then, Master Wymar, I wish you a–peaceful–day.”

“Pointsman!” There was still no color in Wymar’s face, but he made an attempt to smile, licking dry lips, and reached under the counter, came up with a small, heart‑shaped corm half wrapped in a sheet of printed paper. “Might I not offer… In gratitude for your discretion… ?”

Rathe turned back, aware of the envious stares from the crowd around him. He had thought he recognized the corm, was sure of it when he saw the name on the smallsheet that wrapped it, and gave in to an unworthy impulse. “Thank you, no. I don’t take fees, no matter how they’re called. Those are pretty, though. My mother grows them in her garden.”

And she’d probably smack him for taking such a mean pleasure in the fact, he thought, shouldering his way back through the crowd. b’Estorr had moved on from Graeten’s stall, he saw, had found his way to a printer’s, stood idly flipping through a folio. Rathe recognized the whispering gargoyle that adorned the banner as belonging to Bertran Girodaia, and allowed himself a sigh of relief. Not only did Girodaia hire some of the better astrologers to provide her forecasts, she had the wit and the coin to keep all her licenses fully up‑to‑date. Girodaia herself was working the booth today, keeping an eye on two apprentices and a journeyman while chatting politely with a customer, a round‑faced matron with the badge of the embroiderers’ guild on one voluminous sleeve. She managed a nod and a half smile as Rathe approached, and Rathe’s smile in return was honestly friendly. Girodaia might look all to sea, cuffs frayed, hem sagging, brilliant blue eyes wide set beneath grey hair cut short and ragged as a fever victim’s, but she knew her business better than most, and kept a firm control of its every aspect. From the look of her eyes, Seidos was strong in her stars; maybe that, Rathe thought, had taught her the wisdom of keeping matters under close rule. He edged close to the counter, b’Estorr sliding sideways to give him room, and couldn’t help glancing at the embroiderer’s purchase. An edition of the Alphabet, he saw, without great surprise, according to the superscript newly revised and amended based on recent discoveries, and he wondered how many hours ago that had been completed. And b’Estorr was looking at one as well, and Rathe groaned aloud. Damn Chresta Aconin.

“I suppose,” b’Estorr said, without looking up, “the university could demand to see each printer’s master copy, and stamp it once we deemed it–harmless. But then, would we be liable for fraud if the formulae didn’t work at all?”

Rathe looked at him. “Have you ever considered going into the advocacy?”

“Not ever,” b’Estorr answered, and Rathe snorted.

“How does this one look?”

The necromancer shrugged. “I’m no expert, in printing or phytomancy.”

He slid the volume across the counter, and Rathe took it, turning the pages carefully. If he remembered correctly, it looked much like the versions that had been circulating in the spring, when the verifiable Alphabet was first a rumor, a slim volume with crude plates accompanied by text that gave the desired effect and the formula for creating them. This one gave the stars under which the flowers should be gathered, something he didn’t remember from the last editions, and on second glance the plates were less crude than old‑fashioned. Probably taken from a much older edition that had been cannibalized for the plates in it, he guessed, and couldn’t suppress a smile. First the printers had torn the old books apart, and now they were frantically trying to put them back together. He turned to say as much to b’Estorr, who was reading a broadsheet prophecy, and his eye was caught by a notice fluttering from one of the stall’s supporting poles. The Guild of the Masters of Defense announces a new master, prize played for and won… There was more, but it was the name that struck him silent, printed in enormous letters so that the words ran almost the width of the sheet: Philip vaan Esling, lieutenant, late of Coindarel’s Dragons. He blinked, puzzled and then, slowly, annoyed– what, you liked the play so much you had to cast yourself as the noble lover?–and b’Estorr looked over his shoulder. He heard the necromancer’s soft intake of breath, and then the sigh as it was released.

“He’s working on the midwinter masque, Nico, with scores of nobles who have to be told what to do. I imagine it’s rather easier for the guild to get them to cooperate if they can believe he might be something closer to their own class. It probably wasn’t his decision. It looks more to me like the hand of Gerrat Duca. He’s a master at keeping the nobles happy–he has to be.”

“I’m sure you’re right.” Rathe shook his head, the annoyance fading to something like amusement–Eslingen was going to have his hands full keeping up the pretense in that company–and turned back to the stall.

“Hello, Nico, what can I do for you?” Girodaia had finished with her customer, waved away an apprentice to smile at Rathe herself.

“I see you’re flogging a version of the Alphabet,” he said.

“Not the play,” Girodaia said hastily. By law and custom, the play could not be printed until after the masque had been performed, but in other years a few, favored printers had found themselves with copies some weeks earlier.

“No, I can see that,” Rathe said. “And I know you’re not on that good terms with Aconin.”

Girodaia made a sour face, her big hands miming resignation. She had been on good terms with the playwright, Rathe knew, until she had refused to print something she considered too scurrilous about one of the playwright’s former lovers. Aconin had taken his undoubted talent elsewhere, but it hadn’t been too great a loss for Girodaia, as Aconin’s first stage successes had followed closely. As he made a name for himself as a playwright, he’d eschewed the broadsheets altogether–or had he? Rathe wondered suddenly. Could Aconin, of all people, resist the temptation to let his wit run rampant under another name, while keeping his own pristine for the theatres? He shook the thought away–a speculation that might be useful at another time–and turned his attention to the matter at hand.

“I just wondered if you’d thought about the liabilities that might attach to you for selling it.”

“Liabilities?” Girodaia frowned, her eyes going from Rathe to the man behind him, lingering on the Starsmith’s badge at the knot of his stock.

“It’s a practicum,” Rathe said, “or at least anything that purports to be the Alphabet of Desire purports to be a practicum. You’re putting recipes in unpracticed hands–like giving the procedures to making aurichalcum to people who don’t have the wisdom to handle it.”

“And we all know you’d know about that,” Girodaia said, with a quick grin.

Rathe sighed. The affair of the children had turned out to involve the making of aurichalcum; he’d hoped to make her think he was serious, not angling for praise. “It’s no joke, Bertran. Truly.”

“It’s a work of fiction, Nico.” Her eyes slid again to the necromancer, visibly assessing the university’s role in the matter. “Isn’t it?”

“Probably,” Rathe answered. “But suppose somewhere there was a copy that wasn’t. And even ruling that out, because I admit it’s unlikely, there could be something in here that would work. And without the imprimatur–the university’s imprimatur–you could be liable.”

It was thin, and they both knew it, an awkward point to call and even more difficult to prove, and Rathe silently damned Fourie. Without more solid authority, there was nothing he could do but go one by one to the printers and make these veiled threats that the brighter of them would know instantly were pointless.