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He shook his head. “What are you doing here, lover? You must know the Kassian will have a spy embedded in the caravan.”

“They do. His name is Karl. He’s carrying messages from the new, and it seems corrupt, speaker of the Grimwalt court, to the Queen in Fernwell.”

It was Luc’s turn to gape. “And you found this out how?”

She pulled a piece of fabric from her pocket, and then jerked it out of his reach when he tried to take it from her.

“It’s spelled.” She shook her head at him. “Be careful.” She tilted her head. “But I have to ask, whydidyou reach for it so readily? The trader I made it for did the same. He almost threw something aside to reach for it.”

Luc frowned. “I don’t know. I wanted to see it. Didn’t you work that into it?”

“Not specifically.” She tucked it away again. “I obviously wanted him to take it. I thought he would have to touch it to be affected by my working. So I didn’t bother to make wanting to touch it a part of the spell, because by the time he had it in his hand, that would be unnecessary. And yet . . .” She narrowed her eyes. “Maybe it can somehow reach out to people, even if they haven’t yet touched it. But I don’t know how that would work. And how it did, when I never put it there to begin with.”

“I don’t know how any of it works.” Luc realized he would need to be very careful of what he took from others in the future. Ava was teaching him the world was full of deadly things that looked completely innocent.

“The working I showed you was to create compliance in the trader I gave it to.” She paused, as if thinking about whether to elaborate. “Remember I told you I had a plan for revenge against the Queen’s Herald?”

“Yes. It’s what kept us apart for so long.”

She nodded. “I made him a shirt.”

Now that he knew she had compelled the Herald to stab himself with a jacket she had embroidered for him, he had an idea of what she had in mind with the shirt. “How were you going to get it to him?”

“That’s the thing. The trader my grandmother’s housekeeper arranged with to take the shirt to Fernwell is part of this caravan.” She glanced over at the line of carts, and Luc thought her gaze rested on a particular stall.

“That’s him?”

She nodded. “He had put out the shirts I had made for sale to the Rising Wave.”

Luc sucked in a breath. “That would have been . . .”

“Very dangerous.” She nodded.

He was going to say deadly, but dangerous covered it.

“I made a working, gave it to him, and convinced him the shirts couldn’t be sold at all until he reached Fernwell. I was able to tell him how to get the shirt I made for the Herald into his hands, and I found out how they managed to leave Grimwalt as a trading caravan when the border is closed.”

“And?”

“And, they were let through on the sly so that Karl could deliver the letters to the Queen from the Grimwalt Speaker.” She hesitated. “Apparently, I’m considered on the run, so I might not have any power to help the trade treaty with the Skäddar, as I promised I would.”

“Don’t worry about that now.” Luc ran a hand down her back. “That is truly a future problem we will come to in good time.”

She sighed, nodded. “Karl also offered the other traders money for any gossip or information they heard from the Rising Wave traders today.”

“Which means he’s more than just a mule. He’s an active spy.”

“Yes.” The wind came up, blowing sand and dried leaves at them, and she ducked her head against his shoulder.

His horse shifted uneasily beneath him, and he tightened his grip on her and bent his head, closing his eyes against the debris and burying his nose in her hair.

He had never felt so comforted, although if someone had asked him what he needed comfort from, he would be hard-pressed to say.

The wind died as suddenly as it had sprung up, and he raised his head, saw the traders seemed to be winding up their business.

“Will that working you made still be effective?”

Ava looked up. “You want to use it on Karl?”