Irons in the Fire by Juliet E. McKenna

Hill, but the streets were choked with hawkers.
    "Discover the secrets of Aldabreshin soothsaying." A girl with the dark skin of the distant southern islands tried to hand him a crudely carved circle of wood. "Read your future in the passage of the stars."
    "A contest of dancing bears! In the Mercers' Market at noon tomorrow!" The burly man jangling a length of sturdy chain looked half-cousin to a bear himself with his bushy beard and long black hair.
    "Come and see the two-faced pig! Two snouts, three eyes." A smaller man was approaching from the other direction. "A marvel of nature!"
    The bear-ward rattled his chain violently. "Dancing bears, noon tomorrow in the Mercers' Market!" he roared.
    "The two-faced pig and more freaks besides," the smaller man bellowed. "At the horse-market outside the Selerima Gate!"
    "Dancing bears!" The bear man scowled ferociously and pulled the chain taut between his fists. "From the mountains of Gidesta!"
    "A two-faced pig and a six-legged calf!" The pig's herald squared up to him, bold as a cockerel. "From the wildlands of Solura!"
    The two men stood motionless in the middle of the street, gazes locked. Then the bear-ward threw back his head and laughed. The pig's herald grinned and offered the bigger man his hand. Relief rippled briefly through the crowd as people who'd slowed to see if there was going to be a fight began moving again. Tathrin wondered if the whole encounter had been deliberately planned.
    "The wizards of Hadrumal keep you in ignorance while the dead can speak through those who can weave necromancy's spells!" A skinny man in a garish purple cloak shouted into the momentary lull. "The keys to Saedrin's door no longer lock away the secrets of the Otherworld!"
    Tathrin saw a priest in yellow robes belted with an orange rope come out onto the steps of Saedrin's temple. He pointed the blasphemer out to three solidly built men also liveried in the god's colours.
    "Want to know all the shields and blazons of Lescar's dukes and their vassals?"
    Tathrin was about to brush the man aside when he saw Gruit accept the grubby sheet of paper.
    The pamphleteer bowed to the merchant. "My congratulations on castigating the worthies of Vanam so eloquently, my friend."
    He was a man of medium height and solid build, blunt-featured with brown hair and beard, both close-cropped and fading to grey. He wore a ragged blue doublet and grimy buff breeches, his lower legs bare and his shoes tied up with twine. Tathrin would have taken him for a beggar.
    "If you can remember exactly what you said, I'll print it up." The man clapped Gruit on the shoulder. "It's time someone challenged Lescar's exiles to decide if they are sheep or goats."
    What had happened to the man's ears? Tathrin wondered. Both lobes were raggedly torn, and not so long healed, judging by the red of the scars.
    "I don't recall saying anything about sheep or goats." Gruit was amused.
    "You may as well have done." The pamphleteer reached inside his doublet. "Do they want to be sheep, penned and fleeced? Or goats, roaming free, answerable to no man?" He showed them both a sketch of remarkably stupid-looking sheep looking through a wooden fence as fearsomely horned goats put a mangy pack of hounds to flight. "When goats could chase off those dogs of mercenaries."
    A gap-toothed woman came up to nudge the fellow's elbow, her hands full of scraps of dirty linen. "I can't find no more. Not without getting a beating from the local rag-pickers."
    The pamphleteer pulled a canvas sack from a pocket and shoved the linen into it. "Wait by the gallows and see what you can get when they cut the bodies down." Seeing Tathrin looking askance, he grinned. "You know the price of paper, apprentice? There's ways around that. Keep papermakers in rag and they pay in offcuts."
    "I admire your resourcefulness," Tathrin said politely.
    "This is Reniack--" Gruit began.
    "A whore's bastard from the free enclave of Carif on the southern coast of Parnilesse." The