Alone Among the Stalls
You slip in small and quick and unremarkable, one more shadow under the lanterns — a plan that lasts exactly forty feet.
That's where the pickpocket finds you: a sprite the size of a dragonfly, dressed head to toe in stolen thimbles, who lands feather-light on your wrist and has three of your bracelet's star-charms half unhooked before your other hand closes around it — gently, because it's the size of a dragonfly, but firmly, because those are your mother's stars.
“No harm, no harm!” it squeaks, muffled. “Merely assessing! Lovely clasp-work! I'll trade you a secret for my freedom — Market rates, very fair!” You open your hand an inch. The sprite straightens its thimble hat with dignity. “The secret is: nothing here is unremarkable, especially you. The whole Market smelled the unicorn on your sleeves before your second step, honey-child. Lucky for you it's the Market and not the field out there.” It points one tiny arm at the darkness beyond the lanterns, where wolf-shapes pace the truce-line, watching the gate. Watching, you realize, for what might walk out of it later.
“The Apothecary,” it adds, spiraling up off your wrist, suddenly kind the way tiny lawless things sometimes are. “Blue tent, third lantern. Tell him Pintuck sent you — actually, no, tell him the opposite of that.”