“Are they seen mostly by day or night?”
“That I don’t know, but I can find out fer you.” Kepi wiped his plate clean with the last bit of bread.
“See that you do.” Seregil took out a half sester this time and held it up. “And I want to know if they’re in the Lower City, or if they’ve been there. This is a matter of great importance, Kepi, and I need this information as soon as possible. A friend’s life depends on it.”
Kepi tied his head scarf back on at a rakish angle and headed for the door.
“You can stay here until the rain stops,” Alec offered. It was still coming down in sheets and lightning forked across the sky.
Kepi gave him another skeptical look and disappeared into the storm.
“What do you make of all that?” asked Alec, sitting down on the warm bricks before the fire.
Seregil sat on the stool, gazing into the flames. The angle of light made his grey eyes look silver, and Alec felt an unexpected wrench of memory but pushed it away.
“A bunch of mad traders who bargain in hair, among other things, and give out yellow stones?” Seregil murmured, absently winding a lock of his own dark hair around one finger. “It’s certainly something out of the ordinary.”
“We should go to the Ring and have a look for ourselves. Hair could mean necromancy.”
“Not yet. We have a dinner engagement with the archduchess tonight, and I want to see who else is going to be there. Let’s see what else Kepi finds for us. No sense fishing where the fish aren’t biting.”
CHAPTER 31. Hunting Ravens
THE dinner with Alaya that night was interminable for Alec, knowing that precious time was passing all too quickly for Myrhichia. The longest the stricken lived was a week, and not all of them lasted that long. They’d lost a day already.
To make matters worse, they learned nothing of note. Alaya flirted playfully with Alec throughout the evening, but his thoughts were with Myrhichia and later Seregil informed him that he’d told the elderly archduchess that his first kiss had been with a rabbit.
“I thought she said ‘first kill’!” Alec exclaimed. “I wondered why everyone laughed.”
Much to Alec’s relief, Kepi was waiting for them when they returned home, and with more news of the raven people-promising news.
“Some of ’em was seen in the Lower City,” the boy told them, hunkered down by the fire in his dripping clothes, flannel draped over his head as he gnawed on a cold goose leg. “I talked with folk who remembered the old man, and the young fellow with the crutch. But they ain’t been seen about down there since the quarantine.”
“So that must have driven them up here,” said Alec.
“What about the Ring?” Seregil asked.
“That’s the good bit, my lord! There’s a little girl who traded with an old raven woman for a sweetmeat the other day. Now she’s in the drysian temple in Yellow Eel Street.”
“I’m surprised they brought her out at all,” said Seregil.
That temple stood close by one of the Sea Market gates that let into the Ring. “The Ring folk generally tend their own.”
“Do you want me to go back again?” Kepi asked hopefully.
Seregil gave him a few coins. “Go back to watching Duke Reltheus for now.”
Kepi made them a bow and disappeared into the storm again.
“Could the sweet have been poisoned?” wondered Alec.
“Possibly, but it sounds like it isn’t only food they offer. As for the trades, if it was just hair, that would make necromancy more likely, or even alchemy, but there doesn’t sound like there’s any pattern to the trades. Or it could all just be coincidence.”
Alec grinned. “Are the fish biting well enough for you now?”
“I think they just might be. Let’s start with that little girl in Yellow Eel Street.”
Braving the storm, they rode to the Sea Market and entered the temple. A drysian met them and led them through his small shrine to a smaller room beyond it.
A haggard, fair-haired woman knelt beside the pallet, watching as another drysian let some liquid drip between a little girl’s lips. The child was no more than seven, a golden-haired, blue-eyed little thing. She’d been bathed and put into a clean nightgown, Seregil noted. Too late again. The woman, presumably the mother, was in worn clothing, but remarkably clean for a Ring dweller. She glared fiercely up at the two well-dressed nobles approaching her girl.
“What do you want?” she demanded, her accent marking her as southern-born.
“We have an interest in this affliction,” Seregil told her. He went down on one knee on the other side of the pallet and took two silver sesters from his purse. “I’d just like to look her over a bit, and ask you a few questions.”
The woman hesitated, then snatched the coins “Go on, then.”
“How long has she been like this?”
“She fell ill yesterday morning.”
“Did you see her talking to any strangers?”
“An old woman give her a treat the other day.”
“Was the old woman one of what they call the raven people?” asked Alec, trying to mask his excitement.
“Never heard of any raven people. But she had the look of a beggar.”
“Did she make an odd trade?”
The woman gave him a surprised look. “She give Lissa the sweets for her broken doll.”
“Can you describe it?” asked Seregil.
“What, the doll? What you want to know that for?”
He held up another silver coin. “I have my reasons. Please, tell me.”
She accepted the coin. “The usual sort: flat baked red clay, with some lines scratched in for a face and hair.”
“And the old woman traded her a sweet for it?”
“Aye, that’s what Lissa said.” She looked sorrowfully down at her daughter. “Was it poison, sir? Why would anyone do a child so?”
“I wish I could tell you.”
Alec gently lifted the child’s head. “Her hair hasn’t been cut.”
“Are there any marks on her body?” Seregil asked the drysian.
“No,” the woman told him.
“What about the old woman?” Seregil asked the mother. “What did she look like?”
“I hardly noticed. I was scrubbing laundry-that’s my trade-and saw Lissa talking to her. She didn’t look evil, sir, just old and bent, in ragged clothes needing washing. She had on a kerchief, blue I think, pulled forward so I couldn’t make out all of her face. She did have a drinker’s nose, though, all red at the tip. She leaned on a knobby stick- Oh, and she had a few oddments hung from her girdle.”
“Like what?” asked Alec.
“I don’t know! What’s that to do with my girl?”
“It might help,” Alec replied.
The woman thought a moment. “A cat’s skull for one; I do
remember that, since it was so odd. The rest of it I couldn’t say, but there were more.”
“Did she hang the broken doll from her girdle, once she had it?” asked Seregil.
“I didn’t see. Like I said, I was at my washing. She just went off.”
Seregil took out another coin and gave it to her. “How long ago was all this?”
“Just two days, my lord.”
“Thank you. That’s most helpful. I’m very sorry about your little girl.”
“And I,” said Alec. “Maker’s Mercy on you both.”
