“My guess is he’s not only the guardian, but the lookout. It’s no wonder they scarper off so quickly. They’re certainly good at evading the quarantines here, too.”
“What about the old woman?” Alec asked impatiently. “If she didn’t crawl out a window, where did she go?”
“She’s most likely still in there.” Seregil hefted his basket on one hip.
“And where did you get those?” asked Alec.
“I made a street seller very happy. Stay here. I’ll go take a look. You keep an eye on the back of the house.” With that, Seregil sauntered off around the corner, calling out his wares.
He was gone a long time, but when he returned Alec knew at a glance that he’d been as unsuccessful as they’d been at anything but selling fruit. He had a smudge of dirt beside his nose and a few cobwebs caught on his hat brim.
“Well?” Micum asked.
Seregil sighed and tossed the basket away. “I’ve had the life story of half the tenants, but no word of the woman and no one will own up to knowing anything about the ravens. I
even managed to sneak up in the attic and down into the cellar, but there’s no sign of her.”
“Damn!” Alec growled. “Could she have gotten out the back without you seeing her?”
“I don’t think so. This is a blind alley, so I’d have met her coming out. Unless she went over the roof, too. Pretty spry for an old girl. And cunning. I’m developing a certain grudging admiration for these people. They’re tricky, these ravens, and they’re smart.”
They wandered among the tenements and markets for the rest of the afternoon, and returned to the Stag and Otter in defeat.
“We don’t even know how many of them there are,” Micum said from the bedroom as he washed his face and changed clothes.
Still in his woman’s kit, Seregil sat in one of the hearth armchairs, tapping one foot restlessly against the ash shovel. “We’ve heard of a young, one-legged man, seen a blond beggar, and seen the old man and woman. She interests me the most, with all those things on her belt.”
“I still feel like a fool for being taken in,” Alec said glumly. “And we paid the bastard to gull us, too.”
Micum ruffled Alec’s hair as he joined them in the sitting room. “Worth it, to have another of them to recognize. And this is the closest we’ve gotten to them so far.”
Seregil slid from his chair suddenly and rummaged under the couch until he found a large rolled city map tied up with a green ribbon. Blowing the dust off it, he carried it to the table and unrolled it, weighting the edges down with books already lying around on the table and chairs.
As the others watched he placed pennies on the Lower City, the southeast section of the Ring, the slums north of the Temple Precinct, the Street of Lights, and the warren of twisting streets behind the inn.
“See the pattern?” he asked. “They get pushed out of one area by the quarantine and just move to the next nearest hunting ground. They avoided the Temple Precinct, apparently,
but they could have made their way through the Street of Lights on their way here.”
“And Myrhichia could have given something to one of them, thinking they were just a beggar,” Alec noted.
Seregil frowned down at the map, trapping his forefinger against his chin as he thought. “Except that there hadn’t been any report of them this far north in the city before she was stricken.”
“Someone could have picked her pocket,” Micum suggested.
“Thero thinks the item has to be freely given,” Alec explained. “That’s why they trade.”
Seregil threw himself down on the couch, glaring at the empty hearth. “Conjecture! That’s all we have until we catch one of the bastards.”
“That still doesn’t explain how one of them got to her,” said Micum, absently stroking his moustache as he looked down at the map.
“Never mind how, for now. The question is, why her? Why leap from the poorest of the poor to a wealthy courtesan with friends who care about her-powerful friends.”
“The opportunity must have presented itself,” Micum reasoned as he went to the sideboard and poured three cups of wine from the decanter there. “Maybe she was the first wealthy person they could get near?”
“Yes, but
No one had an answer for that.
Alec and Seregil were debating whether they should return to Wheel Street for the night when Thero’s face appeared in front of Seregil, startling all of them.
“I hate it when you do that!” Seregil exclaimed.
Thero frowned at him. “Archduchess Alaya is dead. Murder has not been ruled out.”
Seregil rested his face in his hands for a moment. “Bilairy’s Balls!”
“She was a harmless old woman,” Alec groaned.
“And she was one of the closest to the princess royal,”
Thero replied. “Elani is inconsolable and the prince is more furious than he was before.”
“Are you certain it was murder?” asked Seregil.
“I’m not, but the prince thinks so, in light of recent events, though none of the conspirators in the Tower seems to know anything about it. Alaya was dining with the royal family and he saw with his own eyes when she fell back in her chair, dead. Once again no poison was detected, or magic, but Valerius could find nothing physically amiss, either.”
“Poor Elani!” Alec exclaimed softly. “She loved Alaya like a grandmother. Do you think her death is related to the others?”
“At this point, nothing would surprise me. Perhaps we did miss some conspirators, and they’re still at large and carrying on.”
“So what are the chances that the two different cabals would use the same undetectable poison?” asked Micum.
“Tit for tat?” Seregil shrugged. “I don’t know. Something about this doesn’t make sense. They’ve spent all their energy killing each other off, rather than making another attempt on Klia, or on Elani. If someone could get close enough to poison Alaya, then why not Elani, too?”
“The same thought occurred to me,” said Thero.
“Does Elani know about the conspiracies?”
“Korathan explained it to her, apparently in an effort to get her to leave the city. She refuses to go.”
“That could be exactly what the assassins are hoping for,” said Seregil. “She’s more vulnerable than ever out on the road, even with an armed escort.”
“You’re probably right. For now, she remains in Rhiminee, but in her quarters under heavy guard and a ready supply of food tasters.”
“I was afraid of this,” Seregil said with a sigh. “If the arrests haven’t stopped the killing, then something or somebody important was missed.”
“If they were using professional assassins, and I daresay they were, then they may still be under orders,” Thero replied.
“My informers inside the guild say that only Kormarin and Nerian were contracted.”
“Tit for tat, indeed,” said the wizard. “So who’s killing the others, and how?”
“We’ll keep our ears open, Thero, but we haven’t made much of a job of it so far.”
“That’s all?”
“For now. In the meantime, we’re going to keep hunting the ravens.”
Thero began to sputter but Alec said firmly, “We still have Myrhichia to avenge.”
Atre lit the candle in his dank little workroom and pulled a silver ring from his pocket. A pretty little bauble, he thought with a thin smile, and one he hadn’t really considered using. In fact, he’d forgotten all about it in all the fun of toying with the nobles, killing them off here and there as it suited him and enjoying the rising panic, until he recognized Alec and that Micum Cavish fellow during that near miss at the tenement. Humming to himself, he pulled an empty phial from the rack and dropped the ring in.
