narrow way for any sign of Selsha.
“Selsha!” she called into the gloaming. Her daughter was nowhere in sight, but Mirya knew that she was rarely out of earshot. She could remember her own mother calling for her at the end of the day when she was a child and supposed that she probably sounded a lot like that to Selsha’s ears. A mother’s voice carried a long way, as she recalled. “Selsha! It’s time to go home!”
She heard nothing at first and peered up and down the alleyway behind the storehouse. She rarely stayed at the shop this late into the evening, and the shadows were long and dark in Hulburg’s streets. The buildings surrounding Erstenwold’s did not seem so friendly or familiar as night descended over the town. During the day these streets were busy with scores of neighbors that Mirya knew well-the cooper across the alley, the tinsmith next to him, old Mother Gresha and her laundry tub two doors down, and Auntie Tilsie who sold scores of simple meals to the town’s porters and drivers every day from her kitchen around the corner from that. All of them doted on Selsha and were happy to let her pester them during the day, but they were all closing up or indoors now. After sunset Hulburg’s taphouses and taverns filled up, and instead of watchful neighbors the streets would be left to strangers searching for a place to drink themselves into a stupor. Mirya frowned at that thought and raised her voice. “Selsha! Where are you?”
“I’m coming, Mama!” Selsha appeared at the end of the alleyway and ran to the door. She was a slip of a girl, just nine years old, with wide blue eyes that had a way of disarming Mirya’s most furious moments and with silky black hair just like her own.
“Where were you? Did you not hear me calling?” Mirya scolded her. She bustled Selsha into the store and pulled the door closed behind her. “I was worried about you, Selsha!”
“I’m sorry, Mama,” Selsha replied. Then she held out her hand. “But look, I found something.”
Mirya looked down into her daughter’s hand. It was an amulet of some kind on a silver chain. She could see at once that it was valuable, and she reached down to gently lift it from Selsha’s grasp. “What is this?” she murmured, and she looked closer. The amulet was formed in the shape of a sunburst, but the rays were jet, and in the center gleamed a jawless skull of silver. She stared at it in growing horror, realizing that what she held in her hand was a holy symbol of Cyric, the Black Sun, the god of lies and murder. With a small cry she let it drop to the floor.
“What? What is it?” Selsha asked.
“Something that we are not to handle lightly,” Mirya answered. She rubbed her hand briskly against her skirt, unable to stop herself. “Selsha, where did you find this?”
Selsha looked down, and her lip started to quiver. Mirya realized that her own sudden alarm had frightened the girl. “I’m sorry, Mama. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-I didn’t know-”
Mirya took a deep breath and kneeled down by Selsha, wrapping her arms around her daughter and stroking her hair. “No, no, Selsha, all is well,” she said softly. “I am not angry with you. I was only surprised. Now, tell me, how did you find the amulet?”
“Kynda and I were playing in the empty storehouse on Fish Street. I know we’re not supposed to, but no one was around. Anyway, I found it on the floor. See, the chain’s broken-I think someone dropped it and didn’t even know. Kynda and I were looking at it when we heard some men come in. They sounded angry, and we were afraid we would get into trouble, so we hid until they left.”
“Did the men see you?”
The girl shook her head.
Mirya picked up the amulet from the floor, suppressing a shudder of distaste. “Do you think they were looking for this?”
This time Selsha nodded slowly. “I heard one man say he thought it might have fallen through the floorboards, and the other man told him to go get a crowbar so they could pry up the floor and look for it.”
“You shouldn’t have been in someone else’s storehouse, abandoned or not, and well you know it.” She gave Selsha a stern look and stood up, slipping the amulet into a pocket of her dress as she turned away, thinking about what to do with the thing. A token of Cyric was not prohibited by any law she knew of, nor was it an evil thing in and of itself. The Black Sun was not a god that she cared to honor, but then again few people truly revered such things as murder or strife. Most people either gave Cyric his due in order to avert his attention or looked past the darker aspects of his doctrines and instead saw him as a deity of ambition and determination-the sort of god who encouraged his followers in their desire to fight their way up out of their circumstances no matter what it took. The poor foreigners who huddled in miserable neighborhoods such as the Tailings sometimes turned to grim gods like Cyric out of simple desperation. Mirya couldn’t blame them for being attracted by promises of prosperity and success. Of course, she didn’t doubt that there were truly malicious followers of the Black Sun in those same neighborhoods. Slavers, thieves, and robbers of all sorts looked to Cyric for favor too, and there were plenty of those in the Tailings.
But what Selsha had found wasn’t simply a charm or token. It was a holy symbol of the sort a high-ranking priest might carry. She could sense the enchantment of the thing; it was precious to somebody. “Now what should we do with it?” she muttered to herself. She certainly didn’t want to keep it. She could have Selsha put it back where she found it-but if Selsha was right, the men she’d overheard were already looking for it, and Mirya was not about to send her daughter into the hands of someone who might be a zealous follower of Cyric. Either she’d have to take it back herself, or she’d have to throw it away somewhere.
Someone knocked sharply on the alley door. Mirya started and looked at the door. Only a neighbor would come by that door, and her neighbors were all at their supper tables by now. The knock came again.
“Who is it, Mama?” Selsha asked in a small voice.
“I’ve no idea.” Mirya frowned at the door and smoothed the front of her dress. This is ridiculous, she told herself. It’s probably Tilsie come to borrow some flour. Still, her intuition told her that wasn’t so. She set a hand on Selsha’s shoulder. “Stay here, dear. I’ll see who it is.”
She went to the door, calmed herself for a moment, then lifted the bar and pulled the door open a foot or so. “Yes?” she said.
Outside in the alley stood a pale, fair-haired man in a laborer’s garb. Streaks of gray marked his temples and the neatly trimmed square of beard under his chin. He stood with a strange, distracted smile on his face, but his eyes were dark and intense. “Ah, you must be Mistress Erstenwold,” he said.
“I’m afraid we’re closed for the evening. If you come back tomorrow-”
“I’m not here on business,” the man said. He held up a hand to forestall her protest. She noticed a fine gold ring on his little finger and the smoothness of his palm and found herself doubting very much whether he was as poor as his clothing suggested. “I understand that you have a young daughter who might have been playing out in the neighborhood today. A dark-haired girl, perhaps ten years of age. Is that so?”
A cold stab of fear sank into Mirya’s heart. “Aye, it is,” she said slowly.
“Then perhaps she might have found something I lost, something rather valuable to me. By any chance have you seen a silver amulet? It would be marked with the emblem of a silver skull.” The man affected a shrug. “A keepsake, but one I would very much like to find.”
Mirya kept her face neutral. She was sorely tempted to deny it outright, but a small voice warned her that the stranger wouldn’t be at her door unless he had a very strong suspicion about the amulet’s location already. Priests sometimes knew finding spells of different sorts, and he might have already divined where his holy symbol was. She wished a couple of her clerks were still on the premises; she did not like being alone with this man at her door.
The stranger took her hesitation for confusion. “Perhaps you could call your daughter to the door? I’d like to ask her about it-just in case, you understand.”
As little as she liked the half-smile on his face or the strange intensity of his eyes, she liked the idea of this man speaking to Selsha much less. She reached into her pocket before she even realized what she was doing and held the amulet out to him. “There’ll be no need for that,” she said. “She found this in the alley a little ways from here. Is it yours?”
The pale man gently took it out of her hand and glanced at it. He smiled broadly and inclined his head, but his eyes remained cold, almost serpentine. “Why, it is indeed!” he said. “Now I wonder how it came to be lying out in the alleyway? Doesn’t that seem strange?”
“It looks like the chain has a broken link.”
“It does.” The man carefully gathered up the silver skull and slipped it into his pocket. She noticed a gray
