Cascet of souls

CHAPTER 33. In the Ravens' Wake

THE following morning Alec helped Seregil escort Eirual home in a hired carriage. Leaning silently on Seregil’s shoulder, holding both their hands, she seemed to have no more tears left, but her cheeks were pale, her eyes dull with grief.

Alec couldn’t think of any words of comfort to offer; his own sorrow was too raw, and he suspected Seregil felt the same, though he was concentrating on soothing Eirual.

The house was closed in mourning. Word had been given out that Myrhichia had died of fever.

Seregil gave Eirual his arm and helped her up to her bed. As he pulled the coverlet over her, she caught his hand. “Who would want to kill poor Myrhichia? She never harmed a soul!”

“I don’t know. But they’ll pay, I swear to you.”

Her dark eyes met his. “The Cat. Will you speak to him? I’ll give anything!”

He kissed her brow. “I will. And he won’t take a penny of yours for avenging her, I promise you.”

She gave a tremulous sigh. “I wish I could thank him myself.”

He gave her a fond smile as he stroked the hair back from her cheek. “You know it doesn’t work that way.”

“Not even after all this time?”

“No. He won’t change.”

Hyli and a few other girls came in to sit with her. Alec and Seregil took their leave and went to Myrhichia’s room.

The velvet drapes were drawn and candles had been lit. Coils of sweet smoke rose from an incense burner hanging from the ceiling to cover the smell of death.

Myrhichia had been laid out on her own bed. The women of the house had bathed her and dressed her in a white silk gown. Her hands were folded on her breast; the gold sesters on her eyes glittered like tears in the flickering light. Devoid of cosmetics, her pinched, waxen features lacked any semblance of life, and when Alec touched her hand he found it stiff and cold. The young woman who’d so sweetly ushered him into the soft give and take of real lovemaking was gone. A sob caught in his throat at the memory.

Seregil put his arm around Alec’s shoulders and pulled him close. “We did all we could, tali.”

Alec shook his head angrily. “Not enough! If we’d caught that old man-”

“I’m sorry. I swear to you, we’ll find out what happened and avenge her. But we have a duty to keep Elani and Klia safe. We can’t do anything more for Myrhichia now.”

He held Alec and let him cry for a while, then handed him his handkerchief. “Come on, tali. Work’s the best thing for us now.”

Alec wiped his face and nodded. Taking his dead friend’s hand for the last time, he whispered, “By Illior, Myrhichia, I swear I will kill the one who killed you!”

Seregil was grim as they headed back to the Oreska for their horses.

“How often has the Cat helped Eirual?” Alec asked.

“Oh, three or four times, over the years. Small jobs, except for one. I hunted down a man who murdered one of the girls. Strangled her in her own bed. It was early in Eirual’s career and she didn’t have the influence she does now, so the bluecoats didn’t waste much time trying to find him.”

“Sort of like how no one seems to care about the poor with the sleeping death.”

“Yes, very much like that. Then again, I don’t suppose the very poor care much about the doings of the rich, either. The

gulf is too wide. Not many have been on both sides of it, as we have.”

They visited Thero’s Farrow Street stone dealer, but the man hadn’t had dealings with any strange folk.

“Have you had many people buying this particular kind of stone before?” asked Alec, showing him the one he’d bought from the boy in the Ring.

“Wizards, mostly, and dishonest jewelers.” The merchant examined the stone closely. “This isn’t one of mine. In fact it’s better than anything I have here. You could cut this one and pass it off as citrine or beryl. Maybe even a yellow sapphire.”

“Do you know anyone else who sells them?” asked Seregil.

“Only Mistress Elein, in Bank Street.”

They made that their next stop, but it was a dead end, as well. The woman was as certain as the other dealer had been that she’d have remembered anyone that fit the raven folk’s description selling a stone that pure.

“So they could have brought them from wherever it is they came from.”

“Or bought them from some street vendor in any one of the markets,” Seregil replied with a sigh.

They returned to Stag in time for the evening meal and found Micum waiting for them in the kitchen. He’d come dressed for nightrunning, in homespun clothing and mud-flecked boots, with a small pack at his feet. Rain droplets still beaded his long moustache and his mane of red-and-silver hair.

They carried their supper upstairs to eat in private and Seregil laid out the circumstances surrounding the sleeping death and the loss of Myrhichia.

“Astellus carry her softly,” Micum said sadly. “If these raven folk are the same people who were attacking the Lower City poor, then Korathan’s quarantine must have driven them up here.”

“So it would seem. Yet the first Kepi saw of them was up here.” Seregil absently tapped his pewter spoon on the edge

of his untouched soup bowl. “We’ll have to set someone to watch at the Yellow Eel Street temple. If that little traitor who led us into that ambush really did make a trade, she might just show up there.”

“I’d like to have had a word with that old man, too. I’d really like to know how he gave me the slip like that.”

“So, what’s the job, exactly?” Micum asked as they settled over wine.

Seregil smiled at the familiar glint in his old friend’s eyes. Micum grew more keen still as Seregil and Alec explained the complicated tangle of problems with the ravens and the noble cabals.

“So it’s Alec and me for the Ring, then?”

“I’ll go in with you sometimes, too, but it will always be with one of us. And only during the day,” said Seregil. “Micum, I’d like you to stay out of sight here when you’re not on the job. Alec and I will have to be seen at Wheel Street and around town.”

Micum took out his pipe and tobacco pouch and set about preparing for a smoke. “That suits me fine.”

The rainy weather continued for the next few days. Seregil and Alec were summoned once to the Palace to attend Elani, and spent the following night burgling Kyrin for fresh evidence. There was more gold in Kyrin’s secret room, but no new coded messages. Perhaps Klia had rooted that out, at least for now.

They set Kepi to watch at the Sea Market temple, in case the boy who’d traded with the old man or anyone else with the sleeping death turned up.

With the threat of quarantine hanging over their heads, Alec and Micum made their forays into the Ring slum. Alec wore his peasant-woman garb and Micum looked suitably disreputable in a dirty soldier’s coat and an eye patch. He went armed and they were mostly left alone. Though they found more people, mostly children, who claimed to have traded with a raven person, almost none of the descriptions matched. One had dealt with the old woman with the strange belt adornments, but no one had seen the old man. There was

talk of a young woman in a ragged cloak, and the lame young man on a crutch, but none of the people they questioned were able to give much more of a description than that. No one remembered a tall swordsman hanging about.

Kepi soon turned up at Wheel Street again with news of a boy who fit the description of the one Alec had gotten the yellow crystal from. He’d been brought into the Yellow Eel Street temple, along with many others.

“The merchants in the square are up in arms about it,” Kepi told them while having his customary meal in the kitchen under the fond eye of the cook. “They’re hollerin’ for quarantine louder every day ’cause folk are staying away from the merchants nearest there.”

“Then we’d better hurry,” said Seregil.

Alec and Seregil rode to the temple and found it ringed with angry people shouting at the priests and trembling acolytes.

“You know we can’t turn away the sick,” the head priest cried. “Maker’s Mercy, good people, let them at least die in peace.”

They shouldered their way through the crowd and into the temple. Once inside, Alec shook his head, looking at all the sightless sleepers lined up against the walls. The boy he’d gotten the stone from lay on a pallet near the door.

Alec hunted out the drysian in charge. “Could I borrow two of your acolytes, please, Brother? I need to send some messages.”

The two boys were quickly sent off, one with a message for Valerius, the other for Thero.

While they waited he and Seregil made use of their time examining the stricken people, looking for marks of any sort, or anything else out of the ordinary.

“Here’s something,” said Alec, kneeling by one of the little girls. “Look, someone’s cut a lock of her hair in the back. I saw that on another of the little ones over there, too.” He turned to the drysian woman. “Have you noticed that with any of the others who’ve come through here?”

“No. But we deal in illness, not hair.”

“Alec, look!” Seregil pointed to a child on the far side of the room.

It was the little golden-haired washerwoman’s daughter and her mother. The child still lived.

“That’s a few days longer than we expected,” Alec pointed out hopefully.

“We can’t take anything for granted,” Seregil warned.

The wizard and drysian arrived within the hour. The crowd had swelled but parted respectfully for Valerius.

Thero’s robe was rumpled and he looked rather hollow-eyed. He took in the room at a glance. “Your messenger told us a bit about what’s going on, but this? Look at all the little ones!”

“I’ve been talking with the priests,” said Seregil. “At least half of them were seen making trades with the ravens. I think this may be magic, rather than a simple illness. Or magic that causes the illness, at least.”

Thero nodded. “I’ll see what I can discover.”

The wizard moved among the sick, touching them, brushing their minds-or trying to. There seemed to be no mind to touch. The bodies were mere empty, breathing husks. All the same, there was the faintest hint of something else, something that made him vaguely uncomfortable, like a bad smell. He took his time at it, and when he finished he washed his hands.

“Did you find anything?” asked Valerius.

“I’m not sure. It’s not like anything has been laid on them, but rather something taken away, leaving just the faintest echo in its wake.”

“I sensed something similar,” Valerius told him.

“Taken.” Alec touched a little girl’s hand. “Like their khi?”

“Their soul, you mean?” Valerius shook his head. “They’d be dead if that were the case.”

“Only if the soul is the same thing as life,” said Thero. “Philosophers have been debating that for centuries.” He tapped his chin, thinking. “There is one last thing I’d like to

try, though. Help me move this older boy over to that clear place by the wall.”

Seregil and Alec carried the boy to the spot he’d indicated and then stood back with Valerius as Thero took out his chalk and began drawing an elaborate pattern of symbols around the stricken one. When he was done there was a solid circle around the boy, with room enough for Thero to sit inside with him on the floor.

He rested his hands on his knees, closed his eyes, and sat in concentration for over an hour before giving up. At last he stood up, scuffed the chalk circle, and walked over to where Alec and the others were waiting.

“Anything?” asked Seregil.

“Just a headache.”

“Didn’t you sense any magic?” Valerius asked impatiently.

“No, nothing that I recognize as such.”

“Could it be some form of necromancy?” Alec suggested.

Thero gave him an affronted look. “I’m well versed in the various arts, Alec, as you very well know. That sort of magic always leaves traces and marks. If there is any magic to this, it’s too clean for necromancy. Nysander’s friend Teleus would have been the man to talk to about this, but he was killed when the Plenimarans attacked the Oreska House. He was the best versed in killing magic of any of us.”

“What about his successor, Miya?” asked Valerius.

“I think her studies have taken her in another direction, but she has all of her master’s books. I’ll speak with her.”

As they stepped outside they were met by a group of Scavengers being overseen by a score of the City Watch.

“What are you doing?” the temple drysian exclaimed in alarm as two Scavengers shouldered past him.

“Vicegerent’s orders,” the bluecoat captain informed him, handing him a scroll with the prince’s seal of office dangling from it. “As of now, this part of the Ring is being sealed off. All the sick ones you have there must go back inside.”

Looking past him, Alec saw a wagon loaded with boards and rocks, no doubt to build the barrier.

“But you can’t just toss them in there!” the temple drysian cried. “What will become of them?”

“They’ll be under your care, won’t they?” said Valerius.

The man looked at him with horror. “You expect us to go in there?”

“The Maker’s servants go where the need is greatest. They are your charges and you will attend to them. You, Captain!” He turned to the man in charge of the bluecoats. “Give my priests time to gather all they need and see that the sick are moved gently to some sheltered place. I won’t have you doing murder in the prince’s name and if you do, he’ll hear about it from me, understand?”

“Of course, Brother Valerius!” the captain assured him, cowed as most were by the sheer force of the imposing drysian’s will and presence.

Leaving Valerius to oversee the transfer, Alec drew Thero aside. “So what do you think?”

“I think that if this is magic, then a quarantine isn’t going to solve the problem,” the wizard replied. He paused, frowning. “I wonder if we have this backward?”

“How so?” asked Alec.

“What if it isn’t what these raven folk take away? What if it’s what they leave behind that acts as some sort of telesm? If so, then you may have put yourself in danger, buying that stone the other day. The boy who bought it has already been struck down.”

“May have?” Alec asked, suddenly uneasy. He’d had bad experiences in the past with strange magics.

“It’s just a theory. Do you have it?”

Alec took it from his purse and handed it to the wizard.

“If that’s the case, though, then now you’re in danger, aren’t you?” asked Seregil.

“I can seal it up so that it can’t be used by anyone from a distance.”

“The little girl we found in the temple had only been given a sweetmeat,” Alec pointed out. “And she ate it, so there was nothing left to work magic through.”

“What you eat becomes a part of you, doesn’t it?”

“Just how certain are you that sealing the stone away will work?” asked Alec.

Thero shrugged. “Reasonably certain.” Then, lowering his voice, “Can you find your way into the quarantined areas and look for more of these raven folk of yours tonight? I really need some item from them.”

“We’re hosting Archduchess Alaya, Princess Elani, and her mother at the Golden Crane, to see the new tragedy. Reltheus and his wife are coming, as well. By the time we get out of that, the ravens will probably have gone to nest. But tomorrow we’ll look into it.”

“Ah, I see. Then would you mind if I accompanied you to the theater?” Thero asked, surprising them both.

“You want to go?” asked Seregil.

“I’d like to have a closer look at Reltheus, and also reestablish my acquaintance with the princess royal. I can discreetly ascertain whether magic is being worked on her by any conspirators, as well. This would be the most innocuous way to do it, given that I’m known to be your friend.” He paused and raised an eyebrow at them. “And perhaps you’ll stop hounding me about it, too.”