Casket of Souls

by Lynn Flewelling

  “She’s off to visit her son,” Alec replied. “But don’t worry. We never send you away hungry, do we?”

  Seregil came back and handed Kepi the flannel.

  “Your clothes will dry faster if you lay them out by the fire,” Alec suggested.

  The boy gave him a dark look and his hand went to the hilt of the knife at his belt as a loud crack of thunder shook the house. “None of that, my lord!”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I’m fine as I am.” The boy grabbed the flannel and vigorously worked it over his wet hair, still keeping a watchful eye on Alec.

  Alec saw with some irritation that Seregil was suppressing silent laughter as he filled a plate with cold meat and bread from the larder. He added the remains of an apple tart and handed it to the boy. Kepi grabbed it and began wolfing down the food as if someone was going to take it away from him. In his daily life, that was most likely a common occurrence. Alec leaned on the mantelpiece, smiling as he watched Kepi cram a handful of tart into his mouth.

  “Do you have something for us, or are you just looking for a dry place out of the rain?” asked Seregil, pulling up a stool.

  “ ’Course I do, my lord! You said to look for anything odd or out of place. You heard of the raven folk?”

  “No.” Seregil took a few pennies from his purse and placed them on the floor in front of Kepi. “Suppose you enlighten us.”

  “Nothing special about ’em, except they’re touched in the head,” the boy replied, quickly grabbing up the coins. “They’re queer folk, even for the Ring.”

  “Why are they called raven folk?” asked Alec.

  “Why, because they barter up for any damn thing you can think of! I know one boy who got a sack of sweets for a glass bead. Another one give Easy Lia a half sester for a lock of her stringy hair, and didn’t even want a tumble to go with it. Now she’s gone missing.”

  Seregil exchanged a look with Alec at the mention of hair. “How many of them do you think there are?” The boy shrugged and bit one of the coins, as if doubting its make. Seregil flipped him another. “So? How many have you seen?”

  “Just the one—a lame old man with a patch over his left eye. He offered me a yellow stone for my head rag, if you can believe it.” He glanced possessively at the greasy silk kerchief drying on the hearth. “I’da told him to go to Bilairy, but figured you might want to pay—I mean, see it, and so I give him a hank of my hair for it in the end.” He held up a short lock of his wet hair where it had been cut.

  “Let me see the stone.”

  Kepi gave him a chagrined look. “It got lifted.”

  “Someone picked your pocket?” asked Alec.

  “Folk are hard in the Ring!” Kepi exclaimed. “Some older boys seen me trade and went after me. It was give it over or get knifed.”

  “It can’t be helped, but it would have been useful. Do you know of any other raven folk?”

  “Three or four I heard of from some of the others about the neighborhood. One of ’em’s a young fella on a crutch, and there’s a couple of women.”

  “What do they look like?” asked Alec.

  The boy shrugged. “The ones who seen ’em didn’t take much note, except for they was dirty, and making silly bargains for dross.”

  “Which means they weren’t young or pretty,” Seregil noted. “So, a bead, locks of hair, and an attempt on your colorful headwear. What do you make of it?”

  Kepi let out a scornful snort. “They’re loons.”

  “When did they show up in the Ring?”

  “Real recent, folk say.”

  “Since the closure of the Lower City?”

  “Maybe. It ain’t been long.”

  “Does anyone know where they came from?” asked Alec.

  Kepi bit off a mouthful of bread and shook his head as he chewed loudly. “If they do, I ain’t heard it.”

  “Alec, I think our friend here could use a little beer with his meal.”

  Kepi grinned, showing off a newly missing canine tooth and bits of bread stuck in his remaining teeth. “Much obliged, my lord!”

  “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.”

  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.”

  “Thank you, sir, for not calling on the Old Sailor,” she said softly, stroking her daughter’s hair.

  Astellus the Sailor—in addition to being the patron of those who fished and sailed—also ferried the dead to Bilairy’s gate. Seregil guessed Alec had invoked Dalna instead out of kindness.

  Seregil left her there and drew the drysian out of the room. “Have you seen any others like this?”

  “No, my lord, this is the first one that’s been brought to me. It’s the Lower City plague, isn’t it? The sleeping death?”

  “Most likely. Please, Brother, will you send word to me when she dies?”

  “Of course, my lord.”

  Seregil gave him their address and they took their leave.

  “Do you think it’s poison?” Alec asked as they headed back to Wheel Street. “She did give the girl something to eat.”

  “But from what Kepi said, it wasn’t usually something to eat. I wish the mother could have told us what else the woman had hanging from her belt. You’d think if there had been hanks of hair she’d have noticed.”

  “We have to go look, Seregil! It’s been two days already for Myrhichia. I think it’s time we considered magic again, too. And if it is magic, then how long before it spreads to the rest of the city?”

  “I know. But in daylight.”

  * * *

  The villa in Wheel Street was closer to the Sea Market than the Stag and Otter, but they never worked out of there in disguise. Instead they returned to their rooms at the inn and spent the night there.

  By morning the rain had turned to a muggy drizzle. Dressed in ragged clothes—Alec in his one-eyed beggar gear, Seregil in his broken-brimmed traveler’s hat held on with a ragged scarf and a rag wrapped around his left hand to cover the lissik-dyed dragon bite there—and patched oilskin capes, they made their way through the morning bustle to the great marketplace, managing to catch a ride in the back of a fishmonger’s cart most of the way. Once there, they talked their way past the guards; it was far easier getting into that part of the Ring than getting back out again.

  Once through, they began a leisurely stroll up and down the winding, muddy paths that passed for streets here between the pitiful hovels.

  The Upper City was surrounded by not one but two tall curtain walls, spaced several hundred yards apart. The area between, known as the Ring, was divided up into sections around its circumference, accessible by gates and put to various uses. The royal regiments kept horses in the long western corridor behind the Palace. The eastern section was given over to grazing, kept ready in case of siege. The poor populated the wards east of the Sea Market, and the poorest of the poor were pushed out into the southernmost section of the Ring, where they slapped up shacks or whatever paltry shelter they could manage.

  It was also a refuge for blackguards of every stripe, making it more dangerous by far than the quarantined area below. Even the drysians were looked upon with suspicion here, and soldiers passed at their own peril.

  The sturdiest-looking structure in view was a large lean-to that appeared to serve as the local tavern. There weren’t even any brothels here; the bawds practiced their trade in the open air or under whatever shelter they could find. There was stinking garbage everywhere, rooted through by hogs, dogs, and filthy children. Even in their plain, dirty garb, Seregil and Alec attracted beggar children.

  “Get off, all of you!” Seregil growled, scooping up a stone and throwing it carefully to only graze the largest boy. “We got nothin’ for the likes of you!”

  Used to such a reception, the children picked up rocks of their own and threw them with less compassion at Alec and Seregil, who had no choice but to run for cover at the tumbledown tavern. It wasn’t a very good showing for the ne’er-do-wells lounging on old crates and empty barrels in front under the eaves.

  “You’re a fine pair of rogues,” a bald man with a scabrous scalp cackled as Seregil and Alec came to a halt in front of them. “Run off by the little ’uns.” He and his four compatriots stood up and started toward them. “Maybe you’d like to show us what you got in your purses, eh?”

  Seregil threw back his cloak to show his sword and Alec did the same. “We don’t kill children,” he growled in the same rough accent. “Can’t say the same for your sort.”

  The drunkards were unarmed except for knives, so they settled back on their seats, sneering.

  Seregil took out a silver half sester and tossed it at the feet of the man who appeared to be the leader. “We’re looking for the raven folk.�
��

  The man spat on the coin. “Never heard of ’em.”

  Neither had any of the others, or so they claimed.

  Seregil nodded to Alec and they went on their way deeper into the noisome ward as the others hurled jeers and insults after them.

  “Could be a long day,” Alec murmured. “Especially since we don’t know where to look.”

  Kepi hadn’t been much help. Aside from naming this general area, there seemed to be no particular place that the raven people were seen.

  They wandered among the ramshackle shanties for the rest of the morning, attracting little attention from the locals. There wasn’t any formal market that they could see, just people crying their meager wares in the streets or offering what little they had from doorways.

  Casual inquiry about the raven folk got them either blank looks or shrugged shoulders. The raven people came and went as they pleased, and nobody knew where any of them lived or where they’d come from, but anyone who had seen them put them down as mad for their silly trades.

  Nevertheless, Seregil and Alec soon came across a few people stricken with the sleeping death. Two were lying in the open—one a boy of fourteen or so, and the other an old woman—left to die alone. No one would admit to knowing anything about them. Seregil sensed that it hurt Alec to just walk away, but there was little they could do for them here.

  The morning was nearly gone when they passed an open-fronted lean-to. Inside, an old woman was wailing over a little boy lying on a pallet of rags.

  “What ails him, old mother?” Seregil asked, approaching slowly so as not to alarm her.

  “Dead of the sleeping sickness,” she wept. “The last of all my kin! No drysian would come.”

  “Have you lost any others to the sickness?”

  “His sister died yesterday. What am I to do?”

  Seregil knelt beside her and looked down at the child. He had hair the color of Alec’s, and a lock of it had been cut to the left of his face. “Did he and his sister trade with the raven folk, old mother?”