Casket of Souls

“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.”

 
    T HE 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