Casket of Souls

have entered.
    An old man sat across the unpaved street smoking a pipe.
    “Did you see an old woman come by here?” asked Micum. “My mother has wandered off again.”
    “The mad woman with the things on her belt?” the old fellow asked.
    “Yes, that’s her.”
    The man pointed the stem of his pipe across the street at a two-story tenement. “That one there, with the blue door. I seen her here before, you know.”
    “She’s a slippery one,” Micum said with a laugh. “At least now I know where she gets off to. Many thanks, old father. Come along, Sana.”
    He gave Alec a wink and they went to the house in question and tried the latch. It was not locked, and opened into a small entrance area with a stairway leading up to the rooms. On the second floor they found most of the doors open—the occupants tried to encourage a sea breeze to dissipate the stale funk of the place. There was no sign of their woman, so they hurried up to the next floor, where things were much the same.
    A one-eyed young tough with a bandage covering half his face and hair that might have been the same color as Alec’s if it were ever washed lounged in a doorway at the end of the corridor. “What’s the hurry, friends?”
    “I’m looking for an old woman who just came in,” Micum told him. “Grey hair, bits and bobs hanging from her belt.”
    “I know who you mean. The old raven woman, right?”
    Alec hid his excitement as he asked, “Does she live here?”
    The man gave him a measuring look and a slanted grin. “What’s it worth to you, missy?”
    Alec reached into the little purse at his belt and took out a copper.
    “That the best you can do?” the tough asked derisively.
    Micum handed him another. “We’re poor folk. Please, won’t you help us?”
    The man pocketed the money. “She lives below, third door on the left.”
    “Much obliged,” Micum said, and followed Alec back downstairs.
    Atre breathed a sigh of relief as Alec and his companion disappeared down the stairs. Brader stepped out from the empty room he’d hidden in.
    “Now, that was very interesting,” Atre murmured, scratching under the bandage.
    “How so?”
    “Unless I’m very much mistaken, that was young Lord Alec under that kerchief and dirt and that forced falsetto. Seems he’s more of an actor than he let on.”
    “Did he recognize you?”
    “No, of course not.”
    “I’ve never seen the big fellow with them.”
    Atre gave him a thin smile. “I have. He was at Lord Alec’s party.”
    The door in question was one of the few that was closed. Micum knocked, but there was no answer. With a quick look around to see if anyone was watching, he tried the latch, but it was locked.
    The door directly across the corridor was closed, as well, and no one in the rooms on either side seemed to be paying any attention. Micum shielded Alec as best he could while he pulled a pick from under his kerchief and jiggered the simple lock. No sooner had he touched the latch, however, than the door was jerked violently open and Micum jumped back just in time to miss being brained by an iron poker. As it was it caught him a glancing blow across the left shoulder, the barbon the end of the poker tearing his shirt but missing the skin below.
    He thrust Alec out of the way and blocked the next swing with his stout cudgel.
    “Thieves!” the man cried, trying to drive Micum back but hampered somewhat by the door frame. “Housebreakers!”
    Micum knocked the poker from his hands and gave the fellow a light thump in the belly with the end of the cudgel, just enough to set him back on his ass. A woman screamed. Alec looked around nervously. They were attracting far too much attention.
    “Where’s my mother!” Micum bellowed. “I know she’s here!”
    The man blinked up at him. “Mother? What in Bilairy’s name makes you think I’ve got your damn mother here?”
    “I have it on good authority that she was brought to this place,” Micum growled, apparently using aggression in place of making any sense. Giving the man a shove in the chest with his foot, he stepped into the room and the woman screamed again.
    “Help!” the man shouted.
    “What’s going on ’ere?” a very large man with a stout, spiked club demanded from down the hall.
    Micum backed quickly from the room and faced him down. “My own mother has been carried off, and I was told this man had her.”
    “Nakis? What would he be doing with your poxy mother?” The man started down the