Casket of Souls

like the creak of hinges from the stage area. He raced back in time to see the scrim ripple, and then the muslin curtains leading into the left wing.
    “You’re not getting out, Atre!”
    There was no answer, and no sound of movement. He stood still, listening, and began to wonder if the noise had just been the old building settling, and the movement of the cloth nothing more than a breeze from the open doorway.
    There was no way to lock the door from the inside; if Atre was in here, Seregil would have to stay between him and the door. Unless there was another way out he didn’t know about. If there was, Atre certainly would.
    “Damnation!” he muttered, quietly advancing down the left wing. Alert for any sound or movement, he looked into each cubicle, using the point of his sword to move the fabric back. Some had an old trunk or abandoned bit of furniture, but most of them were empty. And there wasn’t just a single row of them down each side of the narrow corridor; there were some behind others, making for a labyrinth that was as easily passed through as it was to hide in.
    Suddenly he heard the creak of a floorboard at the far endof the corridor and looked up just in time to see a fabric wall settle back into place where someone had passed. Whoever it was, they were trying to flank him. Seregil quietly ducked into a small cubicle on that side only to find that there were two more behind him. While he was searching those, he heard a sudden burst of footsteps from the corridor. Fighting his way through layers of muslin, he dashed back to the door in time to cut off a dark, running figure who disappeared back into the maze once more.
    They played at this game for some time, Seregil wondering all the time where the others had gotten to.
    He was guarding the door and about ready to set fire to the place when he heard the clink of glass from beyond the scrim. If Atre was making a break for the front of the theater, then he’d be trapped in the open. Seregil pushed past the scrim and stepped out onto the stage.
    Enough light came in through the partially open skylight and between the cracks in the shuttered windows for him to see Atre standing at the front of the stage, facing him. He was dressed like a peasant and had a pack at his feet. A crude necklace of long pale beads hung around his neck, unlike anything Seregil had ever seen him wear. As Seregil slowly approached, the actor smiled and held up something that caught the light.
    A glass phial.
    “I wouldn’t come any closer if I were you, Lord Seregil,” he said, giving it a slight shake that made whatever was inside tinkle against the glass. “I’m tired of our game. I think you know what’s in this one.”
    “Yes. And you’re not leaving with it.”
    “Tut, dear Lord Seregil. You’d better mind your manners. This bottle is rather fragile and it’s very risky, freeing an unfixed soul. You never know where it will end up. Some get home to their bodies. Others?” He made a graceful fluttering gesture. “They just float away.”
    Seregil swallowed hard. Thero had warned of this. Perhaps they had just been lucky with Mika.
    “Put down your sword, Lord Seregil.”
    Seregil laid it on the stage beside him and raised his handsto show the other man they were empty. He was less than twenty feet away from Atre, but he doubted he could close that distance in time if Atre let the bottle fall. Or threw it.
    And he noticed something else. Atre was not wearing Elani’s ring.
    “Thank you, my lord,” said Atre with mock-deference. “Well, here we are, onstage together at last. No masks or costumes for you this time, though. I knew there was more to you than you let on.”
    “I could say the same of you. You know why I’m here.”
    Atre smiled and gave the bottle another little shake and Seregil caught a glint of silver in the morning light. “I enjoyed dancing with little Illia at your party that night. Delightful child. Such a shame you and your friends got in my way. I might have left her alone if you hadn’t. Will you tell Micum Cavish that it’s his fault, as much as yours, that his daughter died?”
    Seregil took a deep breath and said as calmly as he could, “If you break that bottle, I’ll have no reason not to kill you.”
    “But she’ll still be dead. Now surely we can strike a bargain.”
    “You give me the bottle, and Elani’s jewels, and I let you walk out of here. Their lives for yours.”
Where in Bilairy’s name are Micum and