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.