As they watched, the old woman smiled and laughed with the children, and made her odd trades for valueless things. Among her wares were a few of the yellow stones like the one Alec had seen before, and something she claimed were dragon’s milk teeth. As much as he wanted to get a closer look, he knew better than to make a trade, given Thero’s concerns about such items.

So instead he and Micum waited until she was done and toddled off, then continued to follow her at a distance. There was no sign of the tall man now, and Alec inwardly berated himself for not keeping a closer eye on him.

“Did you see which way he went?” he whispered to Micum.

“No. The bastard slipped off when I wasn’t looking. Do you think he spotted us?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Seregil is trailing him.”

Just then the old woman turned down a side street. Micum and Alec hurried to the corner in time to see her disappear down another side street. The crowd was thinner here, and they had to hang back a bit more. By the time they reached the second turning, there was no sign of her or the man in the nearly empty street. Tenements leaned over them, any one of which the woman could 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?”