“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 corridor after them, club at the ready. “Get out of here, the pair of you, before you get your heads stove in!”

Other men were emerging from other rooms, some of them armed. Micum and Alec beat an ignominious retreat back to the street, but with the knowledge that the old woman had eluded them.

“Go on, git!” the man shouted down from his room, shaking his fist. “I’ll have the bluecoats on you!”

“Damnation!” Micum muttered as they hurried off the way they’d come. “Seregil isn’t going to like this.”

As they rounded the corner behind the house they very nearly collided with the man himself, who was carrying a basket containing a few bruised pears and pippins.

Seregil noted their expressions and Micum’s torn garment. “I take it things didn’t go well.”

“I doubt she was in there in the first place,” Alec growled. The man with the pipe who’d given them directions was nowhere in sight.

“Did you see a blond man with a bandaged head, by any chance?” Seregil asked.

“Yes. He told us—” Alec gave him a rueful look. “Blond hair! Damn, do you think he was a raven?”

“He was someone who didn’t want to linger,” Seregil told him. “I was at the back of the building, trying to find my man, who’d slipped down this direction, and saw One Eye climbing out of an upstairs window and up the back stair to the roof like a scalded cat. By the time I got up there he’d disappeared among the chimney pots and gables. I cast around but couldn’t find any sign of him.”

“And the masked swordsman?” asked Micum.

“My guess is he’s not only the guardian, but the lookout. It’s no wonder they scarper off so quickly. They’re certainly good at evading the quarantines here, too.”

“What about the old woman?” Alec asked impatiently. “If she didn’t crawl out a window, where did she go?”

“She’s most likely still in there.” Seregil hefted his basket on one hip.

“And where did you get those?” asked Alec.

“I made a street seller very happy. Stay here. I’ll go take a look. You keep an eye on the back of the house.” With that, Seregil sauntered off around the corner, calling out his wares.