“There’s another box down here.” Alec reached under the table and brought up a plain wooden chest. This one was larger, and secured with nothing more than a crude hasp.

“This looks old.” Alec opened it, then hissed sharply through his teeth when he saw what was inside. Broken toys and carved nutshells. A necklace made of a single seashell on a bit of dirty string. A crudely cast tin ring. Maybe a hundred bits and pieces that one might find in a gutter or midden, and locks of hair held together with little dabs of wax. None of these were labeled, but one of the locks was a distinctive white-blond, and dirty.

“Kepi said he traded a lock of hair,” said Alec.

Thero touched it. “A sharp-faced little urchin.”

“That’s him.”

Micum emptied it out beside the jewels and pawed through them, looking for his daughter’s silver ring.

Thero turned to inspect the contents of the racks as the others sifted through the contents of the plain box.

“It’s not here, either!” Micum said at last.

“I think I know why,” Thero replied, holding up a sealed bottle. “All of these I’ve looked at so far contain things like those. Her ring could be in one of them.”

He held the bottle up to the light. The thick, crudely made glass looked old, and was full of striations and bubbles, but they could make out what looked like a small braid of hair floating inside. Seregil took another from the rack. The liquid in this one was milky, but he could see the outline of a hog’s tooth when he held it to the light.

He passed it to Alec. “Didn’t that boy you had the yellow stone from say he traded a hog’s tooth?”

“Yes!”

“So this is what they’re doing with them. We’ve got to find Illia’s ring,” said Micum. “We need to check every damn one of them.”

Beginning at the top of the left-hand rack, he took out one after another and held them up to his lightstone, like a poultry farmer candling eggs. Thero and the others did the same.

“Do you feel that same magic on them?” asked Seregil.

Thero nodded.

“And you didn’t feel this weird magic on any of the other actors except Brader?” asked Micum.

“I thought I felt something like it at Alec’s party that night,” the wizard replied.

“And only Atre was there, not Brader,” mused Seregil. “So whatever this is, it involves at least the two of them.”

“Atre said he and Brader were traveling together before they met the others up in the northlands,” said Alec. “Didn’t he say the two of them are related, Seregil?”

“Cousins, I think. So this might only be the two of them.”

Alec picked up from the table a ring marked OLIA. “Why is he marking only the expensive pieces?”