Cascet of souls

CHAPTER 7. Wheel Street

OVER the next week Alec and Seregil kept an eye on the duke and Kyrin from a safe distance, but the men did nothing particularly suspicious, other than frequent visits to each other’s houses. Thero was getting impatient, and so were they, especially at not being able to burgle Reltheus.

It was something of a relief to move back to Wheel Street on the third day of Shemin, despite the usual fuss of having to make a show of returning to the city as if they’d actually been gone. Riding through the afternoon crowds, Alec and Seregil made a point of waving to friends and acquaintances they met along the way.

Wheel Street was a quiet boulevard on the edge of the Noble Quarter, and fashionable without being grand. The narrow houses with their fancy Skalan facades fronted onto the street, saving their walls for the back gardens. Here and there a shop took up the street-level floor: a tailor, a milliner, a gem dealer, a dealer in fine cards and gaming pieces.

The street ended in a circle, and there was a public stable there to serve the minor nobles like Seregil who didn’t have room for their own. Leaving Windrunner and Cynril with Master Rorik, they walked across the street to their house, the one with the carving of grapevines above the polished oak door. The rich, toothsome, and very unexpected aroma of roast duck greeted them as they walked through the small antechamber and into the painted salon beyond. Poultry was another scarcity.

This room was already decked out for the party. The murals of forest scenes were festooned with ropes of bright dried flowers and greenery, and the carpets had been taken away, leaving the colorful mosaic floor ready for dancing. Trestles were set around the room, already laden with Seregil’s best freshly polished silver chargers and cups. The musicians’ gallery overhead was freshly dusted and free of cobwebs. Runcer the Younger, who ran the household, appeared from behind the curtains of the service corridor with Seregil’s two huge white Zengati hounds, Zir and Marag, at his heels. As soon as the dogs caught sight of their masters, they ambled over to greet them. Alec went down on one knee to hug them and give their heads a good scratching.

Seregil looked around. “Where are our houseguests? I expected to be swarmed by Illia and the boys.”

“Not knowing when you’d arrive, the Cavishes have gone to dine with their daughter Elsbet at the temple. Will you be wanting dinner now, my lords?”

“Yes. Is that a brace of duck in pastry I smell?” asked Alec.

“It is, my lord,” Runcer replied with the hint of a smile. He prided himself on anticipating his masters’ wishes.

“Where in the world did you find ducks this summer?” asked Alec. “Or pastry flour, for that matter?”

“I can’t say, my lord. Perhaps Cook knows.”

“And she’ll tell us to ask you, I bet,” Seregil chuckled. “Whatever the case, well done.”

“Will you eat now, my lords?”

“As soon as we wash up.”

“Very good, my lord. Oh, and the package you’ve been expecting arrived in your absence, Lord Seregil.”

Seregil grinned at Alec. “Come upstairs, tali.”

Alec returned the grin, murmuring “I always like hearing that.”

But Seregil led him into the library rather than the bedroom. A long, thin bundle several feet long lay across the desk at the far side of the room, wrapped in oilcloth and string and wax seals.

“What’s this?” Alec asked as Seregil placed it in his hands.

“Your birthday gift, of course.” He looked remarkably pleased with himself.

“The party isn’t until tomorrow.”

“I wanted to be the first. Go on. Open it!”

Intrigued, Alec sat down in an armchair, pulled the strings loose, and unrolled the bundle, feeling something curved and familiar underneath. When the last of the wrapping fell away, he let out a gasp. “A Black Radly! But-how?”

Seregil was positively beaming now. “I sent for one as soon as we got back this spring. I had no idea if it would make it all the way from Wolde, but as you see, it did.”

The wayfarer bow, made in two halves, lay in the wrappings in pieces, a braided linen bow string curled around them. Alec fitted the steel-clad post of one limb into the ferrule hidden in the grip in the other and twisted it to lock the two together. In one piece, it was only a few hand spans shorter than a long bow. Made of black yew, which grew only around Blackwater Lake in the north, the oil-rubbed limbs shone like dark horn. Master Radly was the finest bowyer Alec had ever found, and he’d mourned the loss of the first Radly that Seregil had given him, which was probably in the hands of a slave ship captain now.

Alec inspected the maker’s mark engraved on the ivory disk set into the back of the handgrip. Radly’s yew-tree mark stood out, and there was a tiny R in the crown of branches, proof that this was the product of the master’s own hands, rather than one of his workmen. Such bows were costly, but more than worth the price: strong, sturdy, and true.

Still gripping it in one hand, he jumped up and grabbed Seregil in an enthusiastic hug. “Thank you, tali. I just… I don’t know what to say, except thank you!” Holding the bottom end of the bow against his foot, he bent it to set the bowstring in its notches, then eyed down the length of it. “It’s perfect.”

“That’s good. It would be a long ride to return it. That bow Riagil gave you is a good one, but I could tell you missed yours, so I couldn’t very well leave you without one, could I? I had Runcer set up a few targets in the garden. Care to try it out?”

Alec was already out the door to fetch his quiver.

The back garden wasn’t large enough to set up a very challenging target, but Alec split a few wands and murdered a bull’s-eye painted on a board propped against the garden wall. When he was done, Seregil and several of the servants who’d come to watch applauded.

“I feel safer already,” said Seregil.

They were at supper when Micum and his family arrived. Alec tossed his napkin aside and hurried into the hall to greet them.

“Here we are at last!” Micum had little Gherin on his shoulder and his giggling blond foster son, Luthas, under one arm. Gherin had his father’s red hair and freckles but his mother’s dark eyes. Luthas looked more like his birth mother every time they saw the child. That couldn’t be easy for Seregil, Alec knew, given the lingering guilt he still felt over Cilla’s death.

Kari came in just behind Micum, one arm around Elsbet, their middle daughter-still in her temple initiate’s robe-and holding young Illia by the hand, laughing with them over something. Unlike Beka and Gherin, both girls had taken after her, pretty and dark-haired.

“Uncle!” Illia ran to Alec and threw her arms around him. When he’d first met her at Watermead, he’d been able to sweep her up in his arms with ease. Now her head came nearly to his shoulder, but she hadn’t lost any of her natural exuberance.

“Why haven’t you come to Watermead this summer?” she demanded.

Alec laughed. “That’s your greeting?”

Ignoring that, she ran to hug Seregil as he came in. “Uncle Seregil!”

Seregil swung her around and kissed her. “At least she isn’t demanding presents from you, Alec.”

“Because she knows you always have them,” her mother said, shaking her head as she came to kiss them both. Illia was wearing the tiny pearl necklace and earrings they’d given her a few years ago, as well as a silver ring from Seregil.

Elsbet had lost some of her shyness since she’d entered the Temple of Illior as an initiate and didn’t have to be coaxed into a hug.

“Look,” she said, showing them a round, elaborate tattoo of Illior’s dragon on the palm of her hand. It was done in black, but now some small parts of the design had been filled in with green and blue.

“Second level already?” said Seregil.

“She is the family scholar, after all,” Micum said proudly. “The head priestess was very complimentary.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Alec.

“Do I get to sleep in the library again?” asked Illia.

“Of course,” Seregil replied.

“But you’re not to stay up all night reading,” her mother warned.

Illia gave Alec a conspiratorial look; why else would she want to sleep there?

They’d hardly gotten settled in for the night when Runcer appeared at their chamber with a familiar pinched look of disapproval around his eyes and mouth.

“That young boy is back, asking for you, my lords,” he told them, sounding pained at having to deliver such distasteful news. “I put him in the garden.”

“Thank you. I’ll see to him,” said Seregil.

They’d met Kepi, so to speak, in the spring when the boy had cut Thero’s purse in the Harvest Market. He’d led Seregil and Alec a merry chase to get it back, too. It wasn’t that there was anything irreplaceable in the purse, but the fact that the boy had been able to get that close to a wizard and two nightrunners and then nearly gotten away intrigued Seregil. Since then, they’d found occasion to use him as an extra set of eyes and ears, together with a handful of other youngsters Kepi brought them.

The boy was perched on the rain butt, wolfing down a mince tart. Runcer might not approve of him, but the cook, Sara, had a soft spot for the child and never let him get away without something in his belly.

Kepi was a true child of the streets, and knew neither his

parents nor his own age. From the looks of him, he could have been anywhere from ten to a malnourished twelve or thirteen. He was skinny, with a pointed little face, wide blue eyes, and a tangle of blond hair so pale it was nearly white under the faded silk head scarf Seregil had given him. His long tunic-some nephew’s castoffs that Sara had cut down for him-hung loose on his narrow shoulders, and his legs and feet were bare and dusty beneath it. He could play the innocent when needed, but in truth he possessed all the craftiness and the streak of savagery needed to survive in his part of the city. But he was also bright and quick, and utterly devoted to his benefactors. As soon as he caught sight of Seregil and Alec, he hopped down from the barrel and made them an awkward little bow. “Evenin’, my lords,” he said, spewing crumbs. “Hope I didn’t disturb you or nuthin’.”

“No. Is there something you wanted?” asked Seregil. The boy had no outstanding assignments from them.

“I was hoping you had some work, my lord. With you gone so long, it’s been a hungry time.”

“What happened to the money we left you with?” asked Alec.

Kepi’s brash grin faltered. “Gambled it, my lord.”

Seregil chuckled. “A lesson from Illior. Hard-won money is easily lost.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“You’re in luck, though. I do have something for you to do. I want you to watch the house of Duke Reltheus in Silvermoon Street. It’s the fifth one on the palace side, east of the gate. If the duke goes out at night, especially alone late at night, I want to know when and where. And keep an eye on who goes in. Don’t worry about the daytime, just after dark. And find someone to keep an eye on Marquis Kyrin in Emerald Street, too.”

“I will, my lords, just as you say.”

Seregil counted out a handful of coins and let the boy out the back postern gate. Kepi disappeared into the night like a stray cat.