“What ails him, old mother?” Seregil asked, approaching slowly so as not to alarm her.

“Dead of the sleeping sickness,” she wept. “The last of all my kin! No drysian would come.”

“Have you lost any others to the sickness?”

“His sister died yesterday. What am I to do?”

Seregil knelt beside her and looked down at the child. He had hair the color of Alec’s, and a lock of it had been cut to the left of his face. “Did he and his sister trade with the raven folk, old mother?”

“With the what?” The old woman stared up at him with red-rimmed eyes.

“Beggars making odd trades? Did your grandchildren trade with them?”

“I don’t know what yer talking about! Just leave me alone.”

“Here now, don’t be badgering her about such things!” a fat man called from his own hovel across the path. Heaving himself up from the crate he’d been sitting on, he stumped over to join them. “Can’t you see she’s mourning? Leave her be with your foolish questions!” the man growled, aiming a kick at Seregil.

Seregil grunted in pain and sprang to his feet. “Apologies to you both. Maker’s Mercy, old mother, and the Old Sailor’s peace.”

Frustrated and hungry, they sat on the end of a broken-down wagon with the bread and sausage they’d brought, not wanting to chance eating anything they’d find here.

“It’s like looking for one particular frog in Blackwater Marsh,” Alec muttered. “We’ve got trades with no deaths and deaths with no trades, and no sign of any raven people. It’s almost three days now, for Myrhichia.”

“We still have plenty of daylight left.”

A handful of ragged, hungry little children sidled up to them and Seregil threw the remains of his food to them. With a sigh, Alec did the same and after a brief squabble the children scampered away, the losers pursuing the ones with the spoils.

One little girl in a ragged grey shift lingered behind. After a moment, she cautiously approached them and looked Seregil boldly in the eye as she held up her short brown braid. The end of it looked newly trimmed. “Trade?”

“Hello, little bird. Did someone trade you for your hair?” asked Seregil.

“Ain’t you raven folk?” she asked, taking a step back.

“No, but we’re looking for them,” said Alec. “You’ve traded with them?”

The child stood on one bare foot with a finger in her mouth as she eyed them. “I’ll tell you for a penny.”

Grinning, Alec snatched a penny out of thin air and held it out to her.

“Toss it,” she said, unimpressed with his sleight of hand.

Cagey even at this age, he thought as he flipped it to her.

She snatched it and hid it away in a pocket of her dingy dress. “I seen the old lady yesterday. She traded me this.” Digging in her pocket, she showed them a tiny cat cunningly carved from bone.

“Did you give her some of your hair?” asked Alec.

She sucked her finger again and nodded.

“When, little bird?” asked Seregil.

The girl shrugged.

“Do you know where we could find her today?” Alec prompted.

“I’ll show you, for ’nother penny.”

Alec produced another one and tossed it to her. “You drive a hard bargain, miss.”

Satisfied, she motioned for them to follow her and led them farther into the makeshift village.

“We need that carving,” Alec whispered.

“I know,” Seregil murmured back. “We’ll buy it from her once she’s shown us where to find the old woman.”

Smoke curled low over the rooftops, defeated by the mist, and the smell of horse-dung fires and poverty hung heavy on the air. The paths had been trodden to mire, and they sank to their ankles in places.

They were nearly to the outer wall, passing between two rude shacks, when a pair of swordsmen stepped around a corner and blocked their way. Four more moved in behind them, trapping them. The girl scampered over to one of them in front of Seregil and hid behind his leg, lisping, “I brung some, Papa.”

“Good girl. Run home,” the man said, never taking his eyes off his supposed victims. “Now then, boys, you’re strangers here. We don’t much like strangers, ’less they have the money for our toll.”

“How much would that be?” Seregil asked.

That made the others laugh.

“Whatever you got, stranger,” one of them in back said, stepping toward Alec. Perhaps he took him for the weaker of the prey, because of his bandaged eye.

Alec soon disabused him of that notion. He threw back his cloak and drew his sword. “Come see for yourself.”

Seregil drew his sword and stood back-to-back with Alec, facing the men in front of them. “I don’t much care for the hospitality here.”

“Me neither,” said Alec. “And here I was hoping we’d get through the day without killing anyone.”

The leader smirked at that. “Can’t ya count, you raggedy bastard? You’re outmanned.”

“I don’t see us walking away, even if we do pay yer toll, you ugly son of a whore,” Seregil replied. “So I’d just as soon keep my purse, if it’s all the same to you.”

The leader’s smirk widened. “Suit yourself, then.

With that, he lunged at Seregil while two other men at Alec’s end closed on him.

Clearly the ambushers had chosen this spot on purpose; there was enough room to swing a sword, but no way for their victims to get past them. Seregil heard the clash of blades behind him as he met the man’s attack and blocked his swing. Springing back, he had just time enough to pull his poniard from the back of his belt before the man and another came at him. They worked like wolves, one trying to distract him so the other could get under his guard. Seregil managed to block them both, but realized that it wasn’t common brigands they were dealing with. These men fought like soldiers, fearlessly pressing their attack. Seregil beat them back and glanced back at Alec, who was holding his own against a big man while the others stood back and cheered their fellow on.

“What was your regiment?” Seregil asked his attackers, poised to strike.

That won him a look of surprise. “What’s that to you?” the leader growled.

“I don’t fancy killing fellow veterans, is all,” Seregil told him. Alec was still fighting behind him, and Seregil heard someone go down.

“Eagle. You?”

“Queen’s Horse,” Seregil lied, since he knew Beka Cavish’s regiment the best.

“You don’t have a rider’s stance,” the man scoffed.

“That’s what they said when they cashiered me, but that don’t make it not so.”

Thinking Seregil off his guard, the leader’s second came after him, slashing at his belly. Seregil narrowly sidestepped disembowelment, caught the man’s blade on his quillon, and drove the poniard’s thin three-sided blade deep between his ribs and up into his heart. He jumped back again as the dying man collapsed with a surprised look on his face.

“You bastard!” the leader snarled, coming at Seregil in earnest this time, having the measure of his foe now. He was skilled, and drove Seregil back with brute force until he nearly collided with Alec. Seregil stepped awkwardly, lost

his footing in the mud and went down, still clutching his sword. Before he could raise it, the man came at him with a killing blow, only to be struck in the side of the head by Alec, who quickly wrenched his blade free of the skull and whirled back in time to run a man through.

The dying man collapsed without a sound on top of Seregil, knocking the breath out of him and impaling himself awkwardly on Seregil’s upraised blade in the process. Heaving the man off, Seregil rolled to his knees in time to miss being skewered by the third man on his side. The fellow overreached and Seregil got past his guard and stabbed him through the heart, getting a face full of blood for his trouble.

Scrambling to his feet, he wiped it from his eyes, pulled his sword from the body at his feet, and turned to help Alec.