This is what was overheard

"Slants!" Sheung swore. I've got nothing.  "Its like he just disappeared."  The small man threw his pendulum down onto the map with his good hand.

Vincenti overheard the little man swearing to himself.  He let his eyes flutter open, the cacophony of memories quieting to a din, then the separate shouts of his past lives until they became merely a background conversation.  He got up from his chair in the corner and went over to his master.

"Can I reach anything for you Sheung?  Get something from kitchen or cupboard?"

"Slants, Arthur is gone!"

Vincenti's slow beating heart fluttered in disappointment.  "But the wards..."

"Have been dissolved by someone or something.  I'm not the best mage around..."

To have Sheung admitting aloud that fact pointed to how distressed the little man must be.

"Do you think he's been discovered?"  Vincenti asked.

"No way of knowing.  Gods I hope Charue is still all right.  Tolo came and went just before you got back saying another several slimes had been abducted..."

"Children."  Vincenti corrected and then regretted speaking.

Sheung merely glared at him.  "Come closer, your glamour looks odd."

Vincenti stepped towards the wheelchair.

"I must be slipping, your golem roots are showing.  I'll need to rework your glamour again.  Remind me next week."

"If people know what I am..."

"If I can get you from the runners before I can do so again.  Don't worry you won't be pressed into service with that lot."  Sheung spat.  The reassurance, however did nothing for Vincenti who wanted to spend as little time with the runners as possible.  Golems were rare commoditiy these days. 

There was a knock on the door.  Sheung stopped, Vincenti's breath stopped in his chest.  Another knock.

"Hold your tail, I'm coming."

Sheung wheeled over to the door while Vincenti retreated behind the curtain that seperated the two lower rooms.

The mage opened the door, a man in a well tailored black suit and matching bowler was standing there.  He wore a monocle and instead of looking at Sheung as the door opened seemed to be scanning the room.  Still without looking at the small man, he said,

"August Sheung I presume?"

"And what if I am?  Are you in need of a potion?  An antidote?"

"Not so much of a what, as an..."  The man's eyes stopped at the curtain "It..."

He turned his head to someone outside out of Sheung's view.  "It's here.  We found it!"

Sheung could hear several pairs of footsteps begin up the stairs of the front.

Sheung backed up slightly and attempted to close the door when the man in the bowler put his foot in the jamb.  Sheung turned and said "Vincenti, be a good sport and get me some lanic please, while I deal with our guests?"

Vincenti flushed and ran towards the stairs to the basement.  He saw other men in bowlers dart passed the window, presumably to cover his escape at the back door.  In the front room he heard Sheung's chair being tipped over as the door burst in.  He wanted to run to aid his master, but his master's orders bound him to his course of action.

In the front room, Sheung rolled away from the chair, producing a small tube from his lizard arm sleeve when he stopped.  He brought the tube up to his lips and puffed, the dart catching the first bowler man in the back of the neck.  Two other men in bowlers charged in the front door.  They saw the man with the monicle sprawl face down on the floor, sliding until his momentum had evaporated.  Sheung managed to get another dart in the tube and fell one of the two assailants.  The third kicked the
tube out of his lizard fingers.

He held up his hands in front of his face to ward off another kick.

"Its antidotes you'll be wanting.  They have minutes until the poison stops their hearts.  Its my own brew and only I can save them."

The third bowler man looked at his compatriots and lowered his leg.

"That's better, now help me to my chair."

The bowler man helped Sheung into his chair, righting it and placing the tiny mage in the seat.

"Very well now, lets discuss payment first, shall we?"

Sheung was answered by the bowler man reaching into his suit pocket, pulling out a blackjack and receiving a sharp rap to his head.  The world exploded in stars then darkness as Sheung lost consciousness.

Vincenti could hear the scuffle upstairs as he ran through the shelved warren that was the basement.  Along the east wall he pulled out a box labeled lanic", the shelf immediately to the boxes right opened, revealing a dark tunnel that didn't come up higher than Vincenti's mid-thigh.  He replaced teh box and shimmied into the tunnel just as the door closed.  As silently as he could he made his way to the tunnel's exit some three blocks way.  In the distance he could hear Sheung's basement being destroyed as the men in Bowler hats looked for him.