The Nameless One frowns.  

“‘Ask the skull.’ That’s what they already told me. Skull was taken in the attack. Seems nobody knows the chant without it. What collectors do you remember?”

He widens his eyes at that news.

“Not any that have passed by here recently.”

The dustman is quiet for some time.

“There’s a fat brown man who dresses like a Fated.  Might be from Clapper.  Never spoke to him.  A woman… want to say from Ragpicker’s.  Kind of half a harlot and half a basher.  Can’t recall her name.”

“Then there is the one in Flint Court, Grundsley or Langley or some such,  but I don’t think he’s your catch.  He’d be the most regular of any collectors working The Hive.  Tobacco merchant.  Known to keep a ripe pile of dead waifs and drunkards in his yard, or so they say.  Doesn’t figure he’d plan to do any thieving.”

He adds almost as an afterthought.  “But don’t put him in the book.  Don’t off him.  He’s been useful to us before.”

“No killing.”

He looks off into the street and grunts again.

“What others you know of?”

He shakes his head slowly.

“Cloth cap. Hair turning gray. Whiskers, maybe?”

His face brightens.  “Yes, that fits.  That's the man that did it?”

“So they told me.”

The Nameless One gives a curt nod and departs. “Thankee.”

If the dustman watches him carefully, he’ll find that The Nameless One turns in the wrong direction to be headed for Flint Court.

Outside, he walks a hundred yards or so to a place outside of the flow of traffic to orient himself.  He has only a few memories of the Hive, but he does remember much of Morte’s words.

Flint Court. Is there any place nearby he can stand outside of vision of passersby?

There’s actually quite a bit of foot traffic here.  It’s one of the wider streets, and there are even an occasional coach or cart being pulled by four legged creatures, despite Sigil’s famously deadly environment for beasts of burden and pets.

On one side of the street is a squat building of mud bricks that presents a rectangular alcove, falling back from the street.  It's maybe twice the size of a family dinner table.  The footprint of the recess is partially occupied with a large, vertical, cast-iron pipe, as thick as an adult pine tree, that rises up to the second story and then makes an abrupt elbow joint to hook into the building.  It must be part of Sigil’s inner architecture.

Sure. He’s not going to skulk behind the tube like some schoolboy playing spies but he will stand in the alcove for a moment.

That encounter went better than he had hoped. The tobacconist is a strong lead, and one corroborated separately by both Morte and the dustman.

So, calling up the mental image of Morte’s map: Flint Court is basically east and maybe a bit north of the mortuary, so… that should place it some miles north west of the Factry district, approximately. Morte said they were what, three or four miles from the tower, and he already walked about one mile.

To get to Flint Court he is going to go east… which is the direction going out the far end of the dustman’s square. He needs to go somewhere between zero and three miles further east, and If he meets the ditch he’ll know he’s about on the right longitude line. He doesn’t know how to recognize Sighs, but it sounds dismal.

When he sees the streets clean up a bit, or maybe if he starts to see houses of industry or foundry chimneys, then he’ll turn left, and then after fifteen minutes walking he should begin making inquiries for Flint Court. Once he’s there he’ll hang around stalls or public houses asking for tobacconists till he confirms he’s got the one with the big yard and the foul corpses stacked in it.

There's going to be a time limit, measured in hours at most, after which the dustmen as a whole will have a full description of his face, body, and tattoos. It would be surprising if the dustman in the pavilion were not troubled enough about their conversation to follow up, even if he is the sole member of his order manning that post. And it's likely the real abbot Traff's response to the breakout will involve messengers being sent to all dustmen in the Hive.

An old woman pushing a cart stacked high with filthy garments has approached and set up shop in front of him, blocking one of the two paths of egress from the alcove.  The other exit is around the opposite side of the tube.

Amusing.

First and foremost, this is a mission to find the journal. But if he fails in that while still finding the tobacconist, there may be other information he can glean.

He should take a moment and think about this logically. Given his five scenarios, what should he expect to see if each is true?

• Option a) He hears from the locals that a portal went wrong and suddenly opened upon an active theater of the Blood War. Powerful spell casters poured out. Mind flayers were seen. A gelatinous monstrosity sent by the outer gods of chaos struck a hundred Hivedwellers insane with its terrible musical piping
• Option b) Witnesses describe a singular explosion or flash neither preceded nor followed by sounds of any altercation. He discovers signs of booby traps and carefully laid fishing wire where his body was found. The remains of a complicated machine decorated in strange characters lies in a ruin within an alley
• Option c) Whatever he encounters will provide a surprisingly strong clue to do an exact thing, be at a precise place at a precise time, or to draw a very particular conclusion with high certainty (He'll have to check in on this one after the fact)
• Option d) - Mundane local street bloods empowered by some artifact or magical spell boast in a local bar of having killed a gray skinned wizard and made away with a hefty bounty. His journal is found in the keeping of the tobacconist, who found it by chance and plans to pawn it
• Option e) - He witnesses any event that is bizarre, intricate, and connected with his own person. Maybe the spot his body was found has an immaculately clean doll house stuffed with moldy cheese. An enchantment spell plays fiddle music and shouts 'swing your partner to the Styx' over and over again. A brigade of halfling sling archers salutes him as "The Gray Spectre"

He should also make an attempt at being less conspicuous. If he can secure a coat or shirt sleeves and some trousers and shoes, he can at least pass without comment as a merchant's guard.

He suddenly wonders about the degree to which ruffians are press ganged in the street into service or capture in the finer parts of Sigil. Harmonium officers, a favored faction employed by the Lady, he knows, are the general peacekeepers. But he hasn’t seen any yet.

Probing his memory of walking to this place from where he left Morte, what were the species, caste, and attire for the last ten passersby he can recall?

On his way to the dustmen’s pavilion he saw:

1. A pale skinned male humanoid youth with shoulder-length white hair and ears that extended upwards several inches.  The outer jacket was voluminous in its shoulder padding
2. A gnoll with a broad brimmed hat and muscular arms, a crossbow strapped to his back, sitting high in the driver’s seat of a coach pulled by two tapirs
3. A round-bodied human woman dressed in some sort of black clerical vestments, holding the hand of a small boy and walking in front of him, pulling him along unwillingly
4. A human woman of a caste similar to The Nameless One, but with a chocolate-colored complexion, with hair in many braided strands and wearing a traveling cloak
5. A creature the size of a dwarf but lighter in build, with a broad blue mustache and wearing a red tapered cap and a smart velvet suit
6. A fat, peach-skinned man in a tricorn hat and white shirtsleeves
7. A githzerai male scantily attired in open tunic and skin-tight pants, probably a streetwalker, and one of the only humanoids walking barefoot through these streets
8. A female giant, eight or nine feet tall, with half her scalp shaved, an unpleasant face, an irritated purple scar passing through the brow of one eye, dressed in some kind of military uniform with brass buttons and carrying a great halberd with a shaft too thick to be comfortably wielded by a smaller creature
9. A light-skinned human female street urchin in dirty, baggy clothes, too young and too grimy to be of use to anyone
10. A skinny human male of middle age, dressed in well-worn clark’s clothes, keeping his gaze downcast and walking swiftly

He isn’t confident whether that’s a representative picture of this part of The Hive or just what caught his eye in passing.

Judging by the milieu of this part of the city, what’s most likely to stand out in the memories of others will be his unclothed torso, the tattoos, and the muscular body. His first priority once he has the means should be to buy long sleeves and trousers.

He declines to interact with the old woman. He moves the other way around the iron tube and sticks his head out into the street, looking both ways for the telltale brown of the Dustman’s robe.

He finds that as he rounds the alcove the woman has somehow flipped the position of her cart, and now quickly pushes it in front of him on this side, blocking him once again.

Right.  

Okay. Sigil is being weird, and he's being made a fool by someone. 

“Grandam,” he says, and nods.

The crone glances at him bemusedly and then goes back to what she was doing, rummaging about.  She stands on the far side of her cart, forming a barrier between them.

He notices a washboard tied to one corner leg of the cart, with a basin and some hot coals in a fold-away compartment.  She appears to be preparing to wash some of her pile of filthy garments.

Okay. He can problem-solve this.

He backs up slowly, all the way to the alcove wall behind the tube, such that he can see both the woman and the cart on one side, and the clear unobstructed gap of several feet on the other side.

He makes as if to go to the open side, takes a step, pauses. How does she react?

She does not react.  She's largely obscured by the iron tube now, working on the other side of her cart.  She’s humming quietly to herself now.

He walks out through the gap into the street.