Point of Hopes

Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett

"Point Of Hopes: the first pointsman book . "

Prologue

the long room was cool, and very quiet, not even the sound of a house clock to disturb the silence. The magist who sat in the guest’s chair by the empty fireplace was very aware of that unnerving quiet, and folded her hands in her wide sleeves to stop herself fidgeting with her rings. The room smelled of sour ash, as though the fire hadn’t been lit in a week or more, for all that it was only the last day of Lepidas and the Rat Moon. The spring came late and cold in the Ajanes; she would have been glad of a fire to cut the chill that clung to the stones of floor and walls. The heavy tapestries and the one paneled wall did little to warm the room. She looked around the room again and was reassured by the sight of silver on the sideboard and wax candles in the carved‑crystal holders, though she could have sworn there had been a case‑clock by the window the last time she’d come to Mailhac.

The landame of Mailhac–who had been plain Jausarande d’Orsandi, one of five daughters with sixteen quarterings and no prospects, before she had made her bargain with the magist’s employer–saw that look from the doorway, and knew it instantly for what it was. To see a shopkeeper’s daughter, or worse, presuming to judge her own financial standing, to count the value of silver that had belonged to this estate for generations, was intolerable. Still, it had to be tolerated, at least a little longer, and she smoothed her skirts, displaying long, fair hands against the rich green silk, and swept forward into the room.

The magist rose to her feet, the drab black of her gown falling in easy folds over a plain travelling suit, the wine‑colored skirt and bodice dull even in the doubled sunlight that seeped in through the flawed glass of the single window. “Maseigne.”

“Magist.” The landame acknowledged the other woman’s greeting with a nod, deliberately did not sit, and was pleased to see the magist stifle a sigh at the reminder of her place. “What brings you here?”

What do you think? The magist swallowed that response, and said more moderately, “We are concerned about the terms of your loan. About your meeting them.”

Her voice was common, the sharp vowels of the capital’s poorer districts barely blunted by her education. The landame achieved a sneer. “I’m surprised to see you here on such an errand, magist. I thought you were concerned with more important parts of your master’s–business.”

The magist shrugged, shoulders moving under the heavy fabric. “You can take it as a compliment to your rank, if you like. Or you can assume–if you haven’t already heard–that it’s just because Douvregn was arrested for dueling, and we haven’t found a knife to replace him yet. As you please, maseigne.”

The landame caught her breath at the insult–how dare she suggest that her employer would send a common street bully like Douvregn to deal with an Ajanine noble?–but controlled herself with an effort that made her hands tremble. She stilled them, stilled her thoughts, reminding herself that she, they, needed time to finish the work at hand, time to get all the pieces into place, but once that was accomplished, neither she nor any of her rank would ever have to crawl to folk like the magist again. “Douvregn was getting above himself, then,” she observed, and was annoyed when the magist grinned.

“No question, maseigne, one prefers to leave blood sports to the seigneury. However, that’s hardly the matter under discussion.” The magist let her smile fade to the look of grave inquiry that had intimidated far less cultured opponents. “We expect the gold at Midsummer–by the First Fair, maseigne, not like last year.”

The landame met the other woman’s stare without flinching, though inwardly she was cursing the impulse that had made her delay the previous year’s payment. That had been petty spite, nothing more, but it seemed as though it would haunt her dealings now, interfering with her current plans. She said, “But the payment was made by Midsummer, magist, as agreed in our bond. I cannot be held responsible for the vagaries of the weather.”

The magist’s mouth tightened fractionally. She knew perfectly well that the other had held back the previous year’s payment until the last possible moment, though she doubted that the landame had any real conception of the effects that delay had had on her employer’s business. “Of course not, maseigne, but, as one who is experienced in such matters, may I suggest you allow more time for bad weather this year? The roads between Astreiant and the Ajanes can be difficult even at the height of summer.”

The landame bent her head with a passable imitation of grace, hiding her anger at the condescension in the other’s voice. “I’ll take that suggestion to heart, magist. As you say, I’m not as familiar as you are with the proper handling of trade.”

“How could you be, maseigne?” the magist answered, and the landame was suddenly uncertain if her insult had even been recognized.

“When will you be leaving us?” she asked abruptly, and wondered then if she’d spoken too soon.

“In the morning,” the magist answered. “As soon after second sunrise as we can manage, I think. Enjoyable as your hospitality is, maseigne”– the flicker of her eyes around the chilly room pointed the irony of the words –“we have business to attend.”

“Of course,” the landame answered, hiding her rage, and the magist moved toward the door.

“Then if you’ll permit me, maseigne, I’d like a word or two with your steward.”

The landame bit back her first furious answer–how dare the woman interfere in the running of a noble’s household?–and waved a hand in gentle dismissal. “As you wish.”

“Thank you, maseigne,” the magist answered, and bowed before slipping from the room.

The landame swore as the door closed behind her, looking around for something to throw, but controlled her temper with an effort. This was not the time, was too early to tip her hand–but when the time came, she vowed silently, when my kinswoman sits on the throne, then you will pay, magist, you and your employer both. That thought, the reminder of her plans, steadied her, and she turned toward the chamber she used for her private business. The catch was hidden in the paneling, hard to find even for someone who knew where to look, and she had to run her thumb over the carved clusters of fruit before she found it. She unlatched the door and went on into the little room. It smelled of stale scent and windows that had been closed too long, and she made a face and flung open the shutters. The air that rushed in was chill despite the sunlight–the estate lay in the high hills, and the manor had been built for defense rather than gracious living–and she considered for a moment calling a servant to relight the fire in the stove. But that would take too long; she had come here only to calm herself with the reminder of her plans, and would be gone again before anyone would hear the summons bell. She went to the case that held the estate’s books instead, unlocked it, and reached behind the cracking volume that held the estate’s charter to pull out a thin, iron‑bound box. She set that down on the table, fumbling beneath her bodice for its key, and unlocked it, stood looking with satisfaction at the papers that nearly filled it. The handwriting was her own, laborious and old‑fashioned–these were not matters that could be trusted to any secretary, no matter how discreet–and the words, the plans they outlined, were frankly treasonous. But the starchange was almost upon them, the Starsmith, ruler of monarchs and astrologers, was about to pass from the Shell to the Charioteer, and that meant that times were ripe for change. The Queen of Chenedolle was getting old, was childless, and had little prospect now of bearing an heir of her own body; with no direct heir, the succession was open to anyone within the far‑flung royal family who possessed the necessary astrological kinship. Law and simple prudence demanded that she name her successor before the starchange, before the events that shift portended actually came to pass. The landame allowed herself a slight, almost rueful smile, studying the jagged letters. In practice, there were only a handful of possible candidates–the queen’s first cousin, the Palatine Marselion chief, among them; then the palatines Sensaire and Belvis, both granddaughters of the previous monarch’s sister; and finally the Metropolitan of Astreiant, who was only the daughter of the queen’s half sister but was rumored to have the queen’s personal favor, as well as a favorable nativity. Her own chosen candidate, the Palatine Belvis, to whom she was related by marriage as well as the more general kinship among the nobles of the Ile’nord and the Ajanes, was rumored to be deeply out of favor at court, for all that her stars were easily as good as Astreiant’s. The landame’s smile widened then. But that would change, she vowed silently. She had taken the first steps toward ensuring Belvis’s accession at the Spring Balance; the next step was well in hand–as long as the magist’s employer could be kept at arm’s length until after Midsummer.

She sorted through the top layer of papers–letters to her agent in the capital, blotted accounts, guarded letters to Belvis herself, and the palatine’s equally guarded replies–and finally found the sheet she wanted. It was not her own, but from her agent: an accounting of the money already spent and a request for more, along with its proposed uses. Most of it would go to the half dozen astrologers who were at the heart of her plan; the rest would go to the printers who sold the broadsheets that promoted Belvis’s cause and to the dozen or more minor clerks and copyists who carried out her agent’s business at court and in the tangles of the city bureaucracy. She looked at the total again, grimacing, but copied the number onto a slip of paper, and closed the box again, pressing hard on the lid to make sure the lock caught.

“Maseigne?” The man who peered around the edge of the door tipped his head to one side like one of the fat gargoyles that infested the manor’s upper stories. “I hope everything’s all right–she, that so‑called magist, is hardly a cultured person. Hardly someone one would choose to handle such a delicate business…” He saw the landame’s eyebrows lift at that, and added, “If one had had other options, of course. I thank my stars I’ve been able to offer some assistance there.”

“And I’m grateful,” the landame said, with only the slightest hesitation. She placed the box back into the cabinet, set the estate’s charter back against it, then closed the double door and relocked it.

The man straightened his head. He had discarded his usual robe for the duration of the magist’s visit, wore a slightly out‑of‑fashion suit, his linen fussily gathered at neck and sleeves, cravat fastened in a style too young for his sixty years. “I take it all went well, maseigne? She had no suspicions?”

“I don’t think so.” The landame shook her head, her lip curling. “No, I’m sure not. All she wanted was the money.”

The old man nodded, his ready smile answering her contempt. “Good. Excellent, maseigne, and I understand she’s leaving tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“Better still,” the man said, and rubbed his hands together. “And she said nothing? No mention of the clocks, or the–well, of your investments?”

The things she had sold to finance his work, he meant, and she knew it perfectly well. A faint frown crossed her brow, but she said only, “No, nothing. As I said.”

“Of course, maseigne, forgive my concern. But things are delicately balanced just now, and I wouldn’t want to take any unnecessary chances–”

“No,” the landame said firmly. “No more do I. But she said nothing.” Fleetingly, she remembered the way the other woman had looked around the outer room, the way her eyes had run over the silver and the wax candles and the blown glass, but shook the memory away. The magist had seen only the proper signs of wealth and standing; there was nothing to make her suspicious.

“Even about the clocks?” the man continued. He saw the landame’s frown deepen to a scowl, and spread his hands, ducking his head in apology. “Forgive me, maseigne, but she is a magist, and that is the one thing that might rouse her suspicions. And we cannot afford that, not yet.”

“She said nothing,” the landame said, again. “And I didn’t see any indication that she’d noticed anything.” In spite of herself, her eyes strayed to the empty spot on the shelf, imperfectly filled by a statue of a young man with a bunch of grapes, where her own case‑clock had once stood. “My people aren’t exactly pleased by that, you know. The clock in Anedelle is too far away, they tell me, they can barely hear the chime unless the wind’s in the right quarter–”

The man held up his hand, and the landame checked herself. “Maseigne, I know. But it is necessary, I give you my word on it. To have clocks in the house now would–well, it would offer too many chances of revealing our plans ahead of time, and that would never do.”

The landame sighed. She was no magist, knew no more of those arts than most people–less, if the truth were told; her education had been neglected, and in her less proud moments, she admitted it. If he said he couldn’t work while there were clocks in the house, well, she would have to rely on him. “Very well,” she said, but the man heard the doubt in her voice.

“Maseigne, what can I do to convince you? I only want what you want, the accession of a proper queen to the throne of Chenedolle, and an end to the erosion of noble privilege. And I assure you, if the clocks–and very fine clocks they were, too, which is part of the problem–if they had stayed in the manor, our plan would be betrayed as soon as I begin the first operations. They cannot remain–and none can be brought back into the household, not by anyone, maseigne. Otherwise, I cannot offer you my services.”

His tone was as deferential as always, eager, even, but the landame heard the veiled threat beneath his fawning. “Very well, I said. There will be no clocks in the house.”

“Thank you, maseigne, I knew you would understand.” The man bowed deeply, folding his hands in front of him as though he still wore his magist’s robes. “I think, then, that I can promise you every success.”

“I trust so,” the landame said, grimly.

“I assure you, maseigne,” the man answered. “The time is propitious. I cannot fail.”

1

it was, they all agreed later, a fair measure of Rathe’s luck that he was the one on duty when the butcher came to report his missing apprentice. It was past noon, a hot day, toward the middle of the Sedeion and the start of the Gargoyle Moon, and the winter‑sun was just rising, throwing its second, paler shadows across the well‑scrubbed floor of Point of Hopes. Rathe stared moodily at the patterns thrown by the barred windows, and debated adding another handful of herbs to the stove. The fire was banked to the minimum necessary to warm the pointsmen’s food, but the heat rolled out from it in waves, bringing with it the scent of a hundred boiled dinners. Jans Ranazy, the other pointsman officially on this watch, had decided to pay for a meal at the nearest tavern rather than stand the heat another minute, and Rathe could hardly blame him. He wrinkled his nose as a particularly fragrant wave struck him–the sharp sweet scent of starfire warring with the dank smell of cabbages–but decided that anything more would only make it worse.

He sighed and turned his attention to the station daybook that lay open on the heavy work table in front of him, skimming through the neat listing of the previous day’s occurrences. Nothing much, or at least nothing out of the ordinary: this was the fair season, coming up on the great Midsummer Fair itself, and there were the usual complaints of false weight and measure, and of tainted or misrepresented goods. And, of course, the runaways. There were always runaways in the rising summer, when the winter‑sun shone until midnight, and the roads were clear and open and crowded enough with other travelers to present at least the illusion of safety. And the Silklanders and Leaguers were hiring all through the summer fairs, looking for unskilled hands to man their boats and their caravans, and everyone knew of the merchants–maybe half a dozen over three generations, men and women with shops in the Mercandry now, and gold in their strongboxes, people who counted their wealth in great crowns–who’d begun their careers running off to sea or to the highways.

Rathe sighed again, and flipped back through the book, checking the list. Eight runaways reported so far, two apprentices–both with the brewers, no surprises there; the work was hard and their particular master notoriously strict–and the rest laborers from the neighborhoods around Point of Hopes, Point of Knives, Docks’ Point, even Coper’s Point to the south. Most of them had worked for their own kin, which might explain a lot–but still, Rathe thought, they’re starting early this year. It lacked a week of Midsummer; usually the largest number took off during the Midsummer Fair itself.

A bell sounded from the gate that led into the stable yard, and then another from above the main door, which lay open to the yard. Rathe looked up, and the room went dark as a shape briefly filled the doorway. The man stepped inside, and stood for a moment blinking as his eyes adjusted to the light. He was big, tall, and heavy‑bellied beneath a workingman’s half‑coat, but the material was good, as was the shirt beneath it, and as he turned, Rathe saw the badge of a guildmaster in the big man’s cap.

“Help you, master?” he asked, and the big man turned, still blinking in the relative darkness.

“Pointsman?” He took a few steps toward the table. “I’m here to report a missing apprentice.”

Rathe nodded, repressing his automatic response, and kicked a stool away from the table. “Have a seat, master, and tell me all about it.”

The big man sat down cautiously. Up close, he looked even bigger, with a jowled, heat‑reddened face and lines that could mean temper or self‑importance bracketing his mouth and creasing his forehead. Rathe looked him over dispassionately, ready to dismiss this as another case of an apprentice seizing the chance to get out of an unsatisfactory contract, when he saw the emblem on the badge pinned to the man’s close‑fitting cap. Toncarle, son of Metenere, strode crude but unmistakable across the silver oval, knives upheld: the man was a butcher, and that changed everything. The Butchers’ Guild wasn’t the richest guild in Astreiant, but it was affiliated with the Herbalists and the scholar‑priests of Metenere, and that meant its apprentices learned more than just their craft. An apprentice would have to be a fool–or badly mistreated–to leave that place.

The big man had seen the change of expression, faint as it was, and a wry smile crossed his face. “Ay, I’m with the Butchers, pointsman. Bonfais Mailet.”

“Nicolas Rathe. Adjunct point,” Rathe answered automatically. He should have known, or guessed, he thought. They weren’t far from the Street of Knives, and that was named for the dozen or so butcher’s halls that dominated the neighborhood. “You said you were missing an apprentice, Master Mailet?”

Mailet nodded. “Her name’s Herisse Robion. She’s been my prentice for three years now.”

“That makes her, what, twelve, thirteen?” Rathe asked, scribbling the name into the daybook. “Herisse–that’s a Chadroni name, isn’t it?”

“Twelve,” Mailet answered. “And yes, the name’s Chadroni, but she’s city‑born and bred. I think her mother’s kin were from the north, but that’s a long time back.”

“So she wouldn’t have been running to them?” Rathe asked, and added the age.

“I doubt it.” Mailet leaned forward, planting both elbows on the table. A faint smell rose from his clothes, not unpleasant, but naggingly familiar. Rathe frowned slightly, trying to place it, and then remembered: fresh‑cut peppers and summer gourds, the cool green tang of the sliced flesh. It was harvest time for those crops, and butchers all across the city would be carving them for the magists to preserve. He shook the thought away, and drew a sheet of paper from the writing box.

“Tell me what happened.”

“She’s gone.” Mailet spread his hands. “She was there last night at bedtime, or so Sabadie–that’s my journeyman, one of them, anyway, the one in charge of the girl‑prentices–so Sabadie swears to me. And then this morning, when they went to the benches, I saw hers was empty. The other girls admitted she wasn’t at breakfast, and her bed was made before they were up, but Herisse was always an early riser, so none of them said anything, to me or to Sabadie. But when she wasn’t at her bench, well… I came to you.”

Rathe eyed him warily, wondering how best to phrase his question. “She’s only been gone a few hours,” he began at last, “not even a full day. Are–is it possible she went out to meet someone, and somehow was delayed?”

Mailet nodded. “And I think she’s hurt, or otherwise in trouble. My wife and I, after we got the prentices to work, we went up and searched her things. All her clothes are there, and her books. She wasn’t planning to be gone so long, of that I’m certain. She knows the work we had to do today, she wouldn’t have missed it without sending us word if she could.”

Rathe nodded back, impressed in spite of himself. Even if Mailet were as choleric as he looked, a place in the Butchers’ Guild–an apprenticeship that taught you reading and ciphering and the use of an almanac, and set you on the road to a prosperous mastership–wasn’t to be given up because of a little temper. “Had she friends outside your house?” he asked, and set the paper aside. “Or family, maybe?” He pushed himself up out of his chair and Mailet copied him, his movements oddly helpless for such a big man.

“An aunt paid her fees,” Mailet said, “but I heard she was dead this past winter. The rest of them–well, I’d call them useless, and Herisse didn’t seem particularly fond of them.”

Rathe crossed to the wall where his jerkin hung with the rest of the station’s equipment, and shrugged himself into the stiff leather. His truncheon hung beneath it, and he belted it into place, running his thumb idly over the crowned tower at its top. “Do you know where they live?”

“Point of Sighs, somewhere,” Mailet answered. “Sabadie might know, or one of the girls.”

“I’ll ask them, then,” Rathe said. “Gaucelm!”

There was a little pause, and then the younger of the station’s two apprentices appeared in the doorway. “Master Nico?”

“Is Asheri about, or is it just you?”

“She’s by the stable.”

Asheri was one of half a dozen neighborhood children, now growing into gawky adolescence, who ran errands for the point station. “I’m off with Master Mailet here, about a missing apprentice–not a runaway, it looks like. I’m sending Asheri for Ranazy, you’ll man the station until he gets here.”

Gaucelm’s eyes widened–he was young still, and hadn’t stood a nightwatch, much less handled the day shift alone–but he managed a creditably offhand nod. “Yes, Master Nico.”

Rathe nodded back, and turned to Mailet. “Then let me talk to Asheri, Master Mailet, and we’ll go.”

Asheri was waiting in the stable doorway, a thin, brown girl in a neatly embroidered cap and bodice, her skirts kilted to the knee against the dust. She listened to Rathe’s instructions–fetch Ranazy from the Cazaril Grey where he was eating, and then tell Monteia, the chief point who had charge of Point of Hopes, what had happened and bring back any messages–with a serious face. She caught the copper demming he tossed her with an expert hand, then darted off ahead of them through the main gate. Rathe followed her more decorously, and then gestured for Mailet to lead the way.

Mailet’s house and workshop lay in the open streets just off the Customs Road, about a ten‑minute walk from Point of Hopes. It looked prosperous enough, though not precisely wealthy; the shutters were all down, forming a double counter, and a journeyman and an older apprentice were busy at the meat table, knives flashing as they disjointed a pair of chickens for a waiting maidservant. She was in her twenties and very handsome, and a knife rose into the air, catching the light for an instant as it turned end over end, before the apprentice had snatched the meat away and the knife landed, quivering, in the chopping board. He bowed deeply, and offered the neatly cut chicken to the maidservant. She took it, cocking her head to one side, and the journeyman, less deft or more placid than his junior, handed her the second carefully packaged bird. She took that, too, and, turning, said something over her shoulder that had both young men blushing and grinning. Mailet scowled.

“Get that mess cleaned up,” he said, gesturing to the bloodied board. “And, you, Eysi, keep your mind on your work before you lose a finger.”

“Yes, master,” the apprentice answered, but Rathe thought from the grin that he was less than chastened.

Mailet grunted, and pushed past him into the shop. “Young fool. And the pity of it is, if he makes a mistake with that trick, it’ll be Perrin who loses a finger.”

“How many people do you have here?” Rathe asked.

“Four journeymen, two boys and two girls, and then a dozen prentices, six of each. And my woman and myself. She’s co‑master with me.”

“Do they all live here?”

“The apprentices, of course,” Mailet answered, “they’ve two big rooms under the roof–with a separate stairway to each, I’m not completely a fool–and then the senior journeymen, that’s Perrin whom you saw, and Sabadie, they each have a room at the head of the stair. And Agnelle and myself live on the second floor. But Mickhel and Fridi board out–their choice, not mine.”

The door that gave onto the main hall opened then, and a dark‑skinned woman stepped through, tucking her hair back under her neat cap. She was close to Mailet’s age, and Rathe was not surprised to see the keys and coinpurse at her belt.

“Agnelle Fayor, my co‑master,” Mailet said, unnecessarily, and Rathe nodded.

“Mistress.”

“You’re the pointsman?” the woman asked, and Rathe nodded again.

“Then you’ll want to talk to the girls,” Fayor said, and looked at Mailet. “They’re almost done, I don’t think it’ll cause any more stir if he does.”

Mailet grinned, rather wryly, and Rathe said, “I take it the apprentices were upset, then?”

Mailet nodded.

Fayor said, “They didn’t know she was going to run, I’d stake my life on that.” She looked at Mailet, seemed to receive some silent signal, and went on, “We’ve had prentices run away before now, everyone has, but they’ve always told us first, given some warning.”

“Not in so many words, you understand,” Mailet interjected. “But you know.”

“Did Herisse have any special friends among the apprentices?” Rathe asked. “A leman, maybe? Somebody she might’ve confided in?”

Fayor’s mouth turned down at the corners. “I don’t hold with that. It causes all sorts of trouble.”

“You can’t stop it, though,” Mailet said. It had the sound of a long argument, and out of the corner of his eye, Rathe saw Fayor grimace expressively. “And it keeps their minds off the opposite sex.” Mailet looked back at the pointsman. “Sabadie would know if she had a leman. You can ask her.”

“Thanks. I’d like to talk to her. But right now, can you give me a description of Herisse?” Rathe had his tablets out, looked from Mailet to Fayor. The two exchanged looks.

“She’s an ordinary looking girl, pointsman, pretty enough, but not remarkable,” Fayor began.

“Tall for her age, though,” Mailet added, and Rathe noted that down, glancing up to ask, “And that’s twelve, right?”

Mailet nodded and took a breath, frowning with concentration.

“She has brown hair, keeps it long, but neat. Not missing any teeth yet. Brown eyes?” He looked at Fayor, who sighed.

“Blue. She has a sharp little face, but, as I said, nothing out of the ordinary.”

“What was she wearing, last time anyone saw her?”

“Last time I saw her, she was wearing a green skirt and bodice. Bottle green, the draper called it, and it’s trimmed with ribbon, darker. She had the same ribbon on her chemise, too, she liked the color. And that’s probably what she was wearing when she went missing, her other clothes are still in her room,” Fayor said. She spread her hands. “I don’t know what else I can tell you.”

Rathe closed his tablets. “That’s fine, thanks. Right–can I speak with Sabadie now?”

Mailet nodded. “I’ll take you to her. Mind the shop, Agnelle? And make sure Eysi doesn’t hurt himself with his fancy knife tricks.”

Fayor muttered something that did not bode well for the apprentice, and Rathe followed Mailet through the door into the main hall. The room was filled with the sunlight that streamed in through the windows at the top of the hall, and the air smelled sharply of vegetables. A dozen apprentices, conspicuous in blue smocks and aprons, stood at the long tables, boys on the left, girls on the right, while a woman journeyman stood at the center of the aisle, directing the work from among baskets of peppers and bright yellow summer gourds. Another journeyman, this one a woman in the black coat and yellow cravat of the Meteneran magists, stood toward the back of the room, one eye on the clockwork orrery that ticked away the positions of the suns and stars, the other on the sweating apprentices. From the looks of things, the piled white seeds and discarded stems, and the relatively small number of baskets of whole vegetables, the work had been going on for some time, and going well. The journeyman butcher turned, hearing the door, and came to join them, wiping her hands on her apron. Rathe was mildly surprised to see a woman in charge–butchery was traditionally a man’s craft–but then, the woman’s stars probably outweighed her sex.

“Just about done, master,” she said. “We’ve another two hours yet, and this is the last load for Master Guilbert.”

Mailet nodded, looking over the hall with an expert eye. “I brought the pointsman–his name’s Nicolas Rathe, out of Point of Hopes. Sabadie Grosejl, my senior journeyman. Can you spare Trijntje to talk to him?” He glanced at Rathe, and added, “Trijntje was probably Herisse’s closest friend.”

“She’s not much use to me today,” Grosejl said, rather grimly, and Rathe glanced along the line of girl‑apprentices, wondering which one it was. She wasn’t hard to pick out, after all: even at this distance, Rathe could tell she’d been crying, suspected from the hunch of her shoulder and the way she glared at the pepper under her knife that she was crying still.

“I’d like to talk to Sabadie as well,” he said, and the journeyman hesitated.

“Go on, I’ll take over here,” Mailet said. “Fetch him Trijntje when he’s done with you, and then you can get back to work.”

“Yes, Master,” Grosejl answered, and turned to face the pointsman, jamming her hands into the pockets of her smock beneath her apron. She was a tall woman, Leaguer pale, and her eyes were wary.

“So you’re in charge of the girl‑apprentices?” Rathe asked.

Grosejl nodded. “For my sins.” She grimaced. “They’re not so bad, truly, just–”

“Young?” Rathe asked, and the journeyman nodded.

“And now this has happened. Master Rathe, I don’t know what Master Mailet told you, but I don’t think Herisse ran away.”

“Oh?”

“She liked it here, liked the schooling and the work and the people–she didn’t tell Trijntje she was going, and she’d have done that for certain.”

“Was she Trijntje’s leman?” Rathe asked.

Grosejl hesitated, then nodded. “Master Mailet doesn’t really approve, nor the mistress, so there was nothing said or signed, but everyone knew it. You hardly saw one without the other. If she’d been planning to run away, seek her fortune on the road, they would have gone together.”

Rathe sighed. That was probably true enough–runaways often left in pairs or threes, either sworn lemen or best friends–and it probably also told him the answer to his next question. “You understand I have to ask this,” he began, and Grosejl shook her head.

“No, she wasn’t pregnant. That I can swear to. Mistress Fayor makes sure all the girls take the Baroness every day.”

“But if it didn’t work for her?” Rathe asked. The barren‑herb didn’t work for every woman; that was common knowledge, and one of the reasons the guilds generally turned a blind eye to the passionate friendships between the apprentices of the same gender. Better barren sex than a hoard of children filling the guildhalls.

Grosejl hesitated, then jerked her head toward a child of six or seven who was sweeping seeds into the piles of rubbish at the center of the hall. “That’s my daughter. There’d have been a place for her, and the child, if she was pregnant. More than there would have been with her family.”

“A bad lot?”

Grosejl shrugged. “Useless, more like. I met them once. The mother’s dead, the father drinks, the other two–boys, both of them, younger than her–run wild. I don’t know where they came up with the indenture money. But Herisse was glad to be away from them, that’s for sure.”

Rathe paused, considering what she’d told him. They all seemed very certain that Herisse Robion was no runaway, and from everything they said, he was beginning to believe it, too. And that was not a pleasant thought. There was no reason to kidnap a butcher’s apprentice– or rather, he amended silently, the only reasons were of the worst kind, madmen’s reasons, someone looking for a child, a girl, to rape, to hurt, maybe to kill. He could see in Grosejl’s eyes that she’d thought of the same things, and forced a smile. “There may be a good explanation,” he said, and knew it sounded lame. “Can I talk to Trijntje now?”

“Trijntje!” Grosejl beckoned widely, and the girl Rathe had picked out before put down her knife and came to join them, wiping furtively at her eyes with the corner of her sleeve. “This is Trijntje Ollre, pointsman. She and Herisse were best friends.”

“She was my leman,” Trijntje interjected, with a defiant glance at the older woman. “And something’s happened to her, pointsman. You have to find her. I’ve money saved–”

“I’m looking into it,” Rathe said. “We can talk fees if there’s extra work to be done.” And there won’t be, he vowed silently. I don’t take money from poor apprentices. But he had learned years ago that telling people he didn’t want their money only bred more distrust and uncertainty: what kind of a pointsman was he, how good could he be, if he didn’t take the payments that were a pointsman’s lot? Rathe dismissed that old grievance, and took Trijntje gently through her story, but there was nothing new to be learned. Herisse had gone to bed with the others, and had risen early and gone out, missing breakfast, but had not come back when Mailet opened the hall for work. She had taken neither clothes nor books nor her one decent hat pin, and had said nothing that would make Trijntje or anyone else think she wanted to run away.

“We were planning to run a workshop together,” Trijntje said, and gave a hopeless sniff. “Once we’d made masters.”

That would probably have come to nothing, Rathe knew–he remembered all too well the fierce but fleeting passions of his own adolescence–but he also remembered the genuine pain of those passing fancies. “I–we at Point of Hopes–will be treating this as more than a runaway,” he said. “We’ll do everything we can to find her.”

Trijntje looked at him with reddened eyes and said nothing.

Rathe walked back to Point of Hopes in less than good humor. Trouble involving children was always bad–of course, by law and custom, apprentice‑age was the end of childhood, but at the same time, no one expected apprentices to take on fully adult responsibilities. Herisse had been only in her second year of apprenticeship; she would have had–would have, he corrected himself firmly–six more to go before she could be considered for journeyman. It was still possible that she’d simply run away–maybe run from Trijntje Ollre, if she, Herisse, had grown out of that relationship, and been too softhearted, still too fond, to end it cleanly. Twelve‑year‑olds weren’t noted for their common sense, he could see one running away because she couldn’t find the words to end a friendship… He shook his head then, rejecting the thought before it could comfort him. Trijntje had spoken of their plans as firmly in the present tense, though that could be self‑deception; more to the point, the journeyman Grosejl had treated the relationship as ongoing, and she, if anyone, would have known of an incipient break. He would ask, of course, he had to ask, but he was already fairly confident of Grosejl’s answer. And that left only the worst answer: if Herisse hadn’t run, then someone had taken her. And there were no good reasons–no logical reasons, reasons of profit, the understandable motive of the knives and bravos and thieves who lived in the rookeries of Point of Sighs and Point of Graves–to steal a twelve‑year‑old apprentice butcher.

He took the long way back to the points station, along the Customs Road to Horse‑Copers’ Street, smelling more than ever of the stables in this weather, and dodged a dozen people, mostly women, a couple of men, bargaining for manure at the back gate of Farenz Hunna’s stable‑yard. Horse‑Copers’ Street formed the boundary between Point of Hopes and Point of Sighs, though technically both points stations shared an interest in the old caravanserai that formed a cul‑de‑sac just before the intersection of the Fairs Road and Horse‑Copers’. The ’Serry had long ago ceased to function as a market–or at least as a legal market, Rathe added, with an inward grin–and the seasonal stables that had served the caravaners had been transformed into permanent housing for sneak thieves, low‑class fences, laundry thieves, and an entire dynasty of pickpockets. What the ’Serry didn’t do was trade in blood–they left that to the hardier souls in Point of Graves–and he turned into the enclosed space without wishing for back‑up. But there had been trouble of that kind there once before, a child rapist, not officially dealt with, and he had questions for the people there.

The ’Serry was as crowded as ever, a good dozen children chasing each other barefoot through the beaten dust while their mothers gossiped in the dooryard of the single tavern and the gargoyles clustered on the low roofs, shrieking at each other. Below them, the low doors and windows were open to the warm air, letting in what little light they could. Another group was gathered around the old horse‑pool. Women in worn jerkins and mended skirts sat on the broad stone lip, talking quietly, while a chubby boy, maybe three or four summers old, waded solemnly in the shallow basin, holding the wide legs of his trousers up while he kicked the water into fans of spray that caught the doubled sun like diamonds. Rathe recognized at least one of them, Estel Quentier, big, broad‑bodied–and, if he was any judge, at least six months gone with child–and at the same moment heard a shrill whistle from one of the blank doorways. He didn’t bother to turn, knowing from experience that he would see no one, and saw heads turn all across the ’Serry. He was known–the people of the ’Serry knew most of the senior points by sight–and was not surprised to see several of the women who had been sitting by the fountain rise quickly and disappear into the nearest doorways. More faded back into the tavern, but he pretended not to see, kept walking toward the fountain. Estel Quentier put her hands on her hips, belly straining her bodice, but didn’t move, squinted up at him as he approached.

“And what does Point of Hopes want with us? This is Point of Sighs.”

“Just a question or two, Estel, nothing serious.” He nodded to her belly. “I take it you’re not working this fair season.”

Quentier made a face, but relaxed slightly. She was the oldest of the Quentier daughters, all of whom were pickpockets like their mother and grandmother before them; there was a brother, too, Rathe remembered, or maybe more than one, also in the family business. Estel had been effective mistress of the ’Serry since her mother’s death three years before, and she was a deft pickpocket, but a pregnant woman was both conspicuous and slow. “I’m an honest woman, Nico, I have to work to live.”

“So you’ll sell what they take?” Rathe asked, and smiled.

Quentier smiled back. “I deal in old clothes, found goods, all that sort of thing. I’ve my license from the regents, signed by the metropolitan herself if you want to see it.”

“If I’d come to check licenses,” Rathe said, with perfect truth, “I’d’ve brought a squad.”

“So what did you come here for, Nico?” Quentier leaned back a little, easing her back, and Rathe was newly aware of the women behind her, not quite out of earshot. He knew most of them: Quentier’s sister Annet, the third oldest, called Sofian for her ability to charm or fee the judges; the dark‑haired singer who was Annet’s favorite decoy; Cassia, another Quentier, thin and wiry; Maurina Tacon, who was either Annet’s or Cassia’s leman–it was hard to unwind the clan’s tangled relationships. They were dangerous, certainly, he knew better than to underestimate them, but if there were a fight, he thought, the immediate danger would come from the hulking man loitering in the tavern dooryard. He had a broom in his hand, and he drew it back and forth through the dirt, but his attention wasn’t on his job.

“There’s a girl gone missing, a butcher’s apprentice over in Point of Hopes,” he said simply, and was not surprised to see Quentier’s face contort as though she wanted to spit. Behind her, Cassia–LaSier, they called her, he remembered suddenly, for the length of her river‑dark hair–said something to her sister, who grinned, and did spit.

“What’s that to me, pointsman?” Estel Quentier said. “Apprentices run away every year.”

“She didn’t run,” Rathe answered. “She didn’t take her clothes or anything with her, and she liked her work. No cause to run, no place to run to.”

“So why do you come to me?” Quentier’s eyes were narrowed, on the verge of anger, and Rathe chose his words carefully.

“Because I remember four or five years ago, in your mother’s time, there was trouble of that sort out of the ’Serry. We knew who the man was, raped two girls, both apprentice‑age or a little older, but when we came to arrest him, he was gone. Your mother swore he’d been dealt with, was gone, and we didn’t ask questions, being as we knew your mother. But now…”

He let his voice trail off, and Quentier nodded once. “Now you’re asking.”

Rathe nodded back, and waited.

There was a little silence, and then Quentier looked over her shoulder. “Annet.”

Sofian took a few steps forward, so that she was standing at her sister’s side. She was a handsome woman–all the Quentiers were good‑looking, dark, and strong‑featured, with good bones–and her clothes were better than they looked. “I remember. Rancon Paynor, that was. He lodged here, he was Joulet Farine’s man’s cousin, or something like that. A farmer, said he was running from a debt he couldn’t pay.”

She looked down at her sister, and seemed to receive some kind of confirmation. “He’s not your man.”

“You’re very sure.”

Sofian met his gaze squarely. “I helped carry his body to the Sier.”

Rathe nodded slowly, not surprised. He remembered the case all too well, remembered both the victims–both alive and well now, thank Demis and her Midwives–and the frustration, so strong they could all almost taste it, when they’d come back to Point of Sighs empty‑handed. It was one of the few times they’d all agreed the chief point shouldn’t have taken the fee. But when Yolan Quentier said she’d deal with something, it stayed dealt with, and they’d all had to be content with that, much as they would have preferred to make the point and watch Paynor hang. It was good to know that he wouldn’t be cleaning up an earlier mistake, even if it meant he was back where he’d started.

“You’ll be going, then?” Quentier asked, and Rathe snapped back to the present.

“I told you, that was my business here. This time.”

Quentier nodded. “The runaways are starting early this year, or so they say. Girls running who shouldn’t. Is there anything we should be watching for, Nico?”

For Quentier to ask for help from a pointsman, even so obliquely, was unprecedented, and Rathe looked warily at her. What do you know that you’re not telling me? he wanted to say, but knew better than to ask that sort of question without something solid to trade for her answers. It was enough of an oddity–and maybe a kind of answer–for her to have asked at all. “Nothing that I know of, Estel. I don’t have anything to go on right now–the complaint came to me, oh, maybe an hour ago.” He shrugged. “You know what I know, right now. She walked out of the hall last night or this morning early, leaving her goods behind, and she hasn’t come home. Her master’s worried, and her leman’s distraught, and I don’t think she ran. Until we know more, yeah, keep an eye on your kids.”

Quentier nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll do that. Will you let me know if there’s more?”

“I will if you will,” Rathe answered, and Quentier grinned.

“As far as I’m able, Nico.” The smile vanished. “Anything about the girl, though–what’s her name?”

“Herisse Robion, not that that would help, necessarily. They said she was tall for her age–she’s just twelve–and still pretty skinny.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the tablet where he’d scrawled the description. “Brown hair, blue eyes, sweet‑faced, good teeth, wearing a bottle green suit, linen, bodice and skirt trimmed to match with darker green ribbon.”

“There are a hundred girls like that in Astreiant,” Sofian said, shaking her head, and Rathe nodded.

Quentier said, “If I hear anything, I’ll send to you, Nico.”

“Thanks.” Rathe tucked his tablet back into his pocket, then wondered if he should have betrayed its usual place in this den of pickpockets. But it was too late to do anything about it; he shrugged inwardly, and turned away, retracing his steps to Horse‑Copers’ Street.

“Oy, Nico!” That was a new voice, and he turned to see LaSier striding after him, her long hair flowing behind her like a horse’s tail. “Wait a minute.”

Rathe paused, suppressing the instinctive desire to put his hand on his purse, and LaSier fell into step beside him. She was younger than he by a year or two, slim and pretty, with a gait like a dancer.

“This butcher’s girl,” LaSier began, “she’s not the only child who’s gone missing who shouldn’t.”

“Oh?” Rathe stopped, already running down the list of missing persons they’d received from Point of Sighs. Not that that was always reliable, as every station guarded its prerogatives and points jealously, but he couldn’t remember anything out of the ordinary. Runaways, certainly, and more than there should have been, or usually were, but nothing like Herisse.

LaSier made a face, as though she’d read his thoughts. “It hasn’t been reported, I don’t think. But there was a boy here, learning the trade, and he went out to the markets to watch the crowds and he never came home.”

“No one made a point on him, then?” Rathe asked, already knowing the answer–if it were that simple, the Quentiers wouldn’t be worrying; prison was an occupational hazard for them–and LaSier spat on the dust at her feet.

“We checked that first, of course, though he’d been here just long enough to learn how much he didn’t know, and I didn’t think he was stupid enough to try lifting anything on his own. But he’s not in the cells at Point of Sighs or anywhere southriver. And I’m worried. Estel’s worried.”

There was no need to ask why LaSier or Quentier hadn’t gone to Point of Sighs with the complaint. The Quentiers had always kept a school of sorts for pickpockets, their own kin and the children of friends and neighbors–Rathe sometimes wondered if there were some secret, hidden guild organization for illegal crafts–and he wasn’t surprised to hear that Estel was keeping up that part of the business. But she would have no recourse when one of her “students” disappeared, not without giving Astarac, the chief at Point of Sighs, an excuse to search the ’Serry and in general look too closely into Quentier business. “Are you making an official complaint to me?”

LaSier shook her head, smiling. “If it were official, we’d’ve gone to Point of Sighs, they’re the ones with jurisdiction. But I thought you ought to know. He didn’t have any place to run, that one. Gavaret Cordiere, his name is, his family’s from Dhenin.”

“Would he have run back to them?” Rathe asked. “If he–forgive my bluntness, Cassia–if he decided he didn’t like the business after all?”

“It’s possible,” LaSier answered. “But I don’t think he did.” She smiled again, a sudden, elfin grin. “He liked the trade, Nico, and he had the fingers for it. I’d’ve put him to work soon enough.”

Rathe sighed, and reached into his pocket for his tablet. “I’ll make inquiries northriver, if you’d like, see if he’s in cells there. And you might as well give me a description, in case–anything–turns up.”

A body, he meant, and LaSier grimaced and nodded in understanding. “He’s fourteen, maybe shoulder height on me, dark‑skinned–not as dark as me, but dark enough–brown hair, brown eyes. There’s a touch of red in his hair, maybe, and it’s curly. He cut it short when we came here, he looks like any apprentice.”

“Your stock in trade,” Rathe murmured.

“Exactly.” LaSier squinted, as though trying to remember, then shook her head. “That’s about all, Nico. He’s a bright boy, but not memorable looking.”

“I’ll keep an eye out,” Rathe answered, and scrawled the last note on the face of the tablet, stylus digging into the wax. He was running out of room on the second page: not a good sign, he thought, and folded the tablet closed on itself. “And I’ll check with the cellkeepers northriver. Would he give his right name?”

LaSier smiled again, wry this time. “He’s a boy, fourteen. Maybe not.”

“I’ll get descriptions, too,” Rathe said.

“Thanks,” LaSier said. “And, Nico: I–and Estel–we’ll take this as a favor.”

Rathe nodded, oddly touched by the offer. Besides, this was the kind of fee that he didn’t refuse, the trade of favor for favor within the law. “I’ll bear that in mind, Cassia, thanks. But let’s see what I find out, first.”

“Agreed,” LaSier said, and turned away. She called over her shoulder, “See you at the fair!”

“You’d better hope not,” Rathe answered, and started back toward Point of Hopes.

Monteia was waiting for him, the youngest of the runners informed him as soon as he stepped through the courtyard gate. The duty point, Ranazy, repeated the same message when he opened the hall door, and in the same moment Monteia herself appeared in the door of the chief point’s office.

“Rathe. I need to talk to you.”

Rathe suppressed a sigh–it was very like Monteia to make one feel guilty even when one had been doing one’s duty–but shrugged out of his jerkin, hanging it on the wall pegs as he passed behind Ranazy’s desk. “And I need to talk to you, too,” he said, and followed Monteia into the narrow room.

It was dark, the one narrow window looking onto the rear yard’s shadiest corner, and crowded with the chief point’s work table and a brace of battered chairs. The walls were lined with shelves that held station’s daybooks and a once‑handsome set of the city lawbooks, as well as a stack of the slates everyone used for notes and a selection of unlicensed broadsides stacked on a lower shelf. The latest of those, Rathe saw, with some relief, was over a moon‑month old: hardly current business.

“Have a seat,” Monteia said, and waved vaguely at the chairs on the far side of her table.

Rathe took the darker of the two–the other had been salvaged from someone’s house, and mended, not reliably–and settled himself.

“I hear you had another runaway today,” Monteia went on. She was a tall woman, with a face like a mournful horse and dark brown eyes that looked almost black in the dim light. Her clothes hung loose on her thin frame, utterly unmemorable, if one didn’t see the truncheon that swung at her belt.

Rathe nodded. “Only I don’t think it was a runaway. The girl seemed happy in her work.”

“Oh?” It was hard to tell, sometimes, if Monteia was being skeptical, or merely tired. Quickly, Rathe ran through the story, starting with the butcher’s arrival, and ending with his visit to the ’Serry and the Quentiers’ missing boy. When he had finished, Monteia leaned back in her chair, arms folded, long legs stretched out beneath the table. Looking down, Rathe could see the tip of her shoe protruding from beneath the table, could see, too, the string of cheap braid that hid the mark where the hem had been lengthened for her. Monteia might be chief point, but she was honest enough, in her way, and had children and a household of her own to keep.

“How many runaways is that so far this season?” she asked, after a moment.

“I could check the daybook to be sure,” Rathe answered, “but I’m pretty sure we’ve had eight reported. Nine if you count Herisse, but I want to treat that as an abduction. And of course the Cordiere boy, but that’s not our jurisdiction.”

Monteia nodded.

“Of the eight, then, two were apprentices, both brewers, and the rest ordinary labor,” Rathe continued. “That’s a lot for so early–the first of the Silklands caravans are only just in, and the trading ships haven’t really started yet.”

Monteia said, “We had the points’ dinner last night.”

Rathe blinked, unsure where this was leading–the chief points of the twelve point stations that policed Astreiant dined together once every solar month, ostensibly to exchange information, but more to help establish the points’ legitimacy by behaving like any other guild. The points were relatively new, at least in their present form; it had been the queen’s grandmother who’d given them the authority to enforce the laws, and not everyone was happy with the new system.

Monteia smiled as though she’d guessed the thought, showing her crooked teeth. “We’re not the only station to be seeing too many runaways, too early. I went planning to ask a few discreet questions, see what everybody else was doing this season, and, by the gods, so was everyone else. So we did a little horse‑trading, and I got some useful information, I think.”

Rathe nodded. He could imagine the scene, the long table and the polished paneling of a high‑priced inn’s best room, candles on the table to supplement the winter‑sun’s diminished light. The chief points would all be in their best, a round dozen men and women–six of each at the moment, all with Sofia, Astree, or Phoebe, the Pillars of Justice, strong in their nativity–sitting in order of precedence, from Temple Point at the head of the table to Fairs’ Point at the foot. He had met all of them at one time or another, as Monteia’s senior adjunct, but really only knew Dechaix of Point of Dreams and Astarac of Point of Sighs, the jurisdictions that bordered Point of Hopes, at all well. And Guillen Claes of Fairs’ Point, he added, with an inward smile. Claes was a solid pointsman, had come up through the ranks, and took no nonsense from anyone, for all that he had the unenviable job of handling the busiest and most junior point station in the city. Most of the southriver points got to know Claes well over the course of their careers, as the professional criminals who lived southriver, pickpockets like the Quentiers and horse‑thieves and footpads and the rest, tended to do their business in Fairs’ Point.

“Everyone’s got an unusual number of runaways this year,” Monteia said. “What’s more to the point, there are as many, or nearly so, missing from City Point as there are from Fairs’ Point.”

Rathe looked up sharply at that. City Point was one of the old districts, second in precedence only to Temple Point itself; children born in City Point were among the least likely to be lured away by the romance of the longdistance traders–or, if they were, they had mothers who could afford to apprentice them properly. Fairs’ Point children, on the other hand, had not only the proximity of New Fair and Little Fair to tempt them, but good cause to want to better themselves.

Monteia nodded. “Aize Lissinain, she’s chief at City Point since the beginning of Lepidas, was asking if we’d had any increase in the brothel traffic.”

“Trust northriver to think of that,” Rathe said, sourly.

“She was also asking Huyser how the workhouses were doing,” Monteia went on, and Rathe made a face that stopped short of apology. Huyser was chief of Manufactory Point; as the name implied, most of the city’s workhouses and manufactories lay in his district, and there were always complaints about the way the merchant‑makers treated their day‑workers. It was a good question–as was the one about the brothels, he admitted–so maybe Lissinain would be better than her predecessor.

“What did Huyser say?” he asked. “I was thinking that myself. Children are cheap.”

“But I wouldn’t want them working with machinery,” Monteia answered. “Too much chance of them breaking something. Anyway, Huyser said he was having as much of a problem with runaways as anyone, though not from the manufactories proper. He hadn’t heard of any of the makers letting workers go, or hiring new, for that matter, but he said he’d look into it.” She smiled, wry this time. “And Hearts and Dreams and I said we’d take a look round the brothels, just to be sure.”

Rathe nodded again. “It’s a reasonable precaution. We might even find one or two of them, at that.”

“Mmm.” Monteia didn’t sound particularly hopeful, either, and Rathe sighed.

“Does anyone know just how many children have gone missing?”

“Temple’s asked us each to compile a list for her, children missing and found, to be cross‑checked by her people just in case we’ve found some of them and don’t know it, and then circulated around the points for general use.” She made a face. “I can’t say I’m particularly happy with the idea, myself–Temple’s always looking for an excuse to stick her fingers in the rest of us’s business–but I think she’s probably right, this time.”

“It could help,” Rathe said. “As long as everyone gets listed. Did she say just the missing, or all the runaways?”

“Anyone reported missing,” Monteia answered. She grimaced. “I know, you’re thinking the same thing I am, some of them won’t list everyone–it’s embarrassing, gods, I’m embarrassed myself. But it’s a start.”

“Agreed,” Rathe said. “But then what?”

Monteia shook her head. “I wish I knew. This isn’t right, Nico. It feels… I don’t know, all wrong somehow. Kids disappear, sure, but not like this, not from everywhere. I was junior adjunct here when Rancon Paynor raped those girls, took them right off their own streets at twilight–it was spring then, right at the end of Limax, the suns were setting together. I remember what it felt like, and it wasn’t like this.”

“No,” Rathe said, and they sat in silence for a moment. He remembered the Paynor case, too, though he always counted the year by the lunar calendar, remembered it as the middle of the Flower Moon. There had been the victims, for one thing, the girls themselves; they’d disappeared for a day, two, but appeared again–and we were just lucky they weren’t bodies, he added to himself. People had been afraid. The women and girls had traveled in groups for weeks, even after it became clear that Paynor had disappeared, but it had been clear that something had happened. Not like this, when they couldn’t even put a name to what was happening. “I suppose no one’s found any bodies,” he said aloud, and surprised a short, humorless laugh from the chief point.

“Not so far. Though if they went in the Sier… the river doesn’t give up its dead easily.”

“But why?” Rathe shook his head again. “One madman, another Paynor, making his kills, yeah, I could believe it, but not with so many lads gone from so many districts. One man alone couldn’t do it.”

“Or woman, I suppose,” Monteia said, “if her stars were bad.”

“But not one person alone,” Rathe repeated.

Monteia sighed. “We don’t know enough yet, Nico, we can’t even say that for certain.” She straightened, drawing her feet back under the desk. “I want you to draw up the report–get in a scrivener to do fair copies, I don’t want to waste any more of your time than I have to, but get it done by tomorrow. We’ll know better where we stand once the compilation comes in.”

“All right.” Rathe stood up, recognizing his dismissal. “With your permission, boss, I’ll make a few inquiries northriver, just in case the Quentiers’ boy ended up in the cells there.”

“Go ahead,” Monteia said. “That’d be all we need, to get the ’Serry really roused against us.”

“People are going to talk,” Rathe said.

“They’re already talking,” Monteia answered. “At least, northriver they are. Oh, when you go back to the butcher’s, get the girl’s nativity from him.”

Rathe stopped in the doorway, looked back at her. “You’re going to go to the university?”

“Do you have any other leads?”

“No.” Rathe sighed. “No, I don’t.” Usually, a judicial horoscope was the last resort, something to be tried when all other possibilities had been exhausted; even the best astrologers could only offer possibilities, not certainties, when asked to do a forensic reading.

“And I’m going to talk to the necromancers, too, see if any ghosts have turned up. You’ve a friend in their college, don’t you?”

Rathe winced at the thought–bad enough to be a necromancer, constantly surrounded by the spirits of the untimely dead, worse still if it were children’s ghosts–but nodded. “Istre b’Estorr, his name is. He’s very good.”

Monteia nodded. “I’ve got a nasty feeling about this one, Nico,” she said, her voice almost too soft to be heard.

“So do I,” Rathe answered, and stepped back into the main room to collect the station’s daybooks and begin the list of missing children.

2

the last muster was nearly over. Philip Eslingen eyed the lines at the rickety tables set up by the regimental paymasters, making sure his own troopers got their proper measure, and mentally tallied his own wages. His pay, a single royal crown, rested in his moneybag beneath his shirt, a soft weight against his heart; he was carrying letters on the temples of Areton that totaled nearly four pillars, his share of the one raiding party: enough for a common man to live for a year, if he were frugal. It should certainly last him until spring, when the new campaigns began–unless, of course, someone reputable was hiring. Whatever he did, it would mean taking a lower place than the one he’d had.

His eyes strayed to the temporary platform, empty now, but bright with banners and heavy patterned carpets, where the Queen of Chenedolle had stood to receive the salute of Coindarel’s Dragons and to release them from her service. Even from his place at the front with the rest of the regiment’s officers, Eslingen had been able to see little more of her than her elegant suit of clothes, bright and stiff as the little dolls that stood before the royal judges in the outlying provinces, visible symbols of the royal authority. The dolls were faceless, for safety’s sake; for all Eslingen had been able to see, the queen herself might have been as faceless, her features completely hidden by the brim of a hat banded with the royal circlet. He had watched her when he could, fascinated–he had never seen the Queen of Chenedolle–but she had barely seemed real. Only once, as he brought his half of the company to a perfect halt, had he seen her move, and then she had leaned sideways to talk to the Mareschale de Mourel who was her leman and acknowledged favorite, a gloved hand lifted to her shadowed face, as though to hide–a smile? A frown? It was impossible even to guess.

“Eslingen.”

He turned, recognizing the voice, hand going to his hat in automatic salute. “Captain.”

Connat Bathias nodded in response and looked past his lieutenant to the last half‑dozen troopers lined up at the paymasters’ table. A royal intendant stood with them to supervise the payout, conspicuous in her black‑banded judicial robe, and there were three well‑armed men– back‑and‑breast, short‑barreled calivers, swords, and daggers–at her back, guarding access to the iron‑bound chest that held the money. “How goes it?”

“Almost done,” Eslingen answered. “No complaints so far.” Nor were there likely to be: Bathias’s company was made up mostly of experienced troopers, who knew what their pay should be, and the royal paymasters were generally honest, at least under the queen’s eye.

“And the horses and the weapons?”

Eslingen looked away again. “As agreed. The Horsemaster took the mounts in hand, and we let the people who wanted to buy back their weapons. Those who didn’t already own them, of course.” Which was well over half the troop, and those that didn’t had mostly paid the captain’s inflated price to keep their calivers: most of them would want to hire out again as soon as possible, and this late in the season most captains would want people with their own equipment. There was still plenty of fighting to be done, along the Chadroni Gap and north past the Meis River, and Dragons were always in demand, particularly for the nasty northern wars, but there was no time to outfit a man.

Bathias nodded. The horses were part of his perquisites, to sell or keep as he chose, and Eslingen suspected he would sell most of them: with the troop disbanding, there was no point in keeping half a hundred animals, and there were other captains who would be willing to buy. Coindarel had persuaded Aimeri de Martreuil to add an extra company to his Auxiliary Horse, and to take most of the gentleman‑officers, the commissioned officers; he would probably buy the horses, as well. “I’m willing to let you purchase your mounts, Eslingen. There’s no point in seeing you unhorsed.”

Eslingen hesitated, tempted and rather flattered by the offer, but shook his head. He couldn’t afford to pay for stabling in the city for more than a month or two, and he had no way of knowing how long it would be before he found work he liked. “Thank you, sir, but I’ll have to pass.”

Bathias nodded again, and looked uneasily toward the empty platform. He was a young man, the fourth child, Eslingen understood, of an impoverished Ile’nord noble, with two older sisters and a brother between him and whatever income the family estates provided: a commission and an introduction to the Prince‑marshal de Coindarel would be the best his mother could do for him. Not that an introduction to Coindarel was the worst she could have done, Eslingen added, with an inward smile. Bathias was young, and very handsome in the golden Ile’nord fashion; his hair, long and naturally curling, glowed in the double light of sun and winter‑sun like polished amber, and his skin had taken only delicate color from the spring campaign. Coindarel notoriously had an eye for a pretty young man, and was inclined to indulge himself in his officers. He picked his juniors, the sergeants and lieutenants who did the real work, with more care, but, all else being equal, a handsome man could go far in Coindarel’s service. Eslingen had earned his sergeancy the hard way, but his promotion to lieutenant, and the royal commission that came with it, had come by way of Coindarel’s roving eye.

“Will you be going with Martreuil, Eslingen?” Bathias asked, and the older man shook himself back to the present.

“No, sir. There are plenty of other companies still hiring, even this late in the season.” It was a sore point–Eslingen had lost any claim to gentility when he lost his commission, and Martreuil, it had been made very clear, was taking only Coindarel’s gentleman‑officers–and he was relieved when Bathias merely grunted, his mind already clearly elsewhere. Probably on the palace, Eslingen thought. Bathias was of noble birth and could claim board and lodging from the queen on the strength of it, and he could do worse than to be seen at court, too.

“I’m sorry to hear it,” Bathias said. “You’re a good officer, and could do well in the royal service.”

“Thank you, sir.” Eslingen kept his face still with an effort, waiting for the dismissal. The line at the paymaster’s table had dwindled to a single trooper, a skinny, huge‑handed former stable boy whom Eslingen had signed on at an inn outside Labadol because he’d needed someone who could handle the major‑sergeant’s bad‑tempered gelding. Then he, too, had accepted his pay and made his mark on the muster list, and turned away to join his fellows waiting at the edge of the Drill Ground. The taverns and inns where most of the recruiting officers did their work lay only a few steps away, along the Horse‑Gate Road.

“You’ve served me well,” Bathias said, and held out his hand. Eslingen took it, startled at this presumption of equality, and then Bathias had released him, and was reaching into his own wide sash. “And, Eslingen. I know you’re not a sergeant anymore, but I also know we didn’t serve out the season. Will you take this from me, as a token of my appreciation?” He held out a bag the size of a man’s hand. It was embroidered–not expensively, Eslingen thought, probably by one of the farm‑girls we took on at Darnais–with Bathias’s arms and the regimental monogram.

Eslingen took it, stiffly, and felt, through the linen and the coarse threads of the monogram, the square shape and weight of at least a pillar. That was more than he could afford to refuse, and he tucked the purse into his own sash. “Thank you, sir,” he said again, stiff‑lipped, saluted, and turned away.

The rest of the company’s sergeants were standing by the sundial that stood at the city end of the Drill Ground, and Anric Cossezen, the senior sergeant, lifted a hand to beckon him over. Eslingen came to join them, and Maggiele Reymers said, “You’ve come up in the world, Philip, if the captain deigned to give you his hand.”

“He gave me drink‑money, too,” Eslingen said, before any of the others could point it out, and Saman le Tamboer laughed.

“Betwixt and between, Philip, neither fish nor fowl.”

Eslingen shot the other man a look of dislike–le Tamboer had a sharp tongue on him, to match his sharp Silklands eyes–and Cossezen said, “Have you given a thought to Ganier’s offer? It’s decent money, and a good chance for plunder.”

“If,” le Tamboer added, honey‑sweet, “the lieutenant doesn’t mind serving with us peasants again.”

Eslingen ignored him, said to Cossezen, “I’ve thought about it, yes, and I’ve wondered why a man with Ganier’s reputation is still hiring, so late in the year.”

Reymers laughed. “That had crossed my mind, too.”

“Ganier always hires his dragons last,” Cossezen said.

Eslingen shook his head. “I’ve fought in the Payshault, Anric. I’ve no mind to do it again, not this year. I’ll see who else is hiring.”

“No one,” le Tamboer said.

“Then I’ll wait until someone is,” Eslingen answered.

“How nice to have the money,” le Tamboer muttered.

Eslingen ignored him, and Reymers said, “If you need lodging, Philip–”

“I don’t have any place in mind,” Eslingen said.

“There’s a tavern in Point of Hopes, south of the river. It’s called the Old Brown Dog, off the Knives’ Road.” Reymers cocked her head. “Do you know Astreiant at all?”

“I can find it,” Eslingen answered. Or if I can’t, I can ask at the Temples when I change my money. “So I can get lodging there?”

Reymers nodded. “A woman named Aagte Devynck runs it–she’s from Altheim, but she served Chenedolle as well as the League during the War. She’s always glad to house a fellow Leaguer, and the place is clean and cheap enough.”

Eslingen grinned. “How’s the beer?” Chenedolle, and Astreiant in particular, were known for their wines; the measure of a League tavern was its beer.

“Good enough,” Reymers answered. “She buys it from a Leaguer brewer–and he’s got enough custom that he hasn’t had to change his ways.”

“Thanks, Mag,” Eslingen said. “I’ll look her up.”

There was a little silence then, and Eslingen looked away. Parting was always awkward–you never knew who would die on campaign, or, worse, come home maimed or blinded–and there was always that moment of recognition, as quickly put aside. “Good luck with Ganier, then,” he said aloud, and turned away, lifting a hand to wave to the cluster of boys who had been hovering at the edges of the Drill Ground to see the soldiers mustered out. Half a dozen came running, and Eslingen pointed to the first two who looked big enough. “You, there, and you. A demming each if you’ll carry my gear to the Aretoneia.”

The older of the boys scraped a hasty bow, and answered, “Yes, sir, to the Aretoneia.”

The younger said, “May I carry your piece, please, sir?”

“You may not,” Eslingen answered, striding to the last cart– almost emptied now–where his baggage was waiting. He tossed the bigger boy his heavy saddlebags, and the smaller locked case that held his pistols. The boy slung the bags over his shoulder and stood waiting, but Eslingen judged he had about as much as he could carry. He handed the smaller boy his cased swords, also locked, and the pouch that held his own supply of powder and lead, and slung his caliver across his shoulder. It felt odd to be without the engraved gorget of his rank, or the royal monograms on the caliver’s sling, and he ran his thumb across the darker spot where the split‑silver disks had been removed. But there was no point in regrets, not yet; he lifted a hand to the other sergeants, still standing by the sundial, and started down the Horsegate Road, the two boys following at his heels.

There were pointsmen on duty at the Horsegate itself, two men in the heavy leather jerkins that served them for rough‑and‑ready armor, crowned truncheons at their belts. At the sight of the little party, the older of the pair stepped into the gate, holding up his hand. “Hold it, soldier. Those are well outside the limits.” He pointed to the caliver, and then to the cased swords. “You’ll have to leave them, or pay a bond.”

Eslingen sighed ostentatiously–he had been through this routine before, every time he came to Astreiant–and slipped his hand into his purse. “I’m taking them to the Temple for safekeeping, pointsman, surely that’s allowed.”

“They’re still oversized,” the older man said. “And that means a bond. A horsehead a piece, that’s the law–that’s two seillings, Leaguer, our coin.”

Eslingen bit back his first answer–there was no point in antagonizing the points on his first day in Astreiant–and pulled two of the silver coins from his purse. “Two seillings, pointsman. May I pass?”

The pointsman stepped back, bowing too deeply, his plumed hat nearly brushing the ground. “Have a pleasant stay in our city.”

Eslingen ignored him, and walked through the sudden cool of the gate, almost a tunnel in the thick wall, to emerge into the bright doubled sunlight and the bustle of the city’s center. He took the easiest route toward Temple Fair and the Aretoneia, down the broad expanse of the Horsegate Road to the Horsefair itself. No one sold horses there anymore, of course–Astreiant was too large, too prosperous, to buy and sell horses within its richest districts–but the law still kept the space open and beaten flat, the dust damped three times a day by water‑carriers in city livery. At this hour, it was busy with the afternoon merchants, selling everything except food from vividly painted pushcarts. Eslingen sighed to himself, seeing the rolls and figures of lace laid out on the black carts clustered in front of the Laciers’ Hall, but turned resolutely away. It would be apprentices’ work–masters’ work was sold within the hall, free of the dust and dirt of the street–but it was still beyond his means to have lace at his cuffs and collar.

He turned instead toward College Street, slowing his steps so that the boys could keep up with him in the press of people. The younger boy was breathing hard, but he and his fellow seemed to be managing their burdens well enough. Still, it was a relief to step into the shadow of the overhanging buildings of College Street, out of the cheerful bustle of the Horsefair. This was another of the old neighborhoods, not as rich as Riversedge or the Mercandry, but prosperous enough. The shop signs were freshly painted, some showing touches of gilt and silvering, and more than half displayed the snake‑and‑gargoyle design of the Merchants‑Venturer above the doorframe, promising goods brought to Astreiant by the longdistance traders. He smelled Silklands spices as he passed one open door, and saw a woman emerge from a side door carrying a string of bright red peppers; at the next door, an apprentice sat in the sunlight outside the door, a tray of polished stones balanced on her lap. It was a nice display, Eslingen acknowledged silently–the stones were rivvens from Esling, gaudy enough to catch the eye, but not worth stealing–and touched his hat as he passed. The girl–young woman, he amended–looked up at him, a smile lightening her intent face, but then went back to her work.

The Aretoneia lay on the western edge of Temple Fair, at the mouth of a street where most of the buildings still carried the wrought iron lanterns that meant they belonged to the university. Most of them were rented out, either to shopkeepers and craftsmen, but here and there the lanterns were still lit and once he saw a scholar in an ochre‑banded gown leading a class in recitation. A toddler clung to her skirts, and she stooped, lifted it without missing a beat. Temple Fair was as busy as ever, travellers clustering around the Pantheon, the broadsheet sellers doing a brisk business at their tables under the awnings along the east side of the square, the book‑printers and their apprentices trying to look aloof beyond them. Eslingen hesitated, tempted by the tables of broadsheets and the sample prophecies displayed on the sun‑faded boards, but turned instead into the narrow door of the Aretoneia: business, after all, before pleasure. He nodded to the senior of the two soldiers on duty at the door–both older men, past the rigors of a campaign season but not too old to put up a decent defense, not that anyone would be stupid enough to attack the Aretoneia–and shouldered past them into the temple.

Tapers blazed in half a dozen hanging candelabra, and stood in rows in sconces along the walls. More candles, smaller votive lights the length of a man’s finger, flickered at the foot of the central statue of Areton, the god of war and courage, throwing odd shadows across the statue’s archaic leg armor and making the base of his long spear seem to waver. This was not Eslingen’s favorite incarnation of the god–he preferred the younger shape, dancing, before he turned to war–but he touched his forehead dutifully anyway before turning toward the money changers.

Their booths lined the side walls of the temple, each one marked with familiar symbols–the cock‑and‑hens of Areill, the rose and wine‑cup of Pajot Soeurs–but he made his way to the biggest booth, the one marked with the ram’s head of Areton’s own priesthood. Enough of Areton’s old servants retired from soldiering into banking, drawing on the sense of value and exchange gained over a lifetime’s fighting in every kingdom from the petty lands west of Chadron to the Silklands themselves; their commissions might be higher than some of the others who rented space in the temple, but the rates of exchange tended to be better.

“Wait for me here,” he said to the boys who were standing wide‑eyed, staring at the thanks‑offerings of guns and swords pinned like trophies to every pillar, and took his place in line at the table marked with the ram’s head. The clerk at the next table, a pretty, dark‑skinned boy, smiled at him.

“I can offer good rates, sir, and no waiting.”

Eslingen shook his head, but returned the smile. The clerk’s hands were painted with a pattern of curving vines, black picked out with dots of red and gold, vivid in the candlelight. If that was the fashion in Astreiant now, Eslingen thought, it was a handsome one, though hardly practical. Then the man ahead of him had finished his business, and he stepped up to the table, reaching into his pocket for one purse, and under his shirt for the other. The clerk–greying, one‑eyed, ledger and tallyboard in front of him, abacus laid ready to a hand that lacked part of a finger–looked up at him shrewdly.

“And what do you have for me–sergeant, isn’t it, from Esling?”

“From Esling, yes, but I earned my commission this season,” Eslingen answered, and set the purses on the table.

“Congratulations,” the clerk said, busily unfolding the letters of credit, and Eslingen allowed himself a sour smile. Words were cheap; the ephemeral commission was unlikely to get him an improved exchange rate for the Leaguer coins. The clerk poured out the small horde of coins–the gold disk of the royal crown that had been this season’s wages, warm in the candlelight; the heavy silver square of the pillar that was Barthias’s gift; a pair of Altheim staters hardly bigger than sequins, but bright gold; a scattering of miscellaneous silver, Chadroni, League, and Chenedolliste equally mixed. The clerk grunted, fingering them neatly into the holes of the tallyboard, then spread the letters of credit beside them, bending close to read the crabbed writing. He grunted again and flicked the beads of his abacus, the maimed finger as deft as the others, then chalked something on his slate and flicked the abacus again.

“You have four crowns and three pillars by my reckoning, sergeant–lieutenant–all good coin of Her Majesty. Do you want it now, or do you want to bank it here and gamble on the exchange?”

Eslingen sighed. One did not bargain with the ram’s‑head bankers the way one bargained with other merchants; if one tried, the clerk was as likely to push the coins back to you and send you searching for another broker. The only question now was whether he would take the cash–and its attendant worries, theft and loss–or take a letter of credit on the Astreiant temple and hope that the exchange between the written amount, the monies of account, and actual coin shifted in his favor. And when one thought about it, it was no choice at all.

“How’s the exchange been so far?” he asked, without much hope, and wasn’t surprised when the clerk shrugged.

“Up and down, sergeant, up and down.”

“Give me two pillars in coin,” Eslingen said, “and a letter for the rest.”

The clerk nodded, put two fingers–the undamaged hand–into his mouth and whistled shrilly. A junior clerk came running, carrying a case of seals. Eslingen waited while the letter was drafted, signed, and sealed, then put his own name to it and folded it carefully into the purse around his neck. He tucked it back under his shirt, and watched as the clerk counted out two pillars for him. The coins rang softly against the wood, the heavy disks of heirats, bright with Heira’s snake, the lighter disks of seillings, marked with Seidos’s horsehead, and a handful of copper small‑coin, spiders and demmings mixed. He had been born under the signs of the Horse and the Horsemaster; he tucked a selling with the coppers in his pocket for luck, and knotted the rest securely in his purse.

Turning away from the table, he waved to the waiting boys–they came quickly enough, a little intimidated, he thought, by the bustling soldiers and longdistance traders–and led them over to the locked door of the armory. He gave the keeper his name and the details of his weapons–Astreiant limited the length of blade a person could carry in the streets, and utterly prohibited locks except to their pointsmen– and waited while the old woman laboriously inscribed them in the book. Then he handed them through the narrow portal, first the caliver and then the swords and finally the locked case of pistols. That left him with a long knife, just at the limit, and, tucked into the bottom of his saddlebag, a third pistol with its stock of powder and lead. The keeper gave him the sealed receipt, which he slipped into the purse beneath his shirt, and he turned away, working his shoulders. He felt oddly light without the familiar weight of caliver and swords–freer, too, with money in his purse, and for an instant he considered looking for lodgings north of the river. Then common sense reasserted itself: the northriver districts were too expensive, even with four crowns in the bank. He would take himself south of the river–the Old Brown Dog lay in Point of Hopes, Reymers had said, which meant doubling back west along the Fairs Road and across that bridge–and be sensible.

He looked back at the boys, reached into his pocket for the promised demmings. “Does either of you know a tavern in Point of Hopes called the Old Brown Dog?”

The younger boy shook his head at once; the older hesitated, obviously weighing his chances of another coin or two, then, reluctantly, shook his head, too. “No, sir, I don’t know southriver very well.”

Eslingen nodded–he hadn’t really expected another answer– and handed over the coins, the doubled moon, the old in the curve of the new, glinting in the candlelight. The older boy handed back his saddlebags, and he and his friend scurried for the door. Eslingen followed more slowly, looking around for fellow Leaguers. If anyone would know how to get to the Old Brown Dog, it would be League soldiers–provided, of course, that Reymers was right about the quality of the beer. There were plenty of Leaguers in Chenedolle, for all that League and Kingdom had fought a five‑year war twenty‑five years before; he should be able to find someone… Even as he thought that, he saw a familiar flash of white plumes, and Follet Baeker came into the light of the candelabra, showing teeth nearly as white as the feathers in his broad‑brimmed hat. As usual, he had a knife with him, a sullen looking, leather‑jerkined man who looked uncomfortable inside the Aretoneia–as well he might, Eslingen thought. Baeker was almost the only broker based in the city who took weapons and armor in pawn; despite Baeker’s generally decent reputation, his knife might well worry about protecting him from dissatisfied clients. After all, it would only take one of them and a moment’s carelessness to end Baeker’s career permanently.

“Sergeant!”

“Lieutenant,” Eslingen corrected, without much hope, and Baeker continued as though he hadn’t heard.

“Back so soon? I heard Coindarel was disbanded.”

Eslingen nodded. “Paid off this noon.”

Baeker’s expression brightened, though he didn’t quite smile openly. “Pity that. Should you find yourself in need of funds, of course–”

“Not at the moment,” Eslingen answered. “Tell me, do you know a tavern in Point of Hopes, called the Old Brown Dog?”

Baeker nodded. “I do. Aagte Devynck’s house, that is, and I heard she needs a knife, this close to Midsummer and the fairs.”

“I was looking for lodging,” Eslingen said, a little stiffly–knife to a tavernkeeper, bodyguard, and bouncer all in one, was hardly a job to which he aspired. “A friend recommended it.”

“Well, she rents rooms,” Baeker said, with a shrug. “Do you need the direction?”

“All I know is it’s in Point of Hopes.”

“Which it is, but that won’t get you there,” Baeker said. “Take the Hopes‑point Bridge, and when the road forks at its foot, take the left‑hand road. Then it’s no distance at all to the Knives’ Road–that’s the Butchers’ quarter, you’ll know it by the signs–”

“And the smell,” Eslingen said.

Baeker grinned. “It’s mostly vegetables this time of year. Autumn, now… But the first road to the right off that, take it to the end, and the Old Brown Dog’s the last house. You’ll see the sign.”

Eslingen nodded. “Thanks.”

“Give my regards to Aagte,” Baeker answered. “And keep me in mind, sergeant. Should you need coin…” He let his voice trail off, and Eslingen sighed.

“I’ll keep you in mind.”

He turned toward the door, drew back as it swung open almost in his face. A thin, sharp‑faced woman in a drab green suit of skirt and bodice–better material than it looked at first glance, Eslingen thought, but cut for use, not show–stepped past with a nod of apology. The candlelight glinted from the gargoyle‑and‑snake pinned to her neat cap, and Eslingen glanced curiously after her. The vagabond professions were traditionally men’s, and the Merchants‑Venturer were more vagabond than most–but then, enough women had masculine stars and followed mannish professions, just as there were any number of men who claimed feminine stars and worked at the fixed professions. He watched her as she made her way to the door of the central counting room–the longdistance traders generally changed their money and letters through the temple networks; letters on the temples of Areton were good throughout the world–and then went on out into the sunlight of the Temple Fair.

Baeker’s directions were better than he’d expected, after all. He crossed the River Sier by the Hopes‑point Bridge, dodging the two‑wheeled barrows that seemed to carry most of Astreiant’s goods, and followed the left‑forking road toward the Butchers’ quarter. Southriver was busier than the northriver districts, the streets crowded not with neatly dressed apprentices and their seniors, guild badges bright against their blue coats, but shopwives and carpenters and boatmen and sailors and members of a dozen other unguessable trades, all in aprons or working smocks over ordinary clothes. It was louder southriver, too, voices raised over the rumble of carts and the shriek of unoiled wheels from the docks, the shrill southriver accent sharpening their words. The smell of kitchens and shop fires warred with the stink of garbage. If anything, it reminded him of the back streets of Esling where he’d been born, and he found himself walking a little faster, unsure if he liked the memories.

At the corner of the next street, a crowd had gathered–largely children just at apprentice‑age and younger, but there were some adults with them, too, and Eslingen paused, curious, to look over the bobbing heads into the manufactory yard. It was a glassblowers’, he realized at once, and the pit furnace was lit in the center of the open yard, waves of heat rolling off it toward the open gates. A young woman, her hair tucked under a leather cap, skirts and bodice protected by a thick leather apron that reached almost to her ankles, leather gauntlets to her elbows, spun a length of pipe in the flames, coaxing the blob of glass into an egg and then a sphere before she began to shape it with her breath. He had seen glassblowers at work before, but stared anyway, fascinated, as the sphere began to swell into a bubble, and the woman spun it deftly against a shaping block, turning it into a pale green bowl like the top of a wineglass. One had to be born under fire signs to work that easily among the flames; he himself had been born under air and water, and knew better than to try. He became aware then that another woman, an older woman, also in the leather apron but with her gauntlets tucked through the doubled ties at her waist, was watching him from the side of the yard. Her face was without expression, but the young man in the doorway of the shed was scowling openly. There were still plenty of people in Astreiant who thought of the League as the enemy, for all that that war had ended twenty‑five years earlier; Eslingen touched his hat, not quite respectfully, and moved on.

Knives’ Road was as busy as the other streets, and narrowed by the midden barrels that stood in ranks beside each butcher’s hall. Outside one hall, a barrel had overflowed, and gargoyles scratched and scrabbled in the spilled parings, quarreling over the scraps. Eslingen gave it a wide berth, as did most of the passersby, but as he drew abreast of the hall a boy barely at apprenticeship came slouching out with a broom to clean up the mess. The gargoyles exploded away, shrieking their displeasure, some scrambling up the corner stones of the hall, the rest lifting reluctantly on their batlike wings. Eslingen ducked as a fat gargoyle flew straight at him; it dodged at the last minute, swept up to a protruding beam and sat scolding as though it was his fault. The creatures were sacred to Bonfortune, the many‑faced, many‑named god of travelers and traders, but if they weren’t an amusing nuisance, Eslingen thought, someone would have found justification for getting rid of them centuries ago. Their chatter followed him as he turned onto the street Baeker had mentioned.

The Old Brown Dog stood at its end, completely blocking the street. It was a prosperous‑looking place, three, maybe four stories tall, if there were servants’ rooms under the eaves. The sign–a sleeping dog, brown with a grey muzzle–was newly painted, and the bush that marked the house as Leaguer tavern was a live and flourishing redberry in a blue and white pot. A gargoyle was rooting among the dropped fruit but took itself off with a shriek as he got closer. The benches to either side of the door were empty, but the main room seemed busy enough for mid afternoon, half a dozen tables filled and a waiter sweating as he hauled a barrel up through a trap from the cellar. Light poured in from an open door on the opposite side of the room– a door that gave onto a garden, he realized. The air smelled of beer and pungent greenery and the first savory whiffs of the night’s dinner.

The waiter got the barrel up onto its stand behind the bar, and let the trap door down again. He wiped his hands on the towel tied around his waist, and nodded to Eslingen. “Can I help you, sir?”

“I understood you rented rooms,” Eslingen answered.

The man gave him a quick, comprehensive glance, taking in the heavy soldier’s boots and the saddlebags slung over his shoulder, but never took his hands from the towel. “That’s up to the mistress,” he said. “And if we have a room. Adriana!”

A moment later, the top half of the door behind the bar opened– the kitchen door, Eslingen realized–and a young woman leaned out. She had taken the sleeves off her bodice while she cooked, and her shirtsleeves were pinned back to the shoulder, showing arms as brown as new bread; her tightly curled hair and broad nose were unmistakable signs of Silklands blood. “Yeah?”

“Is Aagte there?”

“Mother’s busy.”

“There’s man come about a room.”

“Oh?” The woman–she was probably about twenty, Eslingen thought, not precisely pretty but with a presence to her that wasn’t at all surprising in the tavernkeeper’s daughter and heir–tipped her head to one side, studying him with frank curiosity. “Who are you, then?”

Eslingen stepped up to the bar, gave her his best smile. “My name’s Philip Eslingen, last of Coindarel’s Dragons. Maggiele Reymers said the Brown Dog rented rooms.”

“We do.” The woman–Adriana, the waiter had called her– returned his smile with interest, showing perfect teeth. “I’ll fetch Mother.” Before he could answer, she popped back into the kitchen, closing the door behind her.

Eslingen set the saddlebags at his feet–the floor looked clean enough, and he was glad to be rid of their weight–and leaned against the bar. The waiter had vanished in response to a shout from the garden, but he was aware of the tavern’s regulars watching from their tables, and did his best to ignore their stares. Reymers had said that Devynck kept a Leaguer house; her regulars must be used to the occasional, or more than occasional, soldier passing through.

The kitchen door opened again–both halves, this time–and a stocky woman came out, pushing her grey hair back under the band of an embroidered cap. She wasn’t very tall, but she had the familiar sturdy build and rolling walk of the longtime horse trooper, and Eslingen touched his hat politely. “Sergeant Devynck?”

The rank was a guess, but he wasn’t surprised when she nodded and came forward to lean on the bar opposite him. “That’s right. And you’re–Eslingen, was it?”

“Philip Eslingen, ma’am, just paid off from Coindarel’s regiment. Maggiele Reymers told me you rented rooms.”

Devynck nodded again. She had a plain, comfortably homely face, and startlingly grey eyes caught in a web of fine lines. The daughter, Eslingen thought, had obviously gotten her looks from her father.

“That’s right. Three seillings a week, all found, or one if you just want the room. How long would you want it for?”

“That depends. Maybe as long as the fall hirings.”

“I see. No taste for the current season–what rank, anyway, Eslingen?”

“I had my commission this spring,” Eslingen answered. “Before that, I was senior sergeant.”

“Ah.” This time, Devynck sounded satisfied, and Eslingen allowed himself a soundless sigh of relief. She, at least, would understand the awkwardness of his position; it would be a reason she could sympathize with for sitting out a campaign. Hearing the change in her voice, he risked a question.

“Three seillings a week all found, you said. What’s that include?”

“Use of the room, it’s a bed, table, stove, and chair, and clean linen once a week. The boy empties your pot and rakes the grate, and the maid’ll do the cleaning, Demesdays and Reasdays in the morning. You haul your own water, there’s a pump out back.” Devynck’s eyes narrowed, as though she were considering something, but she said only, “I suppose you’ll want to see the room first.”

“Please,” Eslingen answered.

Devynck glanced over her shoulder, as though gauging whether she could afford to leave the kitchen, then came out from behind the bar. “Stairs are through the garden.”

Eslingen followed her out the back door. The garden was bigger than he’d realized, stretching almost twice the length of a normal city plot, and there were fruit trees along one wall, the hard green apples little bigger than a child’s fist. There were tables nearer the door and the ground around them was beaten bare; beyond that area, rows of woven fence kept the drinkers out of plots crowded with plants. Pig apples ripened on their sprawling vines, yellow against the dark green leaves, and he thought he recognized the delicate fronds of carrots in the nearest patch. The pump, as promised, was by the door, a spout shaped like Oriane’s Seabull roaring above a cast‑iron trough; the pump handle was iron, too, and looked nicely weighted. A well‑worn path led between the fences to an outhouse by the back wall.

The stairs ran up the side of the tavern, and Eslingen followed Devynck up past the first floor landing, wondering if he would be offered a space under the eaves with the servants. She stopped at the second floor, however, producing a bunch of keys from her belt, unlocked the door and stood aside to let him past. Eslingen glanced surreptitiously at the lock as he went by, and was relieved to see a sturdy double bolt.

“First on the right,” Devynck said, and Eslingen went on down the well‑scrubbed hall.

The door she had indicated stood ajar. Eslingen pushed it open–it too had a solid‑looking lock attached–and went on into the room. It was surprisingly bright, the light of the twin suns casting double shadows: the single window overlooked the garden, and there was glass in the casement rather than the cheaper oiled paper. The bed looked clean enough, the mattress lying bare on its rope cradle, the plain curtains knotted up to keep away the dust; as promised, there was a table big enough to seat two for private dinners, and a single barrel chair. A ceramic stove was tucked into the corner by the window, its pipe running out the wall above the casement. It was small, Eslingen thought, but would at least keep off the worst of the chill in winter, and let him make his own tea and shaving water. It was all ordinary furniture, clearly bought second‑or thirdhand, or relegated to the lodgers’ rooms when Devynck’s own family had no further use for them, but still perfectly serviceable. He could, he thought, be reasonably comfortable here.

As if she had read his mind, Devynck said, “I offer lodgers a break on the ordinary. Two seillings more a week, and you can have two meals a day below, dinner and supper. You take what we’re serving, but it’s generally good, though I say it myself.”

The smell that had come from the kitchen was tempting enough, Eslingen admitted. He looked around the room again, pretending to study the furniture, and added up the costs. Five seillings a week wasn’t bad; that came to two pillars a lunar month–twenty‑one months, if he bought nothing else and earned nothing else, neither of which was likely, and in practice he should only have to stay in Astreiant until the spring, thirteen months at most. He glanced at the whitewashed walls, the well‑scrubbed floorboards, and nodded slowly. “It sounds reasonable, sergeant. I’ll take it.”

Devynck nodded back. “Meals, too?”

“Please.”

“Wise man. You won’t find it cheaper unless you cook for yourself.” Devynck smiled. “I’ll need the first week in advance.”

“Agreed.” Eslingen reached into his pocket, took out his purse, and searched through the coins until he found a single heirat. The snake coiling across its face gleamed in the sunlight as he handed it across. Devynck took it, turned it to check the royal mint‑mark, and slipped it deftly into her own pocket.

“Make yourself at home, Eslingen. I’ll send someone up with your linens and your key. We lock the main door at midnight, mind, but one of the boys will let you in if you come back later.”

“Thank you,” Eslingen answered, and the woman turned away, skirts rustling. Eslingen shut the door gently behind her, and stood for a moment contemplating the empty room. As always when he moved into a new place, either quartered on some stranger or in lodgings of his own, he felt an odd thrill, half apprehension, half anticipation; the room, the city, the air, and the sunlight coming in through the open window, felt somehow thick, heavy with potential. He set his saddlebags beside the bed–he would need a clothes press, or at least a chest, he thought, and wondered if he could borrow something suitable from Devynck–and went to the window, leaned out into the scent of the fruit trees and spilled beer, grateful for that note of commonality.

To his surprise, it was Adriana who appeared with the sheets and blankets, followed by a pair of waiters carrying a battered storage chest. At her gesture, they set it down inside the door, and headed back to their other jobs. Adriana nodded cheerfully and began to make up the bed.

“You’re from Esling, then?” she asked.

Eslingen nodded, watching her work–the sheets were mended, but looked impeccably clean, and the blankets were only minimally patched–said, “I left some years ago, though.”

“Mother left Altheim when she was sixteen.” Adriana loosened the curtains, slapped them smartly to loosen what little dust had been allowed to gather, then stooped to the chest, dragging it further into the room. Eslingen bent to help her, and found himself looking down the front of her bodice, at the cleavage between two nice breasts. He smiled, realized she was aware of his stare, and looked quickly away.

“Where do you want this?” Adriana asked.

“Oh, under the window would be fine,” Eslingen answered, more or less at random, and together they carried the heavy chest across the room.

“So you were with Coindarel’s regiment,” Adriana went on, and lifted the chest’s lid to reveal a squat chamberpot, an equally unpretentious kettle, and a washbasin and jug. “One hears a great deal about Coindarel.”

I wouldn’t be surprised, Eslingen thought. He said, “I doubt all of it’s true.”

“Oh?” She smiled, a not quite openly mischievous expression that started a dimple in one dark cheek. She seemed about to say something, but then changed her mind, her smile still amused and secret. “I brought a candle‑end for you, but after that, you’ll buy your own.”

“Thanks.” Eslingen watched her out of the corner of his eye, wondering just which of the many rumors she had heard. Probably the one about Coindarel choosing his officers for their looks, he thought, and didn’t know whether to be regretful or relieved. She was pretty–more than pretty, really, and Devynck’s daughter would have a substantial share in her mother’s business, if not the whole of it, since he’d seen no other sisters–but he would be wise to keep hands off until he knew her intentions. Not that he would be so lucky as to attract an offer of marriage–I think well of myself, he admitted, with an inward smile of his own, and with reason, but there’s not a woman alive who’d think I have enough to offer her to make that contract worth her while. But there were other obligations, other degrees of interest and desire, and until he knew more about her, it would be wise to step warily. She was certainly of an age to be thinking about children.

Adriana’s smile widened briefly, as though she’d guessed what he was thinking, but she said only, “That’s your furniture, sergeant–and Mother does charge for damage. The kitchen’s open from six o’clock to first sundown, you can eat any time then. I’ve told the waiters not to charge you.”

“Thank you,” Eslingen said again, and Adriana answered, “My pleasure, sergeant.”

“Certainly mine,” Eslingen replied automatically, and wondered if he’d been entirely wise. Adriana flashed him another quick grin, showing teeth this time, and let herself out in a flurry of skirt and petticoat.

Left to himself, Eslingen leaned out the window to check the sundial that stood in the garden below. Past four, he guessed, from the length of the shadows, but couldn’t see the dial itself. He would want a timepiece of some sort, he thought, frowning–one needed to keep rough track of the hours; even the least observant did their best to avoid their unlucky times–and then a tower clock sounded from the direction of the Street of Knives, a strong double chime marking the half hour. There would be no missing that sound; probably the real difficulty would be learning to sleep through it every night. He allowed himself a small sigh of relief, and began methodically to unpack his belongings.

He had traveled light, of necessity. It didn’t take long to arrange the borrowed furniture to his satisfaction, and to fold his spare clothes neatly into the bottom of the chest. The locked case that held his pistol went beneath his clean shirts: in the morning, he thought, I’ll buy a lock for the big chest, too. There would be other errands to run, as well–find the nearest bathhouse and barber, buy candles of his own, and herbs for the chest, to keep the moths out, and find a laundress, too, and a decent astrologer, I’ll probably have to go back to the university for that–but he put those plans firmly aside for the moment, and reached into the bottom of the right‑hand saddlebag for the carved tablets that were his portable altar. Like most rented rooms from the League to Cazaril in the south, this one had a niche set into the wall beside the door, and he walked over to examine it. It was typical, except for the lack of dust–Devynck was clearly a ferocious housekeeper–just a space for an image or two and a shallow depression to hold the hearth fire, but it was certainly more than adequate for him. He unfolded the hinged diptych, Areton, painted ochre since Eslingen couldn’t afford gilt, dancing on the right‑hand panel, Phoebe as guardian of health in solar splendor on the left. He should probably honor Seidos, too, he thought, not for the first time–he had been born under Seidos’s signs, the Horse and the Horsemaster–but Seidos was patron of the nobility, not of common soldiers. Maybe I’ll ask the magist when I have my stars read, he thought, but he hadn’t done it yet. He tilted his head to once side, studying the altar. He would need to buy a candle for the Hearthmistress, along with the ones for his own use, but those would be easily enough found at any chandler’s shop. He added that to his mental list, and stretched out on the bed, settling himself for a nap before dinner.

The tower clock woke him at five, and again at half past, and at six. He sighed then, swung himself off the bed, and began to tidy himself for dinner. The sun was very low as he made his way down the stairs into the garden, but he guessed it would be another hour at least before it actually set. The air smelled of the cooking food, rich with onions and garlic, and he realized suddenly that he was hungry. Very hungry, he amended, and hoped Devynck’s portions were generous.

The main room was only moderately crowded, and he guessed that Devynck made most of her profit from her beer. He found an empty table beside one of the streetside windows, and lifted a hand to signal the nearest waiter. The man nodded back, but took his patron’s orders before coming over to Eslingen’s table.

“You’re the new lodger–Eslingen, isn’t it? I’m Loret.”

“That’s right.” Eslingen eyed him curiously, recognizing a wrestler’s or blacksmith’s breadth of shoulder beneath the loose smock, and wondered if Devynck often had trouble here.

“Then you get the ordinary. Do you want beer with that? It’s a demming extra for a pitcher.”

“That’s fine.”

Loret nodded, and Eslingen watched him walk away, dodging tables on his way to the kitchen hatch. Loret had the look of country boys who enlisted out of ignorance and deserted after their first battle, good boys with all the wrong stars, more often than not–which was hardly fair, he told himself, considering that Loret was probably born and bred in Astreiant. And big men weren’t all gentle; he’d learned that the hard way, years ago.

It wasn’t long before Loret returned with the tray of food and the sweating pitcher of beer. He set them neatly down, and waited until Eslingen had paid for the beer before answering the next customer’s shout. Eslingen made a face at the caution, but had to admit it was probably justified. Devynck’s clientele would be no better than the average. The food was good–a thick stew, Leaguer style, with a decent serving of beef to supplement the starchy roots that made up the bulk of the dish, and half a loaf of good wheat bread with a dish of soft cheese on the side–and the beer was better. It had been a while since he had eaten Leaguer food–Coindarel’s quartermasters had been mostly Chenedolliste, like their men–and he took his time, savoring the rich meat broth.

“Philip! Philip Eslingen!”

The voice was unexpectedly familiar, and Eslingen looked up, startled, to see Dausset Cijntien waving at him from the center of the room. Eslingen waved back, wondering what the other was doing in Astreiant–the last he had heard, Cijntien had signed on with a longdistance trader, leading a caravan‑guard on the six‑month overland journey to the Silklands. But then, that had been almost six months ago, he realized, and in any case, Cijntien was obviously back, and equally obviously looking for work. Midsummer was the hiring season for the longdistance traders, and the sea captains, for that matter; there was rarely any shortage of work for experienced soldiers.

Cijntien collected his refilled pitcher, reaching over the heads of the people at the nearest table, and then threaded his way through the crowd to Eslingen’s table. The room had filled up since he’d arrived, Eslingen saw, and glanced at the wall stick. It was blind, the light no longer falling to cast its shadows, but from the look of the sky outside the windows, it was getting close to the first sundown.

“It’s good to see you again,” Cijntien said, and settled himself on the stool opposite the other man.

“And you,” Eslingen answered, and meant it. “You’re looking well.”

“Thanks.” Cijntien took a long swallow of his beer, and Eslingen smiled, watching him. They had served together years before–more accurately, he had served under Cijntien, had been a corporal and then a company sergeant under Cijntien, and had stepped into Cijntien’s office of major sergeant when the older man had left soldiering for the less dangerous life of a trader’s man. Or at worst differently dangerous, Eslingen amended. From the looks of Cijntien’s hands, flecked with the dark specks of a recent powder burn, longdistance trading had its own hazards.

“I thought you were with Coindarel these days,” Cijntien went on.

“We were paid off,” Eslingen answered. “This morning, in fact.”

“Hard luck. Or maybe not so hard, depending.” Cijntien leaned forward, planting both elbows on the table. He was wearing a light jerkin over a plain shirt, and the grey brown leather matched the faded brown of his hair. “Have you another place lined up yet?”

Eslingen shook his head. “Not this season.” He hesitated, but Cijntien was an old friend, and was probably one of the few who’d appreciate his promotion. “I had my commission this spring, you see. I’m not inclined to go back to mere sergeant so quickly.”

Cijntien nodded in sympathy. “The stars have been against you, my Philip. Have you tried a good astrologer?”

Eslingen laughed. “Have you ever met an astrologer who could alter the stars once they’re risen? Give over, Dausset.”

“They can mitigate the worst effects,” Cijntien answered, and Eslingen shook his head. Cijntien was old‑fashioned–he had been born in Guisen, the most conservative of the northern cities, back when it was part of the League–and undereducated; no one had ever been able to convince him that even the greatest magists could work only with what the stars gave them.

“I’m planning to consult someone,” Eslingen said. “Tomorrow or the next day. But, no, I don’t have a place, and I wasn’t planning to look until the winter season.”

“As it happens,” Cijntien said, and smiled. “As it happens, my Philip, I’ve a place for you, if you want it.”

“Oh?” In spite of himself, in spite of knowing what it must be, Eslingen felt his heart quicken a little. He was a fish out of water in Astreiant, and that was frightening as well as a challenge; it wouldn’t be bad to have familiar work, or to be serving with Cijntien again… Then common sense reasserted itself. He had no desire to serve six months to a year in a trading company–of course a shipboard post would probably be shorter, assuming Cijntien had moved from the caravans to the more prestigious trading craft, though he himself had never sailed on anything larger than a river barge, much less fought from one.

“My principal’s still hiring for this winter’s caravan,” Cijntien said. “It’s a good trip, I’ve done it five times now, up the Queen’s‑road to Anver, cross the Marr at Breissa and then over the land bridge into the Silklands.”

“I thought that was all desert,” Eslingen said, but couldn’t suppress a surge of curiosity. He had always liked travel–men were generally wanderers by their stars, and he was no exception.

“It is, mostly. But the rivers fill in winter, and the nomads–they’re Haissa, there, mostly, and a lot of Qaidin–come to the city‑sites to trade.” Cijntien looked past him, not seeing the tavern crowd. “It’s a sight to see, Philip. The sites, they’re nothing, just the walls for houses, but then the people come in, pitch their tents, and make a city. They’ve a traders’ peace, too, at least in the cities, so the various clans can do their business. We were early once, saw the Haissa setting up at Saatara. It was like magists’ work, I’ve never seen anything like it. We came in at first sundown, pitched our camp, and there was nothing there, just mud brick walls and dirt. And then, just before second sundown, we heard the Haissa arrive–they’d been held up, their camp mother said, a storm or something–and the next thing we knew the city’d sprouted roofs and doors. All oil‑silk, mind you, and those heavy carpets everywhere. When the light hit them, at first sunup, gods, it was like you’d fallen into a jewelbox. And there was nothing there before, nothing at all.”

Eslingen shivered, caught by the picture the older man had conjured for him. He had met Silklanders before, of course, had served with any number of them, but they were mostly dark‑skinned Maivi, from the center of the empire. He’d never met a true Hasiri, from one of the tribes, though like all Leaguer children he’d been raised on stories of the wild nomads who roamed the roof of the world; it would be wonderful to see.

“After that,” Cijntien went on, “we take it by easy stages down the imperial roads to Tchalindor. My principal’s factor is there. And then we come back by sea.”

And that, Eslingen thought, was the rub. It would be a glorious journey, certainly, but it would take the rest of the year and well into the next spring to reach Tchalindor–the land bridge was only passable in the winter, when the rivers were full–and by the time he could get a ship back to Chenedolle or the League, the best captains would have filled their companies for the spring campaigns. Still, if the pay was good enough, he could afford to wait for the winter season… “What’s your principal offering?”

“Two pillars a lunar month, paid at Tchalindor, plus bonuses. And of course food, mounts, and shot and powder are his business–and weapons, too, if you don’t want to bring your own.”

Which wasn’t enough, not even if he skimped–and besides, Eslingen told himself firmly, he’d always been a soldier, not some caravan guard. He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Dausset. I can’t afford it.”

“Can you afford to have your head blown off, somewhere up in the Ile’nord? Or your throat slit some dark night, more likely?”

Eslingen laughed. “But I’m good, Dausset. Besides, if it’s in my stars, it’s in my stars. By all accounts, you can get your throat cut just as neatly on the caravan roads.”

Cijntien shook his head, the smile fading from his lips. “I wish you’d come with me, Philip. This is not a good time for Leaguers in Astreiant.”

“What do you mean?” Eslingen reached for the pitcher, found it empty, and lifted a hand to signal the nearest waiter. The room had definitely filled while they’d been talking, a mix of Leaguers, marked by their lighter skin and hair and the wide hats they wore even in the tavern, and soldiers and former soldiers, equally marked by their boots and the various scars. But there was a small knot of people whom he couldn’t identify immediately sitting close together at the tables by the door, and another larger group–this one with the leather aprons and pewter Toncarle badges of the Butcher’s Guild–at the big table closest to the bar. Locals, all of them, and they didn’t look particularly happy. The waiter–not Loret, this time–brought a second pitcher, and Eslingen paid, waving away Cijntien’s perfunctory and insincere offer of coin. “So what do you mean, this is a bad time for Leaguers?”

“Haven’t you heard?”

“I got into the city two days ago,” Eslingen answered. “Not even Astreiant proper, the camps out along the Horse Road. And I wasn’t paid off until this morning. So whatever it is, no, I haven’t heard.”

Cijntien leaned forward again, lowering his voice. “There’s something very wrong in this city, Philip, let me tell you that. And the Astreianters are being very quick to blame everybody else before they’ll look in their own stars.”

Eslingen made a noncommittal noise.

“Their children are disappearing,” Cijntien said, leaning forward even further. “Lots of them, just vanishing, no one knows where or why. They say–” He jerked his head toward the doorway, the city beyond it. “–they say it’s Leaguers, or maybe the caravaners and Silklanders, needing hands for the road. But I say it’s a judgment on herself, for being childless.”

Eslingen caught his breath at that, barely kept himself from looking over his shoulder. “Have a care, Dausset.”

“Well, she should have an heiress by now,” Cijntien said, stubbornly. Neither man needed to say who he meant: the Queen of Chenedolle’s childless state had been the subject of speculation for years. “Or have named one. The Starsmith is moving, it’ll enter the Charioteer within the year–”

“Or next year, or the year after,” Eslingen interrupted, his voice equally firm. Anyone in Chenedolle–in the known world–knew what that meant: the Starsmith was the brightest of the moving stars, the ruler of death, monarchs, and magists, and its passage from one sign to the next signaled upheavals at the highest levels. The current queen’s grandmother had died during such a transit, and the transit before that had been marked by civil war; it was not unreasonable to fear this passage, when the current queen was no longer young, and childless. But the tertiary zodiac, the one in which the Starsmith moved, as opposed to the zodiacs of the sun and winter‑sun, was still poorly defined, its boundaries the subject of debate even within Astreiant’s university. The Starsmith might well pass from the Shell to the Charioteer this year, or not for another four or five years; it all depended on who you asked.

“At least you don’t say never,” Cijntien muttered. “Like some godless Chadroni.”

“Whatever else you may say about me, you can’t call me that.”

“Godless?”

“Chadroni.”

Cijntien laughed. “I have missed you, Philip, and I don’t deny it’d be good to have you along this trip if only for the company. But I mean it, this is not a good time to be Leaguer here.”

“Because of missing children,” Eslingen said. “Missing, you said, not dead?”

“No one’s found bodies, at any rate,” Cijntien answered.

“So how many of them have just decided to take to the roads?” Eslingen asked. “It’s Midsummer, or nearly, fair season–hiring season. When did you leave home, Dausset, or did you start out a soldier?”

“As it happened, yes, and I left home at the spring balance,” Cijntien said. “But that’s not what’s happening, or so they say. It’s the wrong children, not the southriver rats and rabble, but the merchants’ brats from north of the river. Those children don’t run away, Philip. They’ve got too much to stay for.”

Eslingen made a face, still skeptical, but unwilling to argue further. In his experience, the merchant classes were as likely to run as any other, depending on their stars and circumstances–he’d served with enough of them in various companies, even with a few who had taken to soldiering like ducks to water. “Still, there’s no reason to blame us. It’s past the campaign season–gods, if I couldn’t find a company hiring, how will some half‑trained butcher’s brat? If they’re looking to blame someone, let them blame the ship captains.”

“Oh, they’re doing that,” Cijntien began, and a hand slammed down onto the table.

“And what do you know about butcher’s brats, Leaguer?”

Eslingen swallowed a curse, more at his own unruly tongue than at the stranger, looked up to see one of the butchers staring down at them. He was a young man, probably only a journeyman yet, but he held onto the table as though he needed its support. Which he probably does, Eslingen added silently, wrinkling his nose at the smell of neat spirit that hung about him. Drunk, and probably contentious– there’s no point in being too polite with him, but I don’t want a fight, either.

“Little enough,” he said aloud, and gave the youth his best blank smile, the one he’d copied from the Ile’norder lieutenants, sixteen quarterings and not a demming in his pocket. “A–figure of speech, I think it’s called, an example, a part standing for the whole.”

“There’s a butcher’s brat gone missing,” the journeyman went on, as though he hadn’t heard a word the other had said, and Eslingen was suddenly very aware of the quiet spreading out from them as people turned to look and listen. “This morning–last night maybe. And I want to know what you know about it, soldier.”

“This morning,” Eslingen said, speaking not so much to the drunken boy in front of him but the listeners beyond, the ones who were still sober and could cause real trouble, “I was with my troop at the Horse Road camps, being paid off by Her Majesty’s intendants– and I was there the night before, too, for that matter, making ready for it. There’s a hundred men who’ll witness for me.” He could feel the tension relax–he wasn’t likely quarry anyway, was too new to the city to be the real cause–and pushed himself easily to his feet. “But no harm done, my son, let me buy you a drink.”

He came around the table as he spoke, caught the journeyman by the arm and shoulder, a grip that looked a little like linked arms but made the slighter man gasp sharply. He started to pull away, and Eslingen tightened his hold. The journeyman winced, subsiding, and Eslingen propelled him toward the door, talking all the while.

“No? Well, you’re probably right, you’ve probably had all you want tonight. I hope you have a pleasant sleep and not too hard a morning.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the other young men from the table of butchers all on their feet, but hesitating, not quite certain what to do, and he favored them with a broad, slightly silly smile. “I think he was just going, don’t you? And one of you should probably see him home, there’s good chap, thank you. Devynck would want it that way, I’m sure.”

The senior journeymen exchanged glances, and then the older of the two nodded. “I’ll see him home, thanks.”

Eslingen nodded and smiled, but kept his grip on the younger man until he was actually in the doorway. The senior journeyman followed him, the rest of the butchers trailing after him, pausing opposite Eslingen. The wind from the street was cool and smelled of the middens outside the butchers’ halls, the sharp green scent of vegetables.

“You were paid off today? Sergeant, is it?”

“Lieutenant,” Eslingen answered. “I was. I give you my word on it.”

The senior journeyman looked at him for a moment longer, then, slowly, nodded. “Come on, Paas, let’s get you home.”

Eslingen released the journeyman’s arm, and let the rest of them file out past him into the street. They went quietly enough, embarrassed more than anything, and he was careful not to say or do anything more. Let them forget as quickly as possible that Paas disgraced himself, he thought, and that’ll do more to keep the peace than any threats or arguing. As the last of them left, he turned back into the tavern, glancing around the room more out of habit than because he expected more trouble. The conversations were already returning to normal, nearly everyone more concerned now with their drinks or a last order of food. He’d pulled it off, then, and as neatly as he’d ever done. He allowed himself a slow breath of relief, and Devynck said, “Not bad.”

Eslingen blinked, startled–he hadn’t seen her there in the shadows, or the big waiter, Loret, who was tucking a cudgel back under the strings of his apron–and Devynck went on, “I don’t suppose you’d care to make a habit of it? Defusing the trouble, not starting it, that is. I’d pay you or take it off your rent.”

Whatever else happened, Eslingen thought, he had not been expecting an offer of employment, but he wasn’t stupid enough to turn it down, not when he’d already decided to stay in Astreiant for the summer. He nodded slowly. “I’d be interested, sergeant, but I’d rather talk terms in the morning.”

“Good enough,” Devynck said, and turned away. “Your beer’s on the house tonight.”

“Thanks,” Eslingen answered, and allowed himself a wry smile. It was a cheap enough gesture: he wouldn’t be drinking that much now, not if he wanted to impress her. And he did want to impress her, he realized suddenly. He wanted this job, wanted to stay in the city, though he couldn’t entirely have said why. He shook his head, accepting his own foolishness, and started back to his table and Cijntien.

3

« ^ »

the list of missing children reported to all the points station arrived within three days–a measure in and of itself of the seriousness with which all the Points were taking the problem, Rathe thought– and was enough to silence even the most skeptical of the pointsmen. There were eighty‑four names on the list, a little less than half of them from the five northriver points–no, Rathe realized, more than half, if you counted Point of Hearts as northriver. Which it was, technically; the district lay on the north bank of the Sier between the North Chain Tower and the Western Reach, but it was southriver in population and temperament. Still, he thought, that was not what any of them had expected. Logically, if children were going missing, either as runaways or because they were taken, they should come from southriver, where there were fewer people of influence to protest their vanishing. Or else, he added silently, turning over the last closely written sheet, I would have expected to hear of someone paying out money for the return of an heiress. And there had been none of that; just the opposite, in fact, merchant parents coming to the points stations to report the loss of daughters and sons, and to demand that the points find their missing offspring. There hadn’t been much of that in Point of Hopes, yet; the majority of their complainants had admitted, however grudgingly, that their children might well have run away–except, of course, for Mailet and the Quentiers.

Rathe sighed, set the list back in its place–Monteia had ordered it pinned in a leather folder chained to the duty desk, to keep the names and descriptions ready to hand–and reached for his daybook, moving into the fall of light from the window to skim through the pages of notes. There had been no sign of Gavaret Cordiere in any of the northriver cells–he had even made a special trip across the river to Fairs’ Point to ask Claes in person, but the man had just shaken his head. Not only hadn’t they arrested any boy matching Cordiere’s description, they hadn’t made point on any pickpockets for nearly four days. And it wasn’t that the pointsmen and women were taking fees, Claes added, with a quick grin; it was more that the pickpockets had stopped working. And that, both men agreed, had to be a bad sign– doubly bad, Claes had said, when you matched it with the new band of astrologers who were working the fairgrounds. The arbiters had declared they could stay, but no one needed any more mysteries just now. Rathe had agreed and left Cordiere’s description in the station, but he wasn’t relishing telling Estel Quentier of his failure.

“Rathe? Have you gotten the Robion girl’s stars yet?”

Rathe looked up to see Monteia standing just outside the wedge of light, a thin, dark‑clad shadow against the dark walls. “I was going this afternoon. I wanted to check everything else first.”

“No luck, then.”

Rathe shook his head, barely stopped himself from glancing again through the pages of notes as though he might find something new there. He had been to the local markets, and to every early‑opening shop on the Knives Road, as well as searching out the rag‑pickers and laundresses who served the street, all without noticeable result. “A woman who does laundry for the Gorgon’s Head says she thinks she saw a girl in green going down Knives toward the Rivermarket, but she can’t remember if it was Demesday or Tonsday that she saw it–or last year, for that matter. And a journeyman sneaking in late thinks he might have seen a girl in green going south, away from the river, but he says freely he was too drunk to remember his mother’s name.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.”

“Nothing at the Rivermarket?” Monteia went on.

“Not so far. I’ve been through once myself, no one remembers her, but it was a busy morning. I’ve asked Ganier to keep an ear out, though.” Ganier was the pointswoman who had semiofficial responsibility for the complaints that came from the district’s markets.

Monteia nodded. “On your way back from Mailet’s–or to it, I don’t care–I’d like you to stop in the Old Brown Dog. I hear Aagte Devynck has hired herself a new knife, and I’d like to see what you think of him. And make sure he understands our position on troublemakers.”

Rathe frowned, and Monteia shrugged. “I’m sending Andry to collect his bond, unless you want the fee.”

You know I don’t, Rathe thought, but said only, “Thanks anyway. I’ll talk to him.”

“It’s not like Aagte to hire outside help,” Monteia said, her voice almost musing. “I hope we’re not in for trouble there. Not right now.”

“So do I,” Rathe answered, and slipped his book back into his pocket. He collected his jerkin and truncheon from their place on the wall behind the duty desk, and stepped out into the afternoon sunlight. The winter‑sun hung over the eastern housetops, a pale gold dot that dazzled the eye; the true sun, declining into the west, cast darker shadows, so that the street was crosshatched with lines of dark and lighter shade. He threaded his way through the busy crowds, turned onto the Knives Road without really deciding which job to do first. Mailet’s hall was closest; better to get it over with, he told himself, and crossed the street to Mailet’s door.

There were no chopping blocks on the street today, or apprentices showing off for the servant girls, though the shutters were down and he could see customers within. He paused outside the doorway to let a matron pass, a covered basket tucked under her arm, then stepped into the shop. The journeyman Grosejl was working behind the counter, along with a boy apprentice. She looked up sharply at his approach, hope warring with fear in her pale face, and Rathe shook his head.

“No word,” he said, and she gave a visible sigh.

“Enas, finish what you’re doing and run tell Master Mailet that the pointsman’s here.” She forced a smile, painfully too bright, to Rathe’s eyes, and passed a neatly wrapped package across the countertop. “There you are, Marritgen, that’ll be a spider and a half.”

The woman–she had the look of a householder, gravely dressed–fumbled beneath her apron and finally produced a handful of demmings. She counted out five of them, Grosejl watching narrowly, and slid them across the countertop. Grosejl took them, gave a little half bow.

“Thanks, Marritgen. Metenere go with you.”

The woman muttered something in answer, and slipped out through the door. The other customers had vanished, too, and Grosejl made a face.

“They’ll be back,” Rathe said. He was used to the effect he had on even honest folk, but the journeyman shook her head.

“It’s a sad thing, pointsman, when they’re half blaming us for Herisse vanishing. There’s regular customers who won’t come near us, like it was a disease, or something.”

There was nothing Rathe could say to that, and Grosejl seemed to realize it, looked away. “I’m sorry. There’s still nothing?”

“Nothing of use,” Rathe answered, as gently as he could. “We’re still looking.”

“No body, though,” she said, with an attempt at a smile, and Mailet spoke from the doorway.

“That just means they haven’t found it. Well, pointsman, what do you want this time?”

“I need some more information from you,” Rathe said, and took a tight hold of his temper. “And for what it’s worth, which is quite a lot, in actual fact, we don’t have ghosts, either. Which means they’re probably not dead.”

“They?” Grosejl said.

Mailet grunted. “Hadn’t you heard, girl? We’re not the only ones suffering. There’re children missing all over this city.” He looked at Rathe without particular fondness. “Come on back, if you want to talk. My records are within.”

“Thanks,” Rathe said, and followed him through the narrow door into the main part of the hall. This time, Mailet led him into the counting room, tucked in between the main workroom and the stairs that led to the living quarters on the upper floors. It was a comfortable, well‑lit space, with diamond‑paned windows that gave onto the narrow garden–not much of a garden, Rathe thought, just a few kitchen herbs and a ragged‑looking stand of save‑all, but then, a dozen apprentices would tend to beat down all but the most determinedly defended plants. There were candles as thick as a woman’s ankle on sturdy tripod dishes, unlit now but ready for the failing light, and an abacus and a counting board lay on the main table. A ledger was propped on the slanting lectern, and there were more books, heavy plain‑bound account books and ledgers, locked in the cabinet beside the door.

“You said you wanted information,” Mailet said, and lowered himself with a grunt into the chair behind the table. An embroidered pillow, incongruously bright, lay against the chair’s back, and the butcher adjusted it with an absent grimace, tucking it into the hollow of his spine. A bad back, Rathe guessed, an occupational hazard, leaning over the chopping blocks all day.

“That’s right,” he said aloud. “My chief wants to know if you have Herisse’s nativity in your records.”

Mailet’s head lifted, more than ever like a baited bull. Rathe met his gaze squarely, and saw the master swallow his temper with a visible effort. “I have it,” he said at last. “I take it this means you don’t have the faintest idea what’s happened.”

“I’ve found two people who might have seen her,” Rathe said, and took tight hold of his own temper in his turn. “But their stories don’t match, and I don’t have a way to test who’s mistaken.”

“Or lying.”

“Or lying,” Rathe agreed. “But I don’t have reason to think that yet, either. We’re not giving up, though.”

“Well, I have some news for you,” Mailet said. “Some oddness that’s come to my ears. My neighbor Follet brought me the word yesterday, I’ve been trying to decide what to do with it. But since you’re here…” He shook himself, went on more briskly. “Follet knows Herisse is missing–everyone does, we passed the word through the guild–and he told me one of his journeymen was out drinking the other night, at the Old Brown Dog. Do you know the place?”

Rathe nodded. “I know it.”

Mailet grunted. “Then you know the woman who runs it, too.”

“Devynck’s not a bad sort,” Rathe said, mildly. “Honest of her kind.”

“Which isn’t saying much,” Mailet retorted. He leaned forward, planting both elbows firmly on the tabletop. “But that’s neither here nor there, pointsman. What is important is what Paas–that’s Follet’s journeyman–heard there. There were two soldiers drinking, Leaguers, and they were talking about the missing children. And one of them was saying, if he couldn’t find a company, how could some half‑trained butcher’s brat?”

“He’d heard of the disappearance, then?” Rathe asked, after a moment. It was an interesting remark, and certainly suggestive considering how most of Devynck’s neighbors felt about the League, but hardly solid enough to be called evidence, or even a lead.

“If he had, would I be bothering you with it?” Mailet said. “He couldn’t’ve done, you see, he swore he’d just arrived in the city today.”

“So this Paas confronted him,” Rathe said.

Mailet looked away. “He was drunk, Follet said, the soldier put him out–and neatly, too, I’ll give him that, no violence offered.” He looked up again. “And that, pointsman, is why I didn’t come to you at once. But since you’re here, I thought I might as well tell you. Devynck’s a bad lot, and there are worse who drink in her house.”

“I’ll make inquiries,” Rathe said. And I will, too: convenient, being bound there anyway. It’s not much to go on, but it’s something. I wonder if he’s the new knife Monteia was talking about?

“And you still want Herisse’s nativity,” Mailet said. He sighed and pushed himself to his feet, crossed to the cabinet that held the hall’s books. He fished in his pocket for his keys on their long chain–gold, Rathe noted, from long habit, a good chain worth half a year’s wages for a poor woman–and unlocked the cabinet, then ran his finger along the books’ spines until he found the volume he wanted. He brought it back to the table and reseated himself, folding his hands on top of the cover. “And what do you want it for?”

“We intend to ask an astrologer to cast her horoscope for us,” Rathe answered. “For her on the day she disappeared, and for her current prospects.” Knowledge of the girl’s stars would also be helpful if they had to locate a body, or to identify one long dead, but there was no need to mention those possibilities just yet. Mailet would have thought of them on his own, in any case.

“That’s not likely to do you much good,” Mailet grumbled. Rathe said nothing–he knew that as well as anyone; it was axiomatic in dealing with astrologers that as the focus of the question narrowed the certainties became smaller–and the butcher sighed, and opened the book. He flipped through the pages, scowling now at the lines of ink that were fading already from black to dark brown, finally stopped on a page close to the end. “Here. This is her indenture, her chart’s there at the bottom of the page.”

Rathe pulled out his tablet, and swung the ledger toward him to copy the neat diagram. It was, he admitted silently, almost certain to be an exercise in futility. Most southriver children knew the date and the place of their birth, but were less clear about its time. Not many common women would have the coin to pay someone to keep track precisely, and their midwives would have enough to do, tending the birth itself, and after, to make it unlikely that the time would be noted with the quarter‑hour’s accuracy the astrologers preferred. He himself knew his stars to within a half hour, and counted himself lucky at that; most of his friends had known only the approximate hour, nothing more. He incised the circle and its twelve divisions with the ease of long practice–even the poorest dame schools taught one how to construct that figure–and glanced at the drawing in the ledger. The familiar symbols were clear enough, the planets spread fanlike across one side of the wheel, but to his surprise there were numbers sketched beside each of the marks, and along the spokes that marked the divisions of the houses. He looked up.

“It’s very complete. Is it accurate?”

Mailet shrugged. “I suppose–I assume so. She was born on the day of the earthquake in twenty‑one, and she told me her mother heard the clock strike five the moment she was born. Her aunt, the one who paid her indenture, had the chart drawn for her as an apprenticeship gift.”

Rathe nodded. He remembered the earthquake himself, the way the towers of the city had staggered; it hadn’t done much damage, but it had terrified everyone, and untuned all the city clocks so that the temple of Hesion had been jammed for a solar month afterward, and the grand resident had built a new tower from the offerings. No one would forget that date, and the astrologers would know the stars’ positions by heart. “This was copied from that chart, the one her aunt bought her?” he asked, and Mailet nodded. “Did she take it with her, or would it be in her room?”

“She carried it around with her like a talisman,” Mailet answered. “You’d think it named her some palatine’s missing heiress.”

Rathe sighed. He would have to hope that whoever copied it into the indenture had been accurate–or pay to have the chart drawn again, which would be expensive. He drew the symbols one after the other, then copied the numbers, checking often to make sure he had it right. Nothing looked unusual, there were no obvious flaws or traps, and he sighed again and closed the tablets. “Thank you,” he said, and pushed himself to his feet.

“For all the good it does you,” Mailet answered, but his expression softened slightly. “Let us know if you find anything, pointsman. Send to us, day or night.”

“Of course,” Rathe answered, and let himself back into the hall.

The Old Brown Dog lay just off the Knives Road, on the tenuous border between Point of Hopes and Point of Dreams, and neither station was eager to claim it. In practice, it fell to Point of Hopes largely because Monteia was able to deal with Devynck woman to woman. Or something, Rathe added silently, watching a flock of gargoyles lift from a pile of spilled seeds beside a midden barrel. Maybe they’d simply settled on an appropriate fee between them.

The main room was almost empty at midafternoon, only an ancient woman sitting beside the cold hearth, her face so wrinkled and shrunken beneath her neat cap that it was impossible to tell if she were asleep or simply staring into space. A couple of the waiters were playing tromps, the table between them strewn with cards and a handful of copper coins, and a tall man sat in the far corner reading a broadsheet prophecy, feet in good boots propped up on the table in front of him. Good soldier’s boots, Rathe amended, and his gaze sharpened. Devynck liked to hire out‑of‑work soldiers, and this just might be her new knife. The stranger looked up, as though he’d heard the thought or felt Rathe’s eyes on him, and lowered the broadsheet with a smile that did not quite reach his eyes. He was handsome, almost beautiful, Rathe thought, with the milk white Leaguer complexion that was so fashionable now, and long almost‑black hair. In the light from the garden window, his eyes were very blue, the blue of ink, not sky, and he’d chosen the ribbons on his hat and hair to match the shade. And that, Rathe thought, recalling himself to the job at hand, bespoke a vanity that, while not surprising, was probably not attractive.

“I’m here to see Aagte,” he said, to the room at large, and the handsome man’s smile widened slightly. One of the waiters put his cards aside with palpable relief–he’d been losing, Rathe saw, by the piled coins, and scurried through the kitchen door. He reappeared a moment later, held the door open with a grimace that wasn’t quite a smile.

“She says, come on back,” he said, and Rathe nodded, and stepped through into the hall that led to the kitchen. The smell of food was much stronger here, onions and oil and garlic and the distinctive Leaguer scent of mutton and beer, not unpleasant but powerful; through the open arch he could see Devynck’s daughter Adriana helping to scour the pans for the night’s dinner. She saw him looking, and grinned cheerfully, her hands never pausing in their steady motion. Rathe smiled back, and a side door opened.

“So, Rathe, what brings you here?” Devynck’s eyes were wary, despite the pleasant voice. She beckoned him into the little room– another counting room, Rathe saw, though a good deal smaller than Mailet’s–and shut the door firmly behind him.

“A few things,” Rathe answered easily. “Nothing–complicated.”

“That would be a first.” Devynck leaned against the edge of her work table, which looked as though it had seen service in the kitchens, the top scarred with knife marks. There was only one chair, and Rathe appreciated the delicate balance of courtesy and status. She wouldn’t sit, and keep him standing, but neither would she stand when he sat.

“I understand you have a new knife,” he went on.

Devynck nodded. “You probably saw him when you came in. His name’s Philip, Philip Eslingen. Just paid off from Coindarel’s Dragon’s.”

“Is that a reference?” Rathe asked, with exaggerated innocence, and Devynck gave a sour smile.

“To some of us, anyway. Coindarel’s no fool, and he doesn’t hire fools.”

Rathe’s eyebrows rose, in spite of himself. Coindarel was known to choose his junior officers for their looks, and the man in the main room was easily pretty enough to have caught the prince‑marshal’s eye.

Devynck sighed. “Not for his sergeants–not for the men who do the real work, anyway. And Philip came up through the ranks.”

“It wasn’t his sleeping habits that worried me,” Rathe answered. “I hear you had a little trouble here the other night.”

“We did not,” Devynck answered promptly, “and that’s precisely why I hired the man. There could’ve been trouble, easy, but he nipped it in the bud.”

“What I heard–what’s being said on the Knives Road,” Rathe said, “is that he was talking about missing butcher’s brats before he could’ve known about it.”

Devynck sighed again, and shook her head. “Paas. He’s a bad lot, that one, be a journeyman all his life–if he doesn’t drink himself right out of the guild.”

“So what happened?”

“You’d have to ask Philip for the details,” Devynck answered, “but what I saw was, Paas came over to their table–Eslingen was drinking with a man, looked like an old friend. I don’t know his name, but he’s a Leaguer, too, works for one of the caravan‑masters. But anyway, they were drinking, and Paas comes over their table, says something I don’t hear except for the tone.” She smiled suddenly. “And the next thing I know, Philip’s got him by the arm and is leading him gently out the door. The rest of the butchers’ boys went with him, pretty well abashed. Everyone knows Paas drinks too much.”

Rathe nodded. “I’ll want to talk to Eslingen, of course–Monteia wanted me to be sure he understood the situation, anyway, with the fair and all.”

“Reasonable enough,” Devynck answered.

“And I wanted to say, if you hear anything, anything at all, that might have to do with the missing children, I expect to hear from you.”

Devynck’s eyes narrowed. “Did you think otherwise, Rathe?”

Rathe shook his head. “No. But people are starting to talk, up on the Knives Road. If you have any trouble, I also expect to hear from you.”

“That you certainly will,” Devynck said. “Who’ll be taking Philip’s bond?”

“Andry. You don’t mind if I talk to him?”

“Philip? No.”

“Thanks, Aagte.”

Devynck nodded, pushed herself away from the table. “I hope I won’t be seeing you, at least not by way of business, Nico.”

“So do I,” Rathe answered, and went back out into the main room. Eslingen–it had to be Eslingen, with those looks–was standing with the remaining waiter, flipping idly through the cards left on the table. “You’re Eslingen, I presume. Can we talk?”

The dark‑haired man nodded, letting the gesture serve for both answers, moved toward the windows. Rathe looked back at the waiter. “I think you’re wanted in the kitchen.” The man made a face, but moved slowly away, closing the kitchen door behind him. Beside the hearth, the old woman stirred slightly, then subsided again. “The chief point asked me to have a word with you, seeing that you’re new in Astreiant–and seeing that it’s fair time.”

“Ah.” Eslingen smiled, the expression consciously cynical. “How much?”

“You might hear me out,” Rathe answered.

“Sorry.” Eslingen reseated himself at the corner table, flipping the skirts of his coat out of his way, and gestured vaguely to the stool opposite. Rathe accepted the invitation with a nod, and leaned both elbows companionably on the table.

“What Monteia–she’s the chief at Point of Hopes–what Monteia wants is for this fair to go off peaceably. Like last year, if not better, in point of fact, which, since you weren’t here, you might want to ask Aagte about. And to that end, seeing as Aagte’s felt the need to hire a new knife–” Eslingen flushed at that, the color clear on his pale skin. So he thinks himself above that title, Rathe thought, but went on without comment. “–she, Monteia, has asked me to tell you that we don’t get a lot of trouble in Point of Hopes. Devynck’s is a soldiers’ place, true enough, but it doesn’t get what you might call soldiers’ business.” Rathe paused, eyeing the other man’s politely impassive face. “Which means, in plain words, if you run into trouble, send a kid to Point of Hopes. That’s the only way we can guarantee everyone will get treated properly, when it’s soldiers’ troubles, is taking the points and letting us bear witness.”

“And the fee for the service?” Eslingen asked, but he sounded less cynical than the words implied.

Rathe shrugged. “I don’t generally take fees.” He smiled suddenly, unable to resist. “You see, I like my points too much, or so they tell me–I get a great deal of satisfaction out of my job, and taking money to let someone go, well, that would spoil it, wouldn’t it? And there’s not much point in feeing me when it won’t buy you off, and when I already enjoy my work. You can ask Aagte for the truth of it, or anyone in the point, they’ll tell you.”

“I’ll probably do just that,” Eslingen said.

“A wise move.” Rathe leaned forward again. “I do have some questions for you, though.”

Eslingen made a face. “That butcher’s journeyman, right?”

Rathe nodded, not surprised that the man had guessed. He didn’t seem stupid, and it would be a stupid man who failed to make that connection. “You want to tell me what happened?”

Eslingen shrugged. “Not much.”

He went through it quickly, concisely–he told the story well, Rathe thought, plenty of detail but all in its place. It was the same story Devynck had told, the same that Mailet had recounted, barring the butcher’s automatic suspicion of the Leaguer woman. And it sounds to me, Rathe thought, as though he handled an awkward situation rather well. He said aloud, “So why’d you pick a ‘butcher’s brat’ for your example?”

Eslingen’s mouth curved into a wry smile. “I wish to all the gods I’d picked anything else. I don’t know–there were, what, near a dozen of them, butchers, I mean, sitting by the bar. I suppose that made it stick in my mind. That and being near the Knives Road.”

Rathe looked closely at him, but the Leaguer met his eyes guilelessly. It was a plausible explanation, Rathe admitted. And I have to say, I think I believe him. Stealing children, for whatever cause–it’s just not Devynck’s style, and she’d never put up with that traffic in her house. He nodded. “Fair enough. But remember, if you have trouble here, send to Point of Hopes. It’ll pay you better in the long run than feeing me.”

“I’ll do that,” Eslingen said again, and this time Rathe thought he meant it. He pushed himself to his feet, and headed for the door.

Eslingen watched him go, impressed in spite of himself. Rathe wasn’t much to look at–a wiry man in plain‑sewn common clothes, hands too big for his corded arms, with a scar like a printer’s star on one wide cheekbone and glass grey eyes with a Silklands tilt to them–but there was something in his voice, an intensity, maybe, that carried conviction. He shook his head, not sure if he was annoyed with himself or with the pointsman, and crossed to the kitchen door, pushing it open. “Oy, Hulet, you can come out now.”

“Thanks,” the waiter answered, without notable conviction. “Aagte wants to see you.”

“What a surprise. So who is he, the pointsman?”

The other man shrugged, and went to pick up the coins that lay still untouched on the table among the scattered cards. “Nicolas Rathe, his name is. He’s adjunct point at Point of Hopes.”

“How salubrious,” Eslingen murmured.

“Oh, Point of Hopes isn’t bad,” Hulet answered. “Monteia’s reasonable, for a chief point.”

Or bribeable, Eslingen thought. His experience with the points had been minimal, but unpleasant; for all their boasting, Astreiant’s vaunted points seemed to make a very good thing out of the administration of justice. He nodded again, and stepped through the kitchen door.

Devynck was waiting in the doorway of her counting room, arms folded across her chest. She jerked her head for him to enter, closed the door behind him, then seated herself behind the table. “So Point of Hopes is already taking an interest in your exploits. Did he tell you about Andry?”

Eslingen shook his head.

Devynck snorted. “Andry’s one of the pointsmen. He’ll be along to collect your–bond, he’ll call it. Tell me what he charges, I’ll pay half.”

Eslingen lifted an eyebrow, but said, “Thanks. Is this trouble?”

“Not the bond, no,” Devynck answered, “but these kids… that could be.”

Eslingen nodded at that, thinking about his own brief explorations in the neighborhood. The people hadn’t been precisely unfriendly, the bathhouse keeper and the barber had been glad of his custom, but he’d been aware of the eyes on him, the way that people watched him and any stranger. He’d walked across the Hopes‑point Bridge that morning to the Temple Fair, to visit the broadsheet vendors who worked there, and the talk had been all of this child and that one, gone missing from their shops or homes. Half the prophecies tacked to the poles of the stalls had dealt with the question, and the lines had been five or six deep to read and to buy. “People are worried.”

“And ready to blame the most convenient target,” Devynck said, sourly. She shook her head. “I can’t see the recruiters bothering, damn it. There’re usually too many people wanting a place, not the other way round.”

“Do you suppose it’s the starchange?” Eslingen asked, and Devynck looked sharply at him.

“I don’t see how it could be, these are common folks’ kin who are going missing.”

Eslingen lowered his voice, despite the closed door. “The queen is childless, and the Starsmith is about to change signs. There is talk–” He wasn’t about to admit it was Cijntien’s idea. “–that that might be the cause.”

Devynck winced, looked herself toward the closed door. “That’s dangerous talk, from the likes of us, and I’ll thank you to keep it to yourself.” Eslingen said nothing, waiting, and the woman shook her head decisively. “No, I can’t think it. If the queen were at fault–well, there would have been some sign of it, surely, some warning, and she wouldn’t have ignored it. Besides, the gossip is, she’s barren. She couldn’t be blamed for that.”

Eslingen nodded. He was less convinced by the benevolence of the powerful–though Devynck was a skeptic by nature, certainly–but he acknowledged the wisdom of her advice. This wasn’t speculation to be voiced openly, at least not now.

“In any case,” Devynck went on, “I want to make sure we don’t have any trouble here for a while. I’ll tell Hulet and Loret, too, of course, but I’d like you to keep a special eye on the soldiers, especially any newcomers. If they haven’t heard what’s going on, they may do something stupid.”

“Like I did?”

Devynck smiled. “Not everyone has your–tact, Philip.”

Eslingen laughed. “I’ll keep an eye on things.”

“It’s what I pay you for,” Devynck said, without heat, and Eslingen made his way back into the main room.

The broadsheets he had bought that morning still lay on the table by the garden window, and he collected them, shuffling them back into a tidy pile. The one on top caught his eye. It was a petty thing, one of the two‑for‑a‑demming sort, offering predictions for the next week according to the signs of one’s birth. He had been born under the signs of the Horse and the Horsemaster, and the woodcut that covered half the page–the most professional thing about the sheet, he acknowledged silently–showed a horse and rider, and the rider held a gambler’s wheel, balancing it like a top in the palm of his outstretched hand. The fortune lay crooked across the page beneath it: chance meetings are just chance and chancy, bring chances, take chances. chance would be a fine thing! Eslingen allowed himself a smile at that, wondering if his encounter with the pointsman, Rathe, was covered in that prediction, then headed for the garden stairs and his own room.

Rathe took the long way back toward Point of Hopes, through the Factors’ Walk, with its maze of warehouses and shops and sunken roads and sudden, unexpected inlets where the smaller, river‑bound lighters could tie up and discharge their cargoes in relative privacy. He was known here, too, was aware of people slipping out of sight, staying to the edges of his vision, but they weren’t his business today, and he contented himself with the occasional smile and pointed greeting. Some of the factors dealt in human cargo–there would always be that trade, no matter what the law said or how many points were scored– but they had been the first to be searched and questioned, from the first report of missing children, and all their efforts, both from Point of Hopes and Point of Sighs, had turned up nothing more than the usual crop of semiwilling recruits. A few of the more notorious figures, the ones who’d overstepped the bounds of tolerance bought with generous fees, were spending their days in the cells at Point of Sighs, but Rathe doubted the points would be upheld at the next court session.

“Rathe!”

He looked up at the shout to see a tall woman leaning over the edge of one of the walkways that connected the warehouses at the second floor. He recognized her instantly: Marchari Kalvy, who made her living providing select bedmates for half the seigneury in the Western Reach, and owned a dozen houses in Point of Hearts as well. He admired her business sense–how could he not, when she’d had the sense to provide not just bodies but the residences where a noble could keep her, or his, leman in comfort, taking their money at all stages of the relationship–but couldn’t like her, wished he’d had the sense to pretend not to hear.

“Rathe, I want to talk to you.” Kalvy bunched her skirts and scrambled easily down the narrow stairs that led to the wooden walkway that ran along the first‑floor windows of Faraut’s ropewalk. “Will you come up?”

She was more than capable, Rathe knew, of coming down, and making a scene of it, if it suited her. “All right,” he said, and found the nearest stair leading up again.

The smell of hemp was strong on the walkway, drifting out the open windows of the ropewalk, and he could hear the breathless drone of a worksong, and the shuffle of feet on the wooden floor. There was a smell of tar as well, probably from the floor below, and he wrinkled his nose at its sharpness. Kalvy watched his approach, hands on her hips.

“So what is it you want?” Rathe asked.

“Do you want to discuss it in the street?” Kalvy returned.

“It was you who wanted to talk to me,” Rathe said. “I’ve business to attend to. It’s here, or come in to the station.”

“Suit yourself, pointsman.” Kalvy leaned against the rail, looking down onto the cobbles a dozen feet below. “It’s about Wels.”

“I assumed.” Wels Mesry was Kalvy’s acknowledged partner and the father of at least two of her children–though not, malicious rumor whispered, of the daughter who bade fair to get the family business in the end. Mesry had been arrested for pandering to a landame from the forest lands north of Cazaril. The boy in question, a fifteen‑year‑old from Point of Hopes, had claimed he was being held against his will, though Rathe personally suspected that he’d exaggerated the degree of force Mesry had used while his mother was listening.

“You know the point won’t hold,” Kalvy said. “The boy wasn’t half as unwilling as he claims–hells, how could he be, gets the chance to live in luxury for a moon‑month, maybe two, and it’s not like she was that unattractive.”

“Old enough to be his mother,” Rathe muttered.

“Sister, maybe.” Kalvy shook her head. “I tell you, Rathe, the brat was glad of the chance, losing his virginity that way.”

“She paid extra for that?” Rathe asked, and shook his head in turn. He would have liked to claim a point on the landame as well, but Monteia had flatly refused to countenance it, saying it was a waste of time and effort. She was probably right, too, but it didn’t make it any better.

Kalvy glared at him. “The landame’s childless, poor woman, that hits high as well as low. The boy had the right stars to be fertile with her, and he was well paid.”

“Practically a public service,” Rathe said, and Kalvy nodded, ignoring the irony.

“Just so.”

Rathe shook his head. “I won’t release him til the hearing–and neither will Monteia, so you needn’t bother walking all the way to the station. Think of it this way, Kalvy, I’m doing you a favor, keeping him in. This way, he can’t be blamed for any of the other kids who’ve gone missing.”

“That’s not my trade, and you know it,” Kalvy said. “You can’t blame that on me.”

In spite of herself, her voice had risen slightly. Rathe glanced at her, wondering if it meant anything, but decided with regret it was probably just the general climate. Anyone would be nervous, these days, at the thought of being linked to the missing children. “See you keep out of it, then,” he said aloud, and pushed himself away from the rail. He thought for a moment that she was going to follow him, or call after him, but she stayed where she was, still staring down at the cobbles. He went down the far stairs, past the ropewalk’s lowest doors where the smell of tar was strongest, mixing with the damp of the river.

The Factors’ Walk ended in the crowds and noise of the Rivermarket, where the merchants’ carts and pitches had spilled out onto the gentle slope of the old ferry landing. There was no ferry anymore–no need for it, since the Hopes‑point Bridge had been built fifty years before, in the twenty‑fifth year of the previous queen’s reign–but a number of the merchants brought their goods in by boat, and the brightly painted hulls were drawn up on the smooth damp stones at the bottom of the landing, watched by apprentices and dogs. Rathe skirted the edge of the market, watching with half an eye for anything out of the ordinary, but saw and heard only the usual cheerful chaos. Except, he realized, as he reached the top of the low slope, there were fewer children than usual in sight. There were a couple by the boats, a third buying vegetables at one of the cheaper stalls, and a fourth, a slight boy in patched shirt and breeches, stood talking to a man in a black magist’s robe. The magist wore neither hood nor badge, unusually, but then a man with a handcart trundled by, blocking Rathe’s view. When he had passed, the magist was gone, and the boy was running back down the slope to the river, wooden clogs loud on the stones. Rathe shook his head, wishing there were something he could do, and lengthened his stride. It was past time he was getting back to the station.

As he turned down Apothecary’s Row, he became aware of a new noise, low and angry, and a crowd gathering in front of one of the smaller shops. Squabbling among the ’pothecaries? Rathe thought, incredulously. It hardly seemed likely. He started down the street toward the commotion, and was met halfway by a woman in the long coat of a guildmaster, open over skirt and sleeveless bodice.

“Pointsman! They’re trying to kill one of my journeymen!”

Swearing under his breath, Rathe broke into a run, drawing his truncheon. The guildmaster kilted her skirts and followed. Outside the shop–one the points knew well, sold more sweets and potions than honest drugs–a knot of people had collected, hiding the group, maybe half a dozen, scuffling in the dust. With one hand, Rathe grabbed the person nearest him, and hauled back. “Come on, lay off. Points presence.”

His voice cut through the confused noise, and the people on the fringes of the trouble gave way, let him through to the knot at the center. They–mostly men, mostly nondescript, laborers and clerks rather than guild folk–stopped, too, but at least two of them kept their hands on the young man in a blue shortcoat who seemed to be at the center of the trouble. His lip was split, a thread of blood on his chin, but he glowered at his attackers, jerked himself free of their hold, not seriously hurt. Rathe laid a hand on his shoulder, a deliberately ambiguous grip, and one of the men, tall, sallow‑faced, in an apothecary’s apron, spat into the dust at his feet.

“Almost too late to save another child, pointsman, or is that part of the plan?”

Rathe set the end of the truncheon in the the man’s chest and pushed. He gave way, glowering, and Rathe looked round. “Get back, unless you all want to be taken in for riot. Now–one of you–tell me what in hell is going on. You, madam”–he pointed to the guildmaster–“is this your journeyman?”

“Yes,” the woman answered, and glared at the crowd around her. “And there’s no theft here. One of my apprentices stole off this morning in the middle of his work. When children are being stolen off the streets, what master wouldn’t worry, wouldn’t send someone to try to find that prentice? Only this lot took it on themselves to decide that my journeyman was the child‑thief.”

“Maybe you both are,” a woman’s voice called, from the shelter of the anonymous crowd.

“Well, there’s one way to find out, isn’t there?” Rathe snapped. He looked around, found a boy, thin and dark, his blue coat badged with Didonae’s spindle: no mistaking him for an apothecary, Rathe thought, that was unambiguously the Embroiderers’ Guild’s mark. He nodded to the woman who had him by the shoulder. “If you don’t mind, madam. What’s your name, child?”

The boy glowered up at him, half sullen, half scared–frightened, Rathe realized suddenly, as much by what he’d unleashed as by being caught. “Dix.”

“Dix Marun, pointsman, he’s been my apprentice for little more than a year now…” The guildmaster broke off as Rathe held up a hand.

“Thank you, madam, I want to talk to the boy.” He looked down at Marun, feeling the thin shoulder trembling under his hand. “Are you her apprentice? Think carefully, before you answer. If you’ve been mistreated in your apprenticeship, you might want revenge. But it won’t be worth it, because there are laws in Astreiant to deal with liars who send innocent people to the law.”

The child’s dark eyes darted to the journeyman who was nursing his lip and would have a badly bruised face in a few hours. That young man was damned lucky, Rathe thought, and looked as though he knew it. And if it was him the boy was running from, well, maybe it would be a salutary lesson for all concerned. He fixed his eyes on the apprentice then, his expression neutral, neither forbidding nor encouraging, refusing either to condescend or intimidate. Finally, Marun looked up at him, looked down again.

“All I wanted was to go to the market,” he said, almost voicelessly, more afraid now of the crowd that had come to his ‘rescue.’ “It’s almost the fair, I wanted my stars read, before the others. I needed to see my fortune.”

“Does your master mistreat you?” Rathe asked, gravely, and Marun shook his head.

“No. Not really. She’s hard. Sometimes she’s mean.”

“And the journeymen?”

The child’s lip curled. “They can’t help it. They think they’re special, but they’re not masters, not yet. They just think they are.”

“Do you want to return to your master’s house, then?”

“I wasn’t running away, not really.” This time, the look Marun gave the journeyman was actively hostile. “I would’ve traded my half day, but he wouldn’t let me.”

Rathe sighed. “I see. And you see these people just wanted to make sure you weren’t harmed. But are you willing to go back with them?”

Marun looked at his feet, but nodded. “Yes.”

Rathe glanced around him, surveying the crowd. It was thinning already, as the people with business elsewhere remembered what they’d been about. “I take it no one here has problems with that?”

“Give him a good hiding, madame, for deceiving people like that!”

It was a man’s voice this time, probably one of the carters at the edge of the crowd. Rathe rolled his eyes, looked at the guildmaster.

“Then, madame, there’s the question of harm done your journeyman. There is a point here, if you want to press it.”

“It was the boy’s fault, surely,” a woman called from the doorway of a prosperous‑looking shop, and Rathe shrugged.

“You should have sent to Point of Hopes, mistakes like this happen more easily when you don’t know the questions to ask. It wasn’t Dix here who beat the journeyman.” He looked back at the guildmaster. “It’s up to you, madame.”

The woman sighed, reached out to take Marun by the shoulder of his coat. “No, pointsman. An honest mistake. Let it go, please.”

“As you wish.” Rathe slipped his truncheon back into his belt. “I’ll see you to the end of the street, madame, if you want.”

“Thank you, pointsman.” She was reaching for her purse, and Rathe shook his head.

“Not necessary, madame. Despite what some think, it’s what I’m paid for.”

“Probably not enough,” she retorted, assessing shirt and coat with a practiced eye.

Rathe managed a smile in answer, though he was beginning to agree with her. “A word in your ear, madame. Keep an eye on your journeyman there.”

She nodded. “I’d a mind to it, but thank you.” They had reached the end of the street, where a pair of low‑flyers had pulled up to let the drivers gossip. She lifted a hand, and the nearer man touched his cap, slapped the reins to set the elderly horse in motion. “I count myself in your debt, though, pointsman.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” Rathe answered, and stepped back as the low‑flyer drew to a halting stop. The journeyman hauled himself painfully into the cab, and Marun followed. The guildmaster hesitated on the step.

“I meant it, you know,” she said.

“So did I,” Rathe answered, and the woman laughed. She pulled herself into the low‑flyer, and Rathe turned back toward Point of Hopes.

The rest of his walk back to the station was mercifully uneventful, and he turned the last corner with a sigh of relief. The heavy stone walls turned a blind face to the street–the point stations, especially the old ones like Point of Hopes, had originally been built as militia stations, though they had lost that exclusive function a hundred years ago–and the portcullis was down in the postern gate, barring entrance to the stable court. He pushed open the side door, the bells along its inner face clattering, and walked past the now‑empty stable to the main door. No one at Point of Hopes could afford to keep a horse; Monteia used the stalls for cells when she had a prisoner to keep.

“The surintendant wants to see you, Rathe,” the duty‑point said the moment the man stepped into the station. “As soon as you returned, the runner said. Of course, that was over an hour ago…”

“Yeah, well, some of us had work to do,” Rathe muttered, but grinned. Barbe Jiemin at least had a sense of humor, unlike some of their colleagues. “And if it was over an hour ago, another few minutes won’t kill him. Is Monteia in?”

“Trouble?” Jiemin asked, and Rathe shrugged.

“A–disturbance–over a runaway apprentice that could easily have gotten someone killed.” Rathe ran his hands through his hair, feeling the sweat damp beneath the curls. It was still hot in the station, and the air smelled more than ever of someone’s inexpert cooking. “Guildmaster set a journeyman to bring the runaway home, and the good citizens along Apothecary Row decided this was our child‑thief.”

“Not good, Nico.” Jiemin looked down at the daybook, trained reflex, checking the day’s events. “You managed all right, though?”

“This time.” Rathe shook his head again. “Next time, I’m not so sure.”

Jiemin nodded, soberly. Before she could say anything, however, the door of Monteia’s office opened and the chief point looked out. She had removed her coat and neckcloth and loosened her shirt, but still looked hot and irritable, a few strands of hair straggling across her forehead.

“Didn’t the surintendant send for you?”

Rathe suppressed a sigh. “I just got in. And I need to talk to you. We nearly had a riot in the Apothecaries Row over a runaway apprentice.”

Monteia grunted. “Can you say you’re surprised? Come on in.”

Rathe followed her into the little room, sweltering despite the wide‑open window. There was little breeze in the back garden at the best of times, and the river breeze never reached this far into Point of Hopes.

“So what’s this about a riot?” Monteia asked.

Rathe told the story quickly, but wasn’t surprised when Monteia grunted again.

“Guildmaster should take better care of her apprentices, if you ask me. Bah, it’s not good, any way you look at it.”

“No. And there’s more.”

“There would be,” Monteia muttered.

“The butchers are blaming Devynck for their missing children,” Rathe said, bluntly. “No cause for it, I don’t think, but they’ve never liked having a League tavern on their doorstep.” He ran through that story quickly, too, and Monteia muttered something under her breath.

“Chief?”

She shook her head. “Never mind. So, you think this knife–what was his name, Eslingen?”

“Philip Eslingen, yes.”

“You think he was telling the truth there, about what he said?”

Rathe nodded. “I do.” I rather liked him, he added, silently, almost surprised by the thought, but said only, “He seems to be sensible.”

“He’d better be,” Monteia said. She sighed. “Well, we expected this, didn’t we? Or should have done. And you shouldn’t be keeping the surintendant waiting, though I wish to all the gods he wouldn’t keep drawing off my best people when they’re supposed to be on duty.” She reached under her skirts, flipped a coin across the desktop. Rathe caught it, surprised, and she went on, “Take a low‑flyer. Doesn’t do to keep the sur waiting, does it?”

Jiemin had anticipated the order, and the youngest of the runners arrived with word that a cart was waiting as Rathe stepped out into the main room. Rathe tossed the boy a half‑demming–not that he could spare it easily, but that was how the runners earned their bread, taking tips from the pointsmen–and went out to meet the driver. She was a woman, unusually, but as she leaned down to take the destination, Rathe saw she had the wide‑set, staring eyes that often marked someone born when Seidos was in his own signs of the Horse and Horsemaster. That made her stars not merely masculine but ideal, and he stepped up onto the iron bracket that served as a step with a slight feeling of relief. The low‑flyers didn’t have a wonderful reputation– half of the drivers drank the winters away just to keep warm, and the other half earned their charcoal‑money in less than legal ways–and it was somewhat comforting to think the driver had been born to her position.

“The Tour de la Citй, please,” he said. The woman nodded, straightening easily, and Rathe climbed into the narrow cab behind her, wondering if it wouldn’t ultimately have been faster to take a boat. She threaded her way through the traffic that jammed the Hopes‑point Bridge quite competently, however, and then through the maze of the Old City, drawing up at last in the cleared square in front of the Tour in no more time than it would have taken him by the river ways. He climbed out, handing over the spider Monteia had given him, and made his way across the court to the main gate.

The Tour had been built five hundred years ago as the gatehouse of the then‑walled city, and no matter how much the city’s regents and the various royal and metropolitanate officials who had inhabited it over the intervening years had tried to change it, the building still had the feeling of a fortress. Rathe’s heels echoed on the stone floors, and even the red‑coated judiciary clerks seemed chastened by the heavy architecture. At least it was cooler inside the massive walls, Rathe thought, as he made his way through the narrow, badly lit halls, and at least the regents had the sense to use mage‑fire lamps instead of oil or candles. Or maybe it was the judiciary: he didn’t have clear idea who paid for what inside the Tour.

The surintendant’s rooms were at the midpoint of the south tower and boasted two narrow windows overlooking the city square. Rathe gave his name to one of the hovering clerks and settled himself to wait. To his surprise, however, the surintendant’s voice came almost at once from behind a half‑open door.

“Ah, Rathe, good. Come in and sit down.”

Rathe did as he was told, his eyes on the surintendant. Rainart Fourie was a merchant’s son from the Docks by Point of Sighs, had begun by buying his place as an adjunct point, but had risen to chief on his own merit, as even the most grudging critics were forced to admit. His appointment was still something of a novelty–until him, the surintendancy had generally been held by gentry, the sons of landames and the like whom the queen owed favors–and he was sometimes more aware of the politics of his situation than Rathe felt was good for either him or his people. At the moment, Fourie was dressed very correctly, the sober tailored black of the judicial nobles, his haircut as close as a Sofian renunciate’s. Though that, Rathe added silently, probably had less to do with devotion or politics than with the fact that his mouse brown hair was thinning rapidly, and the fashionable long wigs would have looked ridiculous on his long, sharp‑boned, and melancholy face. Fourie lifted an eyebrow, as though he’d guessed the thought, and Rathe schooled himself for whatever was to come.

“Your former patronne sent for me this morning,” Fourie said. “It seems one of her clerk’s apprentices is missing, and she wants you to handle the case.”

Rathe exhaled. One thing about Fourie, he reflected, he always was direct. “You mean Maseigne de Foucquet?”

“Do you have another patronne?”

Rathe shook his head. He had begun his working life as a runner for the court, before he’d been a pointsman; Naudin de Foucquet had been a young intendant then, and as a judge she’d taken a benevolent interest in his career. It never hurt to have well‑placed connections, but he had not been entirely sorry when Foucquet had been assigned to the courts at Point of Hearts. Friends in the judiciary could be a liability, as well as an asset, in his line of work. “That would be Point of Hearts’ business, surely.”

“She asked for you specifically,” Fourie said.

Rathe sighed, acknowledging the ties of patronage and obligation, wondering, too, why Fourie, who usually defended his people’s autonomy, seemed willing to countenance this interference. “So who is– he, she? How old, what’s the family?”

“He’s thirteen, and his name is Albe Cytel. His mother is assizes clerk at Point of Hearts.”

So it really isn’t my business at all, Rathe thought. He said, “When did he go missing?”

“Yesterday afternoon, according to Foucquet, and I would imagine her people keep a keen eye on their apprentices,” Fourie answered.

Rathe nodded.

“He had the morning off, it was his regular half‑day, which he was supposed to use in studying. When he didn’t show up for the afternoon session, they sent a senior clerk around to his room. He wasn’t there, but nothing of his was missing, either.” Fourie looked up from his notes, and gave a thin smile. “Under the circumstances, they felt it was a points matter.”

Rathe nodded again. “It sounds like half a dozen cases I know of, two I’m handling personally. Does maseigne know how many cases there are like that in the city right now?”

“I imagine she does,” Fourie answered. “I daresay that’s why she wants you. It makes no difference, Rathe. The judge‑advocate wants you handling this case, and so do I. Can you tell me honestly you don’t want it?”

Rathe made a face. He owed Foucquet for patronage that had been very useful when he was starting out; more than that, he liked and respected her, and beyond that still, any missing child had claim on him. “No, sir, it’s not that, of course it isn’t. It’s just…” He paused and ran a hand through his hair, wondering just how far he could go. “Gods know, yes, I owe maseigne in any case, and at least she’s not asking me to drop any southriver cases for some clerk’s apprentice–” He had gone too far there, he realized abruptly, and stopped, shaking his head. “Sorry, sir. It’s been a bastard of a day.”

Fourie inclined his head in austere acceptance of the apology, but said nothing. Rathe watched him warily, not quite daring to ask the question in his mind, and Fourie leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers. “What’s your theory on it all, Rathe?”

“I haven’t got one,” Rathe answered. As you well know. None of us have any theories, or at least nothing solid, from the newest runner to the dozen chief points. “With respect, sir, why are you taking this case out of Point of Hearts? I’m not unwilling, but they’re not going to like it, and I can’t say I blame them.”

Fourie ignored the question. “What about politics?”

“Politics?” Rathe repeated, and shook his head. “I don’t see it. I mean, I know this is a tricky time, with the starchange and all, but– what do these children have to do with that? They’re not well enough born for blackmail–they don’t have anything in common, as far as I can see.”

“I know,” Fourie said. “I’m not–fully–sure myself. Maybe nothing. But there are factions seeking to influence Her Majesty’s choice of a successor. Too many things are happening at once for it all to be a coincidence, Rathe.” He leaned forward, as though he had reached a decision. “I want you to check out Caiazzo’s involvement.”

“Caiazzo?” Rathe leaned back in his chair. Hanselin Caiazzo was–officially, at least–a longdistance trader, an up‑and‑coming merchant‑venturer who had almost escaped the taint of his southriver origins. He was also, and less officially, the paymaster for or master of a good dozen illegal businesses both south and north of the Sier, with interest that ranged from the Court of the Thirty‑Two Knives to Point of Graves to the Exemption Docks. No one had yet proved a point on him, and not for want of effort. Customs Point was doing very well from his fees, or so the rumor had it. “I don’t see it… ”

“Caiazzo has a good many business interests in the north,” Fourie said. “Especially in the Ile’nord.”