Point of Hopes (15 page)

It made a kind of sense, Rathe knew, but couldn’t
pretend he was happy with it. He hesitated searching for a
diplomatic way to say what had to be said then shook his head. “I
won’t find evidence that isn’t there, sir.”

Fourie nodded. “I know. That’s why I picked you for
the job.” It was, Rathe supposed, meant as a compliment, however
backhanded. “But I want you to look into this—Foucquet’s more
important than her rank would suggest, she has a great deal of
influence with the judiciary, and so far she hasn’t said who she
supports. This apprentice of hers could have been taken to force
her hand. Look into it, Rathe, with particular attention to
Caiazzo.”

Rathe stared at him with some frustration. This
wasn’t Caiazzo’s style, he’d fenced with the man long enough to
know that; Caiazzo stayed away from politics and political business
as only a commoner would. And Caiazzo was southriver born and
bred—he of all people would know better than to risk stirring up
the smouldering angers there. Unless he was a Leveller? Rathe added
silently, but dismissed the thought as soon as it was formed.
Caiazzo was no Leveller: society suited him very well in its
present form, and he’d be the first to say as much. But there was
no ignoring the surintendant’s direct order. “Very well, sir,” he
said, and made no effort to keep the skepticism from his voice.

Fourie ignored it, nodded in dismissal. “And keep me
informed.”

Rathe walked back from the Tour to Point of Hopes,
grumbling that he had better things to spend his money on. He was
tempted to avoid the station entirely, tell Monteia about this new
case and the surintendant’s new interpretation of the old one in
the morning, but his mother had always said that unpleasant duties
were best dealt with as quickly as possible. He sighed and went on
through the courtyard into the station.

Jans Ranazy was on duty again, and Rathe made a
face, quickly concealed. He wasn’t fond of the other man, and knew
the feeling was mutual; Monteia had done her best to keep them
working apart, but the station staff was too small to make her
efforts completely effective. Ranazy’s dinner sat on a tray on top
of the daybook, and Rathe grimaced again, recognizing the Cazaril
Grey’s horsehead stamped into the cheap pottery. Only Ranazy, of
all the points, including Monteia herself, managed to afford to
have his dinner brought over from the inn. All the others, fee’d or
not, brought cold dinners when they had the night shift, or cooked
over the stove. But that didn’t suit Ranazy’s opinion of
himself.

Ranazy looked up then, and smiled, not pleasantly.
“Still on duty, Nico?”

“
It’s been a busy afternoon,” Rathe
answered. “Is the chief in the office?”

“
She’s out back, in the yard.”
Ranazy would clearly have loved to ask more, but Rathe ignored his
curiosity, and pushed open the back door of the station.

The space behind the points stations was, more
properly, open ground intended as defensible space, but forty years
of civil peace had turned it into a back garden, lightly fenced,
and sporting a few haphazardly tended garden plots. Monteia was
sitting on a bench under a straggling fruit tree in the reddened
light of the first sunset, the winter-sun’s shadows pale on the
ground around her. She held a lit pipe negligently between her
first two fingers, and the air was redolent of the mixed herbs. She
looked up as the back door closed.

“
Dare I ask what the sur
wanted?”

“
You won’t like it. It seems
Judge-Advocate Foucquet has lost one of her clerk’s apprentices.
It’s the same as the others. No sign that the boy ran. He
just—disappeared, yesterday afternoon. His mother is assize clerk
in Point of Hearts.” He took a breath. “And the judge-advocate and
the surintendant both want me to take the case on my
book.”

“
Oh, that’s just marvelous, Rathe.
As if you haven’t enough to do….” Monteia broke off. “And how am I
supposed to justify your poaching to Hearts?”

“
It was the sur’s direct order,”
Rathe answered. “And aside from that, I do feel as though I owe
this to maseigne.” He had kept his tone as respectful as possible,
but from the look she gave him, Monteia was not
appeased.

“
For a southriver rat, you
certainly have a lot of friends in high places.” She picked up a
sheaf of papers that had been lying at her feet, weighted with a
slate against the nonexistent breeze. “Well, then, since you’re
taking on extra work, you can look into these. The whole city’s
getting a rash of these unlicensed sheets, and they’re not helping
things. About half of them are blatantly political—hells, they’ve
backed every possible candidate for the succession, including a
couple I’ve never heard of—and the rest of them are passing hints
about the children, but they’re none of them operating under a bond
license. You can add these to your daybook.”

Rathe took the papers mechanically. If Monteia’s
assessment was correct—and it would be, he had no doubt of
that—then Caiazzo could well be connected at least to the printing.
He would take these home with him, and tomorrow he would begin the
delicate job of tracking down their source. After, he added
mentally, after I’ve spoken to Maseigne de Foucquet and found out
exactly why she doesn’t want to go to Point of Hearts.

Along with the papers, he took a batch of nativities
Salineis had collected for him out through the station onto the
front steps, unwilling to intrude on Monteia’s quiet work in the
yard, even more unwilling to remain in the still, hot air of the
station—made hotter, if not stiller, he thought, by the presence of
Ranazy. He sat down on the broad front step of the station,
stretching his legs out with a sigh of relief, and started leafing
through the nativities, settling the broadsheets under his hip. A
knot of the station’s runners were also playing in front of the
building, despite the sun that still beat down hard in the later
afternoon. Laci looked up at him from his game of jacks, a smile
like the sun glinting off a bright knife blade. Jacme, a
rough-boned twelve-year-old who had been thrown out of his home in
the Court of the Thirty-two Knives, was sitting in the lower boughs
of one of the few trees that survived in the street; Ranazy would
scold him out of it, but Rathe just turned a blind eye. He’d seen
few enough fruit trees ruined for being a good climbing tree as
well. Fasquelle de Galhac was lazily tossing a ball back and forth
with Lennar, their constant rivalry temporarily forgotten. Asheri,
Rathe’s favorite, sat in her usual place on the edge of the dry
trough, her hands for once not busy with any needlework. He smiled
at her as he sat down, and she returned the smile, lighting up her
thin face. She had, he reflected, a stillness none of the others
had or rather a capacity for stillness; Rathe had seen her fully as
rambunctious as any of the others. A quiet, aloof child would have
found no favor with the rest of the runners, and she had learned
that quickly, despite her own personality. She was a daredevil by
necessity, and a sound one, taking risks that were quickly and
carefully calculated. That calculation wasn’t, some of the other
points thought, natural in a child of twelve. It was, Rathe
thought, an attribute of a sound pointswoman.

He read through the nativities, poring over them for
any similarities, anything at all that he might have missed the
times he had read through his and the other points’ notes, knowing
it was fruitless, knowing he didn’t make that kind of mistake and
even if he did it was unlikely that every other pointswoman and man
in the city would overlook anything that was there. He looked at
two he held in his hands—in his left, the nativity of an
eight-year-old in his right, that of a twelve-year-old.

He realized with a sick knot in his stomach that the
station’s runners were all in the age range of the children who had
gone missing, from Laci, the youngest, to Jacme, the oldest. It was
surely just luck that they hadn’t lost any of them yet. He
carefully stacked the papers, weighting them with a rock, and
cleared his throat. Instantly, their attention was focused on him,
on the possibility of a job to be run, of earning a few extra
coins. Well, he hated to disappoint them, but….

“
Sorry, no job at the moment, I
just want to talk to you. Come on over here,” he invited and the
runners, some eagerly, some warily, joined him by the table,
dropping to sit on the ground beneath the tree. Jacme was still in
the tree, above his head and Rathe looked up. “Sorry, Jacme, but
I’d like you down here for this, all right?”

“
Right, Nico,” the boy said
cheerfully enough, and dropped to the ground with a solid thud. He
sat down next to Asheri. “What’s up?”

These were streetwise children, for the most part,
probably a lot wiser in the ways of the streets than many adults,
certainly more so than most of the children who had been stolen.
But like most children, they had a sense of invulnerability,
despite the fact that their lives had been a great deal harder than
that of most of the missing children. “All right,” he said. “You
lot know what’s been going on, these disappearances. We’re doing
everything we can to find out what’s happened to these kids, and,
just as important, find those children who have already
disappeared.” He looked at them, their faces grave, but not
frightened, not even worried. They were street urchins, southriver
rats who faced this kind of threat most days of their lives. “And
you’ve probably all heard all the rumors going about, maybe even
some we haven’t yet.”

“
Like the ones who say the points
are doing it, Nico?” Laci chimed in, and Rathe gave him a sour look
that fooled neither one of them.

“
I had heard that one already, yes,
thank you, Laci.” He paused, not quite certain how to proceed,
wanting to find the words that would reach them, and not simply
send them squirming into paroxysms of impatience. “The thing is,
the thing you may not have realized, is that all the missing
children are between the ages of eight and twelve.” He stopped, and
looked at each of them in turn. They understood, he could see that,
but still, he had to say it, make it explicit. “So you lot are in
the exact age range of the children who have disappeared.” He
shrugged. “All I’m saying is, be careful. You know the city better
than a lot of people, you see things other people would miss, or
would dismiss as unimportant. If you see anything, no matter what
you think I might think of it, let me know, or anyone else
here.”

“’
Cept Ranazy,” Jacme
muttered.

“
Yes, well, just do it, all
right?”

There were mumbles of assent, and looks were
exchanged that made Rathe frown. “And if you’ve already noticed
anything, now might be a good time to tell me.”

Fasquelle was drawing lines in the dirt; Jacme was
shredding some grass that had been struggling to exist. Rathe saw
Asheri look at each of them, and then she stood up.

“
I don’t know if anyone else has
mentioned it, Nico…” she began, and then frowned, closing her teeth
on her lower lip in thought.

“
Mentioned what, Ash?” Rathe asked,
quietly, encouragingly, glancing at each of the other runners. They
seemed content to let Asheri speak for them.

“
I was waiting for Houssaye the
other afternoon at Wicked’s—he wanted me to run some of those
nativities back to the station, since he was on his way home—and
there were some students there. And they were complaining about
these new astrologers working the fair this year.”

“
New astrologers?” Rathe asked, and
Asheri nodded.

“
The students were complaining that
they’re taking business away from them because they’re doing
readings for people for less than the students charge—a
half-demming, they say. Which would be ridiculously low,” Asheri
added, “since you can barely buy a loaf of bread for
that.”

“
They’re not with the university,
then.” It was a privilege of the fair for university students to
augment their stipends by working the various temple booths,
casting horoscopes and doing star readings. They charged what the
market would bear—not usually exorbitant, but certainly more than
half a demming. “Who are they aligned to?” he asked.

Lennar burst in eagerly. “No one, Nico—they wear
long robes, like a magist, but the robes are black, and they don’t
carry any badge or insignia, and they don’t belong to any temple.
They say they can offer people charms to protect their children
from the child-thieves.”

And at that, Rathe felt a cold anger within him. Bad
enough that parents and guildmasters were worried sick about their
children and apprentices, bad enough that the broadsheets were
having a field day with it all, blaming any group with less
influence than another, but for these hedge-astrologers to prey on
these fears for the sake of coin…a half-demming wasn’t much,
admittedly, but when you multiplied it by the number of fearful
adults—and adolescents—they could be making a very tidy sum. And he
had seen one of them, too, he realized, at the Rivermarket. The
description was too precise, a magist’s robe with no insignia, and
he wished he had known enough to stop the man. That was probably
why he had vanished so quickly. He wondered, briefly, if this might
not be Caiazzo’s style, Caiazzo’s hand at work, but then he
dismissed the thought. Too petty, surely, for a man with the vision
and ambitions of Hanselin Caiazzo. Caiazzo thought to rival the old
trading house Talhafers within the next several years; it would be
a fool’s game to antagonize the temples.

“
What else have you heard about
these astrologers?” he asked and knew that some of his anger came
through in his voice, because the runners seemed to draw back. He
took a breath. “No, look, I’m sorry. It’s not you I’m angry with,
truly. I’m glad you told me about this—if nothing else, they’re
probably violating bond laws, and we should look into it. But has
anyone heard anything else about them? Seen them? Spoken with any
of them?”