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.