“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.