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.”