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.