Point of Hopes by Melissa Scott Page B

to
test who’s mistaken.” .
    “ Or lying.”
    “ Or lying,” Rathe agreed. “But I
don’t have reason to think that yet, either. We’re not giving up,
though.”
    “ Well, I have some news for you,”
Mailet said. “Some oddness that’s come to my ears. My neighbor
Follet brought me the word yesterday, I’ve been trying to decide
what to do with it. But since you’re here…” He shook himself, went
on more briskly. “Follet knows Herisse is missing—everyone does, we
passed the word through the guild—and he told me one of his
journeymen was out drinking the other night, at the Old Brown Dog.
Do you know the place?”
    Rathe nodded. “I know it.”
    Mailet grunted. “Then you know the woman who runs
it, too.”
    “ Devynck’s not a bad sort,” Rathe
said, mildly. “Honest of her kind.”
    “ Which isn’t saying much,” Mailet
retorted. He leaned forward, planting both elbows firmly on the
tabletop. “But that’s neither here nor there, pointsman. What is
important is what Paas—that’s Follet’s journeyman—heard there.
There were two soldiers drinking, Leaguers, and they were talking
about the missing children. And one of them was saying, if he
couldn’t find a company, how could some half-trained butcher’s
brat?”
    “ He’d heard of the disappearance,
then?” Rathe asked, after a moment. It was an interesting remark,
and certainly suggestive considering how most of Devynck’s
neighbors felt about the League, but hardly solid enough to be
called evidence, or even a lead.
    “ If he had, would I be bothering
you with it?” Mailet said. “He couldn’t’ve done, you see, he swore
he’d just arrived in the city today.”
    “ So this Paas confronted him,”
Rathe said.
    Mailet looked away. “He was drunk, Follet said, the
soldier put him out—and neatly, too, I’ll give him that, no
violence offered.” He looked up again. “And that, pointsman, is why
I didn’t come to you at once. But since you’re here, I thought I
might as well tell you. Devynck’s a bad lot, and there are worse
who drink in her house.”
    “ I’ll make inquiries,” Rathe said.
And I will, too: convenient, being bound there anyway. It’s not
much to go on, but it’s something. I wonder if he’s the new knife
Monteia was talking about?
    “ And you still want Herisse’s
nativity,” Mailet said. He sighed and pushed himself to his feet,
crossed to the cabinet that held the hall’s books. He fished in his
pocket for his keys on their long chain—gold, Rathe noted, from
long habit, a good chain worth half a year’s wages for a poor
woman—and unlocked the cabinet, then ran his finger along the
books’ spines until he found the volume he wanted. He brought it
back to the table and reseated himself, folding his hands on top of
the cover. “And what do you want it for?”
    “ We intend to ask an astrologer to
cast her horoscope for us,” Rathe answered. “For her on the day she
disappeared, and for her current prospects.” Knowledge of the
girl’s stars would also be helpful if they had to locate a body, or
to identify one long dead, but there was no need to mention those
possibilities just yet. Mailet would have thought of them on his
own, in any case.
    “ That’s not likely to do you much
good,” Mailet grumbled.
    Rathe said nothing—he knew that as well as anyone;
it was axiomatic in dealing with astrologers that as the focus of
the question narrowed the certainties became smaller—and the
butcher sighed, and opened the book. He flipped through the pages,
scowling now at the lines of ink that were fading already from
black to dark brown, finally stopped on a page close to the end.
“Here. This is her indenture, her chart’s there at the bottom of
the page.”
    Rathe pulled out his tablet, and swung the ledger
toward him to copy the neat diagram. It was, he admitted silently,
almost certain to be an exercise in futility. Most southriver
children knew the date and the place of their