Point of Hopes by Melissa Scott Read Free Book Online

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 kids 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.
     
     
Chapter 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 money bag 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