He opened the station door, miming surprise at finding it fully dark outside. “Mistress, do you need company home?”

As he spoke, he let his eyes roam across the waiting points. He was still getting used to Point of Dreams, a lateral promotion if ever there was one, but he’d already learned whom he couldn’t trust with such a delicate task. Leenderts, for one, the man had the sensitivity of a cargo barge; but Sohier was clever, could handle it, and Amireau as well. Voillemin, the other adjunct point, would probably make a decent job of it, had learned his manners from a merchant‑resident mother, but the door to his workroom was closed.

Evaly looked startled by the offer, and pleased, but then flushed faintly, and shook her head. “Bless you, Adjunct Point, no, I know these streets well. I was born here, just three streets over, my sister and I, and grew up here. But it was a kind offer.”

Rathe nodded, stepped out into the darkness with her, intending at least to see her to the station gate, and she made no protest, her shoes loud on the cobbles. At the gate, she put her hand on his arm and looked up into his face, and Rathe could see that she must have been something like beautiful when she was younger, not breathtaking, but what his mother would call heart‑lovely. “My sister. She wasn’t murdered, was she, Adjunct Point?”

Rathe took a careful breath, not knowing quite what to make of the suddenly lucid question. “I don’t believe so, mistress, no. But I will look into it for you.”

“After all this time.” Evaly shook her head, not a hair out of place under her neat cap. “Six years, come spring. It’s just lovely to have her back, but I can’t talk to her. I need to talk to someone.”

“I understand.”

Her hand tightened briefly, and then she was gone. Rathe watched her to the corner, a grey shadow quickly lost in the growing dark, then shook his head, and went back into the main room. The air was warmer than it had been: someone, Sohier probably, had built up the fire in the third stove, and he was grateful for it.

“That was kind, Nico,” Sohier said with a glance at Leenderts, and Rathe shrugged.

“It wasn’t much. Not if it brings her comfort.”

From the skeptical look on Leenderts’s face, the younger man didn’t accept the lesson–didn’t see the point, probably, didn’t think it was the points’ job to bring comfort, only law, if that–and Rathe sighed. No man, no leman, no child, just the ghost of a beloved sister: no one should be left so utterly alone. And she probably wasn’t totally alone, probably had staff and servants, but he couldn’t shake the chill of it completely. The clock whirred and struck the quarter hour, and he turned to collect his coat from its hook between the stoves. Sohier held the daybook open for him, and he glanced quickly over the entries before initialing them.

“Oh, Adjunct Point.” Voillemin’s door had opened, and the other adjunct made his way to the worktable, turning the daybook so that he could read the entries.

Rathe bit back a frown–that was really the duty point’s job, not Voillemin’s, particularly when Voillemin had been so quick to hide himself when Mistress Evaly appeared–but swallowed his automatic reproof. He and Voillemin were technically equal in rank, and it was no secret that Voillemin thought he should have had Rathe’s job when the former Chief Point DeChaix retired. It behooved them both to tread warily until the station had gotten used to the change of regime. “What’s up?”

“Well, sir.” Voillemin’s tone was stiff, and Rathe sighed. Voillemin was young, that was all, he told himself, young to be even a junior adjunct–his mother’s properties in Dreams had earned him quick promotion under DeChaix–and both his youth and his connections meant he should have been stationed elsewhere. It wasn’t that he was a bad pointsman, or even merely, ordinarily, corrupt, it was just that he hadn’t ever had the chance to find his own feet, instead behaved as though points’ service was some great game, the rules of which he hadn’t quite learned yet. And he was equally uncertain about Rathe himself: he knew the story of the stolen children, knew that Rathe had been one of the heroes of the summer, but also knew that the man was commoner than most, southriver born and bred and a leveller like most of that sort, and the two did not sit well together in Voillemin’s eyes. Or at least not until The Drowned Islandhad opened, Rathe amended, and admitted to himself that this was one of his greatest grievances against the miserable play. He didn’t know which was worse, watching Voillemin deplore his background, or seeing him look at him wide‑eyed, like the apprentices clogging the Tyrseia’s pit.

“There are people to see you. They came while you were with Mistress Evaly. I had them wait in my workroom.”

From the tone, he was on the verge of making a grievance of it, too. Rathe waited, but nothing more seemed to be forthcoming. “And?”

Voillemin shifted. “It’s the necromancer, b’Estorr. With another man.”

“His proper title is magist,” Rathe said. “Or master. As in fellow of the university.”

Voillemin ignored the rebuke. “He said he needed to see you, even if it was the end of your day. So I said he could wait. I know you’re close.”

Not the way you mean it. Rathe bit back the words, said, “You may have need of his services someday yourself, Voillemin.”

The younger man’s eyes widened in something almost like horror, and Rathe wondered if the boy’s father was Chadroni or a Leaguer, that he was so nervous about necromancers. More likely his nurse filled him with tales, he thought, and managed to smile as he initialed the daybook. “Send the boy to fetch some tea,” he said aloud, and moved toward the door of Voillemin’s workroom.

Istre b’Estorr was waiting as promised, together with a slim, plain man in an advocat’s scarlet robe that hung open over a plain brown suit. He looked vaguely familiar, and Rathe hid a frown, trying to place the stranger. Nothing came, and he nodded to the magist.

“Evening, Istre. Hope you weren’t waiting long.”

b’Estorr gave him a preoccupied smile. “Not too long. I’m sorry we’re here so late. I hate to catch you just at the end of your day.”

“It’s not a problem,” Rathe answered. In spite of himself, he glanced at the stranger, and b’Estorr picked up smoothly on the cue.

“Nico, you know Advocat Holles?”

Of course. Rathe nodded, gave a bow. “By reputation, and through the intendant, of course.” Kurin Holles was an advocat in the court of Point of Hearts, and a good one, by rumor, but he was also the leman of the late intendant Bourtrou Leussi, one of the better judges that Rathe appeared before–and one of the chamberlains, too, though he had died before the masque could be chosen, and Rathe didn’t envy the intendant who inherited the task. He sighed, remembering the last time he had seen Leussi–after hours, at the intendant’s comfortable, unlavish house, discussing the proper response to a case of forged licenses. Holles had been there, too, he remembered, a shadow in warm amber, formal robes discarded for a dressing gown, glancing through a door to find his leman busy, and withdrawing as quietly as he’d appeared. Rathe doubted Leussi had known he’d been there, so intent had the other man been on the problem at hand.

“I was very sorry to hear about the intendant,” he said aloud. “I had the pleasure of working with him a number of times–one of the fairest I’ve ever known. I’ll miss him.”

Holles inclined his head, the gesture not hiding the pain in his eyes, and Rathe wondered if it would have been better not to mention the man. But it was ghost‑tide, and Leussi must be all too present to his grieving friend.

“Thank you, Adjunct Point–and my compliments on the promotion. Bourtrou was pleased to hear of it, he always felt you would advance…” Holles paused, took a breath. “Which is why I presumed on Magist b’Estorr for the introduction.”