And not a tub, barrel, or useful bucket anywhere in sight. Rathe glanced up at the overhanging wave, and saw the woman’s eyes following his, suddenly widening as she realized what she’d seen. Then she shook herself with an exclamation of disgust and waved to her fellows. “All right, you lot, bring him along. You’re welcome to ride with us, Adjunct Point.”

That was not something he relished, a ride on the dead cart with apprentice alchemists and their very peculiar sense of right and wrong, but there was no help for it. “Thanks,” he said. “Sohier!”

The pointswoman straightened from her examination of yet another trapdoor, and came to join him. “Sir?”

“I want your report as soon as you can get it. You know what you’re looking for.”

Sohier nodded, still pale, and Rathe sighed.

“Pray Sofia you find it.”

The deadhouse lay in University Point, set discreetly away from the main quadrangle and the towering dome of the library in a tangled neighborhood of chairmakers and leatherworkers and the occasional chemist. By rights, of course, Rathe thought, trying to ignore the story the junior apprentice was recounting about someone supposedly eaten by a giant fish, it should be in City Point, but that area was far too grand for the homely business of examining the dead. It was a long, low building, much like the petty manufactories surrounding it, except that its walls were stone rather than timber, and the glassed‑in windows glowed with mage‑light instead of the warmer lamplight. To his relief, the apprentices dropped him at the main door instead of bringing him in with the body, and he took a breath, bracing himself before pushing through into the narrow lobby. He had been to the deadhouse dozens of times, but he still couldn’t be easy about it, no matter how often he’d been there. The place was impeccably clean, floors and walls scrubbed, so scrupulously free of odors that it was almost impossible not to think about what wasn’t there. Even the sharp stink of daybane would have been preferable.

A trio of apprentices were at work in the lobby, on their knees with pails and scrubbing brushes, but at his entrance one rose, rubbing her hands on her skirts, and came to greet him.

“You’re the pointsman with the body?”

There was no use in standing on rank at the deadhouse. Rathe nodded.

“Fanier said I should bring you straight back.”

She was no more than thirteen, Rathe thought, bemused, as he followed her down the long corridor that led to the workrooms, and wondered what her stars were like that she’d been brought into this profession. She paused at a cross‑corridor, consulting a slate tacked to the wall, then brought him to a closed door. She knocked, and it swung open to her touch.

“Adjunct Point Rathe, master.”

“Oh. Good.” Fanier turned, blinking a little, and Rathe tried not to look at the body that lay on the stone table behind him, an older apprentice busy stripping away the last of the clothing. “Go on, then, this isn’t for you yet.”

Rathe blinked, but he’d been talking to the girl. She made a face, but turned away, closing the door a little too sharply behind her.

“Nice to get them eager,” Fanier said, rubbing his hands together as though to warm them for the work ahead, “but it’s early days to call her in. So this one’s yours, eh? When did you transfer to Dreams?”

He looked more than ever like a bear, Rathe thought, his already bulky body thickened by a heavy fisherman’s jersey and a leather apron, his thick grey hair springing loose and untidy around his broad face. Brass‑framed glasses, like the first apprentice’s, were perched awkwardly among the curls, as though he’d forgotten they were there. Beneath them, his expression was bearlike, too, and Rathe shook himself back to the question at hand. “I was advanced to senior adjunct there about a month ago.”

“Liking it?” Fanier was still watching the apprentice straighten the body, and Rathe suppressed a shudder.

“It’s interesting,” he said. That was easily the safest answer. “Things like this don’t happen much in Hopes.”

“No. Straightforward place, Hopes,” Fanier said, without a trace of a smile. “So. Dead on the Tyrseia stage, eh? And a man of quality, by his linen.”

Rathe nodded. “Which is likely to make trouble, once the family finds out, so the sooner you can determine for me what killed him, the better I’ll like it.”

“Oh, yes,” Fanier said, almost vaguely, and nodded to the apprentice. “All right, lad, I’ll take him now.”

Rathe looked away as the alchemist moved toward the body, focusing his attention instead on the empty courtyard he could see beyond the low windows. It had always seemed perverse to him to have windows in these workrooms or, rather, to have them set so low, where anyone walking past could see the alchemists at work. And where any local children could dare each other to steal glances, he thought, but then remembered Fanier saying that was how they found about a third of their apprentices. He could hear the others moving behind him, Fanier mumbling something that was answered with a clang of metal against stone, and Rathe winced, concentrating on the stones patterning the court. At least today there weren’t any lurking children–no one in sight at all, not even the alchemists’ own apprentices, and the stones looked dark with rain. Sleet soon, probably, Rathe thought, squinting at the slate‑dark sky, and suppressed a shiver.

“Well, the cause of death’s easy enough,” Fanier announced, and Rathe glanced warily over his shoulder. The apprentice was just covering the body with a clean sheet, a last few flickers of mage‑light dying from around it as he did so, and Rathe tried to hide his relief. “He drowned. Might have been unconscious before he went into the water, that’s usually the way of it if it’s murder. Hard to drown somebody otherwise, especially a man in as decent shape as this one.” He tipped his head to one side, considering. “Thing is, that usually means a whacking great blow, usually on the head, and there’s not a mark on him. Not in the water very long, either, just enough to die there. Does that help you?”

“Not much,” Rathe said, and Fanier nodded.

“Didn’t think so.”

“Because so far, we haven’t found anything that could hold enough water to drown a man,” Rathe went on, and suppressed the memory of the looming waves, and the smaller ones lurking beneath the stage floor. “Could he have been moved? Drowned elsewhere, and his body left at the Tyrseia?”

“Ursine said she didn’t think so,” the apprentice said, and colored deeply as both men looked at him.

“Mmm.” Fanier ran his hand through his hair, dislodging his glasses, but caught them before they could fall. He polished them absently, turning back to stare at the body, and Rathe saw another flicker of movement, almost as though a breeze had touched the concealing sheet. The air was utterly still. “No. Ursine’s got a good eye for that, I must say. Died and left and found, all in the same place.”

Rathe heard the distant note in his voice, as though he was listening to that same invisible wind, and Fanier shook himself. “Which is to say, the changes in the body have been steady and consistent since the moment of death. If he’d been moved, well, we’d feel it– you’d see it on him, most likely, how the blood pools.”

“I take your word for it,” Rathe said, a little faintly–there were times when he hated dealing with the deadhouse–and Fanier went on as though he hadn’t spoken.

“Which would seem to indicate murder, if you can’t find a bath to drown him in, but you’re still missing that whacking great blow. It could be poison, I suppose, to keep him quiet. But that’s going to take me a little longer to find out.”

“We don’t have a lot of time, Fan,” Rathe answered. “The unofficial–highly unofficial–”

“And I daresay accurate,” Fanier murmured.