The boy held out a folded scrap of paper–torn from an old broadsheet, Rathe saw, unfolding it, and he flattened it deliberately on his table before he scanned the flamboyant penmanship. Flamboyant and hard to read, he amended, squinting at letters scrawled with a pen that definitely needed mending, and looked up at the boy. “And?”

The boy seemed used to the question–as well he might be, if he had to deliver writings like this one on a daily basis, Rathe thought. He shifted his feet, hands clasped behind his back in a loose‑jointed parody of a soldier’s stance, and said, “Please, Adjunct Point, the– Head Point Mirremay says you might be interested in this complaint of Master Aconin’s.”

Rathe glanced at the note again. With that broad hint, he could make out the gist of the note, which was that Chresta Aconin had come to Point of Knives less than an hour ago with the complaint of a theft from his rooms. Someone–he couldn’t make out the name– had been dispatched to document the complaint, and what she had found had sent her pelting back to Mirremay. And Mirremay had sent for him. He looked back at the boy. “Tell me about it.”

The boy didn’t seem to need much encouragement, but then, runners rarely did. He bounced forward on his toes, then seemed to remember where he was, clasping his hands behind his back again. “Please, Adjunct Point, they say it was a mess, the worst anyone’s ever seen. Everything spoiled, and all his papers burned, and his coats cut up, and–” He stopped abruptly, as though remembering his dignity. “And the chief says she’d take it kindly if you’d lend a hand, seeing as you’re already dealing with the theatres.”

“Does she think they’re connected?” Rathe asked, but he was already on his feet, reaching for his coat.

“He’s the playwright.” The boy shrugged. “And the chief says she’d swear he knows what’s going on, but he says he doesn’t. And he doesn’t want you called in, I heard him arguing about it.”

Sofia forgive me, but that would probably make me go even if I didn’t already think it was important. Rathe shrugged on his jerkin, grateful for the extra layer, and slipped his truncheon into his belt. “All right, my boy, let’s get on with it.”

Point of Knives was exactly as he remembered it, a blocky, foursquare building that had once been an armory. It had been rebuilt since then, and the neighborhood’s clock perched awkwardly in an afterthought of a gable, but it still turned windowless walls to the street on three sides. The windows that faced the open market Square were little more than slits along the second floor. Dark and cheerless for any pointsman who lodged there, Rathe thought, with sympathy, and noisy, with the clock gears ticking and grinding overhead night and day. I’ll lay money Mirremay lodges elsewhere.

The doorway was thick and defensible, with old firing points hastily boarded over to keep out the chill, but it opened into a surprisingly pleasant day room smelling of herbs and only incidentally of dinner. There were a dozen mage‑lights spaced along the walls, supplemented in this cold weather by a hanging chandelier, and a pair of runners kicked their heels on a bench by the stove, each one at an end to make room for the dice and counters spread between them. A pointsman in a cracked jerkin was polishing his truncheon by the enormous empty fireplace, and a woman in last summer’s fashionable brimless cap looked up at their approach.

“Good, you found him. Thank you for coming, Adjunct Point, the chief will be glad to see you.”

“It sounded–intriguing,” Rathe said, and the man in the cracked jerkin looked up quickly.

“That’s one word for it–”

“If you’ll come with me?” the woman interrupted smoothly, and Rathe allowed himself a quick glance over his shoulder as he followed her. The pointsman’s head was down over his truncheon, and Rathe wondered what he would have said.

Mirremay’s workroom was on the second floor, almost at the head of the narrow stairs. It wasn’t at all as he had suspected it would be like, was, instead, a comfortable room, dominated by one of the narrow windows, and Rathe cocked his head, trying to hear the dull tick of the clock through the ceiling. Mirremay herself leaned one hip on the edge of her worktable, frowning at Aconin in the visitor’s chair. She was a short, round woman, with a heart‑shaped face and knowing amber eyes, and Rathe hid a frown, remembering too late what gossip said of her. Mirremay had been the name of one of the thirty‑two knives, and before that of a bannerdame; in joining the points, Mirremay had been re‑creating a family fiefdom here on the edges of the Court. Perhaps that was the reason that the surintendant had been so reluctant to advance Point of Knives to the status of a full station: no one wanted to make a Mirremay chief point of anything, least of all Point of Knives.

“Thanks for coming, Rathe,” she said, and Rathe nodded, grateful that she’d decided to let him avoid the awkward question of her rank.

“I’m grateful you sent for me.”

“Well, I’m not.” That was Aconin, still lounging in the visitor’s chair. A decorative pose, Rathe thought, but the playwright couldn’t hide the tension in his muscles. “Honestly, Mirremay, this isn’t worth his time. It’s just another theft, that’s all.”

“And what, then, is missing?” Mirremay asked, mildly enough, but Aconin frowned.

“How can I tell that, when you won’t let me look?”

Rathe lifted an eyebrow, and Mirremay smiled. “Oh, yes, that’s what we have here, just another housebreaking in the Court. Except that Master Aconin can’t tell me what was stolen.”

“I have valuables,” Aconin said. “The place was such a mess that I couldn’t tell if they were there or not.”

“Still, it seems odd that so many things should be happening to the people involved in this thrice‑damned masque,” Mirremay said. “And I say it’s Dreams’s problem as much as mine.”

She gave Rathe a challenging look, and the other spread his hands, automatic suspicion rising in him. No chief point, and she was that in stature if not in name, gave away cases, unless they were likely to cause more trouble than they were worth. “I couldn’t take it out of your hands, Mirremay, not without Trijn’s approval, but I am glad you called me.”

Mirremay smiled again. “Wait till you see the rooms before you say that. And, speaking of it–”

“Mirremay–” Aconin began, and the round woman held up her hand.

“Don’t bother. He’s coming with us.”

Aconin subsided at that, straightening his wig as he rose, and Mirremay reached for her own full coat. “Let’s go.”

Aconin lived on the edges of the Court–even he hadn’t dared to move into the rookery at the center, the decayed mansion, now broken up into a hundred or more one‑room flats, where the thirty‑two knives had held their macabre reign. The pointsman Rathe had seen in the day room–Sentalen, his name was–tapped at a lower door and, when it opened a crack, spoke briefly to someone hidden in the shadows. Then she vanished again, the edge of a dark blue skirt whisking back out of sight, and Sentalen turned to Mirremay.

“Same as before, Chief. No one’s been in or out–she says.”

Aconin rolled his eyes, but Mirremay smiled, and started up the outside stairs. It would be a nasty climb at midwinter, Rathe thought, stepping carefully, and wondered why the playwright chose to live in this neighborhood. Probably to keep his enemies at bay, he thought, and glanced over his shoulder to see Aconin hesitating at the bottom of the stairs. That was unlike him–to give him his due, Aconin never feared the results of his attacks–and in the same instant, the playwright started after them, so quickly that Rathe wondered if he’d imagined the hesitation. But it had been real, he decided, seeing the tension in Aconin’s body, in the tightness of his hands on the narrow rail. Mirremay was right, this was no ordinary theft.