Fasquelle was drawing lines in the dirt; Jacme was shredding some grass that had been struggling to exist. Rathe saw Asheri look at each of them, and then she stood up.

“I don’t know if anyone else has mentioned it, Nico…” she began, and then frowned, closing her teeth on her lower lip in thought.

“Mentioned what, Ash?” Rathe asked, quietly, encouragingly, glancing at each of the other runners. They seemed content to let Asheri speak for them.

“I was waiting for Houssaye the other afternoon at Wicked’s–he wanted me to run some of those nativities back to the station, since he was on his way home–and there were some students there. And they were complaining about these new astrologers working the fair this year.”

“New astrologers?” Rathe asked, and Asheri nodded.

“The students were complaining that they’re taking business away from them because they’re doing readings for people for less than the students charge–a half‑demming, they say. Which would be ridiculously low,” Asheri added, “since you can barely buy a loaf of bread for that.”

“They’re not with the university, then.” It was a privilege of the fair for university students to augment their stipends by working the various temple booths, casting horoscopes and doing star readings. They charged what the market would bear–not usually exorbitant, but certainly more than half a demming. “Who are they aligned to?” he asked.

Lennar burst in eagerly. “No one, Nico–they wear long robes, like a magist, but the robes are black, and they don’t carry any badge or insignia, and they don’t belong to any temple. They say they can offer people charms to protect their children from the child‑thieves.”

And at that, Rathe felt a cold anger within him. Bad enough that parents and guildmasters were worried sick about their children and apprentices, bad enough that the broadsheets were having a field day with it all, blaming any group with less influence than another, but for these hedge‑astrologers to prey on these fears for the sake of coin… a half‑demming wasn’t much, admittedly, but when you multiplied it by the number of fearful adults–and adolescents–they could be making a very tidy sum. And he had seen one of them, too, he realized, at the Rivermarket. The description was too precise, a magist’s robe with no insignia, and he wished he had known enough to stop the man. That was probably why he had vanished so quickly. He wondered, briefly, if this might not be Caiazzo’s style, Caiazzo’s hand at work, but then he dismissed the thought. Too petty, surely, for a man with the vision and ambitions of Hanselin Caiazzo. Caiazzo thought to rival the old trading house Talhafers within the next several years; it would be a fool’s game to antagonize the temples.

“What else have you heard about these astrologers?” he asked, and knew that some of his anger came through in his voice, because the runners seemed to draw back. He took a breath. “No, look, I’m sorry. It’s not you I’m angry with, truly. I’m glad you told me about this–if nothing else, they’re probably violating bond laws, and we should look into it. But has anyone heard anything else about them? Seen them? Spoken with any of them?”

“I think I saw one of them near the fair, Nico, but I can’t be sure… It was a long black robe, but it might have had a badge, I just couldn’t see.” That was Lennar, speaking slowly, carefully. A couple of the others were nodding, Asheri included.

“Have any of them approached any of you?” he asked, and was relieved to see them all shake their heads definitively. “Right, then. It’s probably nothing, they probably just don’t want to pay the temple bond for casting horoscopes. But thanks for letting me know. And what I said before, I meant–be careful.”

There were shrugs, looks of bravado, but these kids were smart, they wouldn’t take any risks, they’d do as they were told. And that, Rathe told himself, was the best he could do, wishing that there weresome sort of charm to protect them from danger.

4

« ^ »

eslingen leaned against the bar of the Old Brown Dog, letting his gaze roam over the crowd filling the main room. It was smaller than the night before’s, and that had been smaller than the crowd the night before that: Devynck’s regular customers had been dwindling visibly for the past week. First it had been the butchers’ journeymen and junior masters, the ones who had passed their masterships but not yet established their own businesses, who had vanished from the tap, then it had been the rest of the locals, so that Devynck was back to her original customers, soldiers and the few transplanted Leaguers who lived within walking distance in either Point of Hopes or Point of Dreams. And there were fewer of the latter every night. Eslingen looked around again, searching for familiar faces. Marrija Vandeale, who ran the brewery that supplied the Dog, was still there, holding court under the garden window, but her carter was missing, and Eslingen guessed it would only be a matter of time before Vandeale took her drinking elsewhere.

There were still a sizable number of soldiers in attendance, the half dozen who lodged with Devynck and a dozen or so others who had found rooms in the neighborhood, and Eslingen wasn’t surprised to see a familiar face at the corner table. Flory Jasanten had lost a leg in the League Wars, though no one knew which side he’d served– probably both, Eslingen thought, without malice–and had turned to recruiting to make his way. At the moment, he was contracting for a company of pioneers that had lost a third of their men in a series of skirmishes along the border between Chadron and the League, a thankless job at the best of times, but particularly difficult in the summer, when the risk of disease was greatest. And given the pioneer’s captain, a man generally acknowledged to be competent, but whose unlucky stars were almost legendary… Eslingen shook his head, and looked again toward Jasanten’s table. Jasanten would be lucky to get anyone with experience to sign on.

As he’d expected, there was only a single figure at the table, a gangly blond youth with a defiant wisp of beard that only managed to make him look younger than his twenty years. As he watched, the young man nodded, and reached across the table to draw a careful monogram on the Articles of Enlistment. Well, one down, Eslingen thought, and Jasanten looked up then, meeting his eyes. Eslingen lifted his almost empty tankard in silent congratulations; Jasanten smiled, mouth crooked, and then frowned as a slim figure leaned over the table to speak to him. It was a boy, Eslingen realized, looked maybe fourteen or fifteen–just past apprentice‑age, at any rate–and felt himself scowl. That was all Devynck needed, to have kids that age using the Old Brown Dog to run away to be soldiers, and he pushed himself away from the bar, intending to tell Jasanten exactly that. Before he could reach that table, however, the older man shook his head, first with regret, and then more firmly, and the boy stalked away toward the kitchen door.

Eslingen allowed himself a sigh of relief–he didn’t really want to alienate any of Devynck’s few remaining customers–but seated himself on the stool opposite Jasanten anyway.

“You’re not looking for work,” Jasanten said, but smiled again.

“Not with Quetien Filipon,” Eslingen agreed. “Besides, I had my fill of pioneering by the time I was nineteen.”

Jasanten grunted. “I wish you’d tell that one that.” He tipped his head sideways, and Eslingen glanced casually in the direction of the miniscule gesture. The boy was back, carrying a half pint tankard, and hovering on the edge of a table of soldiers, three men and a woman who’d been paid off from de Razis’ Royal Auxiliaries the same day that Coindarel’s Dragons had been disbanded. The tallest of the men saw him, and grinned, edged over to make a place for him at the table.