He let his eyes range out between the pillars, squinting a little into the sunlight of the Temple Fair. Beyond the steps that led up into the Pantheon, the flat grey flagstones were drifted with dust and debris. The booksellers’ apprentices had swept it into tidy piles beside the shopfronts, but in the center of the fair the dust lay pale as straw against the bluestone flags, swirled into patterns by passing feet. Of all Astreiant’s fairgrounds, only Temple Fair was paved; the horses’ hooves rang loud on the stones, and the horsebrats were busy, their shrill cries– Horse, ma’am, hold your horse?–greeting the passing riders. Even this early, the fair was busy, a crowd of shopkeepers and their servants clustering beneath the booksellers’ bright red awnings, their bright finery shadowed here and there with the solid black of a student’s gown. Another pair of scholars, thin, serious women in their dusty gowns, arms weighted with books, crossed the fair by the most direct route, heedless of the traffic: heading for the college, Rathe guessed, and an early class. A young man with a parasol, finely dressed, with painted hands and face, paused to listen to the ballad‑singer on her platform in the fair’s southeastern curve, joining for a moment an audience of two chubby boys and a barefoot servant girl. The woman’s voice, and the fiddler’s scratching accompaniment, blended into the hum of the crowd, barely audible above that general noise. The ballad sellers weren’t doing their usual business, despite the singer’s best efforts. Most of the customers were clustered at the line of makeshift stalls between the Queen’s‑road and the northern Highway where the vendors of prophecies plied their trade. Rathe let his eyes slide along the line of tables, picking out familiar faces–Ponset de Ruyr, whose wife owned two presses and a brothel southriver; the Leaguer Greitje vaan Brijx, red‑faced and sweating under her wide‑brimmed hat; a thin‑faced boy who had to be the son of Saissana Peire, minding the store while his mother was serving her latest two months for unbonded printing; and, finally, the man he was looking for, a big man, sweating freely in the heat, his thinning hair hanging lank around his heavy face. Gallabet Lebrune had gone grey since he got his bond, Rathe noted, with a certain satisfaction, and pushed himself away from the wall.

Lebrune was doing a brisk business, and enjoying himself at it. His big hands moved deftly among the piled sheets of his stock, selecting and rolling each chosen prophecy into a tidy cylinder to be handed across the table in exchange for a demming or two quickly pocketed, as though it was beneath his and his customers’ dignity to notice the exchange of coin. And I’d wager he makes a tiny sum shortchanging them that way, too, Rathe thought, and couldn’t quite suppress a smile. Lebrune was a petty thief and a liar, but he had a style about him that you couldn’t help admiring.

Copies of the various prophecies were tacked to the tabletop; three more, the newest or the most popular, were pinned to an upright board, and Rathe joined the crowd waiting to read them, insinuating himself neatly into the group behind a pair of blue‑coated apprentices who should have known better. He peered past a feathered hat at the smeared lines of verse–Lebrune’s printing skills hadn’t improved, at any rate–and a crude woodcut of an astrologer hunched over a writing desk, and a woman jostled him, turning instantly in apology.

“Sorry–”

The rest of whatever she would have said died on her lips as she saw the jerkin and the crowned truncheon tucked into Rathe’s belt. She smiled nervously, licked her lips, and turned quickly away. The nearer apprentice saw her abrupt departure, and glanced up and back, eyes widening as he took in the pointsman’s uniform. He nudged his friend, not subtly. The second boy looked back, scowling, and the first one said, “Come on.”

The second apprentice’s eyes widened almost comically, and his friend grabbed him by the elbow, dragging him away. “Pardon, pointsman–”

That word was enough to turn heads all along the tabletop. A young gentleman–would‑be gentleman, Rathe amended, with an inward grin–paused in the act of handing his demmings to Lebrune, but then drew himself up to complete the transaction with outward composure. He accepted the neatly rolled papers, and stalked quickly away, flicking open his parasol to put its shield between himself and the pointsman.

“You’re bloody bad for business, you’re poison, you are,” Lebrune snarled, watching his customers vanish. “What do you want?”

Rathe took an idle step closer, still looking at the prophecies pinned to the standing board. “Paid your bond yet?”

“You know I have, pointsman, so I take it poorly you frightening away my customers.”

Rathe shrugged, unpinned one of the sheets to look at it more closely. “If you’re bonded, Lebrune, what reason did they have to be afraid of me?”

“Maybe they think you’re stealing children,” Lebrune muttered. Rathe dropped the sheet and reached across the table to seize Lebrune by his jerkin collar.

“That’s not funny at the best of time. If you’ve got reason to believe there are pointsmen behind these disappearances, you tell me.”

“I don’t, Rathe, it’s nothing more than you’ll hear in half a dozen taverns!”

Rathe released the man with an oath. “North or southriver?”

“North. ’Course, southriver, they think it’s northriver merchants. When it’s not Leaguers. But it’s all pretty ugly, and the, um, independent printers are having a field day with it.” Lebrune spoke with the contempt of the recently legitimized, and Rathe acknowledged it with a sour smile.

“Caiazzo used to fee you, didn’t he? Who’s he fielding these days?” Rathe asked, overriding the other’s inarticulate protest.

“I’m bonded, Rathe, how should I know who’s printing under Caiazzo’s coin?”

Rathe just looked at the other man, eyes hooded. After a moment, he said, “Just what kind of a fool do you take me for, Lebrune? No, I’m curious.” He put his hands down on the table edge and leaned forward. The wood creaked slightly, and Lebrune grimaced.

“I’ve heard,” he said, with delicate emphasis that suited oddly with his oversize frame, “that he’s supporting a number of free‑readers who are doubtless printing their findings.”

“A name?” Rathe asked gently.

Lebrune gave him a fulminating look, but said, “One I know of is Agere. You’ll probably find her working the Horsefair these days. Or she may have moved to the New Fair by now, she usually works there at Midsummer.”

“So which is it?”

“How would I–?”

“Oh, Lebrune,” Rathe said, and the printer sighed.

“New Fair, probably. Certainly.”

Rathe nodded and straightened his back. “Thanks, Lebrune. Have a busy day.”

Lebrune’s response was profane. Rathe grinned and turned away.

It made sense, he thought, as he joined the traffic heading east along the Fairs’ Road. The fair didn’t officially open for another three days, but there were always a few dozen merchants who managed to get permission to open their stalls a day or two early in exchange for an early closing, and there were even more Astreianters eager to get a start on the semiholiday. What better place to sell unlicensed broadsheets than in the middle of that confusion?

He found the row of printers’ stalls easily enough, set into the shade of a stable on the western end of the New Fair itself. At the moment, they were encroaching on the spaces generally held by the painter‑stainers, but that guild’s representatives had yet to make their appearance, and the fairkeepers were currently more concerned with dividing the prime space at the center of the fair to everyone’s satisfaction. Administering the fair was a thankless task, falling to each of the major guilds in turn, and not for the first time Rathe was glad there was no pointsman’s guild. They had enough to do to keep the peace without having to administer the fair as well.