Caiazzo blinked once, and Rathe knew the warning had been heard. The trader sighed, and turned away from the window. “Why would I be involved with stealing children, Nico? There’s no profit in it, not like this.”

“I don’t know that you are,” Rathe answered. “I’ve no reason to think you are. But you didn’t use to dabble in politics, either.”

Caiazzo laughed, a short, harsh sound. “I still don’t. That”–he nodded to the broadsheet still in Rathe’s hand–“will be dealt with. Politics aren’t my business, and well you know it. And as for these kids… people of mine, their kin anyway, have lost children. There’s no sense in it, Nico, and that’s not a game I’d play.”

Slowly, Rathe nodded. “I know that. So keep an eye on your astrologers and printers, Hanse. I don’t want to be dragged off real business to deal with them–and if I do, I’ll look a lot closer at your businesses than I necessarily want to.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” Caiazzo said, after a moment, and this time Rathe believed him.

The clerk let him out–the side door, this time–and Rathe made his way upstream along the Sier, trying to decide what to do next. By rights, he should go back to Point of Hopes, but at the moment that felt unbearably useless, and instead he made his way along the eastern docks, telling himself he was keeping his eyes open for a pair of redheads. There was one other errand he still needed, to do–two, he added, if he counted going to the theaters in Point of Dreams, but that could wait until he had a chance to talk to the actors who lived in the attic of his own lodgings. They, and Gavi Jhirassi in particular, knew all the gossip in Point of Dreams; if Foucquet’s wayward apprentice had run away to the theaters, one of them would know. He made a face then, heedless of the crowd of laborers busy alongside a battered‑looking caravel. That left his errand to the university, and he was hardly eager to ask these particular questions there. But Monteia had told him she wanted horoscopes cast for the children missing from Point of Hopes, and they both knew what the other step should be. The university trained necromancers, as well as every other school of magist, and no pointsman was foolish enough to deny the utility of a necromancer’s talent. It was just… Rathe allowed himself a sour smile, seeing the double light glinting off the Sier where it curled around the piers that held the Manufactory Bridge. It was just that none of them wanted to ask, for fear that someone would tell them the children were indeed dead. And that was foolishness, superstition, not reason, he told himself fiercely. There wasn’t a necromancer in Astreiant who didn’t know perfectly well what was going on, who wouldn’t come to the points the instant he touched a child’s ghost. Even the rawest student knew that much, or at worst would know to go to his teachers, so the absence of reported ghosts could be considered a good sign. At least Istre b’Estorr was a friend as well as a colleague.

He crossed the Sier at the Manufactory Bridge, through the courtyard of Point of Graves that lay astride the approach to the bridge itself. The gallows at the center of the square was empty, and, as always, a few of the Point of Graves runners were sitting on its steps, daring each other to investigate the trap. Rathe passed them without a second glance, aware that the hangman’s woman was watching them from the steps of her house, and went on through the massive gatehouse to the bridge.

b’Estorr, like most scholars, lived in University Point, on the grounds of the university itself. He’d come to Chenedolle as a student–necromancy was viewed with deep suspicion in his native Chadron, not least because the kings of Chadron had an unfortunate habit of dying untimely, and rarely by their own hands–and had returned only briefly to serve the old king, who had held a more liberal vision of his talents. Unfortunately, that vision had not extended to his own nobles, and the old Fre had, like so many of his ancestors, been assassinated. b’Estorr had escaped back to Chenedolle, and the sanctuary of the university. He rarely referred to his time at the Chadroni court, but Rathe, surveying the peace of the college yard, broken only by clusters of gargoyles and junior students in full gowns of almost the same slate grey, couldn’t help wondering if b’Estorr missed the power he must have had. To be a mere master, his assistance to the points the only break in that routine, must be something of a diminishment.

The Corporation had long ago realized that there was little point in holding students to their normal routine during the week of the Midsummer Fair, and the same truce seemed to hold for the week before. Inquiring at the porter’s gate, Rathe was told that b’Estorr was in his rooms, not at class as he’d expected, but he made his way back across the yard without complaint. b’Estorr’s rooms, one of the tower lodgings reserved for senior masters, were more congenial than the cold stone classrooms, with their tiers of wooden benches and the master’s lectern at the bottom of that slope, like a cross between a bear pit and the public stage. He showed his slate to the crone of a porter who guarded b’Estorr’s building, and the woman nodded and unlatched the lower half of her door. Rathe climbed the winding stair to the first floor, knocked hard, knowing b’Estorr’s habits.

As he’d expected, it was a few moments before the necromancer opened his door. He was a tall man, unusually fair for a Chadroni, with straw blond hair and dark blue eyes, and at the moment his fair brows were drawn into a faint puzzled frown. That eased into a smile as he saw Rathe, and he pulled the door open wide.

“Nico. Come in.”

Rathe stepped into the sunlit space, and, as always, felt a faint prickling at the base of his neck, as though the air were cooler than it should be. Ghosts were b’Estorr’s constant companions as well as his strongest tools; even the least sensitive couldn’t help but be at least vaguely aware of their drifting presence. And then he saw a trio of small bones lying on a sheet of parchment on the polished wood of the worktable, and drew a quick breath, trying to swallow his panic. b’Estorr saw where he was looking, and refolded the paper over them.

“Not what you’re thinking.”

“Not my business, then,” Rathe said, and knew he sounded edgy.

“Not the business I think you’ve come to me about,” b’Estorr answered. “Unless you’re interested in historical murders? These are old, it’s been a generation or two at least since they wore flesh.”

“When I have the time,” Rathe answered. “When children aren’t disappearing from Astreiant.” b’Estorr nodded. “I thought that was it. Have you eaten?”

Rathe glanced automatically at the sunstick in the window, saw with some surprise that it was well past noon. “Not since this morning, no.” And that had been a bite or two of bread and cheese at the Old Brown Dog.

“Then why don’t you join me?” b’Estorr said, and leaned out the door to call for a servant without waiting for the other’s answer. When the servant appeared–a girl in a student’s gown, Rathe saw without surprise–b’Estorr gave quick orders for a meal, and closed the door again. “There’s wine in the jug, help yourself.”

Rathe nodded, but made no move. b’Estorr smiled again, and poured himself a glass. It was blown glass, pale blue streaked with an orange pink, not one of the pottery cups Rathe himself used at home, and he wondered if they were university privilege, or like b’Estorr survivors of the court of Chadron. He could not quite, he realized, imagine b’Estorr drinking from pottery.

“So what can I do for you?” b’Estorr asked, and lowered himself into one of the carved chairs, stretching his feet into the patch of sunlight.

Rathe seated himself as well, aware of an eddy of cold air that seemed to shy away from him as he moved. One of b’Estorr’s ghosts? he wondered, and shook the thought away. “As you said, the missing children. I don’t suppose you’ve seen–sorry, touched–any of them, or any unusual ghosts at all, these past three weeks?” b’Estorr shook his head. “I doubt it’s much comfort, but no. I haven’t, and neither has anyone I know.”