Mailet grunted, and pushed past him into the shop. “Young fool. And the pity of it is, if he makes a mistake with that trick, it’ll be Perrin who loses a finger.”

“How many people do you have here?” Rathe asked.

“Four journeymen, two boys and two girls, and then a dozen prentices, six of each. And my woman and myself. She’s co‑master with me.”

“Do they all live here?”

“The apprentices, of course,” Mailet answered, “they’ve two big rooms under the roof–with a separate stairway to each, I’m not completely a fool–and then the senior journeymen, that’s Perrin whom you saw, and Sabadie, they each have a room at the head of the stair. And Agnelle and myself live on the second floor. But Mickhel and Fridi board out–their choice, not mine.”

The door that gave onto the main hall opened then, and a dark‑skinned woman stepped through, tucking her hair back under her neat cap. She was close to Mailet’s age, and Rathe was not surprised to see the keys and coinpurse at her belt.

“Agnelle Fayor, my co‑master,” Mailet said, unnecessarily, and Rathe nodded.

“Mistress.”

“You’re the pointsman?” the woman asked, and Rathe nodded again.

“Then you’ll want to talk to the girls,” Fayor said, and looked at Mailet. “They’re almost done, I don’t think it’ll cause any more stir if he does.”

Mailet grinned, rather wryly, and Rathe said, “I take it the apprentices were upset, then?”

Mailet nodded.

Fayor said, “They didn’t know she was going to run, I’d stake my life on that.” She looked at Mailet, seemed to receive some silent signal, and went on, “We’ve had prentices run away before now, everyone has, but they’ve always told us first, given some warning.”

“Not in so many words, you understand,” Mailet interjected. “But you know.”

“Did Herisse have any special friends among the apprentices?” Rathe asked. “A leman, maybe? Somebody she might’ve confided in?”

Fayor’s mouth turned down at the corners. “I don’t hold with that. It causes all sorts of trouble.”

“You can’t stop it, though,” Mailet said. It had the sound of a long argument, and out of the corner of his eye, Rathe saw Fayor grimace expressively. “And it keeps their minds off the opposite sex.” Mailet looked back at the pointsman. “Sabadie would know if she had a leman. You can ask her.”

“Thanks. I’d like to talk to her. But right now, can you give me a description of Herisse?” Rathe had his tablets out, looked from Mailet to Fayor. The two exchanged looks.

“She’s an ordinary looking girl, pointsman, pretty enough, but not remarkable,” Fayor began.

“Tall for her age, though,” Mailet added, and Rathe noted that down, glancing up to ask, “And that’s twelve, right?”

Mailet nodded and took a breath, frowning with concentration.

“She has brown hair, keeps it long, but neat. Not missing any teeth yet. Brown eyes?” He looked at Fayor, who sighed.

“Blue. She has a sharp little face, but, as I said, nothing out of the ordinary.”

“What was she wearing, last time anyone saw her?”

“Last time I saw her, she was wearing a green skirt and bodice. Bottle green, the draper called it, and it’s trimmed with ribbon, darker. She had the same ribbon on her chemise, too, she liked the color. And that’s probably what she was wearing when she went missing, her other clothes are still in her room,” Fayor said. She spread her hands. “I don’t know what else I can tell you.”

Rathe closed his tablets. “That’s fine, thanks. Right–can I speak with Sabadie now?”

Mailet nodded. “I’ll take you to her. Mind the shop, Agnelle? And make sure Eysi doesn’t hurt himself with his fancy knife tricks.”

Fayor muttered something that did not bode well for the apprentice, and Rathe followed Mailet through the door into the main hall. The room was filled with the sunlight that streamed in through the windows at the top of the hall, and the air smelled sharply of vegetables. A dozen apprentices, conspicuous in blue smocks and aprons, stood at the long tables, boys on the left, girls on the right, while a woman journeyman stood at the center of the aisle, directing the work from among baskets of peppers and bright yellow summer gourds. Another journeyman, this one a woman in the black coat and yellow cravat of the Meteneran magists, stood toward the back of the room, one eye on the clockwork orrery that ticked away the positions of the suns and stars, the other on the sweating apprentices. From the looks of things, the piled white seeds and discarded stems, and the relatively small number of baskets of whole vegetables, the work had been going on for some time, and going well. The journeyman butcher turned, hearing the door, and came to join them, wiping her hands on her apron. Rathe was mildly surprised to see a woman in charge–butchery was traditionally a man’s craft–but then, the woman’s stars probably outweighed her sex.

“Just about done, master,” she said. “We’ve another two hours yet, and this is the last load for Master Guilbert.”

Mailet nodded, looking over the hall with an expert eye. “I brought the pointsman–his name’s Nicolas Rathe, out of Point of Hopes. Sabadie Grosejl, my senior journeyman. Can you spare Trijntje to talk to him?” He glanced at Rathe, and added, “Trijntje was probably Herisse’s closest friend.”

“She’s not much use to me today,” Grosejl said, rather grimly, and Rathe glanced along the line of girl‑apprentices, wondering which one it was. She wasn’t hard to pick out, after all: even at this distance, Rathe could tell she’d been crying, suspected from the hunch of her shoulder and the way she glared at the pepper under her knife that she was crying still.

“I’d like to talk to Sabadie as well,” he said, and the journeyman hesitated.

“Go on, I’ll take over here,” Mailet said. “Fetch him Trijntje when he’s done with you, and then you can get back to work.”

“Yes, Master,” Grosejl answered, and turned to face the pointsman, jamming her hands into the pockets of her smock beneath her apron. She was a tall woman, Leaguer pale, and her eyes were wary.

“So you’re in charge of the girl‑apprentices?” Rathe asked.

Grosejl nodded. “For my sins.” She grimaced. “They’re not so bad, truly, just–”

“Young?” Rathe asked, and the journeyman nodded.

“And now this has happened. Master Rathe, I don’t know what Master Mailet told you, but I don’t think Herisse ran away.”

“Oh?”

“She liked it here, liked the schooling and the work and the people–she didn’t tell Trijntje she was going, and she’d have done that for certain.”

“Was she Trijntje’s leman?” Rathe asked.

Grosejl hesitated, then nodded. “Master Mailet doesn’t really approve, nor the mistress, so there was nothing said or signed, but everyone knew it. You hardly saw one without the other. If she’d been planning to run away, seek her fortune on the road, they would have gone together.”

Rathe sighed. That was probably true enough–runaways often left in pairs or threes, either sworn lemen or best friends–and it probably also told him the answer to his next question. “You understand I have to ask this,” he began, and Grosejl shook her head.

“No, she wasn’t pregnant. That I can swear to. Mistress Fayor makes sure all the girls take the Baroness every day.”

“But if it didn’t work for her?” Rathe asked. The barren‑herb didn’t work for every woman; that was common knowledge, and one of the reasons the guilds generally turned a blind eye to the passionate friendships between the apprentices of the same gender. Better barren sex than a hoard of children filling the guildhalls.

Grosejl hesitated, then jerked her head toward a child of six or seven who was sweeping seeds into the piles of rubbish at the center of the hall. “That’s my daughter. There’d have been a place for her, and the child, if she was pregnant. More than there would have been with her family.”