“Please,” Rathe said.

“And if I find him?”

“Let me know, and I’ll let Foucquet know. She can handle it from there, sort it out with the boy’s mother.”

“If Savatier has him,” Jhirassi said, “if she’s taken him on, he’s likely to be good, Nico. It could be a shame to force him back into the judiciary.”

“I know,” Rathe answered. “But his mother has a right to know if he hasn’t gone missing. Who knows, she might be so delighted to hear he’s with Savatier, and not disappeared, she might let him stay on.” He didn’t sound terribly convincing, and knew it, and so, from the look on the actor’s face, did Jhirassi. The judiciary was a good career, and a rich one, ideal for those who had the proper stars, and that range was broadly defined. Clerkships like the one Albe Cytel had held were as jealously guarded as any guild apprenticeship, and for the same reasons: their holders had an advantage over the hundreds of others who tried to make their living in the trade, and that advantage could be passed from mother to child. Cytel’s mother would be reluctant to lose that, no matter what the boy’s stars said, and there would be ambition and expectation involved as well. Sometimes it was hard to make the parent’s desires give way to sidereal sense. He himself had been lucky, Rathe thought. He might have been an apothecary, or an herbalist, given his parents’ occupations, but it had been clear from his stars that Metenere’s service was not for him, and they had made no protest. He looked again at the sheaf of papers with their scribbled nativities. There had been nothing in common among those children’s stars, or at least nothing that he could see, not even a common like or dislike of their present circumstances.

“I’ll ask at Savatier’s,” Jhirassi said again. “But I can’t promise anything.”

“I appreciate it,” Rathe answered.

Jhirassi nodded, mischief glinting in his eyes, but then common sense reasserted itself. He rose gracefully from the table, smiled at b’Estorr, and crossed to the corner table where the rest of the actors were sitting. Rathe watched him go, but his mind wasn’t on the slim figure.

“That sounds–interesting,” b’Estorr said, and Rathe rolled his eyes.

“In other circumstances, yes. It might almost be amusing, but not just at the moment, thank you. Not with people–respectable guildfolk, mind you–trying to do our jobs for us.”

“Is it true someone was killed last night?” b’Estorr asked.

Rathe nodded. “A journeyman butcher, name of Paas Huviet. He was threatening to attack the inn, and when he wouldn’t heed the warnings, Eslingen–he was Devynck’s knife–shot him dead.” He managed a crooked smile. “Which I don’t think comes under your purview, Istre.”

“I would think not,” the magist agreed. “So what happened to him, the knife, I mean?”

Rathe grimaced. “Oh, gods, that was a mess. We had to call the point on him, if only to keep the rest of the crowd quiet, but of course it was disallowed. It had to be, really, he’d only fired in self‑defense and in defense of real property. But Devynck let him go, since she didn’t want there to be more trouble because of him. So I… I got him a position in Caiazzo’s household.”

b’Estorr stared at Rathe, then laughed. “What possessed you to lodge him with Caiazzo, of all people? I take it you don’t much like this knife–Eslingen, was it?”

Rathe looked faintly embarrassed. “Yeah, that’s his name. And, no, in actual fact, I like him, he’s a good sort, clever–”

“So why, in the Good Counsellor’s name, stick him with Caiazzo?” b’Estorr paused. “Or do I have it turned around?”

Rathe hesitated, but there were few men he trusted more than the Chadroni. And besides, he added silently, I wouldn’t mind having someone tell me I’d done the right thing. “I need someone in Caiazzo’s household,” he said, lowering his voice. “The sur thinks he might be involved with the missing children somehow, but I’ve got my hands too full investigating the disappearances themselves to waste time on something I don’t think is very likely. It seemed a natural conjunction.”

b’Estorr shook his head. “Gods, Nico, remind me never to call in any favors from you, you have the most backhanded way of returning them. He agreed?”

“He agreed. I didn’t exactly hold a knife to his throat, either, Istre,” Rathe said.

“It’s not a bad idea, though,” b’Estorr said, thoughtfully. “As long as Caiazzo doesn’t find out, that is.”

That was something Rathe did not particularly want to think about. He reached for the pieces of paper instead, slid them across the table toward b’Estorr. “Here. These are for you. We’ve managed to gather some more information on the children missing from Hopes–I think you have all the nativities now. I don’t know, maybe if you look at them in line with Herisse’s, or something, maybe the days of their disappearance, you’ll find something we’ve missed.”

b’Estorr set down his glass and spread the papers out on the table, studying each in turn. Rathe watched him, absurdly fearful that he would see some dire pattern just glancing at them, something the points could and should have seen. And that’s just being ridiculous, he told himself firmly, hearing more than an echo of his mother in his mind. But the papers looked pathetic, lives in limbo, reduced to so many numbers and calculations. He wasn’t an astrologer, at least no more so than most people in Astreiant, possessing a rudimentary knowledge of the mathegistry that defined their lives. b’Estorr could read the figures Rathe had given him as easily as Rathe could read the broadsheets, and Rathe wondered what picture the nativities conjured up for the magist. Could he see these children, get a sense for who they were–are, he corrected firmly–what their dreams, hopes, futures might be? He shook his head, at himself this time, and took another swallow of his wine, never taking his eyes from b’Estorr. Finally, the magist rolled up the papers and placed them carefully in his leather pocket case. He smiled a little sheepishly at Rathe.

“Sorry. There’s little enough I can do right now, but I get caught up. It’s interesting, but I’m not seeing any obvious patterns off the top of it. No common positions, bar the gross solar position of the winter‑sun and its satellites for most of them. And of course the Starsmith.”

Rathe nodded. The winter‑sun and its three kindred stars stayed in each of the solar signs for about fourteen years; everyone born within that period shared those signs. The Starsmith took even longer to move through its unique zodiac. “That hardly counts, though, right?”

“Right. And not all of them were born with the winter‑sun in the Anvil, either, some of them are young enough that it was in the first degrees of the Seabull.” b’Estorr shook his head again. “For that matter, they weren’t even all of them born in Astreiant.”

“That we had noticed,” Rathe said. “It’s almost as though there’s less of a pattern than there should be, and where you expect to find one, no matter how meaningless–I expected, we reasonably could have expected, all the kids to have been born here–it’s not there. It’s the kind of negative pattern you couldn’t create if you tried, you’d be bound to slip up somewhere.”

“That’s an interesting thought,” b’Estorr said, and this time it was Rathe who shook his head.

“It could just be frustration speaking. Damn it, there has to be some pattern there, somewhere.”

b’Estorr nodded. “And the absence of pattern would be meaningful, too. Don’t give up hope yet, Nico.”

Rathe smiled ruefully, leaned back in his chair as a waiter appeared with his dinner–the promised lasanon, he saw without surprise, smelling strongly of the garlic and summer herbs layered with the cheese and the strips of noodle dough. Wicked was right, the wine would complement that, or vice versa, and for the first time that evening, felt his mood begin to lift. “I’m not. It’s just–”