Point of Hopes Read Free Page A

yard. Rathe looked up, and the room went dark as a
shape briefly filled the doorway. The man stepped inside, and stood
for a moment blinking as his eyes adjusted to the light. He was
big, tall, and heavy-bellied beneath a workingman’s half-coat, but
the material was good, as was the shirt beneath it, and as he
turned, Rathe saw the badge of a guildmaster in the big man’s
cap.
    “ Help you, master?” he asked, and
the big man turned, still blinking in the relative
darkness.
    “ Pointsman?” He took a few steps
toward the table. “I’m here to report a missing
apprentice.”
    Rathe nodded, repressing his automatic response, and
kicked a stool away from the table. “Have a seat, master, and tell
me all about it.”
    The big man sat down cautiously. Up close, he looked
even bigger, with a jowled, heat-reddened face and lines that could
mean temper or self-importance bracketing his mouth and creasing
his forehead. Rathe looked him over dispassionately, ready to
dismiss this as another case of an apprentice seizing the chance to
get out of an unsatisfactory contract, when he saw the emblem on
the badge pinned to the man’s close-fitting cap. Toncarle, son of
Metenere, strode crude but unmistakable across the silver oval,
knives upheld: the man was a butcher, and that changed everything.
The Butchers’ Guild wasn’t the richest guild in Astreiant, but it
was affiliated with the Herbalists and the scholar-priests of
Metenere, and that meant its apprentices learned more than just
their craft. An apprentice would have to be a fool—or badly
mistreated—to leave that place.
    The big man had seen the change of expression, faint
as it was, and a wry smile crossed his face. “Ay, I’m with the
Butchers, pointsman. Bonfais Mailet.”
    “ Nicolas Rathe. Adjunct point,”
Rathe answered automatically. He should have known, or guessed, he
thought. They weren’t far from the Street of Knives, and that was
named for the dozen or so butcher’s halls that dominated the
neighborhood. “You said you were missing an apprentice, Master
Mailet?”
    Mailet nodded. “Her name’s Herisse Robion. She’s
been my prentice for two years now.”
    “ That makes her, what, twelve,
thirteen?” Rathe asked, scribbling the name into the daybook.
“Herisse—that’s a Chadroni name, isn’t it?”
    “ Twelve,” Mailet answered. “And
yes, the name’s Chadroni, but she’s city-born and bred. I think her
mother’s kin were from the north, but that’s a long time
back.”
    “ So she wouldn’t have been running
to them?” Rathe asked, and added the age.
    “ I doubt it.” Mailet leaned forward
planting both elbows on the table. A faint smell rose from his
clothes, not unpleasant, but naggingly familiar. Rathe frowned
slightly, trying to place it, and then remembered: fresh-cut
peppers and summer gourds, the cool green tang of the sliced flesh.
It was harvest time for those crops, and butchers all across the
city would be carving them for the magists to preserve. He shook
the thought away, and drew a sheet of paper from the writing
box.
    “ Tell me what happened.”
    “ She’s gone.” Mailet spread his
hands. “She was there last night at bedtime, or so Sabadie—that’s
my journeyman, one of them, anyway, the one in charge of the
girl-prentices—so Sabadie swears to me. And then this morning, when
they went to the benches, I saw hers was empty. The other girls
admitted she wasn’t at breakfast, and her bed was made before they
were up, but Herisse was always an early riser, so none of them
said anything, to me or to Sabadie. But when she wasn’t at her
bench, well…I came to you.”
    Rathe eyed him warily, wondering how best to phrase
his question. “She’s only been gone a few hours,” he began at last,
“not even a full day. Are—is it possible she went out to meet
someone, and somehow was delayed?”
    Mailet nodded. “And I think she’s hurt, or otherwise
in trouble. My wife and I, after we got the prentices to