Point of Hopes Read Free Page B

work, we
went up and searched her things. All her clothes are there, and her
books. She wasn’t planning to be gone so long, of that I’m certain.
She knows the work we had to do today, she wouldn’t have missed it
without sending us word if she could.”
    Rathe nodded back, impressed in spite of himself.
Even if Mailet were as choleric as he looked, a place in the
Butchers’ Guild—an apprenticeship that taught you reading and
ciphering and the use of an almanac, and set you on the road to a
prosperous mastership—wasn’t to be given up because of a little
temper. “Had she friends outside your house?” he asked, and set the
paper aside. “Or family, maybe?” He pushed himself up out of his
chair and Mailet copied him, his movements oddly helpless for such
a big man.
    “ An aunt paid her fees,” Mailet
said, “but I heard she was dead this past winter. The rest of
them—well, I’d call them useless, and Herisse didn’t seem
particularly fond of them.”
    Rathe crossed to the wall where his jerkin hung with
the rest of the station’s equipment, and shrugged himself into the
stiff leather. His truncheon hung beneath it, and he belted it into
place, running his thumb idly over the crowned tower at its top.
“Do you know where they live?”
    “ Point of Sighs, somewhere,” Mailet
answered. “Sabadie might know, or one of the girls.”
    “ I’ll ask them, then,” Rathe said.
“Gaucelm!”
    There was a little pause, and then the younger of
the station’s two apprentices appeared in the doorway. “Master
Nico?”
    “ Is Asheri about, or is it just
you?”
    “ She’s by the stable.”
    Asheri was one of half a dozen neighborhood
children, now growing into gawky adolescence, who ran errands for
the point station. “I’m off with Master Mailet here, about a
missing apprentice—not a runaway, it looks like. I’m sending Asheri
for Ranazy, you’ll man the station until he gets here.”
    Gaucelm’s eyes widened—he was young still, and
hadn’t stood a nightwatch, much less handled the day shift
alone—but he managed a creditably off-hand nod. “Yes, Master
Nico.”
    Rathe nodded back, and turned to Mailet. “Then let
me talk to Asheri, Master Mailet, and we’ll go.”
    Asheri was waiting in the stable doorway, a thin,
brown girl in a neatly embroidered cap and bodice, her skirts
kilted to the knee against the dust. She listened to Rathe’s
instructions—fetch Ranazy from the Cazaril Grey where he was
eating, and then tell Monteia, the chief point who had charge of
Point of Hopes, what had happened and bring back any messages—with
a serious face. She caught the copper demming he tossed her with an
expert hand, then darted off ahead of them through the main gate.
Rathe followed her more decorously, and then gestured for Mailet to
lead the way.
    Mailet’s house and workshop lay in the open streets
just off the Customs Road, about a ten-minute walk from Point of
Hopes. It looked prosperous enough, though not precisely wealthy;
the shutters were all down, forming a double counter, and a
journeyman and an older apprentice were busy at the meat table,
knives flashing as they disjointed a pair of chickens for a waiting
maidservant. She was in her twenties and very handsome, and a knife
rose into the air, catching the light for an instant as it turned
end over end, before the apprentice had snatched the meat away and
the knife landed, quivering, in the chopping board. He bowed
deeply, and offered the neatly cut chicken to the maidservant. She
took it, cocking her head to one side, and the journeyman, less
deft or more placid than his junior, handed her the second
carefully packaged bird. She took that, too, and, turning, said
something over her shoulder that had both young men blushing and
grinning. Mailet scowled.
    “ Get that mess cleaned up,” he
said, gesturing to the bloodied board. “And, you, Eysi, keep your
mind on your work before you lose a finger.”
    “ Yes, master,” the