Point of Hopes (51 page)

“
I always do when I deal with the
godless Chadroni,” Monferriol muttered.

The other man—Rouvalles—lifted a shoulder in a
shrug. He was almost as tall as Monferriol, his long hair drawn
back with a strip of braided leather that had probably come from a
broken harness. “They’re good horses and you know it.”

“
Better than those last screws you
sold me?”

“
Those screws are pure Vestaran
blood, Jevis, but if you don’t want them you don’t, and there’s no
point in my forcing them on you.” Rouvalles glanced at Rathe,
nodded politely. “Sorry to interrupt.”

“
How in the name of all the gods,
and poor Bonfortune above all, does Caiazzo ever turn a profit with
you?” Monferriol demanded, rolling his eyes to the tent’s peak.
“You won’t bargain, you won’t even allow the possibility of
haggling—”

“
I don’t have time to haggle,”
Rouvalles said, cutting through the tirade with what sounded like
the ease of long practice. “I’m already two weeks late, as you damn
well know. You can have the horses or not, it makes no difference
to me.”

“
Money came through finally, did
it?” Monferriol asked, and Rouvalles shrugged.

“
As you also know.”

“
So you’re Caiazzo’s
caravan-master,” Rathe interjected. He hoped he sounded casual, but
doubted it.

Rouvalles glanced at him, the smile ready enough,
but the pale eyes cool and assessing. “You know Hanselin, then—oh,
I see. Pointsman.” He grinned suddenly, and the humor looked
genuine. “Then I guess you would know him. Yes, I’m his
caravan-master, and no, I’m not spiriting any children out of
Astreiant. You can check my camp if you like, but you wouldn’t find
any children there in any case, they’re useless on a long route
like mine.”

“
Fairs’ Point already spoke to you,
then,” Rathe said, apologetically, and was surprised when Rouvalles
shook his head, one dirty gold curl escaping from the tied
leather.

“
No. Hanse’s new knife, in actual
fact, which should count in Hanse’s favor. Have you been looking in
his direction, pointsman? It wouldn’t be like him, you
know.”

“
I do know,” Rathe agreed. “You
said you’re late leaving the city. You haven’t noticed anyone who’s
left early, or in a hurry, or just been acting odd?”

Rouvalles shook his head again. “Not that I’ve
noticed.” He looked at Monferriol. “So, Jevis, you want the
horses?”

“
I want the damn horses,
yes.”

“
All right, then, I’ll have them
brought round once you send the money. How many children are you
missing, pointsman?”

Monferriol slid off his stood. “Oh, very funny,
Rouvalles, indeed. Would you get out?”

“
No, I’m curious.” Rouvalles lifted
a hand, and Monferriol subsided, muttering. Gesture and response
seemed automatic: the Chadroni was almost aristocratic, for a
caravaner, Rathe thought, and stilled his own instinctive
rebellion. “How many?”

“
Throughout the city, eighty-five.
Why?” He fixed his eyes on Rouvalles, and the Chadroni looked
away.

“
You should probably ask Jevis why
he’s buying horses so late in the season.”

“
You bastard,” Monferriol flared,
and Rouvalles glared at him.

“
I’ve heard the same story from
half a dozen people, and if you lot won’t go to the points you brag
of in every other city in the world—well, by all the gods, I
will.”

“
Jevis?” Rathe looked at
Monferriol, and the big man threw up his hands.

“
There’s no law against selling
horses, for Bonfortune’s sake. And there’s no reason to think this
had anything to do with the children.”

“
Except,” Rouvalles said, “that
this pointsman is asking about anything out of the ordinary. And by
Tyrseis, this is just that.”

Rathe looked from one to the other. “One of you can
start from the beginning and explain. Jevis?”

Monferriol looked distinctly abashed. “It’s nothing,
really—almost certainly. But, oh, a week or two ago, maybe seven,
eight days, a man came to me and wanted to buy a pair of draft
horses. Suitable for pulling a baggage wagon—hells, I thought he
was a damn mercenary, there are enough of them around these days.
But he offered me half again what the beasts were worth, and when I
hesitated—I thought I’d heard him wrong—he upped the price again.
So I sold them, and even at his prices”—he jerked his head at
Rouvalles—“I’ll still make a profit.” He stopped then, glaring
first at Rouvalles and then at the pointsman.

Rathe shook his head. “Interesting, but I don’t
see—”

Rouvalles stirred, and Monferriol said hastily, “The
thing is, the same thing’s happened to a dozen of us, a man coming
and wanting to buy draft horses. And offering too good a price to
turn him down. It hasn’t been the same man, always, but still,
well, it got some of us wondering, They’re not traders, that’s for
sure, but beyond that, who knows? We didn’t know if we should go to
the points or not, Nico, it might have been something
ordinary.”

Rathe nodded absently, his mind racing. A dozen
traders, selling one or two horses each—that would easily be enough
to transport eighty-five children. The only question was, where had
they been taken? He said “I don’t suppose you have any idea who
this person was?”

Monferriol shook his head. “I told you, I thought he
was a mercenary, the successful kind. He dressed like an upper
servant, mind you, nice coat, nice manners.”

“
What did he look like?” Rathe
asked without much hope, and wasn’t surprised when the big man
shrugged.

“
Ordinary. I’m sorry, boy, he
was—well, middling everything. You know the sort, sort of
wood-colored.”

Rathe grinned in spite of himself, in spite of the
situation. He knew exactly the sort of man Monferriol was
describing, brown-haired, brown-skinned, brown-eyed, utterly
unremarkable features—the points took dozens of them for thieving
every year, and released half of them for lack of a victim to swear
to them. “What about you?” he said to Rouvalles, and the Chadroni
shook his head.

“
All I know is what I’ve heard from
Jevis and some others. I don’t use draft horses, you can’t take
carts over the landbridge.”

Rathe sighed—that would have been too much good
luck—and looked back at Monferriol. “Jevis, I’m going to tell you
this once, and I want you to do it for me. Consider it the favor
you owe me.”

“
We’ll see,” Monferriol said but
nodded.

“
Go to Fairs’ Point with this,”
Rathe said. “Get together everybody who’s sold to these people, and
go to Guillot Claes, he’s the chief at Fairs’, and tell him what
you’ve told me. They’ve probably left the city, but it’s worth
trying to find them, and this is Fairs’ business, not
mine.”

“
You couldn’t keep us company,”
Monferriol said without real hope, and Rathe shook his
head.

“
It would look better if it was
just you.”

“
Right.” Monferriol made a face.
“Bonfortune help me, but I’ll do it.”

“
Thanks,” Rathe said, and included
Rouvalles in his nod.

The Chadroni smiled, the expression
a little melancholy. “It’s a bad business, this,” he said. “Not to
mention bad
for
business. I hope you find them.” He looked back at Monferriol.
“Send the money, and I’ll send the horses. And sooner would be
better than later, I’m going to be busy the next few
days.”

“
You’ll get your money,” Monferriol
growled. Rouvalles waved a hand, acknowledgement and farewell, and
ducked back out the tent flap, Monferriol looked at Rathe. “I
would’ve gone to the points sooner, Nico, but—hells, I didn’t
realize, none of us did, just how many horses were being bought
this way.”

“
Go now,” Rathe said, gently.
“Claes will be grateful, I’m sure of that. It’s one of the first
solid things we’ve had.”

“
I hope you catch the bastards,”
Monferriol answered. “Hanging’s too good for them.”

“
We’re doing what we can,” Rathe
answered, and followed Rouvalles out of the tent. And that was more
than he’d thought they’d be able to do yesterday, he thought, as he
made his way back toward Point of Hopes, but still not
enough.

Monteia was waiting in the station’s main room,
fingers tapping impatiently on the edge of the worktable. She rose
as he came in, saying, “Well?”

“
More news, Chief,” he answered.
“Monferriol says that some people—not traders, not anything he
recognized—have been buying draft horses from various of the
caravaners. A lot of horses, Chief, enough to pull enough wagons to
carry eighty-five children.”

Monteia went very still. “Any idea of who, or where
they went?”

Rathe shook his head. “I told Jevis—Monferriol—to
take himself and the others over to Fairs’ Point, let them work on
it. But I think we know how they’re being moved now.”

“
And damn all good it does us,”
Monteia muttered. “We know two hows, how they’re choosing the kids
and some of how they’re moving them, but that doesn’t get us
anything useful.”

“
Not yet,” Rathe answered, and
hoped it was true.

Monteia sighed. “I’ve been thinking about what you
said this morning. I still don’t like it, but I can’t think of
anything better. Let’s get the runners in here, and see if any of
them are willing to be bait.”

Rathe flinched—put that baldly, the idea seemed to
have even less merit—but went to the door and looked out. The
youngest of the runners, a child from the Brewers’ Court who looked
even younger than his ten years, was sitting on the edge of the
empty horse trough, and Rathe beckoned to him. “Laci! Find the rest
of the runners, will you, and ask them to come in here,
please.”

“
Are we in trouble?” The boy looked
warily at him, and Rathe felt his smile turn sickly.

“
No.” Not unless we make some bad
mistakes, he added silently, and Astree send we don’t. “The chief
has a job for some of you, that’s all.”

“
All right.” The boy turned away,
and Rathe called after him.

“
As soon as possible,
please.”

Laci lifted a hand in answer, and darted away. Rathe
stood for a moment, looking at the now-empty yard, and then went
back into the station. To his surprise, however, Laci was back in
less than a quarter of an hour, and half a dozen of the other
runners were with him.

“
This was all I could find, Nico,”
Laci announced. “Is that all right?”

“
That’s fine,” Rathe answered. He
stood back, letting the little group file past him into the
station, and saw Monteia shake her head.

“
In the workroom, please,” she said
aloud, and the runners edged in, whispering and murmuring among
themselves. Rathe followed them in, and closed the door behind
them. He knew all of them, of course: Laci; raw-boned Jacme, who’d
been kicked out of his own house and slept behind the bar at the
Cazaril Grey; willowy Biatris, who would get her apprenticeship
next year if the station itself had to pay her fees; Surgi, dark
and stocky, born in the Rivermarket docks; Fasquelle de Galhac, who
had a brain despite the pretensions of her name; stolid Lennar with
his crooked nose; and finally Asheri, his favorite of this year’s
group. She was standing a little apart from the rest, her thin face
very grave, and he wondered if something was wrong. Then Monteia
had seated herself behind the table, gestured for the runners to
make themselves comfortable.

“
As you may or may not have heard,
we’ve found something all the missing kids have in common,” she
began bluntly. “They all knew their stars to a quarter hour or
better, and a lot of them, maybe all of them, had their stars read
by one of these new astrologers we’ve been hearing about. Which
gives us an obvious option.”

Biatris was already nodding, her thumbs hooked into
the belt she wore beneath her sleeveless bodice. Asheri tipped her
head to one side but made no other move, while Surgi and Lennar
exchanged nervous glances. Monteia gave them all a jaundiced
look.

“
I’ll say from the start that I’m
not particularly happy with this idea, but it could work, and it’s
vital that we catch these bastards.” She took a deep breath. “What
we need is someone of the right age—your ages—who knows her stars
close enough to go and get a reading done. We’ll be watching you,
of course, myself and Nico and Houssaye and Salineis, but there’s a
chance something could go wrong. So think about that before you
answer.”

Surgi and Lennar exchanged looks again, and Lennar
said, “I’d do it—”

“—
in a minute,” Surgi
agreed.

“—
but I don’t know my stars that
well,” Lennar finished. “And neither does Surgi. Couldn’t we
pretend?”

“
I asked about that at the
university,” Rathe said. “Istre—a friend of mine who’s a
necromancer—said that they’d be able to tell.”

“
Oh.” Surgi’s shoulders sagged
visibly, but then he brightened. “We could go with everybody, help
make sure the astrologers don’t steal them.”

“
We’ll see,” Monteia said. “All
right. Do any of you know your stars to the quarter
hour?”

There was a little silence then, and Asheri said, “I
do. Better than that, actually, I was born on the hour.”