Nicholas Rathe is a pointsman, a watchman in the great city of Astreiant, the capital of the Kingdom of Chenedolle. It is the time of the annual trade fair, and the city is filled with travelers, and someone is stealing children. The populace is getting angry and frightened and is looking for som...
By mutual if unspoken agreement, he and Rathe were both avoiding places where they were known individually, which left them mostly northriver places like this one. It was pleasant enough, occupied in the early evening primarily by clerks from the counting houses and factors’ offices along the Mer...
He intended to find some permanent solution to the problem of Mr Clark’s garden gate, and had unearthed both a manual on the care of all manner of doors and a more general treatise with a section on untangling enchantments muddled by too many previous hands. Both were out ...
If anything, he reminded himself, and bent again over the station’s daybook. It was his turn to review the week’s events, to be sure nothing had slipped through their fingers, but he was finding it almost impossible to concentrate on the matters at hand. He made a last note that someone should fo...
Alma and Lewis were still in bed and Stasi was taming the madding crowd with about fifty pancakes, cigarette in one hand and spatula in the other, a bleary expression on her face. After he dropped Jerry he started home, then on impulse turned onto Hilea Road to go to the P...
She was on her fourth piece of toast (Merilee refused to eat anything but toast in the morning) and Stasi was nursing her third cup of coffee and a headache when the boys charged in. They immediately started squabbling over whether or not panettone was a proper breakfast food or not, which Stasi ...
Charles in Paris. Alma sipped her café au lait, sweet and rich with cream, her forearms resting on the edge of the white clothed table. Hotel St. Charles had been built in the 18th century as a private house, and no doubt in that day this had been the stable yard, but now it had been converted in...