Ray hadn't moved from the square in over an hour, though anyone watching closely enough to notice would have assumed otherwise. He'd shifted position three times — leaning against the well, then a market post, then finally settling near the mouth of an alley with a clear line to both the main street and the lane Corvin and Zelene had disappeared down — each move small enough, unhurried enough, to look like nothing more than a traveler killing time.
It wasn't nothing.
He'd counted the guards twice now. Four, that he could see, moving through the square at irregular intervals, none of them wearing anything that marked them clearly as guild or crown — just plain leather and short blades, the kind of men hired to look unremarkable while doing work that wasn't.
A pair of women near the well had gone quiet the moment one of those men passed close enough to overhear them. Ray caught only the tail end of what they'd been saying before the silence dropped.
"—another one, they're saying, from the east quarter this time—"
"—doesn't matter how old, don't matter if she's married or not, they don't seem to care—"
The rest was lost to distance and caution. Ray didn't move to follow. He only watched the two women part ways, unhurried, careful not to look at each other too long once the guard had passed.
Women going missing. Not just Della. Not just one street.
He didn't like it. He liked even less that nobody in the square seemed willing to say it plainly.
Zelene crouched down again once the mill was out of sight, keeping Wren's hand in hers as they walked, matching her pace to the girl's shorter stride.
"Wren," she said. "Is there anyone near your home who might know where your mother was going, before she disappeared? A neighbor, someone who watches out for the street?"
Wren considered this seriously, the way she seemed to consider most things — like a child who'd learned early that careless answers cost more than careful ones.
"There's Old Fen," she said. "He sells fish next to Mama, same corner, every day. He watches me sometimes when she's busy. Gave me a fish last winter, when we didn't have coin for supper." She hesitated. "He's grumpy. But he's nice. Mama says he's been on that corner longer than the bridge itself."
Corvin glanced at Zelene over the girl's head. "That's worth asking, then."
"I don't want to frighten him," Zelene said, more to herself than to either of them. "Or frighten anyone else on that street, if people are already too afraid to talk."
"We should ask around first," Corvin suggested. "Before we go straight to him. If the whole street's gone quiet the way the square has, better to understand why before we walk in asking questions that might get back to the wrong ears."
They tried three doors along the row nearest the bridge before anyone answered honestly. The first, a woman who took one look at Wren, murmured something sympathetic, and shut the door too quickly to be anything but afraid. The second didn't answer at all, though Zelene was certain she saw a curtain shift in an upstairs window. It was the third — an older man mending a net on his stoop — who finally spoke, though only after glancing up and down the street first.
"You're asking about Della," he said. It wasn't a question.
"We are," Zelene said. "Wren's with us. She's been alone since her mother didn't come home."
The man's face softened at that, though the wariness didn't fully leave it. "Della's a good woman. Kept to herself, mostly. Worked hard for that girl." He glanced toward Wren, something apologetic in his expression. "I don't know where she's gone, if that's what you're hoping. But if anyone on this street's noticed something, it'll be Fen. Man doesn't miss much, sitting where he does all day."
"Would he be willing to talk to us?" Corvin asked.
The man's mouth twisted, somewhere between a grimace and doubt. "Depends who's asking, and how loud you ask it." He lowered his voice slightly. "There's been trouble 'round here nobody wants to name outright. You'd do well to be careful how you go about this."
He didn't elaborate further, returning his attention to the net in his hands with the particular finality of someone who'd already decided he'd said enough.
---
Old Fen's stall sat at the far edge of the fishmongers' row, tended by a weathered old man whose hands moved with the slow, sure economy of someone who'd done this work most of his life. He looked up as they approached, and the moment his eyes found Wren, something in his posture changed entirely, the idle motion of his hands stopping mid-task.
"Wren." His voice had gone tight. "Where's your mother, child?"
"We're trying to find out," Zelene said gently. "She's been gone two days. Someone on your street said you might have noticed something."
Old Fen's face closed over almost immediately, the warmth he'd shown Wren folding itself away behind something far more careful. He glanced past them, toward the square, toward the guards still moving between the stalls, and lowered his voice before he spoke again.
"People ought to learn to keep their mouths shut," he muttered — though there was no real anger in it, only tiredness. "I don't know anything."
"You knew her name before we said it," Corvin said, not unkindly, but plainly. "You've been watching that street a long time, by all accounts. I don't think that's nothing."
For a long moment, Old Fen said nothing at all, only stared out toward the river, toward the last of the day's light catching along the water — weighing, it seemed, exactly how much a stranger's trust was worth against however many years of learning not to give it.
"There's talk," he said finally, so quiet they had to lean in to catch it. "Has been, for months now. Women are missing. Doesn't matter their age, doesn't matter if they've got husbands or children or nowhere at all to be missed from. Started slow enough nobody thought much of it — one here, one there, easy enough to believe they'd simply left. But it's more than a dozen now, by my count, and nobody in this town wants to say the number out loud."