The place was also full of people—at least twenty, plus small children. Everyone was talking, drinking cider or beer, children running about.
“Hey all,” Haberneck called out. “I brought some friends.”
All eyes went to Dayne.
“Saints, he’s a big one!” one person called.
One of the running children crashed into Dayne’s leg. She looked up at him, her eyes wide, and then screamed, “It’s the giant!”
More children screamed.
“Hey, hey, settle!” Haberneck said. “My friend’s a big guy, but he’s not a giant. He’s a good guy.” A few of the adults gathered up the children and brought them to the other room.
“Sorry,” Dayne said as one of the men came up to him, handing him a beer.
“It’s nothing. Kids being kids. Wow, look at you two. Actual Tarians, swords and everything. You said, Gol, but I didn’t believe it.”
“You’re Elvin?” Dayne said, offering his hand. “Hi, I’m Dayne. This is Jerinne. I understand there are children missing?”
Elvin took his hand and led them to chairs. All the adults in the apartment gathered around, crowding into every space they could to see Dayne.
“So, friend,” Elvin said. “What can you two do about this?”
“I can’t promise anything,” Dayne said. “But start with telling me what’s happening.”
Elvin looked to Haberneck first, who gave a nod, and then he started. “So, kids go missing here. That’s been a thing, especially the doxy kids in the park. It happens.”
“Doxy kids?” Jerinne asked.
“The street ladies,” one of the women whispered. “They’re too, you know, fallen to have proper homes. They camp in the park with their children, poor things.”
“Tragic, tragic,” other women said.
“I’m standing right here!” one woman shouted.
Elvin continued. “You’d hear about those kids going missing, other ones on the block. Always seemed too much, but the sticks, they said it was a thing that happened.”
“Stupid sticks,” another man said.
“They’re in the pocket, they are,” one woman said. “We all know it.”
“But something changed?” Dayne asked.
“The last two weeks, it cranked up. Not a thing that just happens.”
“All the kids in the doxy camp,” the woman who shouted before said. Her eyes were red and tearing. “In one night, all of them. Gone.”
“Then more in the neighborhood,” Elvin said.
“At least twenty,” someone else said.
“Twenty!” one woman said, her voice breaking. “My Molly!”
“My Astin!”
“Oscar!”
“All right, all right,” Elvin said.
Dayne’s heart was breaking. “I’m so sorry. And the constables didn’t say anything?”
“Took reports,” the woman whose daughter Molly was missing. “Said they would look into it.”
“Ain’t no one look into anything.”
“What should they look into?” Jerinne asked.
A hushed silence fell over the room.
“Fenmere,” the doxy woman said quietly. “Every dark and twisted thing in this part of town, he’s the seed of it.”
“Who’s Fenmere?” Dayne asked.
No one looked like they wanted to answer.
The doxy woman answered again. “He’s the man behind the drugs here. The effitte and the efhân. He runs that, he runs the dox houses, he’s got the sticks under his thumb.”
“He’s taking kids?”
“I didn’t say that,” she said. “But nothing happens in Dentonhill that he doesn’t touch.” She glared at the other people. “I know one or two of you have coin in your pocket from him. Or a vial.”
“Like you never did, Maxi,” one woman said.
“I’ve been clean since spring,” Maxi said.
“So he knows something?” Dayne asked. “Maybe someone he can’t buy should have a word.”
“You?” Elvin asked.
“Where do I find him?”
Again, the silence.
“Rutting sinners, all of you,” Maxi said. “If Elvin won’t take you—”
“One thing,” Jerinne said. “Tell me about the giant.”
“What giant?”
“The little girl said Dayne was ‘the giant.’ As in a specific one. What did she mean?”
The adults all shrugged.
“I saw it.”
A little boy in the doorway to the back room. He shuffled forward, with an older girl standing behind him, hands comfortingly on his shoulder.
“What did you see?” Dayne asked.
“When Jilly and Goady were taken,” the boy said. “I saw it. They had gone into the crushed house together, and I went with them, and they yelled at me to go away.”
“Crushed house?” Dayne asked.
“An empty tenement a block away,” Elvin said. “It’s half collapsed, and we tell kids to stay clear, but . . .”
“Kids go play in there anyway,” Maxi said.
“I stayed in the corner,” the kid went on. “I was mad, I wanted to play with them. They went in the basement, and I heard them scream. I went halfway down the stairs, and I saw him. The giant.”
“Tell us about him,” Jerinne said.
“Bigger than him,” the kid said, pointing at Dayne. “And his skin was shiny. He scooped up Jilly and Goady, and went in a hole in the wall.”
“A hole in the wall in the basement?” Dayne asked.
“And I heard him,” the boy said in whispered horror. “He said . . . he said, ‘Gurond take. Take the children. Children for the Dragon.’”
“Why didn’t you tell us this?” Elvin asked.
“He told us all before,” the girl behind the little boy said. “We tried to tell you.”
“Can you show us this ‘crushed house’?” Dayne asked. “And where we can find this Fenmere fellow?”
Elvin got to his feet. “We can do that, yeah. You’re going to do something about this?”
“I promise you I will try,” Dayne said, taking the man’s hand. “I don’t know where it will lead me, but I will look for your children, and do what I can to bring those responsible to justice.”
Verci arrived at Kimber’s not sure what he was going to find. Asti had sent a note that he needed to come urgently, so he locked up the shop and came.
“Your brother isn’t about to drag you into some other scheme, is he?” Raych asked as they came in. “We’re finally settling into normal.”
“I don’t know,” Verci said. “I know that Enanger Lesk has been dying in one of the beds upstairs. Maybe this is it for him.”
“What’s he dying of?”
“Asti stabbing him.”
“And Asti
