Point of Hopes (12 page)

“
A few things,” Rathe answered
easily. “Nothing—complicated.”

“
That would be a first.” Devynck
leaned against the edge of her work table, which looked as though
it had seen service in the kitchens, the top scarred with knife
marks. There was only one chair, and Rathe appreciated the delicate
balance of courtesy and status. She wouldn’t sit, and keep him
standing, but neither would she stand when he sat.

“
I understand you have a new
knife,” he went on.

Devynck nodded. “You probably saw him when you came
in. His name’s Philip, Philip Eslingen. Just paid off from
Coindarel’s Dragons.”

“
Is that a reference?” Rathe asked
with exaggerated innocence, and Devynck gave a sour
smile.

“
To some of us, anyway. Coindarel’s
no fool, and he doesn’t hire fools.”

Rathe’s eyebrows rose, in spite of himself.
Coindarel was known to choose his junior officers for their looks,
and the man in the main room was easily pretty enough to have
caught the prince-marshal’s eye.

Devynck sighed. “Not for his sergeants—not for the
men who do the real work, anyway. And Philip came up through the
ranks.”

“
It wasn’t his sleeping habits that
worried me,” Rathe answered. “I hear you had a little trouble here
the other night.”

“
We did not,” Devynck answered
promptly, “and that’s precisely why I hired the man. There could’ve
been trouble, easy, but he nipped it in the bud.”

“
What I heard—what’s being said on
the Knives Road,” Rathe said, “is that he was talking about missing
butcher’s brats before he could’ve known about it.”

Devynck sighed again, and shook her head. “Paas.
He’s a bad lot, that one, be a journeyman all his life—if he
doesn’t drink himself right out of the guild.”

“
So what happened?”

“
You’d have to ask Philip for the
details,” Devynck answered, “but what I saw was, Paas came over to
their table—Eslingen was drinking with a man, looked like an old
friend. I don’t know his name, but he’s a Leaguer, too, works for
one of the caravan-masters. But anyway, they were drinking, and
Paas comes over to their table, says something I don’t hear except
for the tone.” She smiled suddenly. “And the next thing I know,
Philip’s got him by the arm and is leading him gently out the door.
The rest of the butchers’ boys went with him, pretty well abashed.
Everyone knows Paas drinks too much.”

Rathe nodded. “I’ll want to talk to Eslingen, of
course—Monteia wanted me to be sure he understood the situation,
anyway, with the fair and all.”

“
Reasonable enough,” Devynck
answered.

“
And I wanted to say, if you hear
anything, anything at all, that might have to do with the missing
children, I expect to hear from you.”

Devynck’s eyes narrowed. “Did you think otherwise,
Rathe?”

Rathe shook his head. “No. But people are starting
to talk, up on the Knives Road. If you have any trouble, I also
expect to hear from you.”

“
That you certainly will,” Devynck
said. “Who’ll be taking Philip’s bond?”

“
Andry. You don’t mind if I talk to
him?”

“
Philip? No.”

“
Thanks, Aagte.”

Devynck nodded pushed herself away from the table.
“I hope I won’t be seeing you, at least not by way of business,
Nico.”

“
So do I,” Rathe answered and went
back out into the main room. Eslingen—it had to be Eslingen, with
those looks—was standing with the remaining waiter, flipping idly
through the cards left on the table. “You’re Eslingen, I presume.
Can we talk?”

The dark-haired man nodded letting the gesture serve
for both answers, moved toward the windows. Rathe looked back at
the waiter. “I think you’re wanted in the kitchen.” The man made a
face, but moved slowly away, closing the kitchen door behind him.
Beside the hearth, the old woman stirred slightly, then subsided
again. “The chief point asked me to have a word with you, seeing
that you’re new in Astreiant—and seeing that it’s fair time.”

“
Ah.” Eslingen smiled, the
expression consciously cynical. “How much?”

“
You might hear me out,” Rathe
answered.

“
Sorry.” Eslingen reseated himself
at the corner table, flipping the skirts of his coat out of his
way, and gestured vaguely to the stool opposite. Rathe accepted the
invitation with a nod, and leaned both elbows companionably on the
table.

“
What Monteia—she’s the chief at
Point of Hopes—what Monteia wants is for this fair to go off
peaceably. Like last year, if not better, in point of fact, which,
since you weren’t here, you might want to ask Aagte about. And to
that end, seeing as Aagte’s felt the need to hire a new knife—”
Eslingen flushed at that, the color clear on his pale skin. So he
thinks himself above that title, Rathe thought, but went on without
comment. “—she, Monteia, has asked me to tell you that we don’t get
a lot of trouble in Point of Hopes. Devynck’s is a soldiers’ place,
true enough, but it doesn’t get what you might call soldiers’
business.” Rathe paused, eyeing the other man’s politely impassive
face. “Which means, in plain words, if you run into trouble, send a
kid to Point of Hopes. That’s the only way we can guarantee
everyone will get treated properly, when it’s soldiers’ troubles,
is taking the points and letting us bear witness.”

“
And the fee for the service?”
Eslingen asked but he sounded less cynical than the words
implied.

Rathe shrugged. “I don’t generally take fees.” He
smiled suddenly, unable to resist. “You see, I like my points too
much, or so they tell me—I get a great deal of satisfaction out of
my job, and taking money to let someone go, well, that would spoil
it, wouldn’t it? And there’s not much point in feeing me when it
won’t buy you off, and when I already enjoy my work. You can ask
Aagte for the truth of it, or anyone in the point, they’ll tell
you.”

“
I’ll probably do just that,”
Eslingen said.

“
A wise move.” Rathe leaned forward
again. “I do have some questions for you, though.”

Eslingen made a face. “That butcher’s journeyman,
right?” Rathe nodded not surprised that the man had guessed. He
didn’t seem stupid, and it would be a stupid man who failed to make
that connection. “You want to tell me what happened?”

Eslingen shrugged. “Not much.”

He went through it quickly, concisely—he told the
story well, Rathe thought, plenty of detail but all in its place.
It was the same story Devynck had told, the same that Mailet had
recounted, barring the butcher’s automatic suspicion of the Leaguer
woman. And it sounds to me, Rathe thought, as though he handled an
awkward situation rather well. He said aloud, “So why’d you pick a
‘butcher’s brat’ for your example?”

Eslingen’s mouth curved into a wry smile. “I wish to
all the gods I’d picked anything else. I don’t know—there were,
what, near a dozen of them, butchers, I mean, sitting by the bar. I
suppose that made it stick in my mind. That and being near the
Knives Road.”

Rathe looked closely at him, but the Leaguer met his
eyes guilelessly. It was a plausible explanation, Rathe admitted.
And I have to say, I think I believe him. Stealing children, for
whatever cause—it’s just not Devynck’s style, and she’d never put
up with that traffic in her house. He nodded. “Fair enough. But
remember, if you have trouble here, send to Point of Hopes. It’ll
pay you better in the long run than feeing me.”

“
I’ll do that,” Eslingen said
again, and this time Rathe thought he meant it. He pushed himself
to his feet, and headed for the door.

Eslingen watched him go, impressed in spite of
himself. Rathe wasn’t much to look at—a wiry man in plain-sewn
common clothes, hands too big for his corded arms, with a scar like
a printer’s star on one wide cheekbone and glass grey eyes with a
Silklands tilt to them—but there was something in his voice, an
intensity, maybe, that carried conviction. He shook his head, not
sure if he was annoyed with himself or with the pointsman, and
crossed to the kitchen door, pushing it open. “Oy, Hulet, you can
come out now.”

“
Thanks,” the waiter answered,
without notable conviction. “Aagte wants to see you.”

“
What a surprise. So who is he, the
pointsman?”

The other man shrugged, and went to pick up the
coins that lay still untouched on the table among the scattered
cards. “Nicolas Rathe, his name is. He’s adjunct point at Point of
Hopes.”

“
How salubrious,” Eslingen
murmured.

“
Oh, Point of Hopes isn’t bad,”
Hulet answered. “Monteia’s reasonable, for a chief
point.”

Or bribeable, Eslingen thought. His experience with
the points had been minimal, but unpleasant; for all their
boasting, Astreiant’s vaunted points seemed to make a very good
thing out of the administration of justice. He nodded again, and
stepped through the kitchen door.

Devynck was waiting in the doorway of her counting
room, arms folded across her chest. She jerked her head for him to
enter, closed the door behind him, then seated herself behind the
table. “So Point of Hopes is already taking an interest in your
exploits. Did he tell you about Andry?”

Eslingen shook his head.

Devynck snorted. “Andry’s one of the pointsmen.
He’ll be along to collect your—bond he’ll call it. Tell me what he
charges, I’ll pay half.”

Eslingen lifted an eyebrow, but said, “Thanks. Is
this trouble?”

“
Not the bond no,” Devynck
answered, “but these kids…that could be.”

Eslingen nodded at that, thinking about his own
brief explorations in the neighborhood. The people hadn’t been
precisely unfriendly, the bathhouse keeper and the barber had been
glad of his custom, but he’d been aware of the eyes on him, the way
that people watched him and any stranger. He’d walked across the
Hopes-point Bridge that morning to the Temple Fair, to visit the
broadsheet vendors who worked there, and the talk had been all of
this child and that one, gone missing from their shops or homes.
Half the prophecies tacked to the poles of the stalls had dealt
with the question, and the lines had been five or six deep to read
and to buy. “People are worried.”

“
And ready to blame the most
convenient target,” Devynck said sourly. She shook her head. “I
can’t see the recruiters bothering, damn it. There’re usually too
many people wanting a place, not the other way round.”

“
Do you suppose it’s the
star-change?” Eslingen asked, and Devynck looked sharply at
him.

“
I don’t see how it could be, these
are common folks’ kin who are going missing.”

Eslingen lowered his voice, despite the closed door.
“The queen is childless, and the Starsmith is about to change
signs. There is talk—” He wasn’t about to admit it was Cijntien’s
idea. “—that that might be the cause.”

Devynck winced, looked herself toward the closed
door. “That’s dangerous talk, from the likes of us, and I’ll thank
you to keep it to yourself.” Eslingen said nothing, waiting, and
the woman shook her head decisively. “No, I can’t think it. If the
queen were at fault—well, there would have been some sign of it,
surely, some warning, and she wouldn’t have ignored it. Besides,
the gossip is, she’s barren. She couldn’t be blamed for that.”

Eslingen nodded. He was less convinced by the
benevolence of the powerful—though Devynck was a skeptic by nature,
certainly—but he acknowledged the wisdom of her advice. This wasn’t
speculation to be voiced openly, at least not now.

“
In any case,” Devynck went on, “I
want to make sure we don’t have any trouble here for a while. I’ll
tell Hulet and Loret, too, of course, but I’d like you to keep a
special eye on the soldiers, especially any newcomers. If they
haven’t heard what’s going on, they may do something
stupid.”

“
Like I did?”

Devynck smiled. “Not everyone has your—tact,
Philip.”

Eslingen laughed. “I’ll keep an eye on things.”

“
It’s what I pay you for,” Devynck
said, without heat, and Eslingen made his way back into the main
room.

The broadsheets he had bought that
morning still lay on the table by the garden window, and he
collected them, shuffling them back into a tidy pile. The one on
top caught his eye. It was a petty thing, one of the
two-for-a-demming sort, offering predictions for the next week
according to the signs of one’s birth. He had been born under the
signs of the Horse and the Horsemaster, and the woodcut that
covered half the page—the most professional thing about the sheet,
he acknowledged silently—showed a horse and rider, and the rider
held a gambler’s wheel, balancing it like a top in the palm of his
outstretched hand. The fortune lay crooked across the page beneath
it:
Chance meetings are just chance and
chancy, bring chances, take chance. Chance would be a fine
thing!
Eslingen allowed himself a smile at
that, wondering if his encounter with the pointsman, Rathe, was
covered in that prediction, then headed for the garden stairs and
his own room.

Rathe took the long way back toward Point of Hopes,
through the Factors’ Walk, with its maze of warehouses and shops
and sunken roads and sudden, unexpected inlets where the smaller,
river-bound lighters could tie up and discharge their cargoes in
relative privacy. He was known here, too, was aware of people
slipping out of sight, staying to the edges of his vision, but they
weren’t his business today, and he contented himself with the
occasional smile and pointed greeting. Some of the factors dealt in
human cargo—there would always be that trade, no matter what the
law said or how many points were scored—but they had been the first
to be searched and questioned, from the first report of missing
children, and all their efforts, both from Point of Hopes and Point
of Sighs, had turned up nothing more than the usual crop of
semi-willing recruits. A few of the more notorious figures, the
ones who’d overstepped the bounds of tolerance bought with generous
fees, were spending their days in the cells at Point of Sighs, but
Rathe doubted the points would be upheld at the next court
session.