Point of Hopes (13 page)

“
Rathe!”

He looked up at the shout to see a tall woman
leaning over the edge of one of the walkways that connected the
warehouses at the second floor. He recognized her instantly:
Marchari Kalvy, who made her living providing select bedmates for
half the seigneury in the Western Reach, and owned a dozen houses
in Point of Hearts as well. He admired her business sense—how could
he not, when she’d had the sense to provide not just bodies but the
residences where a noble could keep her, or his, leman in comfort,
taking their money at all stages of the relationship—but couldn’t
like her, wished he’d had the sense to pretend not to hear.

“
Rathe, I want to talk to you.”
Kalvy bunched her skirts and scrambled easily down the narrow
stairs that led to the wooden walkway that ran along the
first-floor windows of Faraut’s ropewalk. “Will you come
up?”

She was more than capable, Rathe knew, of coming
down, and making a scene of it, if it suited her. “All right,” he
said and found the nearest stair leading up again.

The smell of hemp was strong on the walkway,
drifting out the open windows of the ropewalk, and he could hear
the breathless drone of a worksong, and the shuffle of feet on the
wooden floor. There was a smell of tar as well, probably from the
floor below, and he wrinkled his nose at its sharpness. Kalvy
watched his approach, hands on her hips.

“
So what is it you want?” Rathe
asked.

“
Do you want to discuss it in the
street?” Kalvy returned.

“
It was you who wanted to talk to
me,” Rathe said. “I’ve business to attend to. It’s here, or come in
to the station.”

“
Suit yourself, pointsman.” Kalvy
leaned against the rail, looking down onto the cobbles a dozen feet
below. “It’s about Wels.”

“
I assumed.” Wels Mesry was Kalvy’s
acknowledged partner and the father of at least two of her
children—though not, malicious rumor whispered, of the daughter who
bade fair to get the family business in the end. Mesry had been
arrested for pandering to a landame from the forest lands north of
Cazaril. The boy in question, a fifteen year old from Point of
Hopes, had claimed he was being held against his will, though Rathe
personally suspected that he’d exaggerated the degree of force
Mesry had used while his mother was listening.

“
You know the point won’t hold”
Kalvy said. “The boy wasn’t half as unwilling as he claims—hells,
how could he be, gets the chance to live in luxury for a
moon-month, maybe two, and it’s not like she was that
unattractive.”

“
Old enough to be his mother,”
Rathe muttered.

“
Sister, maybe.” Kalvy shook her
head. “I tell you, Rathe, the brat was glad of the chance, losing
his virginity that way.”

“
She paid extra for that?” Rathe
asked and shook his head in turn. He would have liked to claim a
point on the landame as well, but Monteia had flatly refused to
countenance it, saying it was a waste of time and effort. She was
probably right, too, but it didn’t make it any better.

Kalvy glared at him. “The landame’s childless, poor
woman, that hits high as well as low. The boy had the right stars
to be fertile with her, and he was well paid.”

“
Practically a public service,”
Rathe said, and Kalvy nodded, ignoring the irony.

“
Just so.”

Rathe shook his head. “I won’t release him till the
hearing—and neither will Monteia, so you needn’t bother walking all
the way to the station. Think of it this way, Kalvy, I’m doing you
a favor, keeping him in. This way, he can’t be blamed for any of
the other kids who’ve gone missing.”

“
That’s not my trade, and you know
it,” Kalvy said. “You can’t blame that on me.”

In spite of herself, her voice had risen slightly.
Rathe glanced at her, wondering if it meant anything, but decided
with regret it was probably just the general climate. Anyone would
be nervous, these days, at the thought of being linked to the
missing children. “See you keep out of it, then,” he said aloud,
and pushed himself away from the rail. He thought for a moment that
she was going to follow him, or call after him, but she stayed
where she was, still staring down at the cobbles. He went down the
far stairs, past the ropewalk’s lowest doors where the smell of tar
was strongest, mixing with the damp of the river.

The Factors’ Walk ended in the crowds and noise of
the Rivermarket, where the merchants’ carts and pitches had spilled
out onto the gentle slope of the old ferry landing. There was no
ferry anymore—no need for it, since the Hopes-point Bridge had been
built fifty years before, in the twenty-fifth year of the previous
queen’s reign—but a number of the merchants brought their goods in
by boat, and the brightly painted hulls were drawn up on the smooth
damp stones at the bottom of the landing, watched by apprentices
and dogs.

Rathe skirted the edge of the market, watching with
half an eye for anything out of the ordinary, but saw and heard
only the usual cheerful chaos. Except, he realized, as he reached
the top of the low slope, there were fewer children than usual in
sight. There were a couple by the boats, a third buying vegetables
at one of the cheaper stalls, and a fourth, a slight boy in patched
shirt and breeches, stood talking to a man in a black magist’s
robe. The magist wore neither hood nor badge, unusually, but then a
man with a handcart trundled by, blocking Rathe’s view. When he had
passed the magist was gone, and the boy was running back down the
slope to the river, wooden clogs loud on the stones. Rathe shook
his head wishing there were something he could do, and lengthened
his stride. It was past time he was getting back to the
station.

As he turned down Apothecary’s Row, he became aware
of a new noise, low and angry, and a crowd gathering in front of
one of the smaller shops. Squabbling among the ’pothecaries? Rathe
thought, incredulously. It hardly seemed likely. He started down
the street toward the commotion, and was met halfway by a woman in
the long coat of a guildmaster, open over skirt and sleeveless
bodice.

“
Poinstman! They’re trying to kill
one of my journeymen!”

Swearing under his breath, Rathe broke into a run,
drawing his truncheon. The guildmaster kilted her skirts and
followed. Outside the shop—one the points knew well, sold more
sweets and potions than honest drugs—a knot of people had
collected, hiding the group, maybe half a dozen, scuffling in the
dust. With one hand Rathe grabbed the person nearest him, and
hauled back. “Come on, lay off. Points presence.”

His voice cut through the confused noise, and the
people on the fringes of the trouble gave way, let him through to
the knot at the center. They—mostly men, mostly nondescript,
laborers and clerks rather than guild folk—stopped, too, but at
least two of them kept their hands on the young man in a blue
shortcoat who seemed to be at the center of the trouble. His lip
was split, a thread of blood on his chin, but he glowered at his
attackers, jerked himself free of their hold, not seriously hurt.
Rathe laid a hand on his shoulder, a deliberately ambiguous grip,
and one of the men, tall, sallow-faced in an apothecary’s apron,
spat into the dust at his feet.

“
Almost too late to save another
child, pointsman, or is that part of the plan?”

Rathe set the end of the truncheon in the the man’s
chest and pushed. He gave way, glowering, and Rathe looked round.
“Get back, unless you all want to be taken in for riot. Now—one of
you—tell me what in hell is going on. You, madam”—he pointed to the
guildmaster—“is this your journeyman?”

“
Yes,” the woman answered and
glared at the crowd around her. “And there’s no theft here. One of
my apprentices stole off this morning in the middle of his work.
When children are being stolen off the streets, what master
wouldn’t worry, wouldn’t send someone to try to find that prentice?
Only this lot took it on themselves to decide that my journeyman
was the child-thief.”

“
Maybe you both are,” a woman’s
voice called from the shelter of the anonymous crowd.

“
Well, there’s one way to find out,
isn’t there?” Rathe snapped. He looked around found a boy, thin and
dark, his blue coat badged with Didonae’s spindle: no mistaking him
for an apothecary, Rathe thought, that was unambiguously the
Embroiderers’ Guild’s mark. He nodded to the woman who had him by
the shoulder. “If you don’t mind, madame. What’s your name,
child?”

The boy glowered up at him, half sullen, half
scared—frightened, Rathe realized suddenly, as much by what he’d
unleashed as by being caught. “Dix.”

“
Dix Marun, pointsman, he’s been my
apprentice for little more than a year now….” The guildmaster broke
off as Rathe held up a hand.

“
Thank you, madam, I want to talk
to the boy.” He looked down at Marun, feeling the thin shoulder
trembling under his hand. “Are you her apprentice? Think carefully,
before you answer. If you’ve been mistreated in your
apprenticeship, you might want revenge. But it won’t be worth it,
because there are laws in Astreiant to deal with liars who send
innocent people to the law.”

The child’s dark eyes darted to the journeyman who
was nursing his lip and would have a badly bruised face in a few
hours. That young man was damned lucky, Rathe thought, and looked
as though he knew it. And if it was him the boy was running from,
well, maybe it would be a salutary lesson for all concerned. He
fixed his eyes on the apprentice then, his expression neutral,
neither forbidding nor encouraging, refusing either to condescend
or intimidate. Finally, Marun looked up at him, looked down
again.

“
All I wanted was to go to the
market,” he said, almost voicelessly, more afraid now of the crowd
that had come to his “rescue.” “It’s almost the fair, I wanted my
stars read, before the others. I needed to see my
fortune.”

“
Does your master mistreat you?”
Rathe asked, gravely, and Marun shook his head.

“
No. Not really. She’s hard.
Sometimes she’s mean.”

“
And the journeymen?”

The child’s lip curled. “They can’t help it. They
think they’re special, but they’re not masters, not yet. They just
think they are.”

“
Do you want to return to your
master’s house, then?”

“
I wasn’t running away, not
really.” This time, the look Marun gave the journeyman was actively
hostile. “I would’ve traded my half day, but he wouldn’t let
me.”

Rathe sighed. “I see. And you see these people just
wanted to make sure you weren’t harmed. But are you willing to go
back with them?”

Marun looked at his feet, but nodded. “Yes.”

Rathe glanced around him, surveying the crowd. It
was thinning already, as the people with business elsewhere
remembered what they’d been about. “I take it no one here has
problems with that?”

“
Give him a good hiding, madame,
for deceiving people like that!”

It was a man’s voice this time, probably one of the
carters at the edge of the crowd. Rathe rolled his eyes, looked at
the guildmaster. “Then, madame, there’s the question of harm done
your journeyman. There is a point here, if you want to press
it.”

“
It was the boy’s fault, surely,” a
woman called from the doorway of a prosperous-looking shop, and
Rathe shrugged.

“
You should have sent to Point of
Hopes, mistakes like this happen more easily when you don’t know
the questions to ask. It wasn’t Dix here who beat the journeyman.”
He looked back at the guildmaster. “It’s up to you,
madame.”

The woman sighed, reached out to take Marun by the
shoulder of his coat. “No, pointsman. An honest mistake. Let it go,
please.”

“
As you wish.” Rathe slipped his
truncheon back into his belt. “I’ll see you to the end of the
street, madame, if you want.”

“
Thank you, pointsman.” She was
reaching for her purse, and Rathe shook his head.

“
Not necessary, madame. Despite
what some think, it’s what I’m paid for.”

“
Probably not enough,” she
retorted, assessing shirt and coat with a practiced eye.

Rathe managed a smile in answer, though he was
beginning to agree with her. “A word in your ear, madame. Keep an
eye on your journeyman there.”

She nodded. “I’d a mind to it, but thank you.” They
had reached the end of the street, where a pair of low-flyers had
pulled up to let the drivers gossip. She lifted a hand and the
nearer man touched his cap, slapped the reins to set the elderly
horse in motion. “I count myself in your debt, though,
pointsman.”

“
I’ll bear that in mind,” Rathe
answered and stepped back as the low-flyer drew to a halting stop.
The journeyman hauled himself painfully into the cab, and Marun
followed. The guildmaster hesitated on the step.

“
I meant it, you know,” she
said.

“
So did I,” Rathe answered and the
woman laughed. She pulled herself into the low-flyer, and Rathe
turned back toward Point of Hopes.

The rest of his walk back to the station was
mercifully uneventful, and he turned the last corner with a sigh of
relief. The heavy stone walls turned a blind face to the street—the
point stations, especially the old ones like Point of Hopes, had
originally been built as militia stations, though they had lost
that exclusive function a hundred years ago—and the portcullis was
down in the postern gate, barring entrance to the stable court. He
pushed open the side door, the bells along its inner face
clattering, and walked past the now-empty stable to the main door.
No one at Point of Hopes could afford to keep a horse; Monteia used
the stalls for cells when she had a prisoner to keep.