Point of Hopes (20 page)

Rathe followed her down the narrow hall, past
familiar painted panels, flowers, and fruiting trees that were
almost invisible in the morning shadow, and then up the curved main
staircase to the first floor. Foucquet was waiting in her bedroom,
arms lifted to let one of her women lace the stiff corset into
place over shirt and petticoats. A second woman was waiting with
skirt and bodice, and a clerk sat on a low tabouret, reading from a
sheaf of notes. She broke off as Rathe appeared and Foucquet waved
her away.

“
All right, we can finish that
later, thank you. What do you want with me this time, Rathe?” She
gestured to the hovering maid, who dropped the massive skirt over
her head, fastening it deftly over the flurry of petticoats.
Foucquet shrugged on the bodice offered by the second woman, stood
still while she fastened the dozens of buttons.

“
I wanted to talk to you about this
missing clerk of yours,” Rathe answered.

“
Ah.” Foucquet nodded to the second
maid, who had collected the massive scarlet robe of office and
stood waiting with it. “No, leave that for now. All of you, that’s
all for the moment, thank you. Tefana, warn me at the half hour, if
we’re not done by then.”

“
Yes, Excellency,” the older clerk
answered collecting her papers. The younger clerk and the maids
followed her from the room, the last of the maids closing the
double doors behind her. Foucquet crossed to her dressing table,
skirts rustling, seated herself in front of the array of pots and
brushes.

“
You’ll forgive me if I go on
making ready,” she said “but I’m more than willing to answer any
questions.”

“
Thanks,” Rathe said. Her hands
were painted, he saw without surprise, saw too the graceful
movements with which she opened the tiny vials and began repairing
blemished spots with the touch of a tiny brush. He had known
forgers less deft, but then, Foucquet was always careful of her
appearance.

“
I would have thought you’d gotten
the case from Point of Hearts,” Foucquet went on, and added a dot
of gold leaf to the painted arabesques coiling across her right
hand. “I told them what I thought when they were here.”

Rathe shook his head. “Haven’t had the chance,
Excellency. The surintendant only told me last night you wanted me
to handle this.”

Foucquet looked up sharply, her brush, laden this
time with a drop of red paint bright as blood, poised in midair.
“I—?” She broke off, touched the brush to its proper place in the
design. “I didn’t make any such request, Nico. I know how jealous
the points are of their territories. Besides, as I told Hearts, I
have a shrewd idea where the boy’s gone.”

“
You didn’t ask the sur to have me
take the case?” Rathe asked.

“
No.” Foucquet’s eyes narrowed,
deepening the lines at their outer comers. “What’s he up to,
Nico?”

“
I wish I knew.” Rathe frowned. It
was hard to see what Fourie might gain from assigning him to this
particular case—if he’d wanted me to look into Caiazzo’s
maybe-connection to all of this, he could’ve just told me to do it,
he added, with a feeling of genuine grievance. Or was he worried
that someone would find out what I was supposed to be doing? If
there’s a political dimension to all of this, which he seems
certain there is, then maybe he’s wise to treat it this way. He put
those concerns aside for later consideration, looked back at
Foucquet. “You say you think you know what happened to the
boy?”

Foucquet smiled, a rueful expression. “Albe’s
theater-mad—and talented, too, though his mother won’t see it. I
think he ran away to join one of the companies. It’s not a bad time
of year for it, they always need extra help for the fair.”

That was true enough, and Rathe nodded. “How would
he know where to run, though? The players aren’t quite a closed
guild, but they tend to stick together.” And they don’t much like
northriver kids coming in and taking places away from their own, he
added silently.

Foucquet sighed, stared for a moment at the paint
now drying on her hands. “I have been—seeing—someone recently. An
actress in Savatier’s troupe.”

“
Her name?” Rathe reached for his
tablets.

“
Anjesine bes’Hallen. She lives in
Point of Dreams.”

“
Chadroni, by her name.” Rathe
didn’t bother commenting on her residence; most players lived where
they worked.

Foucquet nodded. “Born there, yes, but she’s lived
here a long time.” She looked away again. “She was here the night
Albe ran, he might have gone with her.”

“
And you haven’t asked her?” Rathe
knew he sounded incredulous, and Foucquet made a face.

“
We’ve parted ways, and not
entirely happily, either. And with Albe’s mother as set against it
as she is, I didn’t want to cause her trouble. I confess, I’m not
sorry to see you handling this, even if I didn’t ask for
it.”

Rathe nodded. “What did you tell them at Hearts,
about bes’Hallen?”

“
That she and I were, or had been,
friends,” Foucquet answered. “And I told them the boy wanted to be
a player.”

“
Well, that should give them plenty
to work with,” Rathe said. “I’ll make a few inquiries of my own, if
you’d like, though.”

“
I’d be grateful,” Foucquet
answered. “I’m afraid Hearts will be too blinded by these other
children to look closely at Albe. And he’s still well under age, I
suppose it’s his mother’s right to say what she’ll have him
do.”

“
I suppose,” Rathe said with less
conviction. He had met too many mothers, and fathers, too, who
seemed determined to set their children’s feet on the wrong paths
to agree easily with the judge-advocate. “I’ll do what I
can.”

“
Thank you,” Foucquet said. “And
Nico. Do let me know what happens, whatever the hour. I won’t
forgive myself if he’s not at the theaters.”

Rathe nodded and Foucquet reached for a bell to
summon one of her servants. The younger clerk appeared almost at
once, quickly enough that Rathe half suspected her of listening
outside the double doors. She said nothing, however, and let him
out into the rising warmth of the morning with quick courtesy.

Rathe squinted at the sky, but there was no point
visiting either theaters or actors until the second sunrise, and he
was unlikely to get real sense from anyone until late afternoon.
That left Caiazzo and the unlicensed printers on his book: the
Pantheon was closer, and more or less on his way, and he knew one
or two stall-keepers in Temple Fair who should be able to give him
some of the information he needed. He sighed, and started back
toward the Horsegate.

It wasn’t a long walk to Temple Fair. Rathe made his
way across the open square, dodging travellers and the usual crowd
of idlers, and climbed the three steps to the gallery that
surrounded the Pantheon itself. There, he leaned against the
sun-warmed stone, one booted foot braced against the wall, and
tried to pretend that he was reading the crudely printed broadsheet
nailed to the pillar in front of him. It was typical of its kind,
obscure astrology married to bad poetry, embellished with an
illustration of Areton in full armor confronting Dis Aidones across
a shield marked with a device that might have been intended to be a
map of the kingdom. The dozen-plus-three couplets analyzed the
position of the Areton-star in the heavens, and concluded that
Chenedolle must stand adamant against unspecified enemies. It also
predicted earthquakes at the equinox, but more as an afterthought.
Rathe glanced automatically for the imprimatur, and found it—but
then, he thought, either the printer or the astrologer had been
careful to leave no grounds for refusal. Areton was a neutral god,
patron of soldiers and sportsmen, and giver of courage; his worship
was either specialized or cut across class and national boundaries,
and his temples served as strongboxes for long-distance traders
worldwide. If it had shown Seidos standing against the Starsmith,
or one of the Seideian Heroes, or even Seidos’s Horse, then it
would have been political: Seidos was the protector of the Ile’nord
and of the nobility, and the Ile’norders had been vociferous in
their support for Marselion. But Areton was safe.

He let his eyes range out between
the pillars, squinting a little into the sunlight of the Temple
Fair. Beyond the steps that led up into the Pantheon, the flat grey
flagstones were drifted with dust and debris. The booksellers’
apprentices had swept it into tidy piles beside the shopfronts, but
in the center of the fair the dust lay pale as straw against the
bluestone flags, swirled into patterns by passing feet. Of all
Astreiant’s fairgrounds, only Temple Fair was paved; the horses’
hooves rang loud on the stones, and the horsebrats were busy, their
shrill cries—
Horse, ma’am, hold your
horse?
—greeting the passing riders. Even
this early, the fair was busy, a crowd of shopkeepers and their
servants clustering beneath the booksellers’ bright red awnings,
their bright finery shadowed here and there with the solid black of
a student’s gown. Another pair of scholars, thin, serious women in
their dusty gowns, arms weighted with books, crossed the fair by
the most direct route, heedless of the traffic: heading for the
college, Rathe guessed, and an early class. A young man with a
parasol, finely dressed, with painted hands and face, paused to
listen to the ballad singer on her platform in the fair’s
southeastern curve, joining for a moment an audience of two chubby
boys and a barefoot servant girl. The woman’s voice, and the
fiddler’s scratching accompaniment, blended into the hum of the
crowd, barely audible above that general noise. The ballad sellers
weren’t doing their usual business, despite the singer’s best
efforts. Most of the customers were clustered at the line of
makeshift stalls between the Queen’s-road and the northern Highway
where the vendors of prophecies plied their trade.

Rathe let his eyes slide along the line of tables,
picking out familiar faces—Ponset de Ruyr, whose wife owned two
presses and a brothel southriver; the Leaguer Greitje vaan Brijx,
red-faced and sweating under her wide-brimmed hat; a thin-faced boy
who had to be the son of Saissana Peire, minding the store while
his mother was serving her latest two months for unbonded printing;
and, finally, the man he was looking for, a big man, sweating
freely in the heat, his thinning hair hanging lank around his heavy
face. Gallabet Lebrune had gone grey since he got his bond, Rathe
noted, with a certain satisfaction, and pushed himself away from
the wall.

Lebrune was doing a brisk business, and enjoying
himself at it. His big hands moved deftly among the piled sheets of
his stock, selecting and rolling each chosen prophecy into a tidy
cylinder to be handed across the table in exchange for a demming or
two quickly pocketed, as though it was beneath his and his
customers’ dignity to notice the exchange of coin. And I’d wager he
makes a tiny sum shortchanging them that way, too, Rathe thought,
and couldn’t quite suppress a smile. Lebrune was a petty thief and
a liar, but he had a style about him that you couldn’t help
admiring.

Copies of the various prophecies were tacked to the
tabletop; three more, the newest or the most popular, were pinned
to an upright board and Rathe joined the crowd waiting to read
them, insinuating himself neatly into the group behind a pair of
blue-coated apprentices who should have known better. He peered
past a feathered hat at the smeared lines of verse—Lebrune’s
printing skills hadn’t improved at any rate—and a crude woodcut of
an astrologer hunched over a writing desk, and a woman jostled him,
turning instantly in apology.

“
Sorry—”

The rest of whatever she would have
said died on her lips as she saw the jerkin and the crowned
truncheon tucked into Rathe’s belt. She smiled nervously, licked
her lips, and turned quickly away. The nearer apprentice saw her
abrupt departure, and glanced up and back, eyes widening as he took
in the pointsman’s uniform. He nudged his friend not subtly. The
second boy looked back, scowling, and the first one said,
“Come
on
.”

The second apprentice’s eyes widened almost
comically, and his friend grabbed him by the elbow, dragging him
away. “Pardon, pointsman—”

That word was enough to turn heads all along the
tabletop. A young gentleman—would-be gentleman, Rathe amended with
an inward grin—paused in the act of handing his demmings to
Lebrune, but then drew himself up to complete the transaction with
outward composure. He accepted the neatly rolled papers, and
stalked quickly away, flicking open his parasol to put its shield
between himself and the pointsman.

“
You’re bloody bad for business,
you’re poison, you are,” Lebrune snarled watching his customers
vanish. “What do you want?”

Rathe took an idle step closer, still looking at the
prophecies pinned to the standing board. “Paid your bond yet?”

“
You know I have, pointsman, so I
take it poorly you frightening away my customers.”

Rathe shrugged, unpinned one of the sheets to look
at it more closely. “If you’re bonded, Lebrune, what reason did
they have to be afraid of me?”

“
Maybe they think you’re stealing
children,” Lebrune muttered. Rathe dropped the sheet and reached
across the table to seize Lebrune by his jerkin collar.

“
That’s not funny at the best of
time. If you’ve got reason to believe there are pointsmen behind
these disappearances, you tell me.”