Point of Hopes (38 page)

“
Sir,” the steward said again, and
started toward the kitchen.

Caiazzo looked back at the magist. “As for you,
Aice, take Eslingen here and get over to the university. Take my
travel clock, and make sure we get the right time.”

Denizard nodded. “You’ll want a clocksmith in for
the big one, though.”

“
Another damned expense,” Caiazzo
muttered and turned on his heel and stalked away.

Denizard looked at Eslingen, the comers of her mouth
turning up in a wry smile. “Well. You heard our orders. Let me
dress, and we’ll be on our way.”

The streets were crowded, every crossroads filled
with a smouldering balefire, and the Manufactory Bridge was filled
with people heading northriver. Toward the university, Eslingen
guessed, and wasn’t surprised to see a bigger crowd gathered
outside the university gate. A number of them, he saw, carried
clocks of one kind or another: not surprising, he thought, and did
his best to help Denizard elbow her way to the gate. Most people
gave way before her magist’s gown, but the guard on duty at the
gate shook his head apologetically.

“
I’m sorry, magist, but you’ve come
too late. The ceremony’s started—almost finished, by the sound of
it.”

Even as he spoke, a bell sounded from inside the
compound, a high, sweet sound, and a voice called something. There
was a noise like a great sigh of relief, and another voice repeated
the words.

“
Quarter past one!”

“
Quarter past one,” Denizard said,
and nodded to the guard. She turned away, shielding Caiazzo’s clock
against her body, and adjusted the mechanism. “Well, that finishes
that.”

“
Does it?” Eslingen asked,
involuntarily, and the magist gave him a wry smile.

“
Probably not. But that’s all we
can do about it now.”

“
I suppose.”

“
You have a better idea?” Denizard
asked, but her smile cut the hardness of her words.

Eslingen smiled back, and shook his head. “No, I
admit. But—I just can’t say it feels right.”

“
No,” Denizard agreed. “We—you and
I in particular, Eslingen—will need to keep a careful eye on things
for the next few days, I’d say. This can’t be a good
omen.”

Eslingen nodded back, wondering again if he should
ever have accepted Rathe’s advice, and fell into step beside her,
heading back to Customs Point and Caiazzo’s house.

Another servant, rounder-faced and more cheerful
than the woman who’d served him the night before, woke him with
breakfast and shaving water the next morning, and the news that
Caiazzo would want to see him sometime before noon. “He’ll send for
you, though,” she added, “so be ready.”

“
Do you know when—?” Eslingen
asked, and left a suggestive pause, hoping she’d fill in her
name.

The woman shook her head, as much to refuse the
unspoken question as in answer. “I’ve no idea, sir.”

“
Crushed again,” Eslingen murmured
just loud enough to be heard, and thought her smile widened
briefly. But then she was gone, and he turned his attention to the
business at hand. He was still on sufferance, obviously, and would
be for some time, especially after the events of the night before;
the household would be closing ranks against outsiders. All he
could do was tolerate the snubs, and look for some way of proving
his usefulness.

One of the junior servants—a boy who could have been
from either the counting house or the kitchen; there was nothing to
betray his rank in the neat breeches and dull jerkin—came for him
as the house clock was striking ten. Eslingen, who had been
listening to the distant, musical notes, dragged himself away from
that further evidence of Caiazzo’s status, and gave his stock a
last quick tug before he followed the boy from the room. He was
aware of more signs of Caiazzo’s wealth as they moved from the
servants’ quarters into the main house—panelling with spare,
geometric carvings, glass and silver on the sideboards in the main
hall, wax candles in every room—but schooled himself to
impassivity. He would lose nothing by seeming familiar with the
trappings of wealth, and gain nothing by sneering. Not, he added
silently, that there was much to sneer at. Caiazzo’s taste, at
least in the public rooms, was impeccable, even a little severe for
a man who’d been born a southriver bookbinder’s son.

The boy led him up the front staircase, past a knot
of clerks with ledgers and a neatly dressed matron who looked torn
between anger and nervousness. The edges of her fingernails were
rimmed in black; the remains of paint, he thought at first, and
then realized it was ink. One of the printers Rathe had mentioned?
he wondered, but knew better than even to think of asking.
Caiazzo’s workroom was at the end of the gallery, overlooking the
side alley and the next-door garden, and as the boy tapped on the
door and announced him, Eslingen took that chance to make a brief
survey of the room. It was large, and well lit—only to be expected,
for a man who made a sizeable part of his living on paper—and the
clerk’s counter that ran the length of one wall was drifted with
papers. There was a worktable as well, neater, and a thin woman in
a shade of red that didn’t flatter her sallow complexion was
flicking the last coins into the hollows of a tallyboard. A statue
of Bonfortune stood in a niche in the wall behind her, fresh
flowers at its feet—propitiation, Eslingen wondered, or just common
caution? The magist Denizard leaned against the opposite end of
that table, her robe open over a sharply cut skirt and bodice, and
Caiazzo himself stood by the tall windows, staring toward the masts
that soared above the housetops. He turned at the boy’s appearance,
and nodded to the woman in red.

“
All right, Vianey, that’s all for
now. Bring me the full accounting as soon as you have
it.”

“
Of course,” the woman answered,
sounding vaguely affronted, but covered the board and swept out
with it clutched to her breast.

“
So, Lieutenant Eslingen,” Caiazzo
said, and took his place in the carved chair behind the worktable.
Eslingen, with a sudden rush of insight, guessed that the trader
rarely used it for work, but often for interviews. “Devynck speaks
well of you.”

Decent, under the circumstances, Eslingen thought,
but said nothing, managed a half bow instead.

“
But you didn’t tell me you know
one of my people,” Caiazzo went on. “Dausset Cijntien works for one
of my caravanmasters.”

“
Does he?” For a moment, Eslingen’s
mind was as blank as his face. “I knew he worked for a caravan, but
not whose.”

Caiazzo fixed black eyes on him for a moment longer,
as though wondering what else he would say, but Eslingen met his
stare squarely. He thought he saw the hint of a smile, of approval,
flicker across the trader’s face, but then it was gone. “Aice says
the other names you gave me speak well of you, too. I’m prepared,
despite the otherwise questionable provenance—’’ Caiazzo lifted a
hand, forestalling a comment Eslingen had not been about to make—“a
recommendation from the points, and especially Adjunct Point Rathe,
isn’t always the best thing for a member of my household—to put you
on my books.” He smiled again, this time more openly. “As I told
you yesterday, I do need a knife, and one who looks like a
gentleman can only be an improvement over one who thought he
was.”

“
Thank you,” Eslingen said, though
he wasn’t at all sure it was a compliment.

Caiazzo’s smile widened slightly, as though he’d
guessed the thought and rather enjoyed it. “Right, then—”

He broke off as the door opened, and a
harrassed-looking clerk came in. “I’m very sorry to disturb you,
sir, but Rouvalles is here, and he insists on seeing you.”

Caiazzo gave the statue of Bonfortune a reproachful
glance, but sighed. “Eslingen, you’ll stay. Show him in, Pradon.”
The clerk bowed, and hurried away, closing the door again behind
her.

“
I’m not armed,” Eslingen said
hastily, “bar my knife—”

Caiazzo waved a dismissive hand. “It won’t come to
that.” He looked at Denizard, who straightened, hauling herself off
the end of the table. Eslingen hesitated, then took his place at
Caiazzo’s right. The long-distance trader didn’t say anything, but
Eslingen saw the flicker of eyes that acknowledged his
presence.

The door opened again, and the clerk stood aside to
let a tall, neatly dressed man into the room. He was young,
Eslingen realized with some surprise, or at least young to be
running Caiazzo’s Silklands caravan, didn’t look any older than
Eslingen himself. And he was handsome, too, in a genial,
good-fellow sort of way, an open face and an easy smile beneath a
ragged mane of wavy hair that was just the color of bronze, but
there was something in his pale eyes than belied the easy manner.
He checked slightly, seeing Caiazzo in his chair, and Eslingen saw
the blue eyes flick left and right, taking in first Denizard and
then himself.

“
Standing on ceremony, Hanse? You
don’t need your knife against me.”

“
I was in the process of hiring a
new one,” Caiazzo answered, “and I figured he might as well start
now.” He nodded toward the soldier. “This is Eslingen, served with
Coindarel, and now of my household. I understand one of your own
men speaks highly of him.”

The caravan-master—Rouvalles, the clerk had called
him, Eslingen remembered—blinked. “One of them may, for all I know.
Who?”

“
Dausset Cijntien,” Denizard
said.

“
Then you can ask him yourself,
he’s below.”

Caiazzo nodded thoughtfully. “So what was it you
wanted, Rouvalles?”

The caravan-master took a deep breath. “Look, I
wouldn’t have come myself, except it’s getting late. We need to
leave within the week to make this season work, and I still have
goods and supplies to buy. I need coin, Hanse, and soon.” His voice
had just the hint of a Chadroni accent; Eslingen realized. He
glanced at Caiazzo, but the long-distance trader’s expression was
little more than a mask.

“
You’ll have to wait,” he said,
without inflection. Rouvalles’s eyes narrowed, and Eslingen caught
a glimpse of the cold steel beneath the good humor. Not surprising,
he thought, and I’d bet it serves him well both trading and on the
road, but he’s not a man I’d like to cross.

“
How long?” The caravan-master
matched Caiazzo’s tone.

“
Two days.”

Eslingen thought he heard a hint of relief beneath
the projected boredom, and glanced again at Caiazzo. Rathe had
hinted that not all of the long-distance trader’s businesses were
legitimate, but the caravan was public enough that it surely had to
be—unless it was the source of the coin that was problematic? There
had been talk in the kitchen the night before about a ship that had
just come in…. He shook himself away from that line of thought, and
concentrated on the conversation at hand.

Rouvalles hesitated for a moment, but then nodded,
showing his easy grin. “Right, we can wait that long, but we’re
cutting it very close this year, Hanse.”

“
I know it,” Caiazzo answered.
“There’ve been some—unexpected events.”

“
Like last night?”

“
Not like that.”

“
What I might call problems, then?”
Rouvalles asked, almost cheerfully, but his eyes didn’t match his
tone.

Caiazzo nodded once. “You probably would. But it’s
nothing that’ll affect you.”

“
No more than it already has,”
Rouvalles answered.

“
Not seriously,” Caiazzo corrected.
It looked for a moment as though Rouvalles might protest, but
Caiazzo fixed him with a stare, and the younger man spread his
hands in silent acceptance.

‘
There’s one other thing,” Caiazzo
went on. “Your troopmaster, Cijntien, you said he was
here?”

Rouvalles nodded looking wary.

“
You said I could ask him myself,”
Caiazzo said. “About Eslingen here. Well, I want to.”

“
I’ll send him up,” Rouvalles
answered but Caiazzo shook his head.

“
Aice can go.”

The magist showed no sign of annoyance at being
asked to do a servant’s job, but slipped almost silently out the
door. She returned a few minutes later, Cijntien in tow. The
troop-master looked uneasy at being brought upstairs, Eslingen
thought, with some sympathy, but kept his own face
expressionless.

Caiazzo leaned back in his chair. “I understand you
know someone I’ve taken into my household.”

Cijntien glanced toward Eslingen. “Philip?” he asked
and then looked as though he wanted to recall the word. He looked
instead at Rouvalles, who nodded.

“
I guess you do, then. Go
ahead.”

The troop-master relaxed slightly. “I know Eslingen,
yes, sir. I served with him, oh, seven, eight years. He was a
corporal, then a sergeant under me.” He glanced again at Eslingen,
then back at Caiazzo. “He’s a good man.”

“
Reliable, or clever?” Caiazzo
asked. He enjoyed the awkwardness of the situation, Eslingen
realized suddenly, not quite out of malice, but more out of temper.
Rouvalles had made him uncomfortable; he was perfectly happy to
visit the same discomfort on everyone else in reach.

“
Both.” This time, Cijntien refused
to look at his former subordinate. “Clever enough to lead raiding
parties—hells, he was the man I’d pick first for that, over anyone
else—but I’d trust him at my side. Or my back.”