Point of Hopes (55 page)

The landing by Caiazzo’s house was mercifully empty,
and the boatmen vanished with the second sunset. Even so, Caiazzo
and Ferran kept Malivai more or less upright on the short walk to
the house—hiding an injured man from any prying neighbors’ eyes,
Eslingen knew—and the trader only seemed to relax again when the
doors closed behind him.

“
Help Malivai upstairs,” he said to
Ferran, and the steersman hesitated. “Aice will show you the
way.”

Denizard nodded and started up the stairs. Ferran
followed almost carrying the messenger, who sagged visibly in his
grip, and the senior steward appeared in shirt and breeches to help
them. Caiazzo looked back at Eslingen. “Get yourself cleaned up,
and join us. I’ll want you there.”

Eslingen nodded for the first time really seeing the
rip in his sleeve. The shirt was ripped as well: both would be
difficult to mend, and expensive to replace. He sighed and headed
down the hall to the servants’ stair.

Candle and stand were waiting just inside his door,
and he lit the taper from the lamp that burned constantly at the
end of the hall before going back into his room. He shrugged out of
his coat, swearing at the length of the tear—it ran from the edge
of the cuff halfway up the shoulder on the outside of the arm,
impossible to disguise—and swore again when he saw his shirt. It,
too, was badly tom, and probably beyond saving.

He crumpled it into a ball, and only then realized
that the bravo’s sword had touched him as well. A long scratch ran
along his forearm, showing a few drops of blood already drying. He
scowled at that, and fumbled in his clothes chest for a clean rag.
He had no desire to ruin a second shirt with bloodstains.

There was a knock at the door then, and he lifted
his head. “Come in.”

One of the maidservants—Thouvenin, her name was,
Anjevi Thouvenin, Eslingen remembered, and mustered a tired
grin—stood in the half-open doorway, a steaming basin in her hand.
“The steward said you’d want to wash.”

She’d brought a length of bandage, too, Eslingen
saw, and he took that gratefully, used it to clean the blood from
the scratch. With her help, he laid a strip of cloth over the bit
that was still bleeding and tied it in place, then eased himself
into a clean shirt. He used the rest of the water to wash his face
and hands—the right still felt sticky—and then shrugged himself
into his second-best coat. “Do you know where Caiazzo is?” he
asked, and the woman grinned.

“
The other end of the hall. Don’t
worry, you’ll see the lights.”

She was as good as her word. At the far end of the
house, a door stood open, spilling a wedge of candlelight across
the floor. As Eslingen approached, he could hear voices, and then
the steward came out, wiping his hands on an apron.

“
Oh, Eslingen, good. He wants
you.”

“
I dare say,” Eslingen muttered,
and stepped through the door. The room smelled of boiling herbs, a
scent he recognized from the army physicians’ tents, and he wasn’t
surprised to see a small pot simmering on the lit stove. Malivai
lay in the great bed, propped up on pillows, a wide length of
bandage wrapping his ribs. Above it, the skin was bruised and
sore-looking, and Eslingen winced in sympathy. Caiazzo, sitting on
the edge of the bed, looked up at the soldier’s approach, but went
on talking.

“—
not as bad as we thought. Damn
it, Mai, you’ve no right scaring us like that. Eslingen here just
joined my household,, what’s he going to think of me?”

The man in the bed managed a smile, but he looked
exhausted. Caiazzo glanced back at Eslingen. “Nothing’s punctured,
just a long cut along the bone, and it looks clean enough. Of
course, if they were Ajanine, we don’t really need to worry about
poison, that’s a Chadroni trick.”

“
If they were Ajanine,” Eslingen
said, “they wouldn’t have run.” He sounded more sour than he’d
meant, and Caiazzo fixed him with a stare.

“
And I dare say you would
know.”

“
The wine’s hot, Hanse,” Denizard
said, from the stove, and Caiazzo looked away.

“
Bring a cup, then, please.” He
waited while the magist ladled a cup full of the steaming liquid—it
smelled of wine and sugar and herbs and something vaguely bitter,
probably one of the esoterics—and then helped Malivai take a
cautious sip. “Better?”

“
Some,” the messenger answered, but
Eslingen thought his voice sounded stronger.

“
All right, then.” Caiazzo glanced
over his shoulder, beckoned to the others. “What’s going on with de
Mailhac?”

Malivai took a deep breath and then flinched, his
face tightening in pain. Caiazzo fed him another sip of the wine,
visibly curbing his impatience.

“
Take your time.”

Malivai nodded. “She—there’s a magist at Mailhac,
but not of your kind, Aicelin. He seems to have de Mailhac and her
people under his command.”

Denizard looked startled at that. “There was no
magist there when I was.”

“
You’ve been there?” Eslingen
asked, involuntarily. “This year, I mean?”

“
At the end of Lepidas,” Denizard
answered, and shook her head. “And I didn’t see a magist there
then.”

“
Well, there’s one there now,”
Malivai said. “And de Mailhac does what she’s told.”

Caiazzo frowned. “Why? And how did he manage
that?”

The messenger’s eyes slid to Eslingen, and the
trader sighed. “Eslingen—Philip Eslingen—is my knife, and he
probably saved your life tonight. You can speak freely.”

“
It’s the mine,” Malivai said.
“He—all I could get was that he promised to increase the takings
from the mine, and she agreed to it. And he’s been there ever
since. And as best I can see, Hanse, it’s him who calls the
tune.”

“
And if he promised to increase the
taking,” Caiazzo said, “why haven’t I seen an ounce of it this
summer?”

Malivai shook his head. “He’s not letting it leave
the estate. They—he’s keeping it, but he’s not spending it, and I
never saw any of it, no one did. The mine’s guarded now, never like
it used to be. I’m sorry, Hanse.”

“
For what?” Caiazzo said. “Start
from the beginning, Mal.”

“
Sorry,” Malivai said again. He
took a cautious breath. “I got to the estate on the thirteenth of
Sedeion, didn’t go to the house, like you told me, but went to the
stables, they’re usually hiring there. Only this year they’re not,
the head hostler said, for all I could see they were short-handed.
When I asked him about that, he said they’d spent too much on their
time at court, and couldn’t afford extra hands—”

“
Court?” Caiazzo said, and Denizard
shook her head.

“
De Mailhac hasn’t been in
Astreiant, I’d stake my life on that.”

“
The Spring Balance,” Malivai said.
“The queen was on progress then, de Mailhac joined the court
there.” He took another slow breath. Caiazzo reached for the wine,
but the messenger waved it away. “I’ll sleep if I have much more, I
have to finish first. So I asked if anyone else on the estate was
hiring, said I wanted to be near my leman in Anedelle, and that I’d
been able to summer on the estate before—I’ve kin there, they’ll
speak for me. And I think he would have hired me, but one of the
stewards came out, and when he heard who I was, told me to get off
the Mailhac lands. So I went down to Anedelle then, and asked what
was going on at Mailhac, and nobody seemed to know, except that
there was a magist there who had de Mailhac under his thumb. Nobody
likes him in the household—he’s had the maseigne selling off her
goods and he’s banned all clocks from the house, which is a grand
nuisance to all concerned.” He smiled then, the expression crooked
on his worn face. “Then a man tried to knife me while I slept, and
I’ve been one step ahead of them ever since.”

“
Banned clocks?” Denizard said.
“Why?”

Malivai made an abortive gesture that might have
become a shrug. “Some project of his, they think, but no one
knows.”

Denizard shook her head. “What sort of magist is he?
Did you get a name, or whose badge he wears?”

“
I never got a name—I don’t think
any of them knew—but he doesn’t wear a badge,” Malivai answered.
“All I know is, in Anedelle they say he has de Mailhac completely
cowed—she dances to his tune—and he seems to have control of the
mine.”

Caiazzo muttered something profane, fingers
tightening on the wine cup. With an effort, he put it aside before
he crushed it, and stood up. “All right, Mai, sleep. You should,
given what I put in the wine. Philip, Aice, come with me.”

He led them to his workroom, where someone had
already lit a branch of candles. Almost absently, Denizard lit a
second branch of six, and Eslingen watched the shadows chase each
other across the face of the clock. It was a little past two, two
hours past the second sundown, and he could feel the weight of the
hours on the back of his neck.

“
We have to tell someone, Hanse,”
Denizard said and set the last candle in its place.

“
Oh, really?” Caiazzo stopped
pacing long enough to glare at her, resumed his stride in an
instant. “And whom do you propose we tell? Tell what, for
Bonfortune’s sake? Officially, I don’t own this estate, Aice, it’s
petty treason for a commoner.”

Denizard leaned forward, planting both hands on the
table. “Gold, Hanse, is the queen’s metal, it and the royal house
were born under the same stars. And right now, with the star change
imminent, that link is going to be stronger than ever.”

“
I handle gold every day of my
life—well, these last ten years,” Caiazzo objected. “And I’m common
as they come. That hasn’t made any difference.”

“
That’s coin gold,” Denizard said.
“It’s not pure gold, they add other metals to it in the refining,
precisely to keep it safe. But what comes out of the mine is pure,
and it can become aurichalcum if you handle it right. That’s
queen’s gold, Hanse, and they call it that for a reason. The tie
between them, the queen and her metal, it’s too strong. And that’s
too dangerous to just ignore.” She smiled then, not without a
certain sour humor. “And after the clock-night, I find banning
clocks a very unsettling thing, don’t you?”

“
You can’t think this magist had
anything to do with that,” Caiazzo said.

“
I don’t know how,” Denizard
admitted, “but I do know this is dangerous.”

“
And betraying ownership of an
Ile’nord—hells, an Ajanine—estate isn’t dangerous?” Caiazzo’s voice
was less certain than his words. He stopped at the far end of the
room, scowling at the cold stove. Eslingen stared at him, wondering
what to do. Malivai’s news was too strange, too important not to
let Rathe know about it, especially if Denizard was right about the
gold, and there was a link between it and the queen, and the clocks
and the magist. Caiazzo would not be happy—Caiazzo would be
murderous, an inner voice corrected, and reasonably enough so. You
promised him your loyalty—and I promised to tell Rathe if I ran
into anything unusual, too, he told himself. It may not have
anything to do with the kids, but it is important. It’s too strange
not to be important. He slanted another glance at Caiazzo, who
still stood silent, staring into the shadowed corner beyond the
stove. It would be a shame to lose his respect, Eslingen thought,
not just for the revenge the trader was certain to try to exact,
but because he liked the man….

Denizard’s voice broke through his reverie. “It’s
become political, Hanse. And that’s a game you don’t play.”

Caiazzo dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. He
stood there for a long moment, unmoving, then lowered them and
turned back into the light. For an instant, he looked older than
Eslingen would have thought possible. “All right,” he said, softly.
“All right. Eslingen—in the morning, I want you to go to
Rathe—since he got you this job, maybe he’ll give you a break on
this one. Go to Rathe, tell him about this night’s business.”

“
All of it?” Eslingen asked,
startled—this was the last thing he’d expected from Caiazzo—and the
trader nodded.

“
Well, as much as you have to,
which, knowing Rathe, will be most of it. It was clearly
self-defense there in the square, and on my orders, so neither you
nor I need to worry about that, but somebody’s bound to be asking
questions about those bodies.” Caiazzo nodded slowly, as much to
himself as to the others. “Yes, tell him what’s been happening—my
people set upon in the streets, my business interfered with. That
should keep him busy. And maybe, just maybe, it’ll help put a stop
to whatever is going on with de Mailhac.”

Rathe woke to the sound of knocking, gentle but
persistent, and lay for a moment in the cool dawn light trying to
place its source. It was someone at his door, he realized at last,
and dragged himself out of his bed, groping for shirt and breeches.
The knocking was still going on, a steady beat, not quite loud
enough to wake the neighbors, but insistent. Rathe shivered, still
only half awake, and reached for the knife that he had left hanging
in its scabbard over the back of the chair.

“
Who is it?” he called, and crossed
to the door.

“
It’s Istre, Nico.”

Rathe lifted the bar, and pulled open the heavy
door. The magist looked as dishevelled as Rathe could ever remember
seeing him, shadows heavy under his eyes, magist’s robe discarded
for a coat that didn’t quite seem to fit across the shoulders. He
hadn’t shaved, either, though the fair stubble was hardly
noticeable at first glance, and Rathe stepped back automatically.
“What’s wrong?”