Point of Hopes (68 page)

“
Nico! You’re back, and well.” His
eyes darted to the gate, and back again. “Asheri?”

“
With her sister,” Rathe answered,
and swung down off the horse at last. “I brought her there
myself.”

“
Thank Astree and all the gods,”
Houssaye said. “I’ll take care of the beast.”

“
Thanks,” Rathe answered. He could
see Monteia standing in the station’s doorway, a mug of beer in her
hand, and lifted his own hand in greeting.

She waved back, and beckoned him over. “Welcome
back, Nico—a job well done, by all accounts.”

Rathe blinked, startled, and Eslingen looked over
the chief point’s shoulder. “Aagte asked me to see the beer
delivered—that’s her gift, sort of an apology for thinking ill of
the chief point here, I think.”

And probably a way to get you away from Adriana,
Rathe thought. He said, “So you’ve been telling the chief all about
it, then?”

“
Well, b’Estorr has, more like,”
Eslingen answered, and Rathe realized that the necromancer was
standing just inside the station, a large pitcher in his hand. “I’m
still not fully sure what happened.”

Rathe grinned. “What about the astrologers?” he said
to Monteia. “Did you finally get them?”

“
Most of them, anyway,” Monteia
answered, and looked around the yard. “Come inside, it’s quieter
there.” ,

It was darker, too, and Rathe settled himself on the
edge of the duty desk with a sigh of relief. It was good to be
back—good to be home, he amended, and couldn’t stop himself from
smiling.

“
Between us, Claes and I and
Manufactory made points on six of the astrologers,” Monteia went
on. “There were a couple more, but they seem to have gotten away,
more’s the pity. The thing is, they say they were hired to find the
children by a woman called Domalein.”

“
Savine Domalein?” Rathe asked, and
Monteia nodded. “Known to us, certainly.”

“
Not to me,” Eslingen
said.

Rathe grinned. “She’s a tout—a political tout, from
the Ile’nord originally, runs three or four printers that we’ve had
our eyes on. Her name was in de Mailhac’s papers.”

“
Domalein told them she wanted the
kids for runners,” Monteia went on, “wanted kids whose stars would
predispose them to supporting Belvis. Or at least that’s their
story. It was Domalein and a couple of her bravos who actually took
the kids. Whether the astrologers believed it or not I’m not
convinced, but she paid them well enough to make it worth their
while to say they did.”

b’Estorr shrugged, set his pitcher aside. “It would
be hard to prove they didn’t know, but they had to suspect
something. The stars—there weren’t enough patterns in the
horoscopes to make that work, if you ask me.”

“
And I’d take it kindly if you’d
tell that to the surintendant,” Monteia answered. “He can tell you
who to talk to in the Judiciary.”

“
Looking for a conviction, Chief
Point?” the necromancer asked.

“
Oh, yes,” Monteia answered, and
Rathe cut in hastily.

“
What happened to
Domalein?”

Monteia made a face. “Gone. Probably got out as soon
as she heard we were looking for the astrologers, but at least we
got to go through her house pretty thoroughly. She left in a hurry,
didn’t even stop to burn her papers, and we found plenty of letters
from your Maseigne de Mailhac. She was paying for the whole thing,
from the printers to the astrologers, and paying handsomely,
too.”

“
Except that Timenard had something
else in mind,” Rathe said, suddenly sobered again. He was himself
something of a Leveller by heritage and temperament, and Timenard
had tried to draw on that, paint a vision of a world without queen
or seigneury. An attractive thought, for a southriver rat, except
that it would have been Timenard and only Timenard who ruled in
their place.

b’Estorr touched him lightly on the shoulder. “It’s
a matter of balance, Nico. You can’t compel the stars, not in the
long run, no matter how much aurichalcum you have. He could have
made things very difficult for a while, very painful, but in the
long run, the natural order reasserts itself. We were its agents
this time.”

“
Personally,” Eslingen said, “I’d
be happier without that sort of favor.”

Rathe smiled again, made himself relax. He heard the
tower clock strike, and then, a heartbeat later, the case-clock on
the wall echoed it, beating out the hour. The true sun was sinking
toward the horizon, the winter-sun still high in the sky, and he
allowed himself a long sigh, tasting the familiar summer smells. He
was home, the children were home and safe, and that was the end of
it. He looked around and Eslingen put a cool mug in his hand.

“
Drink up,” he said, and Rathe
laughed, and let himself be led away to join the
celebration.

Of course, the biggest
acknowledgement I have to make is also the hardest. This novel
and
Point of Dreams
—more than that, this world, the characters and the magic and
all the lovely details—were all at least half Lisa’s creation, and
not having her here to share them is still something of a shock.
The voice that we created together was nothing like either of our
solo voices, and for years after her death I couldn’t imagine
coming back to Astreiant without her. We did have more books
planned, of course, one fully outlined, several more sketched out,
but I wasn’t sure I could do them justice without Lisa, even though
we had long ago agreed that if something happened to one of us, the
survivor should carry on. Still, I missed the characters, and their
world, and
Fairs’ Point
was fully outlined. Surely I could at least connect those
dots, and it would be lovely to write just one more Points novel….
And yet.

I’d like to thank Don Sakers and
Thomas Atkinson, Maren Tirabassi, Carl Cipra, Lisa’s siblings,
Bruce and Noralie Barnett and Dorothy Keller, Abby Heim, Jeanné
McCartin, Laura Secor, Rob Gates, Jo Graham and Amy Griswold for
listening to me fret, and for their willingness to read sketches
and offer suggestions. I also have to thank Steve Berman, first for
asking if he could reprint the two existing novels, and then for
asking if there were any more stories, particularly the one that
should have taken place between
Point of
Hopes
and
Point of
Dreams
, in which Philip and Nico actually
get together…. I also want to thank Alex Jeffers for the gorgeous
design, and Ben Baldwin for a fabulous cover.

Without you, I don’t know if I would have found the
nerve to go back, and it certainly wouldn’t have been as much fun
to get there. Thank you, everyone, for the chance to return to
Astreiant.

Melissa Scott is from Little Rock,
Arkansas, and studied history at Harvard College and Brandeis
University, where she earned her PhD in the Comparative History
program with a dissertation titled “Victory of the Ancients:
Tactics, Technology, and the Use of Classical Precedent.” She is
the author of more than twenty science fiction and fantasy novels,
most with queer themes and characters, and has won Lambda Literary
Awards for
Trouble and Her
Friends
,
Shadow
Man
, and
Point of
Dreams
, the last written with her late
partner, Lisa A. Barnett. She has also won a Spectrum Award
for
Shadow Man
and
again in 2010 for the short story “The Rocky Side of the Sky”
(
Periphery
, Lethe
Press) as well as the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.
She can be found on LiveJournal at
mescott.livejournal.com.

Lisa A. Barnett was born and raised
in Dorchester, Massachusetts, attended Girls’ Latin School, and
received her BA from the University of Massachusetts/Boston. She
began working in theater publishing while she was still in college,
beginning at Baker’s Plays in Boston, and then moving to Heinemann,
where she developed her own line of theatre books. In that role,
she edited plays, monologue collections, and books of practical
theatre, as well as a second line of books on theatre in education,
which including a string of award-winning titles. As a writer, she
worked primarily in collaboration with her partner, Melissa Scott,
and together they produced three novels:
The Armor of Light
, set in an
alternate Elizabethan England,
Point of
Hopes
, and
Point of
Dreams
, the last a Lambda Literary Award
Winner. They also produced a short story, “The Carmen Miranda
Gambit,” which was published in the 1990 collection
Carmen Miranda’s Ghost is Haunting Space Station
Three
. Outside of the collaboration, she
had a pair of monologues published in the collection
Monologues from the Road
,
and subsequently saw them produced as part of an evening of
“theatre from the road.” She was exceedingly fond of both dogs and
horses, and was an active member of the Piscataqua Obedience Club
as well as being heavily involved in several equine rescue
organizations. She was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer in
2003, and died of a metastatic brain tumor in 2006.