Point of Hopes (7 page)

Tapers blazed in half a dozen hanging candelabra,
and stood in rows in sconces along the walls. More candles, smaller
votive lights the length of a man’s finger, flickered at the foot
of the central statue of Areton, the god of war and courage,
throwing odd shadows across the statue’s archaic leg armor and
making the base of his long spear seem to waver. This was not
Eslingen’s favorite incarnation of the god—he preferred the younger
shape, dancing, before he turned to war—but he touched his forehead
dutifully anyway before turning toward the money changers.

Their booths lined the side walls of the temple,
each one marked with familiar symbols—the cock-and-hens of Areill,
the rose and wine-cup of Pajot Soeurs—but he made his way to the
biggest booth, the one marked with the ram’s head of Areton’s own
priesthood. Enough of Areton’s old servants retired from soldiering
into banking, drawing on the sense of value and exchange gained
over a lifetime’s fighting in every kingdom from the petty lands
west of Chadron to the Silklands themselves; their commissions
might be higher than some of the others who rented space in the
temple, but the rates of exchange tended to be better.

“
Wait for me here,” he said to the
boys who were standing wide-eyed, staring at the thanks-offerings
of guns and swords pinned like trophies to every pillar, and took
his place in line at the table marked with the ram’s head. The
clerk at the next table, a pretty, dark-skinned boy, smiled at
him.

“
I can offer good rates, sir, and
no waiting.”

Eslingen shook his head, but returned the smile. The
clerk’s hands were painted with a pattern of curving vines, black
picked out with dots of red and gold, vivid in the candlelight If
that was the fashion in Astreiant now, Eslingen thought, it was a
handsome one, though hardly practical. Then the man ahead of him
had finished his business, and he stepped up to the table, reaching
into his pocket for one purse, and under his shirt for the other.
The clerk—greying, one-eyed, ledger and tally board in front of
him, abacus laid ready to a hand that lacked part of a
finger—looked up at him shrewdly.

“
And what do you have for
me—sergeant, isn’t it, from Esling?”

“
From Esling, yes, but I earned my
commission this season,” Eslingen answered, and set the purses on
the table.

“
Congratulations,” the clerk said,
busily unfolding the letters of credit, and Eslingen allowed
himself a sour smile. Words were cheap; the ephemeral commission
was unlikely to get him an improved exchange rate for the Leaguer
coins.

The clerk poured out the small horde of coins—the
gold disk of the royal crown that had been this season’s wages,
warm in the candlelight; the heavy silver square of the pillar that
was Bathias’s gift; a pair of Altheim staters hardly bigger than
sequins, but bright gold; a scattering of miscellaneous silver,
Chadroni, League, and Chenedolliste equally mixed. The clerk
grunted, fingering them neatly into the holes of the tally board,
then spread the letters of credit beside them, bending close to
read the crabbed writing. He grunted again and flicked the beads of
his abacus, the maimed finger as deft as the others, then chalked
something on his slate and flicked the abacus again.

“
You have four crowns and three
pillars by my reckoning, sergeant—lieutenant—all good coin of Her
Majesty. Do you want it now, or do you want to bank it here and
gamble on the exchange?”

Eslingen sighed. One did not bargain with the
ram’s-head bankers the way one bargained with other merchants; if
one tried, the clerk was as likely to push the coins back to you
and send you searching for another broker. The only question now
was whether he would take the cash—and its attendant worries, theft
and loss—or take a letter of credit on the Astreiant temple and
hope that the exchange between the written amount, the monies of
account, and actual coin shifted in his favor. And when one thought
about it, it was no choice at all.

“
How’s the exchange been so far?”
he asked, without much hope, and wasn’t surprised when the clerk
shrugged.

“
Up and down, sergeant, up and
down.”

“
Give me two pillars in coin,”
Eslingen said, “and a letter for the rest.”

The clerk nodded, put two fingers—the undamaged
hand—into his mouth and whistled shrilly. A junior clerk came
running, carrying a case of seals. Eslingen waited while the letter
was drafted, signed, and sealed, then put his own name to it and
folded it carefully into the purse around his neck. He tucked it
back under his shirt, and watched as the clerk counted out two
pillars for him. The coins rang softly against the wood, the heavy
disks of heirats, bright with Heira’s snake, the lighter disks of
seillings, marked with Seidos’s horsehead, and a handful of copper
small-coin, spiders and demmings mixed. He had been born under the
signs of the Horse and the Horsemaster; he tucked a seilling with
the coppers in his pocket for luck, and knotted the rest securely
in his purse.

Turning away from the table, he waved to the waiting
boys—they came quickly enough, a little intimidated, he thought, by
the bustling soldiers and long-distance traders—and led them over
to the locked door of the armory. He gave the keeper his name and
the details of his weapons—Astreiant limited the length of blade a
person could carry in the streets, and utterly prohibited locks
except to their pointsmen—and waited while the old woman
laboriously inscribed them in the book. Then he handed them through
the narrow portal, first the caliver and then the swords and
finally the locked case of pistols. That left him with a long
knife, just at the limit, and, tucked into the bottom of his
saddlebag, a third pistol with its stock of powder and lead. The
keeper gave him the sealed receipt, which he slipped into the purse
beneath his shirt, and he turned away, working his shoulders. He
felt oddly light without the familiar weight of caliver and
swords—freer, too, with money in his purse, and for an instant he
considered looking for lodgings north of the river. Then common
sense reasserted itself: the northriver districts were too
expensive, even with four crowns in the bank. He would take himself
south of the river—the Old Brown Dog lay in Point of Hopes, Reymers
had said, which meant doubling back west along the Fairs Road and
across that bridge—and be sensible.

He looked back at the boys, reached into his pocket
for the promised demmings. “Does either of you know a tavern in
Point of Hopes called the Old Brown Dog?”

The younger boy shook his head at once; the older
hesitated, obviously weighing his chances of another coin or two,
then, reluctantly, shook his head, too. “No, sir, I don’t know
southriver very well.”

Eslingen nodded—he hadn’t really expected another
answer—and handed over the coins, the doubled moon, the old in the
curve of the new, glinting in the candlelight. The older boy handed
back his saddlebags, and he and his friend scurried for the door.
Eslingen followed more slowly, looking around for fellow Leaguers.
If anyone would know how to get to the Old Brown Dog, it would be
League soldiers—provided, of course, that Reymers was right about
the quality of the beer. There were plenty of Leaguers in
Chenedolle, for all that League and Kingdom had fought a five-year
war twenty-five years before; he should be able to find
someone.

Even as he thought that, he saw a familiar flash of
white plumes, and Follet Baeker came into the light of the
candelabra, showing teeth nearly as white as the feathers in his
broad-brimmed hat. As usual, he had a knife with him, a sullen
looking, leather-jerkined man who looked uncomfortable inside the
Aretoneia—as well he might, Eslingen thought. Baeker was almost the
only broker based in the city who took weapons and armor in pawn;
despite Baeker’s generally decent reputation, his knife might well
worry about protecting him from dissatisfied clients. After all, it
would only take one of them and a moment’s carelessness to end
Baeker’s career permanently.

“
Sergeant!”

“
Lieutenant,” Eslingen corrected
without much hope, and Baeker continued as though he hadn’t
heard.

“
Back so soon? I heard Coindarel
was disbanded.”

Eslingen nodded. “Paid off this noon.”

Baeker’s expression brightened, though he didn’t
quite smile openly. “Pity that. Should you find yourself in need of
funds, of course—”

“
Not at the moment,” Eslingen
answered. “Tell me, do you know a tavern in Point of Hopes, called
the Old Brown Dog?”

Baeker nodded. “I do. Aagte Devynck’s house, that
is, and I heard she needs a knife, this close to Midsummer and the
fairs.”

“
I was looking for lodging,”
Eslingen said, a little stiffly—knife to a tavern-keeper, bodyguard
and bouncer all in one, was hardly a job to which he aspired. “A
friend recommended it.”

“
Well, she rents rooms,” Baeker
said, with a shrug. “Do you need the direction?”

“
All I know is it’s in Point of
Hopes.”

“
Which it is, but that won’t get
you there,” Baeker said. “Take the Hopes-point Bridge, and when the
road forks at its foot, take the left-hand road. Then it’s no
distance at all to the Knives’ Road—that’s the Butchers’ quarter,
you’ll know it by the signs—”

“
And the smell,” Eslingen
said.

Baeker grinned. “It’s mostly vegetables this time of
year. Autumn, now…. But the first road to the right off that, take
it to the end, and the Old Brown Dog’s the last house. You’ll see
the sign.”

Eslingen nodded. “Thanks.”

“
Give my regards to Aagte,” Baeker
answered. “And keep me in mind, sergeant. Should you need coin….”
He let his voice trail off, and Eslingen sighed.

“
I’ll keep you in mind.”

He turned toward the door, drew back as it swung
open almost in his face. A thin, sharp-faced woman in a drab green
suit of skirt and bodice—better material than it looked at first
glance, Eslingen thought, but cut for use, not show—stepped past
with a nod of apology. The candlelight glinted from the
gargoyle-and-snake pinned to her neat cap, and Eslingen glanced
curiously after her. The vagabond professions were traditionally
men’s, and the Merchants-Venturer were more vagabond than most—but
then, enough women had masculine stars and followed mannish
professions, just as there were any number of men who claimed
feminine stars and worked at the fixed professions. He watched her
as she made her way to the door of the central counting room—the
long-distance traders generally changed their money and letters
through the temple networks; letters on the temples of Areton were
good throughout the world—and then went on out into the sunlight of
the Temple Fair.

Baeker’s directions were better than he’d expected,
after all. He crossed the River Sier by the Hopes-point Bridge,
dodging the two-wheeled barrows that seemed to carry most of
Astreiant’s goods, and followed the left-forking road toward the
Butchers’ quarter. Southriver was busier than the northriver
districts, the streets crowded not with neatly dressed apprentices
and their seniors, guild badges bright against their blue coats,
but shopwives and carpenters and boatmen and sailors and members of
a dozen other unguessable trades, all in aprons or working smocks
over ordinary clothes. It was louder southriver, too, voices raised
over the rumble of carts and the shriek of un-oiled wheels from the
docks, the shrill southriver accent sharpening their words. The
smell of kitchens and shop fires warred with the stink of garbage.
If anything, it reminded him of the back streets of Esling where
he’d been born, and he found himself walking a little faster,
unsure if he liked the memories.

At the corner of the next street, a crowd had
gathered—largely children just at apprentice-age and younger, but
there were some adults with them, too, and Eslingen paused,
curious, to look over the bobbing heads into the manufactory yard.
It was a glassblowers’, he realized at once, and the pit furnace
was lit in the center of the open yard, waves of heat rolling off
it toward the open gates. A young woman, her hair tucked under a
leather cap, skirts and bodice protected by a thick leather apron
that reached almost to her ankles, leather gauntlets to her elbows,
spun a length of pipe in the flames, coaxing the blob of glass into
an egg and then a sphere before she began to shape it with her
breath. He had seen glassblowers at work before, but stared anyway,
fascinated, as the sphere began to swell into a bubble, and the
woman spun it deftly against a shaping block, turning it into a
pale green bowl like the top of a wineglass. One had to be born
under fire signs to work that easily among the flames; he himself
had been born under air and water, and knew better than to try. He
became aware then that another woman, an older woman, also in the
leather apron but with her gauntlets tucked through the doubled
ties at her waist, was watching him from the side of the yard. Her
face was without expression, but the young man in the doorway of
the shed was scowling openly. There were still plenty of people in
Astreiant who thought of the League as the enemy, for all that that
war had ended twenty-five years earlier; Eslingen touched his hat,
not quite respectfully, and moved on.

Knives’ Road was as busy as the other streets, and
narrowed by the midden barrels that stood in ranks beside each
butcher’s hall. Outside one hall, a barrel had overflowed and
gargoyles scratched and scrabbled in the spilled parings,
quarreling over the scraps. Eslingen gave it a wide berth, as did
most of the passersby, but as he drew abreast of the hall a boy
barely at apprenticeship came slouching out with a broom to clean
up the mess. The gargoyles exploded away, shrieking their
displeasure, some scrambling up the corner stones of the hall, the
rest lifting reluctantly on their batlike wings. Eslingen ducked as
a fat gargoyle flew straight at him; it dodged at the last minute,
swept up to a protruding beam and sat scolding as though it was his
fault. The creatures were sacred to Bonfortune, the many-faced,
many-named god of travelers and traders, but if they weren’t an
amusing nuisance, Eslingen thought, someone would have found
justification for getting rid of them centuries ago. Their chatter
followed him as he turned onto the street Baeker had mentioned.