Point of Sighs Read online

  Table of Contents

  Praise for Astreiant

  POINT OF SIGHS | Melissa Scott

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About The Author

  • PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF ASTREIANT •

  POINT OF SIGHS

  by Melissa Scott

  “In this slow-burning fifth fantasy procedural set in the city of Astreiant (after 2014’s Fairs’ Point), Adjunct Nicholas Rathe and his lover, Guard Captain Philip Eslingen, are once again drawn into unsavory matters of murder, corruption, and intrigue. ... Scott’s world is atmospheric, moody, and richly detailed; the emphasis on trade disruptions, tea, and institutional graft provides an intriguing angle for the relatively leisurely plot.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  FAIRS’ POINT

  by Melissa Scott

  “Centered on a crime that could occur only in Astreiant, Fairs’ Point takes many unpredictable, impressive twists and turns on its way to the conclusion. And, if the reader deduces a guilty party slightly ahead of the protagonists, that doesn’t make the mystery any less fresh or imaginative. In its mystery–in all its parts–Fairs’ Point is, like its predecessors, a pleasure.”

  —Cynthia Ward for Locus

  POINT OF DREAMS

  by Melissa Scott & Lisa A. Barnett

  “A warmly inviting story where astrology and magic work, and ghosts sometimes name their murderer.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Readers of police procedurals will recognize the form of Point of Dreams, if not the details, which are necessarily changed by the fantasy setting…. Scott and Barnett blend the genres deftly, transposing their mystery plot seamlessly into their magical world…. Point of Dreams is a thoroughly rewarding reading experience.”

  —SF Site

  POINT OF KNIVES

  by Melissa Scott

  “Scott returns to the intrigue-laden city of Astreiant in this novella, which bridges the gap between 1995’s Point of Hopes and 2001’s Point of Dreams…. Primarily an intriguing pseudo-police procedural, this fantasy also serves as a satisfying romantic story, with strong world building and great characterization that will leave readers wanting more.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Blood, alchemy, sexual tension, murder, intrigue, and truly wonderful characters: Melissa Scott’s Point of Knives delivers them all, in a world that seems so real, I’m surprised to look up and find I’m not living in it.”

  —Delia Sherman, author of The Freedom Maze and The Porcelain Dove

  “Rathe and Eslingen are fascinating to follow as they navigate the deadly intrigues and dangerous magic of Point of Knives.”

  —Ginn Hale, author of Wicked Gentlemen

  POINT OF HOPES

  by Melissa Scott & Lisa A. Barnett

  “Scott and Barnett use elegant and well-crafted language to carry the discerning reader into a world where astrology works. The two handle the interwoven characters, plots, and subplots with skill and an understated sense of wit.”

  —L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

  “Like Scott and Barnett’s previous collaboration, The Armor of Light (1987), this book features good writing, good characterization, and exceedingly superior world-building. Astreiant has a marvelous lived-in quality…. Place this one high in the just-plain-good-reading category.”

  —Booklist

  POINT OF SIGHS: A Novel of Astreiant

  Copyright © 2018 Melissa Scott. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilm, and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published in 2018 by Lethe Press, Inc. at Smashwords.com

  www.lethepressbooks.com • [email protected]

  ISBN: 978-1-59021-645-3 / 1-59021-645-8

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Cover design: Alex Jeffers.

  Cover artwork: Ben Baldwin.

  Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file with the Library of Congress.

  CHAPTER ONE

  It had been raining for the better part of a week, a thin cold drizzle alternating with colder, heavier downpours that were rapidly stripping the last of the leaves from the trees. Autumn had set in early and hard, and Nicolas Rathe was glad for once to be home by his own stove, stockinged feet stretched to the fender. Rain rattled like pebbles against the shutters, the draft bending the candles’ flames, and the basket terrier Sunflower lifted his muzzle from his crossed front paws. Philip Eslingen lifted his head, too, but quickly returned his attention to the flatiron heating beside the kettle. Behind him, his new-made captain’s coat hung on its stand, carefully arranged so that the crosspiece completely filled the padded shoulders and the full skirts hung without creasing. Silver lace and silver buttons caught the flickering light, bright against the fine midnight-blue wool. Rathe still had his doubts about the ultimate utility of the newly formed City Guard, but he had to admit that Eslingen wore the uniform exceedingly well.

  As he watched, Eslingen laid a shirt on the table, holding the fabric taut with one hand while he ran the iron over it with the other. The air smelled suddenly of hot linen and the herbs it had been washed with, and Rathe tipped his head to one side.

  “I thought you paid your laundress for that.”

  “We don’t draw actual pay until the middle of Galeneaon,” Eslingen answered. “And what Coindarel calls maintenance doesn’t maintain very much at all. And anyway, this is only my second-best.”

  Rathe refrained from pointing out that the point of second- and third-best shirts was that no one expected them to be uncrumpled. “I didn’t know we had an iron.”

  “We don’t.” Eslingen flipped the fabric, rearranged it neatly. “I borrowed it from the weaver downstairs.”

  “I was having trouble imagining you riding through the League with a lump of iron in your saddlebags.”

  Eslingen laughed. “You’d be surprised. When I was senior sergeant, I had a sempster’s box and smoothing stones and a gauffering iron for the company’s use. Of course, I also had a seamstress and three laundresses on the rolls, so I wasn’t expected to use them myself except in emergencies. But Coindarel likes his men looking neat.”

  Evidently. Rathe swallowed a word that might have rung too sharp—Coindarel’s new Guard encroached on the prerogatives of Astreiant’s Points, charged with enforcing the same city laws, and Rathe had been a pointsman too long to take that comfortably—and Eslingen went on, apparently oblivious, “Do you want me to do yours, too?”

  “Think it would do much good?” Rathe asked, with a wry grin.

  “Probably not.” Eslingen set the iron back on the side of the stove, began folding the shirt ready for the clothes-press. That was another piece of furniture Rathe had not owned before; his entire wardrobe lived in a single chest, winter on one side and summer on the other. “I’ve never known a man who could make a shirt wrinkle just by looking at it. It’s as if your clothes take one look at you and surrender.”

  There was, regrettably, enough truth to that to make Rathe shrug. “It’s not like it matters what a pointsman looks like.”

 
“Not even an Adjunct Point? You’re second-in-command of Point of Dreams, don’t you need at least one good suit—and what about the Chief Points?”

  Rathe looked up at that, but Eslingen’s expression was purely curious. “All right, if you’re chief at Temple Point or City Point, you spend enough time dealing with the regents—or the queen’s court, at Point of Hearts—that I suppose someone might care. But the rest of us, especially us Southriver points—we’re like the rat-catcher. People want the job done, but they don’t want to spend much time with us while we do it.”

  “Many a woman’s been grateful for a good rat-catcher,” Eslingen said, lightly enough, but there was a faint line between his eyebrows. As Rathe watched, he found a limp roll of paper and carefully flattened it on the table, then reached for the iron again.

  “Philip, what on earth—”

  There was a soft hiss and a smell of scorched paper, and then Eslingen had set the iron on the back of the stove to cool. “I bought some broadsheets on the way home. Maybe you can explain this one to me.”

  Rathe took the sheet carefully, the paper warm and brittle to the touch. It was recently printed, the ink dark, lines still sharp in spite of the rain, and he looked automatically for the printer’s license at the bottom of the page. For a wonder, the seal was there, and even legitimate—half Astreiant’s broadsheet printers skipped buying their license even for relatively innocuous projects—and it looked as though someone had spent the money to commission the woodcut illustration, rather than re-using an old block that was only tangentially related to the subject. But that subject…. The print showed a flat-faced fish with an ugly, underslung jaw and a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth plus two more that jutted up like tusks, rearing up out of the water to balance on its belly and wide-spread, hand-like fins. Beneath it, oversized letters read: A New Sighting of an Old Curse, or, New Dangers in the Waters, Portending a Rise of All Tides and Other Prognostications Merrily Expounded.

  Rathe skimmed the text, his frown deepening. Some of the river-folk, mainly sailors and bargemen idled by the early autumn, claimed to have seen greater dogfish swimming in the Sier, though the greater dogfish had been extinct for centuries, if indeed it had ever existed at all. The broadsheet writer was happy to claim that its reappearance meant a winter of disaster for the city, and in particular for its sailors—and I’m glad, Rathe thought, that I’m not in Point of Sighs to deal with this one. Point of Sighs and Point of Graves and Customs Point were responsible for the docks on the southern bank of the river, not Point of Dreams.

  “What in Tyrseis’s name is a greater dogfish?” Eslingen asked. “Besides exceedingly ugly.”

  “They say it’s a handmaid of the river spirit, the spirit of the Sier,” Rathe said. “The Riverdeme, they called her. She used to take a certain number of drowned men every year to share her bed, but nobody’s believed in that for, oh, at least three hundred years. When they built the bridges, she was bound, and her power faded and she with it. There is such a thing as a dogfish—lesser dogfish, if you want to be precise—but it doesn’t look anything like that.”

  “That’s comforting,” Eslingen said. “Or—what do they look like?”

  “They’re about as long as my forearm, with a face like one of those pug-dogs they breed in the Western Reaches. Undershot jaw, and little nasty teeth. When I was a boy, they’d take most of our bait fish in a single bite.”

  “Charming.”

  “And they’re not in the slightest bit edible,” Rathe said, mildly surprised to find an old grievance so sharp. “They’re full of tiny nasty bones and taste like mud.”

  Eslingen drew his chair closer to the stove, and settled in the pool of lamplight. “This thing has the jaw, according to the drawing. So do you think that’s what someone saw?”

  Rathe shrugged. “It’s possible. Or it’s possible someone was drunk and telling tales, and an enterprising woman wrote it up for prophecy. Or made it up out of whole cloth. It’s been a grim autumn.”

  Eslingen nodded, still studying the broadsheet, and Rathe sighed. The autumn westerlies had set in almost ten days early, ending the Silklands trade; battered caravels had been straggling in all month, sails in tatters from fighting the gales, and rumor said a good dozen had put in to the smaller ports along the coast to the south, and were sending their goods by land rather than try to make the mouth of the Sier. The tea trade was hurt worst of all, each of the great houses vying to bring the last best thinnings, the Old Year tea that they could sell for midwinter prices. There was already talk that the tea blenders were bidding against each other in every factor’s hall, and there was even a rumor that Three Ships was cutting their ordinaries with tea from southern Chenedolle. It would be a hard winter indeed if they were reduced to that.

  “Do you think it could be an omen?” Eslingen asked. “Though I notice they don’t say anything the astrologers haven’t already said.”

  “If someone’s seen a greater dogfish, it might mean something, if only that the Sier’s running high.” Rathe reached for the broadsheet, and Eslingen handed it across. “Oh, I like that. ‘Prognostications Merrily Expounded.’”

  “Disasters sound better in rhyming couplets?” Eslingen began, and was cut off by a knock at the door.

  Sunflower bounded to his feet, barking wildly, and Eslingen scooped him up one-handed. “Who’s there?”

  “Adjunct Point?”

  Rathe recognized Sohier’s voice, breathless from a quick walk, and unlatched the door. “Sohier?”

  She was wearing a sailor’s oiled hood and shoulder cape over her pointsman’s jerkin, but beneath it her skirts clung damply to her soaked stockings, and a bead of water dripped from the end of her lovelock where it straggled from under her hood. Out of the corner of his eye, Rathe saw Eslingen grimace, and take a tighter hold on the dog.

  “Sorry to disturb you, sir,” she said, “but the chief says, you’re needed.”

  Rathe gave a resigned nod, reaching for the jerkin he’d discarded when he’d come off duty a little after six. The winter-sun would be rising soon, but in this weather, its light would never pierce the clouds. Sohier was carrying a shuttered lantern, he saw with approval, and shrugged back into the damp leather. “What’s the trouble?”

  “The adjunct from Point of Sighs is claiming a point on Mattaes Staenka, and the chief wants some of us there to supervise.”

  “The tea family,” Rathe said, and Sohier nodded.

  “He’s the son—there’s two older sisters, their mother died last year and Meisenta and Redel hold the business in shares, or so I hear.”

  Money, and a lot of it, Rathe thought. Many of the tea merchants preferred to live in the nicer parts of neighboring Point of Dreams, rather than among the warehouses and shops and factors’ barns that made up most of Sighs. “What’s the claim?”

  Sohier winced. “Murder.”

  “Astree’s tits, Sohier.” Rathe stopped. “You’re serious.”

  “I’m afraid so. That’s why Trijn wants you there.”

  To be a buffer to one of the district’s richest families: that was more in Trijn’s line than his. “Why doesn’t she go herself?”

  “She was friends with the mother,” Sohier said. “Sighs is being…touchy.”

  “Who did they send?” Rathe slung his truncheon at his belt.

  “Their Senior Adjunct. Dammar.”

  Rathe swore again. Edild Dammar had a bad reputation even outside his own station, was reportedly a man who demanded fees at every turn, and still somehow never managed to stay bought.

  “Do you want company?” Eslingen asked.

  Rathe hesitated, then shook his head. “No, this is Points business—Points politics.”

  “I’ll keep the bed warm, then,” Eslingen said, and Rathe smiled in spite of himself.

  “Not with the iron, please.”

  “I promise not to scorch the sheets,” Eslingen said sweetly, and Rathe heard Sohier choke.

  He found his own rain cloak and
drew it close, the fabric still chill and smelling of the street. “All right, let’s go. You can tell me the details on the way.”

  The rain had slacked off again, to Rathe’s relief, though he kept his hood up, hunching his shoulders under the damp fabric. Sohier opened the lantern’s shutter all the way, casting a fan of light across the wet cobbles, and gave him a sidelong glance.

  “It’s an odd business. The Staenkas are a quiet family, generally.”

  “So tell me about it.”

  “There’s not much to tell, just yet. Dammar says he was called to a tavern in Point of Sighs, known to be frequented by tea traders, where he found the body of a tea ship captain currently under contract to the Staenkas. The man—bes’Anthe, his name is, was, Ketel bes’Anthe—was seen quarreling with Mattaes Staenka, though I’m not sure he said what about. Mattaes stalked out of the tavern in full view of everybody drinking there, and they found the body in the garden about an hour later.”

  “That’s not much to call a point on,” Rathe said. If it was his case, he’d certainly want to talk to the boy, but it didn’t sound as though there was enough to justify an arrest.

  “I suppose they think he went back after?” Sohier sounded doubtful herself. “There’s usually a gate by the privies, he could have come in there.”

  “No point in speculating.” Rathe pulled his hood further forward as they turned into the wind.

  Like all the points stations, Point of Dreams had once been a garrison and an armory, and in the rainy night its walls loomed large, blocking the end of the street. Magelights flared on either side of the gate, and a cloaked figure emerged from the narrow watch-box at their approach.

  “Sohier—Adjunct Point. The chief’s waiting.”

  I expect so, Rathe thought, but waved an acknowledgement and ducked through the gate. The courtyard was empty except for puddles, though enough light fell from the station’s unshuttered windows to make it easier to avoid them. The main door was open, and even from outside he could see the fire built high in the enormous fireplace. There were more people than usual in the main room—more pointsmen, he amended, two women and a man sitting on a bench pulled close to one of the stoves, and another man leaning on the mantel of the fireplace, scuffing his feet on the stone hearth. They were all strangers, thought he thought he had at least seen one of the women before.