Point of Hopes p-1 Read online

  “Oh?” It was hard to tell, sometimes, if Monteia was being skeptical, or merely tired. Quickly, Rathe ran through the story, starting with the butcher’s arrival, and ending with his visit to the ’Serry and the Quentiers’ missing boy. When he had finished, Monteia leaned back in her chair, arms folded, long legs stretched out beneath the table. Looking down, Rathe could see the tip of her shoe protruding from beneath the table, could see, too, the string of cheap braid that hid the mark where the hem had been lengthened for her. Monteia might be chief point, but she was honest enough, in her way, and had children and a household of her own to keep.

  “How many runaways is that so far this season?” she asked, after a moment.

  “I could check the daybook to be sure,” Rathe answered, “but I’m pretty sure we’ve had eight reported. Nine if you count Herisse, but I want to treat that as an abduction. And of course the Cordiere boy, but that’s not our jurisdiction.”

  Monteia nodded.

  “Of the eight, then, two were apprentices, both brewers, and the rest ordinary labor,” Rathe continued. “That’s a lot for so early—the first of the Silklands caravans are only just in, and the trading ships haven’t really started yet.”

  Monteia said, “We had the points’ dinner last night.”

  Rathe blinked, unsure where this was leading—the chief points of the twelve point stations that policed Astreiant dined together once every solar month, ostensibly to exchange information, but more to help establish the points’ legitimacy by behaving like any other guild. The points were relatively new, at least in their present form; it had been the queen’s grandmother who’d given them the authority to enforce the laws, and not everyone was happy with the new system.

  Monteia smiled as though she’d guessed the thought, showing her crooked teeth. “We’re not the only station to be seeing too many runaways, too early. I went planning to ask a few discreet questions, see what everybody else was doing this season, and, by the gods, so was everyone else. So we did a little horse-trading, and I got some useful information, I think.”

  Rathe nodded. He could imagine the scene, the long table and the polished paneling of a high-priced inn’s best room, candles on the table to supplement the winter-sun’s diminished light. The chief points would all be in their best, a round dozen men and women—six of each at the moment, all with Sofia, Astree, or Phoebe, the Pillars of Justice, strong in their nativity—sitting in order of precedence, from Temple Point at the head of the table to Fairs’ Point at the foot. He had met all of them at one time or another, as Monteia’s senior adjunct, but really only knew Dechaix of Point of Dreams and Astarac of Point of Sighs, the jurisdictions that bordered Point of Hopes, at all well. And Guillen Claes of Fairs’ Point, he added, with an inward smile. Claes was a solid pointsman, had come up through the ranks, and took no nonsense from anyone, for all that he had the unenviable job of handling the busiest and most junior point station in the city. Most of the southriver points got to know Claes well over the course of their careers, as the professional criminals who lived southriver, pickpockets like the Quentiers and horse-thieves and footpads and the rest, tended to do their business in Fairs’ Point.

  “Everyone’s got an unusual number of runaways this year,” Monteia said. “What’s more to the point, there are as many, or nearly so, missing from City Point as there are from Fairs’ Point.”

  Rathe looked up sharply at that. City Point was one of the old districts, second in precedence only to Temple Point itself; children born in City Point were among the least likely to be lured away by the romance of the longdistance traders—or, if they were, they had mothers who could afford to apprentice them properly. Fairs’ Point children, on the other hand, had not only the proximity of New Fair and Little Fair to tempt them, but good cause to want to better themselves.

  Monteia nodded. “Aize Lissinain, she’s chief at City Point since the beginning of Lepidas, was asking if we’d had any increase in the brothel traffic.”

  “Trust northriver to think of that,” Rathe said, sourly.

  “She was also asking Huyser how the workhouses were doing,” Monteia went on, and Rathe made a face that stopped short of apology. Huyser was chief of Manufactory Point; as the name implied, most of the city’s workhouses and manufactories lay in his district, and there were always complaints about the way the merchant-makers treated their day-workers. It was a good question—as was the one about the brothels, he admitted—so maybe Lissinain would be better than her predecessor.

  “What did Huyser say?” he asked. “I was thinking that myself. Children are cheap.”

  “But I wouldn’t want them working with machinery,” Monteia answered. “Too much chance of them breaking something. Anyway, Huyser said he was having as much of a problem with runaways as anyone, though not from the manufactories proper. He hadn’t heard of any of the makers letting workers go, or hiring new, for that matter, but he said he’d look into it.” She smiled, wry this time. “And Hearts and Dreams and I said we’d take a look round the brothels, just to be sure.”

  Rathe nodded again. “It’s a reasonable precaution. We might even find one or two of them, at that.”

  “Mmm.” Monteia didn’t sound particularly hopeful, either, and Rathe sighed.

  “Does anyone know just how many children have gone missing?”

  “Temple’s asked us each to compile a list for her, children missing and found, to be cross-checked by her people just in case we’ve found some of them and don’t know it, and then circulated around the points for general use.” She made a face. “I can’t say I’m particularly happy with the idea, myself—Temple’s always looking for an excuse to stick her fingers in the rest of us’s business—but I think she’s probably right, this time.”

  “It could help,” Rathe said. “As long as everyone gets listed. Did she say just the missing, or all the runaways?”

  “Anyone reported missing,” Monteia answered. She grimaced. “I know, you’re thinking the same thing I am, some of them won’t list everyone—it’s embarrassing, gods, I’m embarrassed myself. But it’s a start.”

  “Agreed,” Rathe said. “But then what?”

  Monteia shook her head. “I wish I knew. This isn’t right, Nico. It feels… I don’t know, all wrong somehow. Kids disappear, sure, but not like this, not from everywhere. I was junior adjunct here when Rancon Paynor raped those girls, took them right off their own streets at twilight—it was spring then, right at the end of Limax, the suns were setting together. I remember what it felt like, and it wasn’t like this.”

  “No,” Rathe said, and they sat in silence for a moment. He remembered the Paynor case, too, though he always counted the year by the lunar calendar, remembered it as the middle of the Flower Moon. There had been the victims, for one thing, the girls themselves; they’d disappeared for a day, two, but appeared again—and we were just lucky they weren’t bodies, he added to himself. People had been afraid. The women and girls had traveled in groups for weeks, even after it became clear that Paynor had disappeared, but it had been clear that something had happened. Not like this, when they couldn’t even put a name to what was happening. “I suppose no one’s found any bodies,” he said aloud, and surprised a short, humorless laugh from the chief point.

  “Not so far. Though if they went in the Sier… the river doesn’t give up its dead easily.”

  “But why?” Rathe shook his head again. “One madman, another Paynor, making his kills, yeah, I could believe it, but not with so many lads gone from so many districts. One man alone couldn’t do it.”

  “Or woman, I suppose,” Monteia said, “if her stars were bad.”

  “But not one person alone,” Rathe repeated.

  Monteia sighed. “We don’t know enough yet, Nico, we can’t even say that for certain.” She straightened, drawing her feet back under the desk. “I want you to draw up the report—get in a scrivener to do fair copies, I don’t want to waste any more of your time than I have to, but get it
done by tomorrow. We’ll know better where we stand once the compilation comes in.”

  “All right.” Rathe stood up, recognizing his dismissal. “With your permission, boss, I’ll make a few inquiries northriver, just in case the Quentiers’ boy ended up in the cells there.”

  “Go ahead,” Monteia said. “That’d be all we need, to get the ’Serry really roused against us.”

  “People are going to talk,” Rathe said.

  “They’re already talking,” Monteia answered. “At least, northriver they are. Oh, when you go back to the butcher’s, get the girl’s nativity from him.”

  Rathe stopped in the doorway, looked back at her. “You’re going to go to the university?”

  “Do you have any other leads?”

  “No.” Rathe sighed. “No, I don’t.” Usually, a judicial horoscope was the last resort, something to be tried when all other possibilities had been exhausted; even the best astrologers could only offer possibilities, not certainties, when asked to do a forensic reading.

  “And I’m going to talk to the necromancers, too, see if any ghosts have turned up. You’ve a friend in their college, don’t you?”

  Rathe winced at the thought—bad enough to be a necromancer, constantly surrounded by the spirits of the untimely dead, worse still if it were children’s ghosts—but nodded. “Istre b’Estorr, his name is. He’s very good.”

  Monteia nodded. “I’ve got a nasty feeling about this one, Nico,” she said, her voice almost too soft to be heard.

  “So do I,” Rathe answered, and stepped back into the main room to collect the station’s daybooks and begin the list of missing children.

  2

  « ^ »

  the last muster was nearly over. Philip Eslingen eyed the lines at the rickety tables set up by the regimental paymasters, making sure his own troopers got their proper measure, and mentally tallied his own wages. His pay, a single royal crown, rested in his moneybag beneath his shirt, a soft weight against his heart; he was carrying letters on the temples of Areton that totaled nearly four pillars, his share of the one raiding party: enough for a common man to live for a year, if he were frugal. It should certainly last him until spring, when the new campaigns began—unless, of course, someone reputable was hiring. Whatever he did, it would mean taking a lower place than the one he’d had.

  His eyes strayed to the temporary platform, empty now, but bright with banners and heavy patterned carpets, where the Queen of Chenedolle had stood to receive the salute of Coindarel’s Dragons and to release them from her service. Even from his place at the front with the rest of the regiment’s officers, Eslingen had been able to see little more of her than her elegant suit of clothes, bright and stiff as the little dolls that stood before the royal judges in the outlying provinces, visible symbols of the royal authority. The dolls were faceless, for safety’s sake; for all Eslingen had been able to see, the queen herself might have been as faceless, her features completely hidden by the brim of a hat banded with the royal circlet. He had watched her when he could, fascinated—he had never seen the Queen of Chenedolle—but she had barely seemed real. Only once, as he brought his half of the company to a perfect halt, had he seen her move, and then she had leaned sideways to talk to the Mareschale de Mourel who was her leman and acknowledged favorite, a gloved hand lifted to her shadowed face, as though to hide—a smile? A frown? It was impossible even to guess.

  “Eslingen.”

  He turned, recognizing the voice, hand going to his hat in automatic salute. “Captain.”

  Connat Bathias nodded in response and looked past his lieutenant to the last half-dozen troopers lined up at the paymasters’ table. A royal intendant stood with them to supervise the payout, conspicuous in her black-banded judicial robe, and there were three well-armed men— back-and-breast, short-barreled calivers, swords, and daggers—at her back, guarding access to the iron-bound chest that held the money. “How goes it?”

  “Almost done,” Eslingen answered. “No complaints so far.” Nor were there likely to be: Bathias’s company was made up mostly of experienced troopers, who knew what their pay should be, and the royal paymasters were generally honest, at least under the queen’s eye.

  “And the horses and the weapons?”

  Eslingen looked away again. “As agreed. The Horsemaster took the mounts in hand, and we let the people who wanted to buy back their weapons. Those who didn’t already own them, of course.” Which was well over half the troop, and those that didn’t had mostly paid the captain’s inflated price to keep their calivers: most of them would want to hire out again as soon as possible, and this late in the season most captains would want people with their own equipment. There was still plenty of fighting to be done, along the Chadroni Gap and north past the Meis River, and Dragons were always in demand, particularly for the nasty northern wars, but there was no time to outfit a man.

  Bathias nodded. The horses were part of his perquisites, to sell or keep as he chose, and Eslingen suspected he would sell most of them: with the troop disbanding, there was no point in keeping half a hundred animals, and there were other captains who would be willing to buy. Coindarel had persuaded Aimeri de Martreuil to add an extra company to his Auxiliary Horse, and to take most of the gentleman-officers, the commissioned officers; he would probably buy the horses, as well. “I’m willing to let you purchase your mounts, Eslingen. There’s no point in seeing you unhorsed.”

  Eslingen hesitated, tempted and rather flattered by the offer, but shook his head. He couldn’t afford to pay for stabling in the city for more than a month or two, and he had no way of knowing how long it would be before he found work he liked. “Thank you, sir, but I’ll have to pass.”

  Bathias nodded again, and looked uneasily toward the empty platform. He was a young man, the fourth child, Eslingen understood, of an impoverished Ile’nord noble, with two older sisters and a brother between him and whatever income the family estates provided: a commission and an introduction to the Prince-marshal de Coindarel would be the best his mother could do for him. Not that an introduction to Coindarel was the worst she could have done, Eslingen added, with an inward smile. Bathias was young, and very handsome in the golden Ile’nord fashion; his hair, long and naturally curling, glowed in the double light of sun and winter-sun like polished amber, and his skin had taken only delicate color from the spring campaign. Coindarel notoriously had an eye for a pretty young man, and was inclined to indulge himself in his officers. He picked his juniors, the sergeants and lieutenants who did the real work, with more care, but, all else being equal, a handsome man could go far in Coindarel’s service. Eslingen had earned his sergeancy the hard way, but his promotion to lieutenant, and the royal commission that came with it, had come by way of Coindarel’s roving eye.

  “Will you be going with Martreuil, Eslingen?” Bathias asked, and the older man shook himself back to the present.

  “No, sir. There are plenty of other companies still hiring, even this late in the season.” It was a sore point—Eslingen had lost any claim to gentility when he lost his commission, and Martreuil, it had been made very clear, was taking only Coindarel’s gentleman-officers—and he was relieved when Bathias merely grunted, his mind already clearly elsewhere. Probably on the palace, Eslingen thought. Bathias was of noble birth and could claim board and lodging from the queen on the strength of it, and he could do worse than to be seen at court, too.

  “I’m sorry to hear it,” Bathias said. “You’re a good officer, and could do well in the royal service.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Eslingen kept his face still with an effort, waiting for the dismissal. The line at the paymaster’s table had dwindled to a single trooper, a skinny, huge-handed former stable boy whom Eslingen had signed on at an inn outside Labadol because he’d needed someone who could handle the major-sergeant’s bad-tempered gelding. Then he, too, had accepted his pay and made his mark on the muster list, and turned away to join his fellows waiting at the edge of the Drill Ground. The ta
verns and inns where most of the recruiting officers did their work lay only a few steps away, along the Horse-Gate Road.

  “You’ve served me well,” Bathias said, and held out his hand. Eslingen took it, startled at this presumption of equality, and then Bathias had released him, and was reaching into his own wide sash. “And, Eslingen. I know you’re not a sergeant anymore, but I also know we didn’t serve out the season. Will you take this from me, as a token of my appreciation?” He held out a bag the size of a man’s hand. It was embroidered—not expensively, Eslingen thought, probably by one of the farm-girls we took on at Darnais—with Bathias’s arms and the regimental monogram.

  Eslingen took it, stiffly, and felt, through the linen and the coarse threads of the monogram, the square shape and weight of at least a pillar. That was more than he could afford to refuse, and he tucked the purse into his own sash. “Thank you, sir,” he said again, stiff-lipped, saluted, and turned away.

  The rest of the company’s sergeants were standing by the sundial that stood at the city end of the Drill Ground, and Anric Cossezen, the senior sergeant, lifted a hand to beckon him over. Eslingen came to join them, and Maggiele Reymers said, “You’ve come up in the world, Philip, if the captain deigned to give you his hand.”

  “He gave me drink-money, too,” Eslingen said, before any of the others could point it out, and Saman le Tamboer laughed.

  “Betwixt and between, Philip, neither fish nor fowl.”

  Eslingen shot the other man a look of dislike—le Tamboer had a sharp tongue on him, to match his sharp Silklands eyes—and Cossezen said, “Have you given a thought to Ganier’s offer? It’s decent money, and a good chance for plunder.”

  “If,” le Tamboer added, honey-sweet, “the lieutenant doesn’t mind serving with us peasants again.”

  Eslingen ignored him, said to Cossezen, “I’ve thought about it, yes, and I’ve wondered why a man with Ganier’s reputation is still hiring, so late in the year.”