Point of Hopes p-1 Read online

  Reymers laughed. “That had crossed my mind, too.”

  “Ganier always hires his dragons last,” Cossezen said.

  Eslingen shook his head. “I’ve fought in the Payshault, Anric. I’ve no mind to do it again, not this year. I’ll see who else is hiring.”

  “No one,” le Tamboer said.

  “Then I’ll wait until someone is,” Eslingen answered.

  “How nice to have the money,” le Tamboer muttered.

  Eslingen ignored him, and Reymers said, “If you need lodging, Philip—”

  “I don’t have any place in mind,” Eslingen said.

  “There’s a tavern in Point of Hopes, south of the river. It’s called the Old Brown Dog, off the Knives’ Road.” Reymers cocked her head. “Do you know Astreiant at all?”

  “I can find it,” Eslingen answered. Or if I can’t, I can ask at the Temples when I change my money. “So I can get lodging there?”

  Reymers nodded. “A woman named Aagte Devynck runs it—she’s from Altheim, but she served Chenedolle as well as the League during the War. She’s always glad to house a fellow Leaguer, and the place is clean and cheap enough.”

  Eslingen grinned. “How’s the beer?” Chenedolle, and Astreiant in particular, were known for their wines; the measure of a League tavern was its beer.

  “Good enough,” Reymers answered. “She buys it from a Leaguer brewer—and he’s got enough custom that he hasn’t had to change his ways.”

  “Thanks, Mag,” Eslingen said. “I’ll look her up.”

  There was a little silence then, and Eslingen looked away. Parting was always awkward—you never knew who would die on campaign, or, worse, come home maimed or blinded—and there was always that moment of recognition, as quickly put aside. “Good luck with Ganier, then,” he said aloud, and turned away, lifting a hand to wave to the cluster of boys who had been hovering at the edges of the Drill Ground to see the soldiers mustered out. Half a dozen came running, and Eslingen pointed to the first two who looked big enough. “You, there, and you. A demming each if you’ll carry my gear to the Aretoneia.”

  The older of the boys scraped a hasty bow, and answered, “Yes, sir, to the Aretoneia.”

  The younger said, “May I carry your piece, please, sir?”

  “You may not,” Eslingen answered, striding to the last cart— almost emptied now—where his baggage was waiting. He tossed the bigger boy his heavy saddlebags, and the smaller locked case that held his pistols. The boy slung the bags over his shoulder and stood waiting, but Eslingen judged he had about as much as he could carry. He handed the smaller boy his cased swords, also locked, and the pouch that held his own supply of powder and lead, and slung his caliver across his shoulder. It felt odd to be without the engraved gorget of his rank, or the royal monograms on the caliver’s sling, and he ran his thumb across the darker spot where the split-silver disks had been removed. But there was no point in regrets, not yet; he lifted a hand to the other sergeants, still standing by the sundial, and started down the Horsegate Road, the two boys following at his heels.

  There were pointsmen on duty at the Horsegate itself, two men in the heavy leather jerkins that served them for rough-and-ready armor, crowned truncheons at their belts. At the sight of the little party, the older of the pair stepped into the gate, holding up his hand. “Hold it, soldier. Those are well outside the limits.” He pointed to the caliver, and then to the cased swords. “You’ll have to leave them, or pay a bond.”

  Eslingen sighed ostentatiously—he had been through this routine before, every time he came to Astreiant—and slipped his hand into his purse. “I’m taking them to the Temple for safekeeping, pointsman, surely that’s allowed.”

  “They’re still oversized,” the older man said. “And that means a bond. A horsehead a piece, that’s the law—that’s two seillings, Leaguer, our coin.”

  Eslingen bit back his first answer—there was no point in antagonizing the points on his first day in Astreiant—and pulled two of the silver coins from his purse. “Two seillings, pointsman. May I pass?”

  The pointsman stepped back, bowing too deeply, his plumed hat nearly brushing the ground. “Have a pleasant stay in our city.”

  Eslingen ignored him, and walked through the sudden cool of the gate, almost a tunnel in the thick wall, to emerge into the bright doubled sunlight and the bustle of the city’s center. He took the easiest route toward Temple Fair and the Aretoneia, down the broad expanse of the Horsegate Road to the Horsefair itself. No one sold horses there anymore, of course—Astreiant was too large, too prosperous, to buy and sell horses within its richest districts—but the law still kept the space open and beaten flat, the dust damped three times a day by water-carriers in city livery. At this hour, it was busy with the afternoon merchants, selling everything except food from vividly painted pushcarts. Eslingen sighed to himself, seeing the rolls and figures of lace laid out on the black carts clustered in front of the Laciers’ Hall, but turned resolutely away. It would be apprentices’ work—masters’ work was sold within the hall, free of the dust and dirt of the street—but it was still beyond his means to have lace at his cuffs and collar.

  He turned instead toward College Street, slowing his steps so that the boys could keep up with him in the press of people. The younger boy was breathing hard, but he and his fellow seemed to be managing their burdens well enough. Still, it was a relief to step into the shadow of the overhanging buildings of College Street, out of the cheerful bustle of the Horsefair. This was another of the old neighborhoods, not as rich as Riversedge or the Mercandry, but prosperous enough. The shop signs were freshly painted, some showing touches of gilt and silvering, and more than half displayed the snake-and-gargoyle design of the Merchants-Venturer above the doorframe, promising goods brought to Astreiant by the longdistance traders. He smelled Silklands spices as he passed one open door, and saw a woman emerge from a side door carrying a string of bright red peppers; at the next door, an apprentice sat in the sunlight outside the door, a tray of polished stones balanced on her lap. It was a nice display, Eslingen acknowledged silently—the stones were rivvens from Esling, gaudy enough to catch the eye, but not worth stealing—and touched his hat as he passed. The girl—young woman, he amended—looked up at him, a smile lightening her intent face, but then went back to her work.

  The Aretoneia lay on the western edge of Temple Fair, at the mouth of a street where most of the buildings still carried the wrought iron lanterns that meant they belonged to the university. Most of them were rented out, either to shopkeepers and craftsmen, but here and there the lanterns were still lit and once he saw a scholar in an ochre-banded gown leading a class in recitation. A toddler clung to her skirts, and she stooped, lifted it without missing a beat. Temple Fair was as busy as ever, travellers clustering around the Pantheon, the broadsheet sellers doing a brisk business at their tables under the awnings along the east side of the square, the book-printers and their apprentices trying to look aloof beyond them. Eslingen hesitated, tempted by the tables of broadsheets and the sample prophecies displayed on the sun-faded boards, but turned instead into the narrow door of the Aretoneia: business, after all, before pleasure. He nodded to the senior of the two soldiers on duty at the door—both older men, past the rigors of a campaign season but not too old to put up a decent defense, not that anyone would be stupid enough to attack the Aretoneia—and shouldered past them into the temple.

  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 tallyboard 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 Barthias’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 tallyboard, 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 selling 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 longdistance 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 tavernkeeper, 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 longdistance 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 unoiled 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.