Point of Hopes (18 page)

Jasanten looked up at their approach, narrowed eyes
flicking from Rathe to Eslingen and then back again, taking in the
royal monogram on the truncheon tucked into Rathe’s belt. He didn’t
move, and Eslingen said hastily, “Flor, this is Nicolas Rathe, he’s
a pointsman—sorry, adjunct point—at Point of Hopes. Flory
Jasanten.”

Jasanten nodded, still distant, and Eslingen wished
he’d kept his own mouth shut. It was too late for that, though, and
he contented himself with saying, “Rathe’s all right, Flor.” Out of
the corner of his eye, he saw Rathe give him a quick glance, though
whether it was startled or grateful he couldn’t be sure, and then
Jasanten grunted, and used his crutch to push a couple of stools
away from his table.

“
Sit down, then, why don’t
you.”

Rathe did as he was told, his expression cheerfully
neutral, but Eslingen wished suddenly that he knew what the other
was thinking behind that mask. “I heard you had a bit of trouble,
last night.”

Jasanten snorted, looked at Eslingen. “You, too,
Philip, I may want a witness of my own.”

“
And will you need one?” Rathe
murmured. His voice was still just as neutral, but Eslingen could
almost feel him snap to inward attention.

“
It’s all right, Flor,” he said
again, and settled himself on the second stool. I hope, he added
silently. But Aagte seems to trust him.

Jasanten nodded once, looked back at Rathe. “I saw
you talking to Aagte. If you talked to her, you know what happened,
and you know I’m not hiring children. So what do you want with
me?”

“
The same thing I wanted with
Eslingen—the same thing I want with anyone here,” Rathe answered.
“First, anything you might know about these kids—someone who might
be recruiting them, or claim to be recruiting, anything you’ve
heard.” He paused then, and Eslingen glanced sideways to see the
grey eyes narrowed slightly under the bird’s-wing brows, as though
the pointsman was searching for something in the distance. “The kid
who’s gone missing from the Knives Road—you’ll have heard about
that, that’s the case that’s got this neighborhood up in arms.
She’s twelve, got no family to speak of, just walked out of a good
apprenticeship—left everything she owned sitting in her chest, and
she was a girl who appreciated her things—and all I’ve got to go on
is a drunk journeyman who says he might’ve seen her going south
from the street, and a laundress who says she might’ve seen her,
too, but going north. Now, you know as well as I do what this could
mean, some madman killing or hurting for the sake of it, though so
far we haven’t found bodies, and no necromancer has reported a new
ghost.”

“
They can bind ghosts,” Jasanten
said, almost in spite of himself, and Rathe nodded.

“
So they can. It’s not easy, or so
I’m told. I’m not a scholar, but it can be done.”

“
A madman might have the strength
for it,” Eslingen said. “They’re stronger physically than they
ought to be, maybe it works the same for a magist.”

Rathe looked at him, the thin brows drawing down.
“Now there’s a happy thought.”

Eslingen shrugged, and Jasanten said, “That’s right,
you were with Coindarel three years ago.”

Eslingen sighed—it was a subject he preferred not to
think about—but nodded. Rathe cocked his head to one side in silent
question, and Eslingen sighed again. “There was a man, a new
recruit, out of Dhenin—he was a butcher by his original trade, in
point of fact—he raped a woman and murdered her. It was pretty
clear who it was, and the prince-marshal hanged him, Rathe, so you
needn’t look sideways at everyone who was paid off from the
Dragons, either. But it took seven men to hold him, when they came
to arrest him. And he was mad, that one.”

“
I remember the broadsheets,” Rathe
said. “It was a nine-days’ wonder.” He sighed, then. “And I hope to
Demis you’re wrong about madmen being magistically stronger, but
I’ll check that out. It’s a nasty thought.”

Jasanten nodded, leaning forward to plant both
elbows on the table. “You’ll find it’s someone like that. It has to
be. No one else would have cause. Areton’s beard, I’m recruiting
for Filipon’s Pioneers, and they’ve had two years of hard luck now,
but I can still find grown men, even experienced men, who need a
place.”

“
The business,” Rathe said, with a
straight face, “just hasn’t been the same since the League War
ended.”

“
No more it has,” Jasanten agreed,
and then shot the younger man a wary look.

Rathe kept his expression sober, however, and said,
“Eslingen here tells me you don’t want kids because they’re too
small to handle the weapons and they don’t have skills you want.
What about kids who knew how to handle horses, would you want
them?”

“
Ah.” Jasanten smiled. “Now that’s
another matter, I admit. If you’ve got kids missing from stables,
Rathe, yeah, I’d look to the recruiters. A boy with the right stars
and the knack for it, or a girl, for that matter, there are girls
enough born under Seidos’s signs, they could find a place if they
wanted it. Or with the caravans, for that matter.”

Rathe glanced again at Eslingen, and the dark-haired
man nodded, reluctantly.

“
A kid would come cheaper than a
trooper, and you always need people to tend to the horses. But a
butcher’s brat wouldn’t be my first choice.”

“
No,” Rathe agreed. He drained the
last of his tea, and stood up, stretching in the fall of sunlight.
“Thanks for your help, Jasanten, Eslingen—and Eslingen, remember.
If you have any trouble, anything you can’t handle, that is, send
to Point of Hopes.”

“
I’ll do that,” Eslingen answered,
impressed in spite of himself, and the pointsman nodded and turned
away. Eslingen watched him go, and Jasanten shook his
head.

“
I don’t hold with that,” he said
and Eslingen looked back at him.

“
Don’t hold with what?”

“
Pointsmen.” Jasanten shook his
head again. “It’s not right, common folk like him having to tend
the law. That’s the seigneury’s job, they were born to protect
us—and you mark my words, Philip, this business won’t be settled
until the Metropolitan gets off her ass and does something about
it.”

Eslingen shrugged. He himself would rather trust a
common man than some noble who had no idea of what ordinary folk
might have to do to live, but he knew there were plenty of people
who agreed with Jasanten—and it was, he had to admit, generally
harder to buy a noble. “Maybe,” he said aloud and stood slowly. “I
have to go, Flor.”

Jasanten looked up at him, an odd smile on his lips,
but he said only, “You don’t want to waste a free breakfast.”

“
No,” Eslingen agreed and decided
not to ask any questions. Good luck to you, Rathe, he thought, and
went back to his table and the bread and cheese and the cooling pot
of tea.

He finished his breakfast quickly enough, and
returned to his room to shave, and to change shirts. He had errands
to run, and he was not about to risk one of his two good shirts on
the expedition—and besides, he added silently, he might have the
good fortune to find a laundress who’d be willing to take his
business. He tucked it back with the others in his chest, and
shrugged himself into an older, coarser shirt, well aware that the
unbleached fabric was less than flattering to his complexion. But
that was hardly the point, he reminded himself, and slipped into
the lightest of his coats. He should also probably find himself an
astrologer as well, see what guidance she or he could provide—the
broadsheets did well enough for entertainment, and for general
trends, but these days, with the climate of the city less than
favorable toward Leaguers, it might be wise to see what the stars
held for him personally.

He went back down the stairs and through the main
room, where Jasanten was drowsing over the remains of his
breakfast, and ducked through the hall behind the bar. There was no
sign of Devynck herself, but Adriana looked up as he peered around
the kitchen door.

“
Do you want me this morning?” he
asked, and heard the girl who helped with the cooking giggle
softly.

Adriana’s smile widened, but she shook her head, and
tumbled a bowl of chopped vegetables into a waiting pot. “Mother
will want you back at opening, but there’s no reason for you to
kick your heels around here all morning. Off to fetch more
broadsheets?”

Eslingen shrugged. “Probably. But I feel in need of
more—personal guidance. Where does one go to get a good reading
done?”

She moved away from the table, wiping her hands
clean on her coarse apron. “Depends on how flush you’re feeling,
now that you’re gainfully employed, lieutenant. There are the
temples, of course, but they’re expensive, and you might not want
to attract the Good Counsellor’s attention just now by visiting one
of his people.”

“
Not particularly,” Eslingen
answered. The Good Counsellor was one of the polite, propitiating
names for the Starsmith, god of death and the unseen, as well as
patron of astrologers, and no soldier wanted to draw his gaze, not
even in peace time.

“
You could go to the Three
Nations,” Adriana went on. “It’s what they’re there for, especially
this time of year.” Eslingen blinked, utterly confused, and she
smiled. “The university students—they call themselves the Three
Nations, every student claims allegiance to one of them,
Chenedolle, the North, or Overseas.”

“
It sounds to me as though they’re
leaving out a few people.”

“
Oh, the students lump Chadron and
the League in with the Ile’nord, though a lot of Leaguers call
themselves Chenedolliste,” Adriana answered. “And Overseas is the
Silklanders and anybody who doesn’t want to be bothered with
politics. It’s all political, really, a game for them and a royal
pain for the rest of us.” She shook her head. “Anyway, the
Three—the students have always had the right to cast horoscopes at
the fairs, both the little fair, which is what’s happening now, and
the great fair. It’s supposed to just be augmenting their stipend,
but they tend to charge what the market will bear.”

There was a distinct note of—something—in her voice,
Eslingen thought. Disapproval? Contempt? Neither was quite right.
“Aren’t they any good?” he asked, cautiously, and she made a
face.

“
It’s not that, they’re good, all
right—they’d better be, or the university would have a lot to
answer for. No, it’s just that…well, the fees are supposed to be a
supplement, but they tend to charge what they can get, which can be
quite a lot, and the students—well, they’re students. They think
well of themselves. Extremely well of themselves, in actual fact,
and not nearly so well of the rest of us.” She shrugged. “They’re
all right, they just get my back up—get everybody’s backs up,
really, but it’s mostly because they’re young and arrogant. If you
can afford it, and you want the cachet of the university, such as
it is, you can go to them.”

“
And otherwise?”

Adriana’s smile was wry. “Otherwise, of course,
there are the failed students who set themselves up casting charts
for the printers, they’re easy enough to find, or ex-temple
servants who claim they know what they’re doing, or—you get the
idea.” She stopped then, tilting her head to one side. “Talk’s been
of some new astrologers working the fair—not affiliated with either
the temples or the university, and the word is they’re a lot
cheaper than the Three Nations. Shame and all that, but a lot of
people are cheering the change. It’s nothing important, it’s just
nice to see the students taken down a peg or three. Loret had his
stars read by one of them, and he seemed to think they knew what
they were doing.”

“
But where did they train? They
must be connected with some temple,” Eslingen said. He’d never
heard of a freelance astrologer who was any good—but then, this was
Astreiant. Anything could happen here.

Adriana was shaking her head. “They don’t claim any
allegiance. They read the stars, they say, and the stars belong to
all gods and all women—and not just to the Three Nations. The
arbiters must have approved them, or they’d have been chased off.
So my advice to you, my Philip, is to save your money where you
can, and see if you can find one of these astrologers to read for
you.”

“
And how do I find one?” Eslingen
asked.

Adriana spread her hands, and the girl looked up
from the hearth.

“
They say they find you, if you
want them,”

“
Nonsense,” Adriana answered and
rolled her eyes at Eslingen.

“
Well, they do,” the girl said
sounding stubborn, and Eslingen said quickly, “How do I tell them
from the Three Nations?”

“
They’re older, for one thing, or
so I hear,” Adriana said. “I heard they dress like magists, but
without badges, so look for black robes, not grey, and no temple
marks.”

Eslingen nodded, intrigued in spite of himself. “I
think I’ll look for them, then. Thanks.”

It was a long walk from Devynck’s to the New
Fairground, almost the full length of the city, but Eslingen found
himself enjoying it, in spite of the heat and the crowds. Hundreds
of people jostled each other in the lanes between the brightly
painted booths, or clustered in the open temporary squares to
bargain over goods—spices, silks, wool cloth and yarn, dyestuffs,
once stacks and stacks of beaten-copper pots—spread apparently
piecemeal across the beaten dirt. It was already bigger than the
Esling fairs he had attended as a boy; what, he wondered, would the
real fair be like when it was fully open?