Point of Hopes (47 page)

The woman touched her badge. “I’m free enough at the
moment. Gui Vauquelin.”

“
Nicolas Rathe. I’m the Adjunct
Point at Point of Hopes.”

“
You’re a ways from home,”
Vauquelin observed, but her tone was neutral.

“
I know.” Rathe took a breath.
“These astrologers, the new ones—what do you know about
them?”

“
Aside from the fact that they’re a
pain in the ass?” Vauquelin sighed. “Which I shouldn’t say, but
they’ve been more headache than they’re worth. Don’t tell me the
points are interested.”

“
Maybe,” Rathe said again, and her
gaze sharpened.

“
The children?”

“
We don’t know. There may be a
connection.” Quickly, Rathe outlined what he’d found, scrupulous to
point out that Claes, whose point this rightfully would be, didn’t
think there was anything they could do yet. When he’d finished,
Vauquelin shook her head.

“
We’ve had trouble with them from
the day they arrived. Oh—” She held up a hand. “That’s not fully
fair, either. We haven’t had any trouble from them, they seem
ordinary enough, except that they’re ostentatious about not owing
allegiance to any particular temple. We’ve had our juniors talk to
them, officially, and unofficially, we had one of our girls get her
stars done, and they seem sound enough. It’s basic, but not
outright wrong, so there’s no basis for complaint there. But the
Three Nations are up in arms—and I offer thanks daily that that’s
not literally true—because they’re taking the students’
business.”

“
Couldn’t you do anything on those
grounds?”

“
The student monopoly is customary,
not legal,” Vauquelin answered, and shrugged. “Besides, there are
plenty of people here—northriver, I mean—who’d like to see the
students taken down a few pegs. I’ve had a woman tell me to my face
that these new astrologers have to be better just because they
aren’t students.”

Rathe swore again under his breath. He had
forgotten, more precisely, he rarely encountered, the old rivalry
that pitted the students’ Three Nations against the ordinary folk
who had the misfortune to share their neighborhoods. It had been
almost five years since the last riots, and he’d hoped that
tensions had eased since.

Vauquelin smiled, ruefully. “Which makes it
difficult to question these people without seeming to favor the
students, and that I will not, cannot, do.”

“
But if they are involved—” Rathe
broke off, gesturing an apology.

“
We are watching them,” Vauquelin
said firmly. “And I know your people are doing the same. Yes, they
talk to children, but we’ve never seen a child fail to return from
talking to them. And it could be coincidence. Children are most at
risk, these days, no wonder they want to offer any guidance they
can.”

“
I suppose,” Rathe said. It was the
same thing the astrologers had told Claes’s people, and it was true
enough, but still, he wished he could share her detachment.
Vauquelin was Astree’s arbiter, had to be scrupulously balanced in
her judgment—but it was hard to be blamed oneself, and see a more
likely suspect embraced by at least the northriver
populace.

Vauquelin looked at him as though she’d read the
thought. “Don’t mistake me, Adjunct Point. If we see anything to
make us at all suspicious, we’ll let you and yours know.”

Rathe nodded, embarrassed that she’d read him so
accurately. “I know. And I appreciate it, really.” He turned away,
his stride lengthening as he headed across the fair toward
University Point.

b’Estorr was not at the university. Rathe stood for a
moment at the foot of the stairway, staring at the doorkeeper, then
shook himself hard. “When will he be back?” he asked, and the old
woman shrugged.

“
By first sunset, I expect,
pointsman.”

She started to close the upper half of her door, but
Rathe caught it, forced a smile. “Will you tell him—no, can I leave
a note?”

The old woman’s eyebrows rose, but after a moment’s
search she found a slate and half a broken chalk pencil. Rathe
scrawled a quick note, the crude point squeaking over the
stone—NEED TO TALK TO YOU, WILL BE BACK TONIGHT, NICO—and handed it
across. “It’s important that he get this,” he said, without much
hope, and the old woman sniffed, and shut the door without comment.
Rathe sighed, and headed back across the Hopes-point Bridge.

It was almost the end of his shift, but he stopped
by the station anyway, read over the daybook before he hung up
jerkin and truncheon and headed back to his lodgings. It lacked an
hour to the first sunset; the sensible thing to do, he told
himself, was to eat a decent dinner and put his thoughts in order
before he went back to the university.

He rented three rooms—almost half the floor—on the
second floor of what had once been a rich merchant’s or petty
noble’s house, and shared what had been the courtyard gardens with
the half a dozen other households that lived in the warren of
rooms. The gardens were, usually, a luxury at this time of year,
but now he winced as he passed his plot, straggling and unwatered,
and hoped that the goats that the weaver kept in the former stable
would eat the worst of the weeds before he was utterly disgraced.
The air in the stairwell was close, and he winced again as he
opened the door of his room. He had left the shutters closed and
latched; the air was hot and still, tasting of dust and something
gone rotten in the vegetable basket. He swore, loudly this time,
and flung open the shutters, then stirred the stove until he found
the last embers under the banked ash and lit a stick of incense. He
set that in the holder in the center of the Hearthmistress’s
circular altar, and then glared at the stove. No amount of banking
would keep those few embers going overnight, but he didn’t relish
the idea of building up the fire in this heat. Nor did he
particularly enjoy the thought of fumbling with flint and tinder
once he’d gotten back from the university, but that was his only
alternative. And I cannot, he decided, face a fire just now. He set
his tinderbox and a candle in a good, wide-saucered stand on the
table by the door, and then caught up the end of a loaf of bread
and went back down to the garden.

The well at its center was still good, still
supplied the entire structure with water, and he hauled up the
bucket, the cup attached to its handle clattering musically against
the wooden sides. He drank, then poured the rest of the bucket into
the standing trough, for the gods, and went back to where a stone
bench stood against the wall beside the base of the stairs. It was
still warm, but he could feel the first touch of the evening
breeze, and the winter-sun was almost directly overhead. He sighed
then began methodically to eat the bread, thinking about the
missing children. The Cordiere boy was, by all accounts, no
different from the rest, except in his profession. He’d disappeared
without warning, without a word, and his nativity contained nothing
immediately remarkable. Being born on the stroke of midnight was a
little unusual, but not completely out of the ordinary. He stopped
then, considering. Cordiere knew his stars to the minute, assuming
the town clocks in Dhenin were accurate—and town clocks were, the
city regents paid good money to be sure of it, just because people
took their nativities from them. That was why the clock-night had
been so bad, had shaken the city into something like good behavior
for the last week. And Herisse Robion knew hers to the quarter
hour, as did the missing brewers—as did every single child who’d
been reported missing to Point of Hopes. They all knew their birth
stars to the quarter hour or better.

Rathe sat up straight, his dinner forgotten. One or
two, and especially the children of guildfolk, he would have
expected that, but all of them? Most southriver women worked too
hard for birth to be much more than an interruption in the business
of existence; they noted the times as best they could but when you
had only the person helping with the birth—and her not a trained
midwife, more often than not, just a sister or a neighbor—small
wonder times were inexact. There were the exceptions, notable days
like the earthquake, and there were enough clocktowers so that with
care a woman could note the time, but still, for so many—for all of
them—to know their nativities so precisely…it had to mean
something, was too strange to be mere coincidence.

He looked again at the sky, guessing the time to
first sunset, and a voice said from the side gate, “Unbelievable.
First at Wicked’s, and now here? I don’t know if I can stand the
shock.”

Rathe smiled almost in spite of himself, and
Jhirassi closed the gate behind him, came across the beaten dirt to
join him.

“
I have some news for you—good
news,” Jhirassi added hastily. “I was going to tease you with it,
but I don’t think that would be playing fair. The clerk’s child you
asked me about, he’s with Savatier. Frightened witless when he
realized his mother thought he’d gone the way of the others, but
there. He’s not bad, for a boy. And Savatier thinks he could make
something of himself.” He sighed. “Just what we all need, more
competition.”

“
Keeps you young,” Rathe said,
automatically, a slight frown forming between his brows. There had
been something odd about Albe Cytel’s nativity—there wasn’t one, he
remembered suddenly. For some reason, premature labor, or just
ordinary carelessness. Cytel’s mother had not managed to note the
time of her son’s birth, and that was the child who was not truly
missing.

“
What’s wrong?” Jhirassi asked, and
Rathe shook his head.

“
Nothing, I don’t think. Gavi, I
want to talk to him—Albe. Can you take me to him?”

“
I just got home,” Jhirassi
protested, but sighed, seeing Rathe’s intent expression. “Oh, very
well. I don’t suppose you can afford to buy me dinner in
return?”

“
No.”

“
I didn’t think so,” Jhirassi said,
sadly. “All right, I’ll take you to Savatier. Maybe I’ll buy
dinner.”

Rathe followed him through the knotted streets where
Point of Hopes joined Point of Dreams, and then out into the
broader squares where the better theaters stood. Savatier’s was a
good house, fully roofed, but at the moment the front doors were
closed and locked. Jhirassi ignored that, and led the way to a side
door that gave onto a narrow hall. It ended in a tangle of ropes
that controlled the stage machinery, and Rathe followed gingerly as
Jhirassi wove his way through them. There was a narrow staircase
beyond that, and Jhirassi went up it, to tap on a red painted
door.

“
The counting-house,” he said,
succinctly, and the door opened. A stocky woman—Savatier, Rathe
assumed—stood looking out at them, barefoot, a sweating metal cup
in one hand.

“
Gavi? What can I do for
you?”

“
I’m sorry to bother you, but this
is Nicolas Rathe—he’s adjunct point at Point of Hopes, and a friend
of mine, too. He wants to talk to Albe.”

Savatier leaned heavily against the door frame.
“We’re not stealing children, Adjunct Point, the boy came here of
his own free will, theater-mad and not without talent.” Her eyes
narrowed. “And what business is it of Point of Hopes, anyway?”

“
You’re Dreams’ business,
Savatier,” Rathe agreed, “and I don’t think you’re stealing
children. But I do need to talk to the boy. He may have some
information.”

“
About these disappearances?”
Savatier asked.

“
Yes.”

She looked at him a moment longer, then sighed
deeply. “All right. Gavi, he’s down in the yard with the rest.” She
looked back at Rathe. “A new script we’re rehearsing, and it’s not
coming together. And if bes’Hallen can’t make it work…” She shook
her head as much at herself as at them. “Go on then,” she said and
closed the door firmly in their faces.

Rathe looked at Jhirassi, who smiled, and started
back down the stairs. “And if it’s the piece I think it is, it’s
not going to get any better. We passed on it.”

He led the way back through the backstage and then a
narrow door into a small courtyard. There were perhaps a dozen
actors there, women and men about evenly mixed, some leaning
against the high walls, a group of three huddled over a
tattered-looking sheaf of paper. There were a few apprentices as
well, and Rathe guessed that the youngest, a fair-haired
ruddy-skinned boy, was the missing Albe Cytel. As the door opened
one of the women detached herself from the group, and lifted a hand
to Jhirassi. She was a striking woman, hair worn loose under a
Silklander scarf, and Rathe recognized her as Anjesine bes’Hallen.
He had seen her several times before on stage, usually as tragic
queens, and he wondered if she would be able to make this
impossible play work. She looked determined enough for it,
anyway.

“
Gavi, joy, I thought you were
settled with Mattie,” she said and Jhirassi sighed.

“
Anj, this is Adjunct Point Nicolas
Rathe, from Point of Hopes. He’s also my downstairs neighbor, so
I’ll vouch for him. He’d like to talk to Albe.”

The boy moved closer to the actress, and bes’Hallen
put a hand on his shoulder. Rathe remembered the gesture from one
of last year’s successful plays, only, since the playwright had
been Chresta Aconin, better known as Aconite, he had to think the
original intent had been ironic.

“
His mother will just have to send
someone from Dreams if she wants him back,” bes’Hallen said. “We’re
not letting him go with just anyone, pointsman, not under the
circumstances—no offense, Gav, but you know what they’re saying
about the points.”