Point of Hopes (9 page)

He had traveled light, of necessity. It didn’t take
long to arrange the borrowed furniture to his satisfaction, and to
fold his spare clothes neatly into the bottom of the chest. The
locked case that held his pistol went beneath his clean shirts: in
the morning, he thought, I’ll buy a lock for the big chest, too.
There would be other errands to run, as well—find the nearest
bathhouse and barber, buy candles of his own, and herbs for the
chest, to keep the moths out, and find a laundress, too, and a
decent astrologer, I’ll probably have to go back to the university
for that—but he put those plans firmly aside for the moment, and
reached into the bottom of the right-hand saddlebag for the carved
tablets that were his portable altar. Like most rented rooms from
the League to Cazaril in the south, this one had a niche set into
the wall beside the door, and he walked over to examine it. It was
typical, except for the lack of dust—Devynck was clearly a
ferocious housekeeper—just a space for an image or two and a
shallow depression to hold the hearth fire, but it was certainly
more than adequate for him. He unfolded the hinged diptych, Areton,
painted ochre since Eslingen couldn’t afford gilt, dancing on the
right-hand panel, Phoebe as guardian of health in solar splendor on
the left. He should probably honor Seidos, too, he thought, not for
the first time—he had been born under Seidos’s signs, the Horse and
the Horsemaster—but Seidos was patron of the nobility, not of
common soldiers. Maybe I’ll ask the magist when I have my stars
read, he thought, but he hadn’t done it yet. He tilted his head to
one side, studying the altar. He would need to buy a candle for the
Hearthmistress, along with the ones for his own use, but those
would be easily enough found at any chandler’s shop. He added that
to his mental list, and stretched out on the bed, settling himself
for a nap before dinner.

The tower clock woke him at five, and again at half
past, and at six. He sighed then, swung himself off the bed, and
began to tidy himself for dinner. The sun was very low as he made
his way down the stairs into the garden, but he guessed it would be
another hour at least before it actually set. The air smelled of
the cooking food, rich with onions and garlic, and he realized
suddenly that he was hungry. Very hungry, he amended, and hoped
Devynck’s portions were generous.

The main room was only moderately crowded, and he
guessed that Devynck made most of her profit from her beer. He
found an empty table beside one of the streetside windows, and
lifted a hand to signal the nearest waiter. The man nodded back,
but took his patron’s orders before coming over to Eslingen’s
table.

“
You’re the new lodger—Eslingen,
isn’t it? I’m Loret.”

“
That’s right.” Eslingen eyed him
curiously, recognizing a wrestler’s or blacksmith’s breadth of
shoulder beneath the loose smock, and wondered if Devynck often had
trouble here.

“
Then you get the ordinary. Do you
want beer with that? It’s a demming extra for a
pitcher.”

“
That’s fine.”

Loret nodded, and Eslingen watched him walk away,
dodging tables on his way to the kitchen hatch. Loret had the look
of country boys who enlisted out of ignorance and deserted after
their first battle, good boys with all the wrong stars, more often
than not—which was hardly fair, he told himself, considering that
Loret was probably born and bred in Astreiant And big men weren’t
all gentle; he’d learned that the hard way, years ago.

It wasn’t long before Loret returned with the tray
of food and the sweating pitcher of beer. He set them neatly down,
and waited until Eslingen had paid for the beer before answering
the next customer’s shout. Eslingen made a face at the caution, but
had to admit it was probably justified. Devynck’s clientele would
be no better than the average. The food was good—a thick stew,
Leaguer style, with a decent serving of beef to supplement the
starchy roots that made up the bulk of the dish, and half a loaf of
good wheat bread with a dish of soft cheese on the side—and the
beer was better. It had been a while since he had eaten Leaguer
food—Coindarel’s quartermasters had been mostly Chenedolliste, like
their men—and he took his time, savoring the rich meat broth.

“
Philip! Philip
Eslingen!”

The voice was unexpectedly familiar, and Eslingen
looked up, startled to see Dausset Cijntien waving at him from the
center of the room. Eslingen waved back, wondering what the other
was doing in Astreiant—the last he had heard Cijntien had signed on
with a long-distance trader, leading a caravan guard on the
six-month overland journey to the Silklands. But then, that had
been almost six months ago, he realized and in any case, Cijntien
was obviously back, and equally obviously looking for work.
Midsummer was the hiring season for the long-distance traders, and
the sea captains, for that matter; there was rarely any shortage of
work for experienced soldiers.

Cijntien collected his refilled pitcher, reaching
over the heads of the people at the nearest table, and then
threaded his way through the crowd to Eslingen’s table. The room
had filled up since he’d arrived Eslingen saw, and glanced at the
wall stick. It was blind, the light no longer falling to cast its
shadows, but from the look of the sky outside the windows, it was
getting close to the first sundown.

“
It’s good to see you again,”
Cijntien said and settled himself on the stool opposite the other
man.

“
And you,” Eslingen answered, and
meant it. “You’re looking well.”

“
Thanks.” Cijntien took a long
swallow of his beer, and Eslingen smiled, watching him. They had
served together years before—more accurately, he had served under
Cijntien, had been a corporal and then a company sergeant under
Cijntien, and had stepped into Cijntien’s office of major sergeant
when the older man had left soldiering for the less dangerous life
of a trader’s man. Or at worst differently dangerous, Eslingen
amended. From the looks of Cijntien’s hands, flecked with the dark
specks of a recent powder burn, long-distance trading had its own
hazards.

“
I thought you were with Coindarel
these days,” Cijntien went on.

“
We were paid off,” Eslingen
answered. “This morning, in fact.”

“
Hard luck. Or maybe not so hard,
depending.” Cijntien leaned forward, planting both elbows on the
table. He was wearing a light jerkin over a plain shirt, and the
grey brown leather matched the faded brown of his hair. “Have you
another place lined up yet?”

Eslingen shook his head. “Not this season.” He
hesitated, but Cijntien was an old friend, and was probably one of
the few who’d appreciate his promotion. “I had my commission this
spring, you see. I’m not inclined to go back to mere sergeant so
quickly.”

Cijntien nodded in sympathy. “The stars have been
against you, my Philip. Have you tried a good astrologer?”

Eslingen laughed. “Have you ever met an astrologer
who could alter the stars once they’re risen? Give over,
Dausset.”

“
They can mitigate the worst
effects,” Cijntien answered, and Eslingen shook his head. Cijntien
was old-fashioned—he had been born in Guisen, the most conservative
of the northern cities, back when it was part of the League—and
undereducated; no one had ever been able to convince him that even
the greatest magists could work only with what the stars gave
them.

“
I’m planning to consult someone,”
Eslingen said. “Tomorrow or the next day. But, no, I don’t have a
place, and I wasn’t planning to look until the winter
season.”

“
As it happens,” Cijntien said, and
smiled. “As it happens, my Philip, I’ve a place for you, if you
want it.”

“
Oh?” In spite of himself, in spite
of knowing what it must be, Eslingen felt his heart quicken a
little. He was a fish out of water in Astreiant, and that was
frightening as well as a challenge; it wouldn’t be bad to have
familiar work, or to be serving with Cijntien again…. Then common
sense reasserted itself. He had no desire to serve six months to a
year in a trading company—of course a shipboard post would probably
be shorter, assuming Cijntien had moved from the caravans to the
more prestigious trading craft, though he himself had never sailed
on anything larger than a river barge, much less fought from
one.

“
My principal’s still hiring for
this winter’s caravan,” Cijntien said. “It’s a good trip, I’ve done
it five times now, up the Queen’s-road to Anver, cross the Marr at
Breissa and then over the land bridge into the
Silklands.”

“
I thought that was all desert,”
Eslingen said, but couldn’t suppress a surge of curiosity. He had
always liked travel—men were generally wanderers by their stars,
and he was no exception.

“
It is, mostly. But the rivers fill
in winter, and the nomads—they’re Haissa, there, mostly, and a lot
of Qaidin—come to the city-sites to trade.” Cijntien looked past
him, not seeing the tavern crowd. “It’s a sight to see, Philip. The
sites, they’re nothing, just the walls for houses, but then the
people come in, pitch their tents, and make a city. They’ve a
traders’ peace, too, at least in the cities, so the various clans
can do their business. We were early once, saw the Haissa setting
up at Saatara. It was like magists’ work, I’ve never seen anything
like it. We came in at first sundown, pitched our camp, and there
was nothing there, just mud brick walls and dirt. And then, just
before second sundown, we heard the Haissa arrive—they’d been held
up, their camp mother said, a storm or something—and the next thing
we knew the city’d sprouted roofs and doors. All oil-silk, mind
you, and those heavy carpets everywhere. When the light hit them,
at first sunup, gods, it was like you’d fallen into a jewelbox. And
there was nothing there before, nothing at all.”

Eslingen shivered, caught by the picture the older
man had conjured for him. He had met Silklanders before, of course,
had served with any number of them, but they were mostly
dark-skinned Maivi, from the center of the empire. He’d never met a
true Hasiri, from one of the tribes, though like all Leaguer
children he’d been raised on stories of the wild nomads who roamed
the roof of the world; it would be wonderful to see.

“
After that,” Cijntien went on, “we
take it by easy stages down the imperial roads to Tchalindor. My
principal’s factor is there. And then we come back by
sea.”

And that, Eslingen thought, was the rub. It would be
a glorious journey, certainly, but it would take the rest of the
year and well into the next spring to reach Tchalindor—the land
bridge was only passable in the winter, when the rivers were
full—and by the time he could get a ship back to Chenedolle or the
League, the best captains would have filled their companies for the
spring campaigns. Still, if the pay was good enough, he could
afford to wait for the winter season…. “What’s your principal
offering?”

“
Two pillars a lunar month, paid at
Tchalindor, plus bonuses. And of course food, mounts, and shot and
powder are his business—and weapons, too, if you don’t want to
bring your own.”

Which wasn’t enough, not even if he skimped—and
besides, Eslingen told himself firmly, he’d always been a soldier,
not some caravan guard. He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Dausset. I
can’t afford it.”

“
Can you afford to have your head
blown off, somewhere up in the Ile’nord? Or your throat slit some
dark night, more likely?”

Eslingen laughed. “But I’m good, Dausset. Besides,
if it’s in my stars, it’s in my stars. By all accounts, you can get
your throat cut just as neatly on the caravan roads.”

Cijntien shook his head the smile fading from his
lips. “I wish you’d come with me, Philip. This is not a good time
for Leaguers in Astreiant.”

“
What do you mean?” Eslingen
reached for the pitcher, found it empty, and lifted a hand to
signal the nearest waiter. The room had definitely filled while
they’d been talking, a mix of Leaguers, marked by their lighter
skin and hair and the wide hats they wore even in the tavern, and
soldiers and former soldiers, equally marked by their boots and the
various scars. But there was a small knot of people whom he
couldn’t identify immediately sitting close together at the tables
by the door, and another larger group—this one with the leather
aprons and pewter Toncarle badges of the Butcher’s Guild—at the big
table closest to the bar. Locals, all of them, and they didn’t look
particularly happy. The waiter—not Loret, this time—brought a
second pitcher, and Eslingen paid, waving away Cijntien’s
perfunctory and insincere offer of coin. “So what do you mean, this
is a bad time for Leaguers?”

“
Haven’t you heard?”

“
I got into the city two days ago,”
Eslingen answered. “Not even Astreiant proper, the camps out along
the Horse Road. And I wasn’t paid off until this morning. So
whatever it is, no, I haven’t heard.”

Cijntien leaned forward again, lowering his voice.
“There’s something very wrong in this city, Philip, let me tell you
that. And the Astreianters are being very quick to blame everybody
else before they’ll look in their own stars.”

Eslingen made a noncommittal noise.

“
Their children are disappearing,”
Cijntien said, leaning forward even further. “Lots of them, just
vanishing, no one knows where or why. They say—” He jerked his head
toward the doorway, the city beyond it. “—they say it’s Leaguers,
or maybe the caravaners and Silklanders, needing hands for the
road. But I say it’s a judgment on herself, for being childless.”
Eslingen caught his breath at that, barely kept himself from
looking over his shoulder. “Have a care, Dausset.”