Point of Hopes (14 page)

“
The surintendant wants to see you,
Rathe,” the duty-point said the moment the man stepped into the
station. “As soon as you returned the runner said. Of course, that
was over an hour ago.”

“
Yeah, well, some of us had work to
do,” Rathe muttered, but grinned. Barbe Jiemin at least had a sense
of humor, unlike some of their colleagues. “And if it was over an
hour ago, another few minutes won’t kill him. Is Monteia
in?”

“
Trouble?” Jiemin asked and Rathe
shrugged.

“
A—disturbance—over a runaway
apprentice that could easily have gotten someone killed.” Rathe ran
his hands through his hair, feeling the sweat damp beneath the
curls. It was still hot in the station, and the air smelled more
than ever of someone’s inexpert cooking. “Guildmaster set a
journeyman to bring the runaway home, and the good citizens along
Apothecary Row decided this was our child-thief.”

“
Not good Nico.” Jiemin looked down
at the daybook, trained reflex, checking the day’s events. “You
managed all right, though?”

“
This time.” Rathe shook his head
again. “Next time, I’m not so sure.”

Jiemin nodded soberly. Before she could say
anything, however, the door of Monteia’s office opened and the
chief point looked out. She had removed her coat and neckcloth and
loosened her shirt, but still looked hot and irritable, a few
strands of hair straggling across her forehead.

“
Didn’t the surintendant send for
you?”

Rathe suppressed a sigh. “I just got in. And I need
to talk to you. We nearly had a riot in the Apothecaries Row over a
runaway apprentice.”

Monteia grunted. “Can you say you’re surprised? Come
on in.”

Rathe followed her into the little room, sweltering
despite the wide-open window. There was little breeze in the back
garden at the best of times, and the river breeze never reached
this far into Point of Hopes.

“
So what’s this about a riot?”
Monteia asked.

Rathe told the story quickly, but wasn’t surprised
when Monteia grunted again. “Guildmaster should take better care of
her apprentices, if you ask me. Bah, it’s not good, any way you
look at it.”

“
No. And there’s more.”

“
There would be,” Monteia
muttered.

“
The butchers are blaming Devynck
for their missing children,” Rathe said, bluntly. “No cause for it,
I don’t think, but they’ve never liked having a League tavern on
their doorstep.” He ran through that story quickly, too, and
Monteia muttered something under her breath.

“
Chief?”

She shook her head. “Never mind. So, you think this
knife—what was his name, Eslingen?”

“
Philip Eslingen, yes.”

“
You think he was telling the truth
there, about what he said?”

Rathe nodded. “I do.” I rather liked him, he added,
silently, almost surprised by the thought, but said only, “He seems
to be sensible.”

“
He’d better be,” Monteia said. She
sighed. “Well, we expected this, didn’t we? Or should have done.
And you shouldn’t be keeping the surintendant waiting, though I
wish to all the gods he wouldn’t keep drawing off my best people
when they’re supposed to be on duty.” She reached under her skirts,
flipped a coin across the desktop. Rathe caught it, surprised, and
she went on, “Take a low-flyer. Doesn’t do to keep the sur waiting,
does it?”

Jiemin had anticipated the order, and the youngest
of the runners arrived with word that a cart was waiting as Rathe
stepped out into the main room. Rathe tossed the boy a
half-demming—not that he could spare it easily, but that was how
the runners earned their bread, taking tips from the pointsmen—and
went out to meet the driver. She was a woman, unusually, but as she
leaned down to take the destination, Rathe saw she had the
wide-set, staring eyes that often marked someone born when Seidos
was in his own signs of the Horse and Horsemaster. That made her
stars not merely masculine but ideal, and he stepped up onto the
iron bracket that served as a step with a slight feeling of relief.
The low-flyers didn’t have a wonderful reputation—half of the
drivers drank the winters away just to keep warm, and the other
half earned their charcoal-money in less than legal ways—and it was
somewhat comforting to think the driver had been born to her
position.

“
The Tour de la Cite, please,” he
said. The woman nodded straightening easily, and Rathe climbed into
the narrow cab behind her, wondering if it wouldn’t ultimately have
been faster to take a boat. She threaded her way through the
traffic that jammed the Hopes-point Bridge quite competently,
however, and then through the maze of the Old City, drawing up at
last in the cleared square in front of the Tour in no more time
than it would have taken him by the river ways. He climbed out,
handing over the spider Monteia had given him, and made his way
across the court to the main gate.

The Tour had been built five hundred years ago as
the gatehouse of the then-walled city, and no matter how much the
city’s regents and the various royal and metropolitanate officials
who had inhabited it over the intervening years had tried to change
it, the building still had the feeling of a fortress. Rathe’s heels
echoed on the stone floors, and even the red-coated judiciary
clerks seemed chastened by the heavy architecture. At least it was
cooler inside the massive walls, Rathe thought, as he made his way
through the narrow, badly lit halls, and at least the regents had
the sense to use mage-fire lamps instead of oil or candles. Or
maybe it was the judiciary: he didn’t have clear idea who paid for
what inside the Tour.

The surintendant’s rooms were at the midpoint of the
south tower and boasted two narrow windows overlooking the city
square. Rathe gave his name to one of the hovering clerks and
settled himself to wait. To his surprise, however, the
surintendant’s voice came almost at once from behind a half-open
door.

“
Ah, Rathe, good. Come in and sit
down.”

Rathe did as he was told, his eyes on the
surintendant. Rainart Fourie was a merchant’s son from the docks by
Point of Sighs, had begun by buying his place as an adjunct point,
but had risen to chief on his own merit, as even the most grudging
critics were forced to admit. His appointment was still something
of a novelty—until him, the surintendancy had generally been held
by gentry, the sons of landames and the like whom the queen owed
favors—and he was sometimes more aware of the politics of his
situation than Rathe felt was good for either him or his people. At
the moment, Fourie was dressed very correctly, the sober tailored
black of the judicial nobles, his haircut as close as a Sofian
renunciate’s. Though that, Rathe added silently, probably had less
to do with devotion or politics than with the fact that his mouse
brown hair was thinning rapidly, and the fashionable long wigs
would have looked ridiculous on his long, sharp-boned and
melancholy face. Fourie lifted an eyebrow, as though he’d guessed
the thought, and Rathe schooled himself for whatever was to
come.

“
Your former patronne sent for me
this morning,” Fourie said. “It seems one of her clerk’s
apprentices is missing, and she wants you to handle the
case.”

Rathe exhaled. One thing about Fourie, he reflected
he always was direct. “You mean Maseigne de Foucquet?”

“
Do you have another
patronne?”

Rathe shook his head. He had begun his working life
as a runner for the court, before he’d been a pointsman; Naudin de
Foucquet had been a young intendant then, and as a judge she’d
taken a benevolent interest in his career. It never hurt to have
well-placed connections, but he had not been entirely sorry when
Foucquet had been assigned to the courts at Point of Hearts.
Friends in the judiciary could be a liability, as well as an asset,
in his line of work. “That would be Point of Hearts’ business,
surely,”

“
She asked for you specifically,”
Fourie said.

Rathe sighed acknowledging the ties of patronage and
obligation, wondering, too, why Fourie, who usually defended his
people’s autonomy, seemed willing to countenance this interference.
“So who is—he, she? How old, what’s the family?”

“
He’s thirteen, and his name is
Albe Cytel. His mother is assizes clerk at Point of
Hearts.”

So it really isn’t my business at all, Rathe
thought. He said, “When did he go missing?”

“
Yesterday afternoon, according to
Foucquet, and I would imagine her people keep a keen eye on their
apprentices,” Fourie answered.

Rathe nodded.

“
He had the morning off, it was his
regular half-day, which he was supposed to use in studying. When he
didn’t show up for the afternoon session, they sent a senior clerk
around to his room. He wasn’t there, but nothing of his was
missing, either.” Fourie looked up from his notes, and gave a thin
smile. “Under the circumstances, they felt it was a points
matter.”

Rathe nodded again. “It sounds like half a dozen
cases I know of, two I’m handling personally. Does maseigne know
how many cases there are like that in the city right now?”

“
I imagine she does,” Fourie
answered. “I dare say that’s why she wants you. It makes no
difference, Rathe. The judge-advocate wants you handling this case,
and so do I. Can you tell me honestly you don’t want
it?”

Rathe made a face. He owed Foucquet for patronage
that had been very useful when he was starting out; more than that,
he liked and respected her, and beyond that still, any missing
child had claim on him. “No, sir, it’s not that, of course it
isn’t. It’s just….” He paused and ran a hand through his hair,
wondering just how far he could go. “Gods know, yes, I owe maseigne
in any case, and at least she’s not asking me to drop any
southriver cases for some clerk’s apprentice—” He had gone too far
there, he realized abruptly, and stopped, shaking his head. “Sorry,
sir. It’s been a bastard of a day.”

Fourie inclined his head in austere acceptance of
the apology, but said nothing. Rathe watched him warily, not quite
daring to ask the question in his mind, and Fourie leaned back in
his chair, steepling his fingers. “What’s your theory on it all,
Rathe?”

“
I haven’t got one,” Rathe
answered. As you well know. None of us have any theories, or at
least nothing solid, from the newest runner to the dozen chief
points. “With respect, sir, why are you taking this case out of
Point of Hearts? I’m not unwilling, but they’re not going to like
it, and I can’t say I blame them.”

Fourie ignored the question. “What about
politics?”

“
Politics?” Rathe repeated, and
shook his head. “I don’t see it. I mean, I know this is a tricky
time, with the star-change and all, but—what do these children have
to do with that? They’re not well enough born for blackmail—they
don’t have anything in common, as far as I can see.”

“
I know,” Fourie said. “I’m
not—fully—sure myself. Maybe nothing. But there are factions
seeking to influence Her Majesty’s choice of a successor. Too many
things are happening at once for it all to be a coincidence,
Rathe.” He leaned forward, as though he had reached a decision. “I
want you to check out Caiazzo’s involvement.”

“
Caiazzo?” Rathe leaned back in his
chair. Hanselin Caiazzo was—officially, at least—a long-distance
trader, an up-and-coming merchant-venturer who had almost escaped
the taint of his southriver origins. He was also, and less
officially, the paymaster for or master of a good dozen illegal
businesses both south and north of the Sier, with interest that
ranged from the Court of the Thirty-Two Knives to Point of Graves
to the Exemption Docks. No one had yet proved a point on him, and
not for want of effort. Customs Point was doing very well from his
fees, or so the rumor had it. “I don’t see it….”

“
Caiazzo has a good many business
interests in the north,” Fourie said. “Especially in the
Ile’nord.”

“
That’s not illegal.”

“
Not in and of themselves, no,”
Fourie agreed. “But when one of the likeliest choices for the
succession is Palatine Marselion, for whom Caiazzo has acted on
more than one occasion….” He let his voice trail off, suggestively,
and Rathe shook his head.

“
I don’t see a connection with the
missing children, sir.”

“
Caiazzo’s been known to bankroll
unlicensed printers,” Fourie said. “Well known for it, in fact,
even if we’ve never proved the point. And astrologers. If Marselion
is up to something, what better way to distract the city, and by
distracting the city, the queen’s government? If that’s the plan,
you have to admit, it’s working. What have all the broadsheets been
talking of for the past week? The nobility? The succession?
Politics or ordinary predictions at all? No—it’s these missing
children.”

It’s very thin.
Rathe bit back the instinctive response, said, more carefully,
“Look, politics just isn’t a game Caiazzo’s interested in playing,
he never has been. Frankly, sir, the return just isn’t good
enough.”

“
Backing the next Queen of
Chenedolle is bound to have a sizeable return, Rathe, whether it be
in immediate wealth or favor and influence.”

“
Sir, is this really about the
children, or is this just a chance to get Caiazzo?”

The surintendant gave another thin
smile. “
 
‘Just’ a
chance to get Caiazzo, Rathe? The man’s behind at least half the
illegal activities in Astreiant. We—you personally—have been after
him for, what, three, five years now? If we can get him on treason
and trafficking in children, he won’t get free of it.”