Point of Hopes (27 page)

“
Whatever possessed her to settle
here, and not in University Point?” Eslingen wiped his face,
studying the sketchy job, and decided not to press his
luck.

“
You mean over by the Horsegate?
Too much competition there.” Adriana grinned again. “As you may
have noticed, Mother doesn’t like to share.”

Eslingen lifted an eyebrow at her, but decided not
to pursue the comment. He reached instead into his clothes chest
and pulled out his best shirt. He had managed to get it laundered,
but that had done the already thinning fabric little good; he could
see seams starting to give way at shoulder and cuff. There was
nothing he could do about it now, however, and he was not about to
make an appearance at the points station with an illegal lock in
his second-best. He stripped off the shirt he’d pulled on before,
pulled on the better one more carefully, wincing as he heard
stitches give somewhere. He decided to ignore it, and reached for
the thick slice of bread that Adriana had brought him. It smelled
of sugar and spices, the sort of heavy cakebread that was common in
the League. He finished it in three bites, grateful for the sharp,
sweet flavor of it, and shrugged himself into his best coat. It,
too, was looking more than a little the worse for wear—not
surprising, after a winter campaign and then most of a summer—but
he managed to make himself look more or less presentable. Adriana
nodded her approval, and collected the bowl and plate.

“
Better hurry, Mother’s
waiting.”

Eslingen made a face, but rewrapped the pistol in
the rag that had protected it, and tucked the unwieldy package
under his arm. “Let’s go.”

Devynck was waiting in the inn’s main room, the
caliver slung over her shoulder. The lock was conspicuously empty
of match, the barrel was sheathed in a canvas sleeve, and a badge
with the royal seal swung from it, but even so Eslingen blinked
trying to imagine the locals’ response to seeing Devynck stalking
the streets with that in hand.

She saw his look and scowled. “Well, I’m not going
to risk drawing the ball, am I? I’ll get Monteia to let me fire it
off instead.”

If she’ll let you, Eslingen added, but thought
better of saying it. It was safer, of course, and he couldn’t blame
Devynck for not wanting to fire it in her own back garden. He could
only begin to imagine the neighbors’ response to shots, or even a
single shot, coming from the Old Brown Dog.

“
Are you ready?” the innkeeper
demanded, and Eslingen shook himself back to reality.

“
Ready enough.” He held up the
wrapped pistol. “I suppose I bring this with me?”

“
Of course.” Devynck’s glare
softened for an instant. “You won’t lose it, Philip—and if you do,
I’ll stand the cost of its replacement.”

“
I appreciate that,” Eslingen
answered. It would be a poor second best, and they both knew it:
pistols were idiosyncratic; even the ones made by the best
gunsmiths had their peculiar habits, and it was never easy to
replace a lock that worked well. Still, under the circumstances and
given the cost of a pistol, it was a generous offer.

Devynck nodded. “Right then. Let’s go.” She shoved
open the main door, letting in the morning light and the faint
scent of hay and the butchers’ halls. The doorstep and the ground
beyond it glittered faintly, scattered with glass from the broken
windows. There were shards of lead as well, and Eslingen grimaced,
thinking of the cost. He followed Devynck out the door, and looked
back to see the half-emptied frames, the leads twisted out of true,
the glass strewn across the dirt of the yard. With the shutters
still barred behind them, they looked vaguely like eyes, and he was
reminded, suddenly and vividly, of a dead man he’d stumbled over at
the siege of Hirn. He had looked like a shopkeeper, the spectacles
shattered over his closed eyes. He shook the thought away, and
Loret appeared in the doorway with a broom, heading out to sweep up
the debris.

To his relief, the streets were relatively quiet,
and the few people who were out gave them a wide berth. They
reached the Point of Hopes station without remark, and Devynck
marched through the open gate without a backward glance. Eslingen
followed more slowly, unable to resist the chance to look around
him. He had never been inside a points station before—and had hoped
never to be, he added silently—but had to admit that it wasn’t
quite what he’d expected. The courtyard walls were as high and
solid as any city fort’s, the gatehouse and portcullis sturdy and
defensible, but the guard’s niches were drifted with dust and a few
stray wisps of straw. The stable looked as though it had been
unused for years; a thin girl, maybe thirteen or fourteen, sat on
the edge of the dry trough outside it, putting neat stitches in a
cap. She looked up at their approach, alert and curious, but didn’t
move. An apprentice? Eslingen wondered. Or a runner? She looked too
calm to be there on any business of her own.

Devynck pushed open the main door, and Eslingen
winced at the smell of cold cabbage and cheap scent that rushed out
past her. Despite the pair of windows, the shutters of both open
wide to let in as much light as possible, the room was dark, and
the candle on the duty pointsman’s desk was still lit. He looked up
at their entrance, eyes going wide, and quickly closed the
daybook.

“
Mistress Devynck?”

He had been one of the ones who’d searched the
tavern, Eslingen remembered, but couldn’t place the man’s name.

“
Where’s Monteia?” Devynck
said.

“
Not in yet, mistress—”

“
Then you’d better send for her,”
Devynck said, grimly, and one of the doors in the back wall
opened.

“
I’m here, if that helps, Aagte.”
Rathe stepped out into the main room, the bird’s-wing eyebrows
drawing down into sharper angles as he looked from Devynck and her
wrapped caliver to Eslingen. “I take it there’s been
trouble.”

Devynck nodded. “No offense, Nico, but Monteia needs
to hear it, too.”

“
None taken,” Rathe said, equably
enough, and stepped past them to the door. “Asheri! Run to the
chief point’s house, tell her she’s needed here. Tell her Aagte
Devynck’s come to us with a complaint.” He turned back into the
main room, a scarecrow silhouette in his shapeless coat. “Come on
into her workroom—but leave the artillery outside,
please.”

Devynck hesitated, but, grudgingly, set the caliver
into a corner. “It’s loaded,” she said. “No match, of course, but
one of the things I’ve come for is to fire it off.”

“
If things were bad enough to bring
out the guns,” Rathe said, “why didn’t you send to us last
night?”

“
They were here and gone before I
had the time,” Devynck answered. “And then there seemed no point in
one of my people risking the streets before daylight.”

Rathe’s eyebrows flicked up at that, but he said
nothing, just motioned for the others to precede him into the
narrow room. It, too, was dark, and Eslingen stumbled against
something, bruising his shin, before Rathe could open the shutters.
This window looked onto a garden of sorts, and laundry hung from a
line strung between the corner of the station and a straggling
tree. Eslingen felt his eyebrows rise at that, and realized that
Rathe was looking at him.

“
All the comforts of
home?”

Rathe shrugged, seemingly unembarrassed. “Has to get
done some time, and some of the people here can’t afford their own
laundresses. So Monteia makes sure one comes in once a week.”

Before Eslingen could answer, Devynck slammed her
palm down on the table, making the inkstand rattle. “Areton’s
balls, what do I have to do to get the points to protect my
interests? Or would the two of you rather sit here and gossip about
laundry?”

“
I thought you wanted to wait for
Monteia,” Rathe answered.

“
Which I do.” Devynck glared but
Rathe went on calmly. “And, to get to what business I can, what
were you doing with that gun of yours, Aagte?”

“
How could I know they would just
break my windows and run—”

Rathe shook his head. “It takes time to load one of
those, Aagte, I know that. If they just broke your windows and ran,
you wouldn’t’ve had time to load it. So what else did they do, and
why didn’t you send to us? Or were you expecting trouble, had it
ready just in case?”

Eslingen kept his expression steady with an effort.
He hadn’t expected the pointsman to know that much about guns,
enough to have caught Devynck in the weakest part of her story.
Most city folk didn’t, didn’t encounter them much in the course of
their lives, or if they did they knew the newer flintlocks, not
old-fashioned ones like Devynck’s matchlock. Flints didn’t take as
long to load—were generally less temperamental than a matchlock—but
he was surprised that Rathe, who didn’t seem to like soldiers much,
would have bothered to find that out. Or did the points still act
as militia? he wondered suddenly.

Devynck fixed Rathe with a glare, and the pointsman
returned the look blandly. “As it happened” she said after a
moment, “I’d loaded before bed just to be on the safe side. After
your lot searched us yesterday, pointsman, it seemed wise to expect
a certain amount of—awkwardness.”

Rathe nodded again, apparently appeased. “Yeah, I
heard about that. Huviet’s getting above herself, wants guild
office, or so I hear.”

“
Not through my misfortunes,”
Devynck retorted.

“
I agree. But, bond or no bond
Aagte, you shoot someone, and it’s manslaughter in the law’s
eyes.”

“
Or self-defense.”

“
If you can prove it,” Rathe said.
“And with the way tempers are these days, it wouldn’t be easy.” He
held up his hand, forestalling Devynck’s automatic outburst. “I’m
not begging fees, Aagte, or telling you not to protect your
property. But I wish you’d sent to us as soon as it happened,
that’s all. I’d’ve welcomed an excuse to put Paas Huviet in cells
for a night or two, think of it that way. I’m assuming he was the
ringleader?”

Devynck sighed. “I think so. I didn’t get a good
look at him, but I’d know the voice.”

Eslingen eyed Rathe with new respect. Not only was
what he said solid common sense, it had appeased Devynck—not the
easiest thing at the best of times, and this was hardly that.

Rathe looked at Eslingen. “Did you see him?”

The soldier shook his head. “I’m afraid not. I heard
the shouting, but I couldn’t swear to the voice.”

Devynck made a sour face. “No, you hardly could.”
She looked back at Rathe. “Does this mean you can’t do
anything?”

Before he could answer, the workroom door opened,
and Monteia said, “I hear there was trouble, Aagte?”

Eslingen edged back against the shelves where the
station’s books were kept, and the chief point eased past him, her
skirts brushing his legs, to settle herself behind the worktable.
Rathe moved gracefully out of her way, leaned against the wall by
the window.

“
Trouble enough,” Devynck answered,
and Monteia made a face.

“
Sit down, for the gods’ sake,
there’s a stool behind you. I’d hoped we’d nipped that in the
bud.”

“
I told you it wouldn’t help
matters,” Devynck said, not without relish, and dragged the tall
stool out from its corner. She perched on it, arms folded across
her breasts, and Monteia grimaced again.

“
Tell me about it.”

“
We had a very slow night last
night, not a single Chenedolliste from the neighborhood, and damn
few of the Leaguers,” Devynck answered. “And after we’d closed
up—and locked up, we’re not taking any chances these days—and were
all in bed, a band of the local youth comes by and smashes in my
front windows. It’s going to cost me more than a few seillings to
get them repaired, that’s for certain.”

“
What time was it that it
happened?” Monteia asked. Rathe, Eslingen saw, without surprise,
had pulled out a set of tablets and was scratching notes in the wax
plates.

Devynck shrugged. “The winter-sun was well down, and
I heard the clock strike four a while after. Sometime after three,
I think.”

“
And you didn’t send to
us.”

“
As I told Nico here, I didn’t want
to send my people into the streets, not when I was pretty sure they
were gone.” Devynck sighed. “They were drunken journeymen,
Tersennes. They weren’t going to do much more damage to my
property, or so I thought, after we’d scared them off, but that
sort’s more than capable of beating one of my waiters if they
caught him unaware. It may have been a mistake, I admit it, but
I’ve my people to think of, as well as the house.”

Monteia nodded. “I gather you didn’t recognize
anyone.”

“
I’m morally certain Paas Huviet
was the ringleader,” Devynck answered, “but, no, I can’t swear to
it.”

Monteia nodded again. She took Devynck through her
story in detail, calling on Eslingen now and then for
confirmation—a confirmation he was only able to provide in the
negative, much to his chagrin—and finally leaned back in her chair.
“I’m sorry it’s come to this, Aagte. I’d hoped we’d put a stop to
the rumors. I’ll send some of my people around to ask
questions—”

“
I’ll take charge of that, Chief,”
Rathe said, and there was a note in his voice that boded ill for
the local journeymen.

“
Good. And we’ll do what else we
can. I’ll make sure our watchmen take in the Knives Road
regularly.”