Point of Hopes (31 page)

“
Thank you for that,” Eslingen
said, not entirely sarcastically, and turned to face the two
pointsmen. “Lead on.”

It took the better part of the next two hours to lead
Nigaud and a handful of his journeymen through the Old Brown Dog.
Rathe was careful to stand aside and let them do most of the work,
intervening only when Devynck’s stores seemed threatened, and at
the end of it Nigaud faced him with visible embarrassment.

“
There’s no one here,” he said, at
last, and Rathe barely stopped himself from nodding.

“
No,” he said, instead, and kept
his tone and face impassive. “Will you say as much to your people,
Master Nigaud, you and Master Follet?”

“
We will,” Nigaud said shortly, and
Follet cleared his throat.

“
And how much of a difference does
this make in terms of a point?”

Rathe cocked his head to one side. “What do you
mean?”

Follet took a deep breath. “People of mine are
liable for riot, I can see that, just as that knife of Devynck’s is
liable for manslaughter. So where do we stand with that, Adjunct
Point?”

Rathe studied him for a long moment, torn between
anger and a grudging respect for the man. Follet’s journeymen—and
Nigaud’s and probably a few others’—could indeed be taken up for
provoking trouble and assault, especially after they’d all been
warned the day before; at least he was acknowledging it, even if he
was also angling for a fee. “Given the circumstances, Master
Follet—I’ve been working on the business of Mailet’s missing
apprentice myself, along with a dozen others, I know how frantic we
all are. Given the circumstances, I’m prepared to overlook the
formal point on your journeymen. Paas Huviet’s hurt, maybe dying,
that’s enough for me. However, we will require two things from you,
masters. First, I want you to post a bond for good behavior for the
ringleaders among the journeymen—you know who they are as well as I
do, and I’ll give you the names in the morning.” He held up his
hand to forestall the automatic protest. “This is a bond, not a
fee, you’ll get it back when they make their appearance at the fall
assizes as long as there’s no more trouble from them. I don’t want
fees from you, or from anyone right now. I want to be free to chase
these child-thieves where or whoever they are. Is that clear?”

He could hear himself on the verge of anger, was not
surprised to see Follet’s matching frown, but Nigaud lifted both
hands in surrender. “The guild will pay the bonds, Adjunct
Point.”

Follet nodded. “You said two things?”

“
That’s right.” Rathe did his best
to moderate his tone. “Devynck’s knife, Eslingen—I don’t expect you
to press the point. It was self-defense and defense of property,
and that’s where it will stand.”

Nigaud looked at Follet. “He was your
journeyman.”

Follet made a face, as though he’d bitten into
something sour. “And he was at fault, I admit it. All right. I
won’t press the point.”

“
Good.” Rathe sighed, suddenly
aware of how late it was, and in the same moment heard the tower
clock strike three. “Then let’s get your people home.”

He made it back to his own lodgings in time to
snatch a few hours’ sleep, but dragged himself out of bed as the
local clock sounded eight. Someone from the Butchers’ Guild would
be coming to pay the journeymen’s bond, and he wanted to be there
personally to oversee the process. Still, he was later than usual
as he entered the gate at Point of Hopes, and glanced around to see
if the guild’s representative had somehow gotten there ahead of
him. There was no sign of him or her, and he allowed himself a sigh
of relief.

“
We’re sent for,” Monteia
said.

Rathe paused in the station doorway, coat already
halfway off his shoulders. He looked at her, seeing the unexpected
tidiness of her clothes—her best skirt, unmistakably, and probably
her best bodice beneath the polished leather of her jerkin—and the
truncheon slung neatly at her waist. “The sur?” he asked, and
Monteia gave a grim smile.

“
The city.” She nodded to the table
where the duty recorder sat, trying very hard to pretend she wasn’t
all ears. A half sheet of good paper lay among the clutter of
slates and reused broadsheets, the city seal at its foot visible
from across the room.

Rathe’s eyebrows rose at that, and he shrugged
himself back into his coat, crossed to the table to pick up the
summons. It was from the Council of Regents, all right, signed by
the grande bourgeoise herself, and her seal lay just above the more
massive slab of wax that was the city’s.

“
The sur will be there, of course,”
Monteia went on, “but it’s for us—me, primarily. Madame Gausaron
dislikes disorder.”

Rathe nodded absently, skimming through the neat
lines of secretarial hand. “All right,” he said, “but I don’t know
what she thinks we should have done.”

“
Nor I.” Monteia studied him
thoughtfully. “Houssaye! I won’t have you, Nico, appearing before
the regents like that. It won’t help us any if you look
hungry.”

“
Chief Point—”

“
Ma’am?” That was Houssaye, the
station’s junior pointsman, coming in from the garden belting his
trousers. He finished that and reached for the buttons of his coat,
but Monteia shook her head at him.

“
Don’t bother. You’re loaning that
to Nico—we’ve business with the regents.”

Houssaye blinked, but slipped obediently out of the
coat. “Yes, Chief.”

“
I have clothes of my own,” Rathe
said.

“
And no time to fetch them,”
Monteia answered. “This is important, Nico.”

Rathe started to bridle, but she was right, of
course, it mattered how one looked, prosperous but sober,
particularly when one was dealing with the women of the Council of
Regents, but he had dressed for the work he expected, not for a
council visit. Not that his best clothes were anything out of the
ordinary—he was hard on clothes, and knew it, had learned to buy
good plain materials that stood the wear—but it stung to be dressed
like a child in someone else’s best. Still, Houssaye was his size
and build and coloring; as he pulled the light wool over his
shoulders, he had to admit that it wasn’t too far from something he
might have bought himself. He fastened the waist buttons—loose;
Houssaye had an inch or three on him there—and hastily rewound the
stock that fastened the neck of his shirt. “We’ve got people from
the Butchers’ Guild coming to post bond, and I wanted to be there,”
he muttered, a last protest, and reached for his jerkin and the
truncheon that hung beneath it.

“
Oh, you can still have that one,”
Monteia answered, and looked at Houssaye. “You’re in charge until
Salineis gets in or we get back—I told her she could sleep in,
after last night. The release order is in my office, get a fair
copy made and send it off to Point of Sighs as soon as you can. Use
the station seal. When the guildmasters show up, tell them they’ll
have to wait—and you can tell them why.”

“
Yes, Chief.”

“
What’s going to happen to
Eslingen?” Rathe said. “It wasn’t exactly fair, calling the point
on him, no matter how necessary it was.” He still felt obscurely
guilty for calling a point on the Leaguer, couldn’t quite work up
much indignation for Paas Huviet, even if he had been shot. His eye
fell on the daybook, and the most recent entry: Paas Huviet had
died close to first sunrise, according to the physician who’d
tended him. He considered it, but even the death didn’t make much
difference. Huviet had been a troublemaker, Eslingen had been doing
his job, and that, he hoped, would be an end to it.

“
It’s technically manslaughter,”
Monteia said, and jammed her hat onto her piled hair. Rathe looked
at her, and she sighed. “But I’ve ordered his release, you heard me
do it, and I won’t be pressing charges unless and until someone’s
stupid enough to force me to it. Does that meet with your approval,
Adjunct Point?”

Rathe nodded. “He did the best he could—better than
I’d’ve expected, frankly, it was a nasty situation. And it wasn’t
him who started it.”

“
I know,” Monteia said. “And you
know why you had to do it. Now, come on.” She swept through the
door without waiting for an answer.

Rathe followed, aware of the unfamiliar weight of
the coat’s skirts around his legs. They hampered his knife hand,
got in the way of his reach either for purse or tablets, but he had
to admit that the beer brown wool looked good against his skin, and
against the decent linen of his shirt. It might be nice to have a
coat like this, for best—he put the thought firmly aside. The coat
might look well enough now, but after a month of his wearing, it
would be as shapeless as any other he owned. Monteia had a nice eye
for clothes on a man—but then, she had a son just reaching
apprenticeship, and the vanities that went with it.

They crossed the Hopes-point Bridge, squinting in
the morning light that glinted from the river. The sun was still
low in the sky, the shadows long, the winter-sun not yet risen, and
there was dew on the grass as they crossed the gardens of the
Maternite. It would be hot later, Rathe thought, and made a face at
the irrelevance of the concern. The only heat he needed to worry
about would come from the council.

The regents met at All-Guilds at the heart of the
Mercandry. The massive building dominated the little square, four
stories high, new halls built against the walls of the original
until the walls rose like stairsteps to the point of the roof. The
oldstyle carvings above the arch of the main entrance showed Heira
presiding over a banquet of the various craft deities. Rathe
recognized Didonae and Hesion and a few of the deities invoked by
the lesser guilds, but there were a good half dozen he couldn’t
place at once. Which wasn’t that surprising, he added silently:
each craft was its own mystery, and had its own rites and special
patrons. No one could know them all, not even the university
specialists. Only Bonfortune was missing: the god of the
long-distance traders had no place in this gathering of Merchants
Resident.

One of the four doors was open, and Monteia led the
way into the sudden shadow. Inside, the hall was startlingly cool,
the heavy stones still holding a faint chill from the winter’s
cold. The people hurrying past—young women, mostly, the long blue
robes of guild affiliation thrown casually over brighter skirts and
bodices, clutching ledgers and tablets—barely seemed to notice
their existence, or no more than was necessary to avoid running
into them. Rathe made a face, but knew enough to keep his mouth
shut, and followed Monteia to the foot of the main staircase. There
was a guard there, a greying man in council livery and polished
back-and-breast, half-pike in hand: more symbolic than anything,
Rathe thought, but it wasn’t a symbol he much liked.

“
Chief Point Monteia, Point of
Hopes,” Monteia said. “And Adjunct Point Rathe.”

The soldier nodded gravely. “Down the hall to your
left, Chief Point. Madame Gausaron is waiting.”

Monteia nodded back, and turned away. Sunlight
striped the stones of the hall, falling through windows cut into
the wall above the roof of the building’s latest addition, and
Rathe was grateful for its intermittent warmth. Another young woman
in the blue guilds’-coat was waiting by a carved door; as they got
closer, he could see the council’s badge, a stylized version of
Heira’s Banquet, embroidered above her left breast. She bowed her
head slightly at their approach, and said, “Chief Point
Monteia?”

“
Yes.” Only the twitch of Monteia’s
lips betrayed any emotion at all. “And Adjunct Point Rathe. For the
grande bourgeoise.”

The woman nodded again, and swung the door open for
them. “Chief Point Monteia and Adjunct Point Rathe.”

The room was very bright, startlingly so after the
shadows of the entrance and the intermittent sunlight of the
hallway. Two of the four walls were fretted stone, a pattern of
flowers filled in with orbs of colored glass, so that they looked
out into the garden behind All-Guilds through another garden made
of light and shade. Rathe blinked, dazzled, and brought himself to
attention at Monteia’s side. He had never been this far into
All-Guilds—never been this close to any of the guild mistresses who
controlled the city’s day-to-day government—but he refused to show
his ignorance.

“
So. What the devil is going on
southriver, Surintendant, that your people can’t keep control of a
tavern fight?” The speaker was a tall woman in the expensive
respectable black of a merchant whose family had kept shop on the
Mercandry for a hundred years. There was fine lace at her collar
and cuffs, and on her cap, forming a incongruously delicate frame
for her long, heavy-fleshed face. She looked, Rathe thought, with
sudden, inward delight, rather like Monteia would, if the chief
point were fattened for a season or three.

“
Madame, the situation is hardly
normal,” the surintendant began, and Gausaron waved a hand that
glinted with gold leaf.

“
No, Surintendant, it’s all too
normal. The points do nothing—for what reason I don’t know, and
make no judgment, yet—until the situation is past bearing. And then
a man, an honest journeyman-butcher, is shot dead in the
street.”

“
This is not a question of fees—”
Monteia began, and the surintendant cut in hastily.

“
Madame, the people who attacked
the tavern were and are concerned for their missing children, but
they were still outside the law.”