It was not a terribly long walk back to Sighs, just over the Hopes-Point Bridge and then east along the waterfront. This was Bonfortune’s Walk, wide and well swept, the cobbles ground down by the passage of four centuries of wagons. On the north side, the river side, a jumble of two- and three-story buildings were jammed between the broad passages that led onto the wharfs, bare masts jutting above the roof-tiles. Pennants hung at the head of some of the passages, bright strips of red and blue and gold, some more faded than others, but each with a house-mark; strands of smaller pennants hung above the doors of some of the lower buildings, marking them as factors’ halls, where the merchants resident could come to bid on cargos as they arrived. The rest of them were chandlers and small shops and bonded warehouses, the last conspicuous for their lack of windows and heavy ironbound doors. On the south side of the street, the buildings were taller by two stories, narrow, once elegant houses long ago converted into trading rooms and counting houses for the families who had long ago moved into better neighborhoods. Perhaps half still had shops or showrooms on their ground floors, but their shutters folded back to reveal leaded glass windows, and a well-dressed knife watched most of the doors. You were there to buy mostly by invitation, Rathe guessed.
Sebern saw where he was looking, and cleared her throat. “We do things differently here in Point of Sighs.”
And all of Astreiant knows it. Rathe kept the thought to himself, knowing he couldn’t afford to antagonize her any further. “I’ve no intention—it’s not my place to change anything.”
She stiffened, then consciously relaxed, rolling her shoulders. “No? The sur seems to have something in mind.”
“I’m sure he does, but he hasn’t shared it with me. He’s told me he wants Dammar’s attacker, and that’s all I know.”
“What about bes’Anthe? Edild told me you and Trijn were protecting the murderer.”
“I’d like to know who killed the man,” Rathe said carefully, “and I don’t think Mattaes Staenka did.”
“Everyone in the Bear and Bush heard them shouting at each other.” Sebern ticked the items off on her fingers. “But only a third of them think they saw the boy leave. bes’Anthe went out to the garden and never came back in; when someone finally wondered what had become of him, they found him dead in the bushes and called us right away, so we know there weren’t any other quarrels that night. When we were finally allowed to make the point, your own woman found a bloody shirt in his room.”
“The quarrel and the shirt are your best arguments. Though the shirt’s not his, we proved that by the laundry-marks.”
Sebern waved a hand in dismissal. ”It happens. Someone’s shirt or shift gets sorted into the wrong basket.”
“Richer houses keep close track of that,” Rathe said. “Because they can. And they’ve got extras to lose.” He waited, and Sebern gave a grudging nod. “Mostly, though—first, the boy’s no fighter. If he’d tried to take on bes’Anthe, he would have lost. Second, I can’t see bes’Anthe letting him walk up and stab him, not after they’d just been shouting at each other.”
Sebern made a face. “Maybe.”
“What I want is to call the point on the murderer,” Rathe said. “But I want proof.”
“Edild was sure it was the boy,” Sebern said.
“Show me the proof,” Rathe said, “and I’ll hand him over.”
They had reached the end of Bonfortune’s Walk, an open square with a central fountain. There were stables on the southern and eastern sides, and carters’ yards further on, and apprentices were coming and going with buckets on heavy yokes. The smell of horses was stronger here than the scent of the river’s mud. Sebern gave him a sidelong glance.
“You think you mean that.”
“I do mean it,” Rathe said wearily. There were any number of things he could have said—that he didn’t take fees precisely because he wanted to be free to act against whoever the facts showed was guilty, that he and Trijn had come to an understanding long ago, that she respected his choice even when she didn’t agree—but none of them would do any good. For most of Astreiant, a pointsman who didn’t take fees, who couldn’t be bought, also couldn’t be trusted.
Her eyebrows rose, but she had the grace not to ask further questions. “We’ll take the shortcut.”
She led him toward a short alley that ran between two of the stable blocks that seemed to end in another brick wall. Sebern started down anyway, and Rathe followed, wrinkling his nose at the smell of urine.
“I don’t imagine you use this much after dark.”
Sebern grinned. “There’s a lot of back alleys I wouldn’t venture in without at least one sun up. But, yeah, this is one of them. It’s convenient by daylight, though.”
As they got closer, he could see that the alley took a sharp right turn, and then a left, to emerge at the corner of the square where Point of Sighs’ station stood, squat and square to block access to the river. Supposedly a southern wall had been planned, with Sighs as its central gate, but like so many things southriver, the money had gone to other things, and the city had gone its own way around the square. Still, the massive entrance remained, big enough to drive a cart through. One of the half-doors was open, and even from across the square Rathe could see that the hall ran all the way through the building to a matching open door.
“Don’t you find that a bit…chancy?” he asked, and surprised another grin from Sebern.
“It’s had its tricky moments, but the doors and the bars are all ironbound. Once they’re closed, there’s not much short of cannon that can open them. Now, if we were Point of Knives….”
“The gods forbid any of them get their hands on artillery,” Rathe said. “Though—surely some of your sailors have cannon?”
“We try not to give them cause to use it on us,” Sebern said, the moment of humor vanishing. “Come on.”
The square was quiet, lined with respectable-looking shops and a pair of taverns that seemed to cater to the merchant classes. Rathe caught a glimpse of a girl reading to a double row of knitters, each with a half-finished stocking twitching on busy needles, and another narrow window showed a haphazard pile of thick Silklands tapestries and carpets: a good neighborhood, and prosperous, especially for the southern side of the river.
There were no steps to block the great doorway, though a slab of granite had been laid as a sill at some point, and the ceiling was a great arched vault like the inside of a barrel. Mage-lights clustered on the pillars and at the joints of the arches, and a pair of tables had been set facing each other, each one blocking a door that led deeper into the building. There was no fireplace, of course, and the air was chill; stoves had been set against the walls, low, hulking stone monstrosities, and there were benches and stools gathered haphazardly around them.
Both the duty points looked up sharply as Sebern entered, and the other points lounging by the stoves came to swift attention. Sebern eyed them without particular favor, and pointed to one of the younger men.
“Hirn. Go inside and fetch out anyone who’s not doing something actually important. I only want to say this once.”
“Yes, Adjunct Point,” the young man answered, and disappeared through the left-hand door. One of the women made an abortive movement toward the other one, and Sebern nodded irritably.
“Yeah, right, go on, might as well check.”
“What’s over there?” Rathe asked.
“Stores, mostly. The armory. Usually there’s nobody in there.”
A knot of points emerged from the left-hand door, most of them young and disheveled: the junior points poor enough to settle for garret rooms at the top of the tower. The woman reappeared in the right-hand doorway, shaking her head, and Sebern clapped her hands.
“All right, listen up! You’ll have heard that the chief’s been put to bed at the Maternité until she delivers, and I know you’ve all heard about the Senior Adjunct. While they’re both out of commission, the surintendant has sent us help from Point of Dreams. T
his is Nicolas Rathe, he’ll be acting as Senior Adjunct until further notice.”
There was a somewhat ambiguous murmur in answer, and the woman in the doorway said, “How’s Edild?”
From her age, Rathe guessed she was one of the senior points, who might have considered herself in line for promotion to adjunct if Sebern had stepped up. Sebern wagged her hand. “Not as out of it as he was, they tell me, but not fit to talk to anyone. There’s a physician sitting with him, we’re to be called if anything changes.”
The woman nodded, evidently satisfied, and Sebern said, “That’s Bellin, she’s the senior for the day watch.”
Rathe suppressed a groan, knowing what was coming, and let himself be taken round the room. It was impossible to match names to faces as quickly as Sebern moved, and he guessed she was doing it on purpose. She was not going to make this easy for him. He smiled anyway, and kept voice and expression deliberately mild until they’d finished, and the group had started to move away.
“A word, if you please.” The words were mild enough still, but he let his tone carry an edge. It stopped them in their tracks, and they turned back to look at him. “As Adjunct Point Sebern says, the surintendant has assigned me to Sighs until Chief Astarac and Adjunct Point Dammar are able to resume their duties. I’m here specifically to find out what happened to Dammar, not to involve myself more than is necessary in the station’s business. I’m also already involved with the murder of the tea captain, bes’Anthe, and I’ll say to you all what I’ve already said to Sebern. I want the murderer, nothing more, nothing less. I expect your cooperation in this.”
There was an answering mutter, less antagonistic than he’d feared, and he looked at Sebern. “I’ll need a workroom. It doesn’t have to be Dammar’s—I’d rather it wasn’t—but I need the space.”
“We can set you up.” She glanced around the room before pointing to a tall woman with spectacles. “Ormere! Rathe is taking the smaller break room. Get a table in there, and a decent kettle.” She looked back at Rathe. “In the meantime, I suppose you want to look at Edild’s books.”
“That would make a start,” Rathe said.
Dammar’s books were, to Rathe’s surprise, impeccably neat and seemingly carefully maintained. Sebern fetched the most recent volumes from the senior adjunct’s workroom, going back half a year, and Rathe paged slowly through them. The daily notes were bland and unhelpful, a bald record of fines collected, the occasional point called, visits and conversations with the local merchants, with nothing to tell a reader why Dammar made his decisions. Rathe pushed on anyway, pausing only when Ormere reported his workroom ready. It was on the upper floor, like all the others, and still showed signs of its hasty repurposing from a common space. But it had a table and a stove, and Ormere had already set a kettle to boil.
“I’ve brought tea as well—it’s our common stock, but I hope it will do until you can bring your own.”
“That’ll do fine,” Rathe said, glancing around again. The space was shallow but wide, a room sliced from the end of the tower, with shelves at each end and a narrow window as well as the usual mix of mage-lights and candles. There was an oil lamp, too, set on the table with a battered set of pens and a chipped inkwell: more things to bring from Dreams, he thought, and put that aside. “Are you Dammar’s second?”
Ormere shook her head. “Amanuensis—well, secretary, I suppose. The adjunct didn’t really have a second.”
“That’s unusual.” Rathe set the stack of Dammar’s record books on the table, and settled himself in the single chair. The room was pleasantly warm: the senior points were going to have one more thing to resent about his presence.
“He used to work with Gerrijs Neulle, but he was transferred to Customs Point.” Ormere shrugged. “He hasn’t worked with anybody steadily since.”
That was one way to leave your options open, Rathe thought. “Did he have you keep these books, then?”
“I made the fair copies.” Ormere glanced at the stove. “The water’s boiling. Shall I make a pot?”
That was more than he had expected, and Rathe gave her a wary glance. She looked faintly chagrined, however, as though she’d forgotten for a moment to whom she was speaking, and that was perversely reassuring. “Yes, please. Thank you. And if you have a minute, I’d like to ask a few questions.”
“I’m at your disposal.” She dragged a stool to the other side of the table, then poured out the tea as well. Rathe’s head lifted as he caught the first whiff of the steam.
“That’s…very nice.”
Ormere shrugged again. “The tea dealers club in to supply the station. We do a lot of work for them this time of year.”
Gifts like that were not uncommon in the trading districts, Rathe reminded himself. At Dreams it was always possible to get a ticket to any play no matter how popular. He took a sip, the liquid green and strong and spiced with the familiar pepper of pot-gold, and told himself he would enjoy it while he was here. Maybe it would ease tensions a little with the station.
“My first concern is with Dammar,” he said aloud. “I’m not seeing anything in the books recently that would provoke an attack like that. Any idea why someone would try to kill him?”
“The adjunct didn’t put down everything,” Ormere said. “None of the seniors do. The chief’s been ailing, even before this, and her daughter’s been ill the last five months. We were trying to spare her.”
And look how that’s worked out. Rathe controlled himself and said, “So what’s not in the books that might shed some light on this?”
Ormere spread her hands, nearly spilling her tea. “Not much, that’s the thing. We may be on the south bank of the river, but we don’t see much in the way of violence—”
That was such an unlikely statement that Rathe felt his eyebrows rise in spite of himself, and Ormere flushed.
“Well, except on the docks, of course. And most of them would rather deal with the pontoises anyway.”
“Can’t imagine,” Rathe said, in spite of himself, and her color deepened. She had the sense not to say anything more, and he sighed. “So if there were some sort of extortion happening on the docks, you’d expect the sailors to go to the pontoises about it?”
“Well, no. They should come to us, of course, it’s our district—and we do act on all the complaints we’re given. It’s just that the dockers and the sailors would rather deal with the pontoises than make a formal statement to us. The pontoises have a reputation for…informality.”
Better to let that go for now, Rathe told himself, though he was appalled by the attitude. If that was how most of the station approached the sailors’ problems, it was no wonder the extortion gang felt free to threaten even the ships’ owners. “So who’d want to kill Dammar?”
“That’s the rub,” Ormere said, pushing her spectacles back up on her nose. “We’ve all been wondering. Mostly he’s been dealing with theft—warehouse theft, some petty embezzlement. Nothing that would mean more than a fine or a woman losing her job, nothing to kill for. Except, of course, for bes’Anthe’s murder. He was certain the Staenka boy did it, too.”
“I’m keeping that in mind,” Rathe said. “But the Staenka family has gone straight to the law on this. They brought in my chief, they’ve enlisted one of the Guard, and they’ve posted a sizable bond. Why do all that, and then try to kill Dammar?”
Ormere paused, considering. “That’s a fair point,” she said, after a moment, and Rathe felt himself relax. At least she was willing to think about alternatives. “And of course if you’re right and the boy didn’t kill bes’Anthe, then the woman who did it might have tried for Edild—though, no, he’d be her best protection, since he was set on calling the point on the boy. Unless….”
She stopped, the color rising again, and Rathe said, “Unless he’d taken a fee, and decided later that the matter wasn’t fee’able after all.” That was the least offensive way he could think to put it, and Ormere nodded gratefully.
“Though I wouldn�
�t think—he took fees, Adjunct, but no more than most of us. Murder’s a different matter.”
Rathe nodded. This was not the time to press the question, though he was sure it would come later. “What else? You helped keep his books.”
“One fraud case that was bigger than usual,” Ormere said. “The merchant resident, a silk dealer, claimed her sister’s man had deliberately bought poor-quality silk so that the sister could take over the business. Family quarrels can be nasty.”
“True enough. So, what, the sister’s man attacked him?”
“Or hired someone to do it. Edild took a pretty fee on that one—from the dealer.”
Rathe reached for his tablets and made a note in the wax. “Worth checking. What else?”
“The pontoises.”
Rathe looked up at that, and Ormere met his eyes determinedly.
“I told you, there’s a long-standing argument about jurisdiction, and Edild took it somewhat personally. If he’d fought with one of their tillermen, and they went further than they meant.”
“And then plucked him out of the river when they could have left him to drown?” Rathe asked.
“Why not, if they didn’t know what their fellows had done? Or maybe it wasn’t the pontoises themselves, but some of the dockers who’d rather deal with them than us.”
That sounded considerably more plausible, and Rathe made another note. “I’ve heard a rumor that a group of dockers is asking more than the usual fee for unloading safely. Is there anything to it?”
Ormere shook her head, too quickly. “No one’s complained to us.”
Rathe thought that was probably the literal truth. He hoped Eslingen could get Young Steen to talk to him. “All right. If you can think of anyone else, any other case that might have provoked the attack—or if you know where he kept his daily notes?”
Ormere shook her head again. “I just copied what he gave me, I never saw anything else. I don’t think he kept notes, just wrote it down straightway.”
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