Point of Dreams a-2

by Melissa Scott

  “Well, there would be,” Gasquine snapped, “de Raзan dead on my stage.”

  Rathe winced. That killed any real pretense he had that the body hadn’t been identified, but he went on as though she hadn’t spoken. “And, there being something odd about it, it’s my responsibility– given the place and the circumstances–and the masque itself–to make very sure what happened before I turn the place back to you. For this or The Drowned Island.”

  “You don’t mean it.” Gasquine’s voice had lost its theatrical ring.

  “Can and do,” Rathe answered. “If we’re not done, The Drowned Islandwon’t play. Besides…” He paused. “You won’t like this, either, Mathiee, but I’d say, if the death’s not natural, the chamberlains may want to bring in a magist, perform, I don’t know, some cleansing, to make sure it doesn’t affect the masque.”

  “Oh, gods, they might,” Gasquine said. “They would. Sweet Oriane, preserve me from the chamberlains.” She took a breath. “All right. You’ve made your point, Nico, and I’ll stand it. Master Duca, will you set one of your people to redirect mine, and I’ll return to the Bells and roust out the rest of my people there.”

  “Thank you, mistress,” Rathe said, bowing, and Duca came forward, offering his hand to the actress as she descended from the stage. She turned back, looking up at Rathe, her heart‑shaped face set into an expression more regal than most queens’.

  “But I will hold you to your promise, Adjunct Point. I want my stage again.”

  “As soon as may be, mistress,” Rathe answered, and was grateful when she swept away.

  The reinforcements from Point of Dreams arrived within the hour, and Rathe set them to a thorough search of the theatre, hoping they would find what he knew had to be there. The carters from the deadhouse were only a few minutes behind them, arriving with cart and boards just as Duca’s men were turning away the first of the actors. The chorus would be along shortly, Rathe knew, and wondered how they would react to the news. Time enough for that after the body was dealt with, though, and he nodded to the strapping woman in a shabby blue coat who led the group.

  She nodded back, already unfastening its buttons, tossed it to one of the men behind her. “Can we take something for you, Adjunct Point?”

  He gestured to the body, and wondered if the actors were corrupting him. “I’d appreciate it if you’d confirm my suspicions.”

  The woman nodded briskly, rolling back her sleeves to reveal a stylized version of the Starsmith’s badge tattooed into her forearm. She knelt by the body, automatically folding her short skirts well out of the way, ran her hands over it once, feeling for any signs of life. She sat back, reaching into her jerkin for a pair of brass‑framed spectacles, and peered up at him over the top of the frame.

  “You suspect he’s dead?”

  Among other things. “Something like that,” he said aloud, and she nodded.

  “He’s dead. We’ll take him along to Fanier for you.”

  “Wait.” Rathe hesitated, then put aside his first question, not wanting to bias her with his own suspicions, said instead, “Can you tell if the body’s been moved?”

  Her eyebrows rose, but she turned back to the body willingly enough, hands moving over it again. This time, she tested limbs– loosening from the rigor, by the look of them, Rathe thought, and winced as she tugged the landseur’s shirt free to examine his torso. “All things are possible,” she said at last, “but by the look and feel of him, I’d say not. I’d say he dropped dead here.”

  And not a tub, barrel, or useful bucket anywhere in sight. Rathe glanced up at the overhanging wave, and saw the woman’s eyes following his, suddenly widening as she realized what she’d seen. Then she shook herself with an exclamation of disgust and waved to her fellows. “All right, you lot, bring him along. You’re welcome to ride with us, Adjunct Point.”

  That was not something he relished, a ride on the dead cart with apprentice alchemists and their very peculiar sense of right and wrong, but there was no help for it. “Thanks,” he said. “Sohier!”

  The pointswoman straightened from her examination of yet another trapdoor, and came to join him. “Sir?”

  “I want your report as soon as you can get it. You know what you’re looking for.”

  Sohier nodded, still pale, and Rathe sighed.

  “Pray Sofia you find it.”

  The deadhouse lay in University Point, set discreetly away from the main quadrangle and the towering dome of the library in a tangled neighborhood of chairmakers and leatherworkers and the occasional chemist. By rights, of course, Rathe thought, trying to ignore the story the junior apprentice was recounting about someone supposedly eaten by a giant fish, it should be in City Point, but that area was far too grand for the homely business of examining the dead. It was a long, low building, much like the petty manufactories surrounding it, except that its walls were stone rather than timber, and the glassed‑in windows glowed with mage‑light instead of the warmer lamplight. To his relief, the apprentices dropped him at the main door instead of bringing him in with the body, and he took a breath, bracing himself before pushing through into the narrow lobby. He had been to the deadhouse dozens of times, but he still couldn’t be easy about it, no matter how often he’d been there. The place was impeccably clean, floors and walls scrubbed, so scrupulously free of odors that it was almost impossible not to think about what wasn’t there. Even the sharp stink of daybane would have been preferable.

  A trio of apprentices were at work in the lobby, on their knees with pails and scrubbing brushes, but at his entrance one rose, rubbing her hands on her skirts, and came to greet him.

  “You’re the pointsman with the body?”

  There was no use in standing on rank at the deadhouse. Rathe nodded.

  “Fanier said I should bring you straight back.”

  She was no more than thirteen, Rathe thought, bemused, as he followed her down the long corridor that led to the workrooms, and wondered what her stars were like that she’d been brought into this profession. She paused at a cross‑corridor, consulting a slate tacked to the wall, then brought him to a closed door. She knocked, and it swung open to her touch.

  “Adjunct Point Rathe, master.”

  “Oh. Good.” Fanier turned, blinking a little, and Rathe tried not to look at the body that lay on the stone table behind him, an older apprentice busy stripping away the last of the clothing. “Go on, then, this isn’t for you yet.”

  Rathe blinked, but he’d been talking to the girl. She made a face, but turned away, closing the door a little too sharply behind her.

  “Nice to get them eager,” Fanier said, rubbing his hands together as though to warm them for the work ahead, “but it’s early days to call her in. So this one’s yours, eh? When did you transfer to Dreams?”

  He looked more than ever like a bear, Rathe thought, his already bulky body thickened by a heavy fisherman’s jersey and a leather apron, his thick grey hair springing loose and untidy around his broad face. Brass‑framed glasses, like the first apprentice’s, were perched awkwardly among the curls, as though he’d forgotten they were there. Beneath them, his expression was bearlike, too, and Rathe shook himself back to the question at hand. “I was advanced to senior adjunct there about a month ago.”

  “Liking it?” Fanier was still watching the apprentice straighten the body, and Rathe suppressed a shudder.

  “It’s interesting,” he said. That was easily the safest answer. “Things like this don’t happen much in Hopes.”

  “No. Straightforward place, Hopes,” Fanier said, without a trace of a smile. “So. Dead on the Tyrseia stage, eh? And a man of quality, by his linen.”

  Rathe nodded. “Which is likely to make trouble, once the family finds out, so the sooner you can determine for me what killed him, the better I’ll like it.”

  “Oh, yes,” Fanier said, almost vaguely, and nodded to the apprentice. “All right, lad, I’ll take him now.”

  Rathe looked away as the alche
mist moved toward the body, focusing his attention instead on the empty courtyard he could see beyond the low windows. It had always seemed perverse to him to have windows in these workrooms or, rather, to have them set so low, where anyone walking past could see the alchemists at work. And where any local children could dare each other to steal glances, he thought, but then remembered Fanier saying that was how they found about a third of their apprentices. He could hear the others moving behind him, Fanier mumbling something that was answered with a clang of metal against stone, and Rathe winced, concentrating on the stones patterning the court. At least today there weren’t any lurking children–no one in sight at all, not even the alchemists’ own apprentices, and the stones looked dark with rain. Sleet soon, probably, Rathe thought, squinting at the slate‑dark sky, and suppressed a shiver.

  “Well, the cause of death’s easy enough,” Fanier announced, and Rathe glanced warily over his shoulder. The apprentice was just covering the body with a clean sheet, a last few flickers of mage‑light dying from around it as he did so, and Rathe tried to hide his relief. “He drowned. Might have been unconscious before he went into the water, that’s usually the way of it if it’s murder. Hard to drown somebody otherwise, especially a man in as decent shape as this one.” He tipped his head to one side, considering. “Thing is, that usually means a whacking great blow, usually on the head, and there’s not a mark on him. Not in the water very long, either, just enough to die there. Does that help you?”

  “Not much,” Rathe said, and Fanier nodded.

  “Didn’t think so.”

  “Because so far, we haven’t found anything that could hold enough water to drown a man,” Rathe went on, and suppressed the memory of the looming waves, and the smaller ones lurking beneath the stage floor. “Could he have been moved? Drowned elsewhere, and his body left at the Tyrseia?”

  “Ursine said she didn’t think so,” the apprentice said, and colored deeply as both men looked at him.

  “Mmm.” Fanier ran his hand through his hair, dislodging his glasses, but caught them before they could fall. He polished them absently, turning back to stare at the body, and Rathe saw another flicker of movement, almost as though a breeze had touched the concealing sheet. The air was utterly still. “No. Ursine’s got a good eye for that, I must say. Died and left and found, all in the same place.”

  Rathe heard the distant note in his voice, as though he was listening to that same invisible wind, and Fanier shook himself. “Which is to say, the changes in the body have been steady and consistent since the moment of death. If he’d been moved, well, we’d feel it– you’d see it on him, most likely, how the blood pools.”

  “I take your word for it,” Rathe said, a little faintly–there were times when he hated dealing with the deadhouse–and Fanier went on as though he hadn’t spoken.

  “Which would seem to indicate murder, if you can’t find a bath to drown him in, but you’re still missing that whacking great blow. It could be poison, I suppose, to keep him quiet. But that’s going to take me a little longer to find out.”

  “We don’t have a lot of time, Fan,” Rathe answered. “The unofficial–highly unofficial–”

  “And I daresay accurate,” Fanier murmured.

  “–identification is that this is the landseur de Raзan. And once his family is informed, the odds are we lose any chance of discovering anything more from that body.”

  Fanier made a sympathetic noise. “I’ll do what I can, of course. And I sent for Istre, but I suspect he has a class.”

  “I gave it up as a bad bet.”

  Rathe turned, to see b’Estorr standing in the open door, the same apprentice who had escorted him from the door scowling at the magist.

  “Magist b’Estorr,” she said, with icy reproof, and Fanier nodded.

  “I can see that, and we still don’t need you. Run along.”

  The girl’s scowl deepened, but she closed the door gently enough behind her. b’Estorr wiped one hand over his mouth, and Rathe guessed he was hiding a smile.

  “Students finally got to you, then?” Fanier asked. “Only took you, what, three years to cancel a class during ghost‑tide?”

  “It wasn’t the students,” b’Estorr answered, and this time the smile was rueful. “It was the other masters. What have you found, Nico?”

  “A body in the Tyrseia,” Rathe answered, and was meanly pleased to see the other man’s eyes widen. “Drowned, and no obvious place to do it in, and Fanier says the body’s not been moved. Can you tell if there’s a ghost?”

  With a sigh, b’Estorr crossed to the shrouded body, gently lifted the drapery away. He stared at the dead man for a long moment, then lightly placed a hand over the man’s heart. His expression was calm, remote, eyes fixed on something the others couldn’t see, and then Rathe sensed a shift in the vague–presence–that he recognized as b’Estorr’s constant ghosts. Then b’Estorr’s hand closed and lifted, and the magist turned away from the body, one eyebrow rising.

  “Oh, yes. There’s a ghost. Thought something of himself, did he?”

  There was a strange note in b’Estorr’s voice, the whisper of the upcountry Chadroni vowels that years at the university and the Chadroni court had beaten out of him, and Rathe blinked. “Why do you say that?”

  b’Estorr shook himself. “I can’t blame him for not taking kindly to being murdered, but I do dislike that kind of arrogance.” He smiled wryly. “And that’s arrogance of my own, I know. So he drowned, Fanier? Drugged?”

  “If your lordship wouldn’t mind waiting,” Fanier said, and b’Estorr’s grin became more genuine.

  “Sorry.”

  Fanier nodded to the waiting apprentice, who had a tablet ready. “All right. There’s no evidence of gross violence done to the body, either before or after death. That leaves poisons and other subtle violence, which it’s now my duty to examine for.”

  The apprentice scribbled rapidly, charcoal moving across the sheet of rough paper, and Fanier glared at the body. “You know how much I hate trying to prove murder during the ghost‑tide,” he said. “And that’s what you’re after, Nico, isn’t it?”

  “I’d really rather it wasn’t,” Rathe answered. “But drowning on a bone‑dry stage isn’t likely to be accidental, is it?”

  “No, no, I’ll grant you that,” Fanier said. “But it’s going to take time.”

  “Fan–” Rathe stopped himself, tried again. “I’ll wait. I want to know for certain before I send to the family.”

  b’Estorr’s head lifted. “Do you mean we’re sitting on a body whose family hasn’t been notified yet?”

  “Istre,” Rathe began, and b’Estorr lifted both hands.

  “I think I’ll wait, too.”

  Fanier snorted, reaching beneath the table to clatter his tools together. “I thought you might.”

  “Do you know how many ordinances of the university are being broken by your acting without notifying the family?” b’Estorr demanded. Fanier ignored him, evidently taking the question as rhetorical, and the necromancer shook his head. “As a master of the university, it’s my duty to remain and make sure you don’t break any more–than you have to.”

  Fanier grinned at that, hands busy with something that was like but not quite an astrologer’s flat orrery, and Rathe sighed. “Thanks,” he said, and b’Estorr waved the word away, his face suddenly sober.

  “If you’re right, you’ll have enough to worry about.”

  And that was all too true, Rathe thought. He made a face, Watching out of the corner of his eye as Fanier stooped over the body, laying tiny brass figures over heart and lungs and viscera. The polished shapes seemed to catch the available light, concentrating it, and for a second, Rathe thought he saw the wet dark red shape of the man’s liver, floating ghostlike above his unbroken skin. He looked away then, swallowing hard, saw the landseur’s clothing discarded on a side table.

  “Think there’ll be a problem if I look through that?” he asked softly, and b’Estorr gl
anced at him, an expression almost of indulgence hovering on his face.

  “It shouldn’t bother them,” he said aloud, and Rathe moved to the table, grateful for the distraction.

  There wasn’t much to find, and he hadn’t expected much, but he went methodically through pockets and purse, laid out his meager findings beside the man’s stacked shoes. They were newly soled, Rathe saw, and a part of him winced, thinking of now‑unnecessary expense. But the man could afford it, he told himself, at least by the look of the rest of his goods. There was a posy in a gilt‑filigree holder, a simple spray of tiny bell‑shaped blossoms poised against a single dark green leaf, a lace‑edged handkerchief and a Silklands amber snuffbox, and a pair of bone dice. Rathe’s attention sharpened at that–gamblers created their own personal hazards, more often than not–but a second look made him put that notion aside. The dice were carved with the signs of the solar zodiac, a child’s toy, for idle fortune‑telling, not the tool of a serious gambler. There were no small coins in the flat purse, just a couple of square pillars, and, folded very small, a recent letter of credit for an amount that raised Rathe’s eyebrows. The man had not been kept on a short leash, that much was certain, but there was no way to tell if any or all of the draft had been used. There were no letters, threatening or demanding or even a scrawled invitation card, and the fashionable red‑bound tablets were empty, the wax stiff from disuse. Little enough evidence of a life, he thought, saddened in spite of himself, and turned away again. Nothing to help him, certainly.

  It was more than an hour before Fanier straightened at last, motioning for the apprentice to put away his tablets and recover the body, and b’Estorr met him with a faint smile. Fanier scowled.

  “All right. What is it?”

  b’Estorr looked down at his hands, but the movement didn’t quite hide the smugness of his smile. “I don’t think you’ll find it’s a traditional form of poison.”