Point of Dreams a-2

by Melissa Scott

  “I didn’t think he’d have the nerve to run.”

  “I’ll get the landlady,” Sohier said, and Eslingen flattened himself against the wall as she clattered back down the long stairs.

  “Do you think he’s gone to Aconin?” Eslingen asked, and Rathe tipped his head to one side, considering.

  “He said it was over between them, though Sofia knows if he was telling the truth. But, no, I don’t think so, mostly because I doubt Aconin’s neighbors would want a stranger bringing his troubles into the Court.” Rathe turned back to the door, pounding it with his closed fist. “If he’s not here, I don’t know where he’d go.”

  “Someone at the theatre will know,” Eslingen said. Privately, he wasn’t so sure–Forveijl had been solitary for an actor, seemed to keep very much to himself. “Or at whatever company he was with.”

  “Master Forveijl?” The voice came from the stairwell, a quavering voice, sexless with age, so that Eslingen had to look to see that it was an old man, remembered him as the landlady’s man. “Are you sure you don’t want next door?”

  “No,” Sohier answered, and from the sound of her voice, Eslingen guessed she’d answered the question before. “No, we don’t want Madame Armondit’s. Like I said, we need to get into Forveijl’s lodgings.”

  “But he’s an actor, not–” The old man broke off in confusion, and Rathe tilted his head again.

  “Not what?” His tone was genuinely curious, and the old man bobbed his head.

  “Not a criminal, or I never would have thought so, not him.”

  “We just want to talk to him,” Sohier said. “You said you could let us in.”

  “But isn’t he there?” The old man blinked at her, and Rathe’s eyes narrowed.

  “You heard him come in? When?”

  “Noon, maybe?” The old man shook his head. “I’ve not heard him go out.”

  “It’s urgent, master,” Rathe said, and there was a note in his voice that made the hair stand up on Eslingen’s neck. The old man seemed to hear it, too, and fumbled a ring of keys from under his short coat. He found the one he wanted, and fitted it into the lock, grunting as he struggled to turn it. The door swung back at last, and Rathe swore. Sohier caught the old man by the shoulders and swung him away from the opening, his mouth wobbling open in shock.

  “Go across to Armondit’s, get her to send a runner to Point of Dreams. Tell them we’ll need someone from the deadhouse.”

  The old man nodded, tottering down the stairs, and Eslingen stepped forward, bracing himself for the worst. Forveijl lay sprawled across the foot of his bed, one bed curtain pulled half off its rings to fall across the body. It was stained with blood, as were the disordered sheets and Forveijl’s shirt and waistcoat–too much blood for him to be left alive, Eslingen thought, but even so Rathe went to him, feeling for a pulse at first one wrist and then the other. He checked before he touched the throat, and straightened, shaking his head.

  “Dead for sure, then,” Sohier said, and her voice cracked on the words.

  “His throat’s been cut.” Rathe turned away from both of them, stood facing the shuttered window, and Eslingen winced. Bad enough that your ex‑lover attacks you, tries to seduce you, but then to find him dead like this, without a chance for either revenge or forgiveness… He shook his head, and looked at Sohier.

  “You’d better see to the body.”

  The pointswoman nodded, understanding, and bent to sort through the dead man’s pockets. “Nothing much here,” she announced after a moment. “But it wasn’t robbery, he’s got three pillars on him, plus a handful of small change.”

  A month’s wages at least, Eslingen thought, though that depended on the contract he had negotiated with Gasquine, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Rathe turn back to them, his face set and grim.

  “And we won’t have to ask the alchemists how this one died,” she went on, and then winced. “Sorry, Nico, I didn’t think.”

  “It’s all right.” Rathe took a breath, glancing around the crowded room. It was tidy enough, Eslingen saw with mild surprise, though the man had probably had someone to clean for him. The bed curtains looked new, or at least well kept, and the door of the clothes‑press was open, revealing at least one other good coat. There were books everywhere, stacked in a case and on top of it and the scarred table. An open chest was stacked with the long, narrow sheets that were actor’s copies of their parts, and at least a dozen broadsheets lay on top of that, spilling out across the table, the one sign of clutter. Or had someone started to search the room? Eslingen wondered.

  “What we need to know is how long he’s been dead,” Rathe said, and Sohier nodded.

  “He’s cold.”

  Rathe nodded, expressionless. “And the old man said he’d come home at noon, or thereabouts, he thought.”

  “But he said he hadn’t heard him leave,” Sohier said. “Which means he didn’t hear the murderer leave, either.”

  “At least not to notice,” Rathe answered. “We’ll have to talk to him about that. But for now–” He glanced around the room again. “First we find the Alphabet.”

  Sohier nodded, and together the three went through the shelved books, plays mostly, Eslingen saw, and guessed they were ones Forveijl had done well in. He knew some of the names, but not all, paused for a moment over a copy of something called The Fair’s Promise and Payment. Aconin had put his own name down as playwright, he saw from the title page, and Rathe grimaced.

  “I hope it reads better than it plays.”

  “Oh?” Eslingen gave it a second, curious glance, and Rathe sighed.

  “That’s the play Aconin wrote for him, wooed him and won him with it. I shouldn’t talk, I never saw it.”

  Behind him, Sohier lifted her head, and then seemed to think better of anything she might have said, hunched one shoulder instead, and kept sorting through the papers. They worked their way across the room–it was a little like the looting after a fight, Eslingen thought, down to the body on the bed, except that he was careful to do as the others did, and put each piece back in its place. Sohier was first to straighten, hands on hips, but she waited until the others finished before she spoke.

  “Sir, there’s no copy of the Alphabet here.”

  “No.” Rathe sighed, his eyes straying back to the dead man. “He didn’t deserve this,” he said softly, then shook himself. “Sohier, I want Aconin, as soon as possible.”

  “Aconin?” Sohier frowned. “Why him? I mean, this is hardly a lovers’ quarrel–”

  Rathe was shaking his head, and she broke off instantly. “Sweet Sofia, I haven’t had a chance to report it, but the landseur Aubine told me this morning that someone had taken a shot at his coach as he left for the theatre.”

  “At Aubine?” Eslingen felt himself flush, realizing he’d spoken aloud, and Rathe looked at him.

  “Broke a window on his carriage, and threatened to freeze all the plants he was carrying. Aubine was riding on the box, mind you, or it might have been him. Why do you sound surprised?”

  Eslingen spread his hands, wishing he’d kept his mouth shut. “I don’t know–I suppose I was wondering why anyone would want to kill him?”

  “And he thinks Aconin did it?” Sohier asked.

  Rathe shrugged. “He says that the man who did it was built like Aconin. But Aconin’s not at the theatre, when he’s been at every rehearsal since the beginning, or so Mathiee says, plus what Aubine says, plus he wrote the play using, I am certain, some copy of the Dis‑damned Alphabet, and when I go to question Aconin’s lover, look who ends up dead. I want him found.”

  “You can’t think he did this,” Eslingen said, and was mildly surprised by his own vehemence. “It’s not like him–and besides, he’s been attacked twice himself.”

  “Could you have done him more of an injury that evening, if you’d been the man with the pistol?” Rathe demanded.

  Eslingen hesitated. “Probably–but I don’t know where the man was standing, or what his line o
f sight was like. The light was against him, that’s for certain.”

  “And the second time he wasn’t attacked,” Rathe went on. “His rooms were destroyed. You said it yourself, that’s a warning, ‘no quarter. ’ It could be he’s fighting back.”

  “I just don’t think it’s like him,” Eslingen said again. “Not Chresta. Oh, he’ll maim you with words, all six days of the week, but use a knife… It’s not his way.”

  Rathe stared at him for a long moment, his expression unreadable. “How long has it been since you’ve known him?” he said at last, and Eslingen swore under his breath.

  “Long enough.”

  “People change,” Rathe said, almost gently. “Besides, if you’re right, he’s in worse danger than poor Guis ever was.”

  That was true enough to close Eslingen’s mouth over any accusation he might have made. Whatever else it was, this wasn’t Rathe striking out blindly at the man who had stolen his former lover; that wasn’t Rathe’s style, any more than it was Aconin’s to lash out with a knife instead of a deadly pen. And that meant he was right: for whatever reason, Aconin had to be found.

  10

  « ^ »

  the lights were different today, the common lanterns doused, the mage‑lights changed, set now into the elaborate practical housings, whose lenses and colored glass doors could turn their light to any time of day or night, and any weather. Even as Eslingen watched, a sceneryman made her final adjustment to one of the smaller globes, setting the last piece of ambered glass into its collar, and then placed a mage‑fire lamp carefully in the center of the iron sphere. Instantly, she was bathed in strong sunlight, sunset light, and she stepped back, motioning to another sceneryman. He hauled on one of the ropes running up into the fly space, and the globe rose majestically, sliding into its place among a cluster of other practicals. Eslingen squinted up at them, counting at least a dozen, mostly amber or red, some left plain, one or two tinted with green and yellow, and shook his head as he looked back at the stage. The light there was almost natural now, the steady, neutral sunlight of an early summer day. The colors of the chorus’s coats, which had seemed odd, too bright under the mage‑lights, now looked normal, and Aubine’s arrangements were vivid as a summer garden at the downstage corners of the stage.

  “Impressive, isn’t it?” Siredy said cheerfully. “At least this is a simple setting. Now, when I was in Aufilia’s Revenge, we had two night scenes, and a thunderstorm. I felt as though I was spending all my time making sure I was out of range of the thunderflashes.”

  “You were in that?” That was Jhirassi, coming up beside them, his hair scraped back to go under a new wig. He wasn’t yet in full costume, just the underpieces, breeches and stiff vest, and his eyes were made enormous with makeup.

  Siredy gave him an appreciative glance, and Eslingen bit back a smile. “I was the villain’s henchman–the one who never gets a line except, yes, mistress.”

  “But the fights were marvelous,” Jhirassi said. “And I enjoyed the play.”

  “So did I,” Siredy answered.

  “Thunderflashes and all?” Eslingen asked, and both men looked at him as though they’d forgotten his presence. He smiled at them, and to his amusement, Siredy blushed.

  “They made things interesting. Technically, it was a complicated piece.”

  “And a great deal of fun,” Jhirassi added. “I’m sorry you didn’t see it, Philip.”

  “So am I,” Eslingen said. He looked at Siredy. “Thunderflashes?”

  “They’re sort of like the practicals,” the other master answered. “Except larger, and with a mirrored back that reflects the light.”

  “The climactic duel takes place at the height of a raging storm,” Jhirassi added. “Lit by lightning at carefully planned moments.”

  “Most impressive,” Eslingen said.

  Siredy made a face. “When the timing is right, yes. Anyway, there’s a small flash charge in each pot–something chemical, I think, it stank to the central heavens–and a piece of slowmatch to set it off. Once those are lit and set, there’s nothing you can do to stop them, so half the time, Bernarin and I were trying to time the fight to the flashes, instead of the other way round.”

  Jhirassi looked even more impressed, and Eslingen had to swallow a laugh. But still, it was impressive–he’d dealt with slowmatch before, in the field, and knew how hard it was to gauge how long it would take a length to burn. “You needed a sapper,” he said aloud, and Siredy nodded.

  “This was at the old Merveille,” Jhirassi said. “Now the Bells. It just hasn’t been the same since Madame Ombredanne died.”

  “For which some of us are grateful,” Siredy said. “And yes, Gavi, it was impressive, but you have to admit, most of the shows were just new ways to show off her toys.”

  “Oh, I know,” Jhirassi answered. “But they were such good toys.”

  Siredy lifted an eyebrow at that, but before he could say anything, the bookholder called Jhirassi’s name. The actor lifted a hand in instant obedience, and took his place in the forming scene. It was the last council meeting, leading up to the climactic duel, and Siredy looked over his shoulder, automatically counting heads, before he turned back to Eslingen.

  “All there,” he said. “Gavi’s right, it was exciting to watch. But I doubt he was ever onstage with any of the devices.”

  “Worse than The Drowned Island?” Eslingen asked idly, letting his eyes slide past the other. Yes, the duelists were all in readiness, and even in their proper costumes, antique longcoats crusted with cheap cut‑glass stones and broad sashes with huge rosettes. De Besselin looked almost as pale as his shirt, and Eslingen hoped the boy could remember his lines this time.

  “Much worse,” Siredy said. “Madame Ombredanne believed in pyrotechnics.”

  Eslingen choked back a snort, remembering the lecture he’d gotten about fire backstage, and Siredy nodded.

  “Exactly so. There were two small fires at the Merveille just in the year I played there. Madame used to hire half a dozen rivermen just to stand by with buckets. I’m surprised any of us lived to tell the tale.”

  Eslingen laughed appreciatively, but his eyes strayed to the duelists again. Still all there, though for once the two landames weren’t standing arm in arm, and he hoped nothing had happened to damp their friendship. They had defied the looks and whispers, and Aconin’s acid tongue, to maintain their affair openly; it would be a shame if the family enmities won after all. “Do you want to herd them on, or shall I?” he asked, and Siredy lifted his eyebrows.

  “I’ll send them on, if you’ll get them off again.”

  Eslingen nodded, knowing he’d been given the easier job, and grateful for it, and turned away, heading deeper into the backstage area so that he could cross the stage behind the massive backpiece. He had seen it from the pit for the first time just the day before, and it had taken his breath away: a mountain landscape, hills rising steeply to either side to frame the narrow valley. In the first act, and in the third, it was the Pass of Jetieve, in the second and fifth, the view from de Galhac’s fortress, and in the rest, all the mountains that bordered the palatinate; the versatiles were painted to change and complete each different setting. They were almost ready for the performance, everything in place except the final blessings of the chamberlains and their magists, and Eslingen paused at the center of the backpiece, peering out through the single narrow slit in the stiff canvas. Only the amateurs used it, or so he’d been told, but he’d also seen more than one of the professionals pausing to glance through the tiny gap. The only difference was that they didn’t use their hands to widen it, and risk spoiling the illusion.

  Through the slit, he could see the actors standing in a semicircle around bes’Hallen, who stood stage center, draped in a floor‑length veil that gleamed like gold in the warm light of the practicals. Between their bodies, posed in stiff formality, he could see the empty benches of the pit, and the dark shadows of the galleries–except, he realized, the pit wasn’t
entirely empty. Gasquine was sitting on one of the center benches, perhaps eight or ten rows back, her head and shoulders just visible as she watched intently. The chief sceneryman sat with her, and a tall woman in a long black gown who had to be one of the chamberlains. By rights, Eslingen thought, Aconin should be with them, but the playwright was still missing–not at the theatre, and not, according to Rathe, at his lodgings, or anywhere else he had been known to frequent. The gossips whispered that maybe he had caused the deaths, that at the least he was likely to be the person who’d put Forveijl up to trying the trick with the flowers, and quite possibly the one who killed Forveijl for it afterward, though there was a minority opinion that insisted that Rathe himself had done it. No one had said that to his face, of course, and Eslingen could guess that there were probably a few people who thought he could have done it–defending his lover–but that was easy to ignore. But Aconin wasn’t responsible, he thought, and turned away from the backpiece, crossing to the far side of the stage. It was more crowded there, and he had to press himself against the brick wall to avoid a pair of scenerymen hauling what looked like a roll of canvas. Another scenepiece, he guessed, or a carpet for one of the soueraine’s entrances. It wasn’t like Aconin to set someone up like that–or at least it wasn’t like him not to hang around to enjoy his victim’s disgrace. Eslingen made a face, remembering a childhood beating for stealing fruit from a neighbor’s garden. Aconin had put him up to it, and had enjoyed the outcome, the shouts and the pursuit and Eslingen’s wails, almost as much as he would have enjoyed the stolen plums. He’d gotten his own back, of course, and Aconin had learned better than to try that again, but the playwright had never been able to resist that kind of manipulation. And that, he thought, is why I’m so sure he isn’t behind any of this. If he was, he’d still be at the theatre, too secure in his own cleverness to think of running away. But that was almost impossible to explain to Rathe–the pointsman was right, it had been years since he’d been in contact with Aconin, but he doubted Aconin had changed fundamentally in those years.