“Regretting your change of employment already?”
The smile, Eslingen saw, didn’t touch his eyes. “Not so far,” he answered. “But this does bring back memories.
Rouvalles gave a short laugh, easing some of the tension and anger in his face, and gestured to one of the stools. “I bet it does. So, tell me, what does Hanse want?”
Eslingen seated himself, taking his time with the skirts of his coat. All the furniture around him was portable, he saw, from the stools to the narrow table and the narrow bedstead; all would break down into easily-carried pieces. The entire room, carpets, bedding, furniture, even the strongbox that lay half-hidden under a worn square of blanket, would fit easily on a single pack animal.
“Cijntien told me he’d made you an offer,” Rouvalles said, and shrugged. “I suppose it still holds, though Hanse wouldn’t thank you— and I’m not sure how much I care about that, just now.”
Eslingen brought himself back to the matter at hand. “No, so far I’m quite comfortable with my employment, thanks. Caiazzo sent me to tell you that the money will be ready tomorrow. You can send a couple of men to collect it any time after second sunrise.”
Rouvalles paused in the act of pouring two glasses of wine: anger at the delay notwithstanding, customs of hospitality, bred on the caravan routes, died hard. He turned to Eslingen, one eyebrow lifted, then Eslingen thought he saw the other man’s shoulders relax slightly.
“Well, that’s good news at least,” the Chadroni said, after a moment. He made a face, as though he had forgotten he was holding the cups, and handed one to Eslingen. “I rather thought you’d come to put me off again.”
Eslingen took a careful swallow of what proved to be a heavy, aromatic wine. He said, “Not this time. And I can’t say I blame you for wanting to leave the city as soon as possible.”
Rouvalles frowned slightly, as though puzzled, then his face cleared. “Oh, the children. I thought you meant the clock-night. No, neither one’s made my life any easier, let me tell you.”
“Nor anyone’s,” Eslingen said, and remembered what Jasanten had said—had it only been a week ago? Children born under Seidos might well find employment with the caravans, though why a caravan-master would steal children was beyond him—unless, he thought suddenly, there was someone foreign, someone in the Silklands, say, who wanted them? It didn’t seem likely, but he owed Rathe at least that much of an effort. “Have the broadsheets been blaming you lot, then?”
Rouvalles scowled, the pale eyes narrowing. “Along with everybody else, yes, they’ve mentioned the caravans, and we’ve had a few worried mothers wandering through, peering in corners when they think we’re not looking.” He shook his head as though amazed at the thought, then looked sharply at Eslingen. “And you can tell Hanse I don’t hire kids, and never have done, he should know that.”
So much for being subtle, Eslingen thought. At least he assumed I was asking on Caiazzo’s behalf. He said, “I’ll pass that on. But—and this is me asking, not Caiazzo, I’m just curious—does that mean you don’t take apprentices?”
“Did you see any apprentices in the hall?” he asked, but his tone was milder than his words. “Oh, we take apprentices, all right, or I do, but what we get… it’s always the ones who’ve already failed at something else. Nobody in Astreiant—nobody anywhere—sets out to become a caravaner.”
“Did you?” Eslingen asked. “I mean, if you’re going to be good at something, it doesn’t seem as though you’d go into it by default. And from what Caiazzo says, you’re probably the best.”
Rouvalles tilted his head, stared into space for a few moments, then said, “I didn’t set out to become a caravaner, no. Never thought it was—open—to me. But once I did, I discovered I liked it, and had a knack for it. Rather like you and soldiering, I would imagine?” he asked, making it not quite a question, and the blue eyes were pale, cool.
“A lot like soldiering,” Eslingen agreed. He finished the rest of his wine, stood up. “Thanks for the drink, it’s a thirsty day.”
“Are you sure you won’t come along?” Rouvalles asked. “This is no time to be a Leaguer, either, in Astreiant.”
“I’m trusting Caiazzo can protect me,” Eslingen answered, with more confidence than he entirely felt. “If you’ll send to him tomorrow, after second sunrise, he’ll have the money for you.”
“We’ll be there,” Rouvalles said, and Eslingen thought there was the hint of a threat in his tone. He lifted an eyebrow in question, and the Chadroni spread his hands. “No ill meant, Eslingen, but I’m a week later than I should be, and I still have supplies and goods to buy, so it’ll be another two weeks before I’m on the road. Hanse—but Caiazzo knows all this.”
Eslingen nodded in restrained sympathy, “I’ll tell him, but, as you say, he knows.”
“If he knows,” Rouvalles said, and the good-humored face was suddenly grim, “if he knows, why in all the hells hasn’t he sent the money I need?”
Eslingen shrugged, regretting his casual remark. “You’ll have to ask him yourself.”
“Don’t think I haven’t,” Rouvalles answered.
Eslingen didn’t answer, but ducked through the improvised door into the hall. The group was still gathered around the brazier, he saw without surprise, making a very bad pretense of interest in the dice game. The carpets would absorb some sound, but not all of it; it was no wonder they had listened. He smiled cheerfully at them, and went down the staircase to the stables.
He was early at the landing, and sat in the sun nibbling half a dozen ripe strawberries purchased on the edge of the market while he watched Caiazzo’s boatmen bring the barge expertly across the current and alongside the landing. The longdistance trader sprang out almost before the ropes were snugged home, Denizard following more decorously, and stalked up the gentle slope toward the street. “Come on, then,” he said, as he drew level with the soldier, “we don’t want to keep madame waiting.
Eslingen fell into step half a pace behind him, wondering why not, but the look of mischief in Caiazzo’s eyes was enough to keep him from asking aloud. He risked a glance at Denizard, but the magist looked, if anything, a little bored. Eslingen sighed, and resigned himself to whatever would happen. Caiazzo led them through the Manufactory district, skirting half a dozen brick-walled compounds that smelled of wood and glue and other, less-identifiable substances, and up the queen’s-road into a neighborhood where sober-looking shops alternating with small, well-built houses. He turned into the courtyard of one of the larger of the latter, and the door opened before he could knock. A servant in sober livery bowed them into a reception hall, murmuring something Eslingen couldn’t quite hear, and vanished through a narrow door.
As the door closed behind him, Eslingen glanced surreptitiously around the hall, impressed in spite of himself by the carved panels and the interlaced tiles that faced the hearth. There was real silver on the sideboard—put out for show as well as use, surely—and the livery had been of good linen, generously cut. The candles—unlit, at this hour, when the sun poured through the unshuttered windows, filling the room with light—were wax pillars as thick as a man’s wrist. Surprisingly good taste from a woman who was partner to a southriver rat, he thought, but his heart wasn’t in the sneer, not confronted by this restrained wealth, the dark wood that showed highlights as cool as the polished silver, the quiet service. Oh, the house itself might be on the wrong side—the Manufactory side—of the queen’s-road, but the interior was as rich as any petty-noble’s palace, or richer.
Caiazzo saw him looking then, and smiled. It was an expression Eslingen had already learned to distrust; he glanced sideways at Denizard, and saw her grave and unsmiling as ever, her painted hands folded into the sleeves of her master’s robe. That was reassuring—if there were real trouble, Denizard would be tensed for it—and Eslingen sighed as unobtrusively as possible. So it really was just one of Caiazzo’s jokes, something he thought would startle or shock his new knife, and Eslingen braced himsel
f to meet the surprise as calmly as possible.
The door to the rest of the house opened then, and a liveried servant stepped through. “Madame Allyns,” he said, and Eslingen caught his breath.
The woman who swept through the doorway was enormous and beautiful, skin like rich cream from the top of her breasts to the roots of her golden hair, eyes blue as summer skies, lips—slightly pouting— the pink of the inside of a shell. A strand of pearls a half-shade lighter than her skin wound twice around her neck, and vanished into the shadowed valley of her cleavage: A brooch the size of a man’s hand— Oriane and the Seabull, Eslingen thought, not quite incredulous, in full congress—clasped her bodice, drawing the eye irrevocably to the divide between her massive breasts. She was as large as any two women, and four times as lovely.
“Hanse,” she said, and swept forward, hands outstretched in greeting.
Caiazzo caught them, brought each in turn to his lips, bowing slightly. “Iniz. How pleasant to see you again.”
“I trust so,” Allyns answered, and turned, smiling, to the others. “Mistress Denizard I know—and I’m delighted to see you again, my dear—but this gentleman—” The smile was back, full of heavy-lidded speculation. “I haven’t had the pleasure.”
Eslingen swallowed hard, willing his arousal to subside. Caiazzo said, “May I present Philip Eslingen, late of Coindarel’s Dragons? My new knife.”
“A soldier,” Allyns said. “How charming.” She held out her hand, and Eslingen bowed over it. She smelled of roses, heavy-scented, late season flowers, a fragrance men could drown in… And then she had twitched her hand deftly out of his grasp, and turned back to Caiazzo, one delicate brow lifting. “And I hear you have need of a knife these days, Hanse. I’m—concerned.”
“There’s no cause for worry,” Caiazzo answered, and Allyns smiled again, too sweetly.
“But there is for concern, is there not? Our partnership has been a profitable one. I’d hate to have to find another longdistance trader, especially this late in the season. But I’d hate it even more if my investments failed to materialize.”
“I doubt very much it will come to that,” Caiazzo answered. “Even considering your legendary prudence, Iniz. Shall we go in?”
Allyns regarded him for a moment longer, and then nodded. She turned away, the rich silks of her skirts hissing against the stone floor, against each other. Caiazzo, suddenly, startlingly drab against her opulence, followed, and the servant shut the door behind them. Eslingen glanced at Denizard, wondering if he should follow, but the magist shook her head fractionally. She seemed to be listening for something, and Eslingen tilted his head to one side, too, not sure what he was waiting for. The house was very quiet; in the distance, he heard a door close, and then, from the street, the rattle of wheels and the sound of a horse’s hooves.
At last Denizard relaxed, looked at him with a rather wry expression. Eslingen said, “It’s all right, then?”
The magist nodded. “Oh, yes. Or, if it’s not, it’s far too late to worry about it.” She saw Eslingen stiffen, and added, “They’ve been partners for fifteen years, Philip. We’re as safe here as in our own house.”
Eslingen nodded back, reluctantly. He knew that most longdistance traders—Merchants-Venturer, as the guild called itself— formed partnerships with Astreiant’s Merchants Resident: each needed what the other could supply, goods exchanged for capital, and markets for each other’s products, but that didn’t explain the particulars of the situation. “She didn’t sound happy,” he said, and Denizard looked away.
“There have been some—difficulties this year,” she said, after a moment. “As you’ve probably gathered.”
Eslingen nodded. “Is it something I should know about? To do my job?”
Denizard sighed. “Hanse said I should use my discretion, telling you. And since you’ve said you’ll stay on… about five years ago, when Seidos was in the Gargoyle, Hanse and Madame Allyns bought a seigneurial holding in the Ile’nord—in the Ajanes, west of the Gap.”
“I thought,” Eslingen said, and chose his words carefully, “I thought only nobles—nobles of four quarterings—could own those holdings.”
Denizard nodded. “That’s right. But there was a woman, a woman of I think eight quarters, who owed Madame quite a bit of money. So they made a bargain: d’Or—this woman would take the title, paid for with Madame’s money, and Hanse’s, and send a share of the estate’s takings to them as payment.”
Eslingen took a slow breath, let it out soundlessly. Caiazzo played dangerous games, and not just the ones southriver. Under the law, a commoner who presumed to purchase a noble title would lose her investment if she were found out, might, if the offense were particularly egregious or open, be sentenced to a fine—but that wasn’t the real deterrent. The nobles of the Ajanes were jealous of their privileges, jealous to the point of having forced the queen’s grandmother to agree to attach the rule of four quarters to the sale of all estates in their domain. And they were old-fashioned enough to try to wipe out such an insult in the commoner’s blood. Eslingen could feel the hairs stirring on the nape of his neck at the thought of trying to protect Caiazzo from Ajanine nobles and their servants. He had served under an Ajanine captain once, for eight months when he was sixteen; it had been the first time he had deserted, and that had been the only thing that had saved his life. Three days after he had run, the Ajanine had thrown his company into a mad assault on a well-garrisoned Chadroni fort, and had lost them all in the space of an hour. Eslingen, and the ten men sent to track him down, had been the only survivors; they had enlisted together under a sober League captain less than a moon-month after that battle. He shook that memory away, said, still cautiously, “But what’s to stop this woman from refusing to pay, now she’s got the estate?”
Denizard gave him a grim look. “Madame Iniz still holds notes of her hand, for one thing, worth more than that estate.”
“Notes can be repudiated,” Eslingen said.
Denizard nodded. “Not easily, but, yes, they can be. But Hanse trades through there, too. And I wouldn’t want to annoy Master Caiazzo, would you?”
“No,” Eslingen agreed. But I’m not an eight-quarter noble from the Ajanes. The words hung between them, unspoken, and Denizard made a face.
“It seemed worth the risk. There’s a gold mine on the estate, and merchants are always short of gold.”
Eslingen started to whistle, cut the sound off in a hiss of breath. Gold made all the difference, made the risks worth taking, both the risk of buying the property and of threatening the true noble who held it for them. Merchants are always short of gold, indeed; it’s gold that builds the manufactories and pays the caravan masters and the Silklands merchants when there’s nothing else to trade. I see why they did it, why it’s worth it, but, Seidos’s Horse, it’s a risk.
“And,” Denizard went on, “the stars were favorable.”
They would have to be. Eslingen squinted slightly. Seidos had been in the Gargoyle, she had said, which made sense. The Gargoyle was Argent’s sign, and Argent-Bonfortune was the god of the merchants: the planet of the nobility in the sign of the merchant, a reasonable omen. But if Seidos was in the Gargoyle in the Demean reckoning, that meant it was—somewhere else—in the Phoeban zodiac. “If Seidos was in the Gargoyle,” he said aloud, “it was also in, what, Cock-and-Hens?”
Denizard looked away. “We’re common, it’s Demis who rules our lives.”
But that’s noble land. Eslingen killed that response—he was no magist, and his astrological education came from the broadsheets he read assiduously; there was no reason to think he was right, when Denizard said otherwise. But the estate in question was noble, and fell under Phoebe’s rule, under the signs of her solar zodiac. And by that reckoning, Seidos was in the sign of the Cock-and-Hens, the winter-sun’s sign, sign of changing seasons, of change and suffering and impending, inevitable death. You could interpret the purchase as a change, and a kind of death, but still… it’s not a ch
ance I’d want to take.
8
« ^ »
rathe leaned over Salineis’s shoulder as she made the last of the nightwatch’s entries in the station’s daybook—a call to locate a strayed maidservant, who’d turned out to be standing at the well chatting with her leman, barely a quarter hour overdue, the sort of thing they were all seeing entirely too much of these days—and then added his initials to the entry. It was his day to supervise the station, something of a welcome break in what had begun to seem like months of walking from point to point in search of clues to the missing children. It also meant that Monteia would not be there, and, since Rathe had had little chance to pursue the question of the unlicensed printers, he was just as glad not to have to explain that to her.
“Not a bad night, on the whole,” Salineis said, and Rathe dragged his attention back to her.
“How’re things by the Old Brown Dog?”
The woman shrugged, and unclasped her heavy jerkin. The bodice beneath it was sweat-dark at her underarms, and another damp patch showed between her shoulder blades as she turned to hang it on the wall. “Not too bad, actually. The Huviet boy’s master, what’s his name, Follet, he’s let it be known he blames Paas, and that’s shut up most of them. Of course, Follet’s never liked Mistress Huviet—who does?— but at least it seems to be keeping the peace.”
Rathe nodded. “And Aagte?”
“Devynck,” Salineis said, with some precision, “is keeping her mouth shut and herself out of sight, for which I thank her stars and all my gods.” She shook her head, set a dashing cap on top of her piled hair. “And it seems to be working. They’re doing a decent business again, and Timo says he saw some of the locals drinking there when he checked in last night. If they blame anyone, it’s that knife of hers.”
“That’s good news,” Rathe said, and meant it. Eslingen was well clear of Point of Hopes; he could afford to take the blame for a little longer, at least until it had been forgotten.
Point of Hopes p-1 Page 32