Fairs' Point (10 page)

Rathe grinned in spite of himself.
“Not much, no.”

“
Seems to me the real mystery is why he didn’t turn up missing before this.”

“
He’s more pleasant in person,” Rathe said. Beier’s image rose before him, a big man, barrel-bellied, standing hand on hips in an inn yard deciphering horoscopes for free just to annoy that year’s Patent Administrator. He’d done it with a wink and a grin, a kiss on the hand and a pat on the cheek, and all other payment virtuously declined until Rathe had thought the Patent Administrator would fall into an apoplexy. And then Beier had winked at him and taken himself off, professing a dinner engagement. It was infuriating, but done with style.

“
One would hope,” Eslingen said.

“
What were the printers saying?” Rathe asked, after a moment.

“
Pointing fingers at each other, mostly,” Eslingen answered. “Or at the women who fee them, though I did not hear Caiazzo’s name bandied about in that regard.”

“
He was backing Beier, I think,” Rathe said. “And anyway, would you take Hanse’s name in vain?”

“
Not I, thank you.” Eslingen’s smile faded. “Is it true that Beier’s a Fellow of the University? Used to hold a chair or some such?”

“
Oh, yes, it’s true, all right,” Rathe said. “The University hates him, too. Istre says every few years the Senior Astrologer tries to find a way to disrobe him, but once you’re a Fellow, you’re a Fellow for life. They didn’t get the chair back either when they kicked him out.”

“
They give you an actual chair?” Eslingen’s eyebrows rose.

“
It’s symbolic, but, yes. It’s a chair. Istre says it’s not the only feudal hangover at the University, but it’s one of the odder.” Something flickered across Eslingen’s face at the necromancer’s name, and Rathe wished he’d kept his mouth shut. It definitely would have been better not to mention Istre, for all that b’Estorr and he were merely friends. “Very fancy cabinetry, I understand, inlaid and gilded and worth a petty-crown at least. So it matters if you have to have another one made—the donor’s not likely to pay twice, after all.”

“
Couldn’t they chase it through the courts?” Eslingen asked.

“
Not without explaining how he came to have it, and allowing Beier to wash some very dirty linen in public,” Rathe said. “I gather they’ve been reduced to watching to see if he pawns it in the off-season, but so far it hasn’t happened.”

“
And here I thought scholars were supposed to be unworldly dreamers, their eyes on the stars and their feet not quite touching the ground. I’m shattered.”

“
You’ve been here a year, and you haven’t noticed how very many, and how very political, the pies are that they get their fingers into?”

“
I wasn’t here six weeks when I got good proof of that,” Eslingen answered. “Not that I minded.”

Rathe grinned, remembering a shared evening spent watc
hing for members of the University, and Eslingen went on more thoughtfully.

“
But this would be why the printers were saying the Patent Administrator hated Beier? Opinion is about evenly divided as to whether he’s had him murdered or if he’s bought him off.”

“
Beier wouldn’t take the money,” Rathe said. “Not from Solveert.”

“
What I heard was that he’d been offered his Fellowship again,” Eslingen said. “A man might do a great deal he wouldn’t otherwise, to get his living back.”

Rathe shook his head.
“Solveert’s not important enough to make it happen, and Beier knows it as well as I do. What are they saying at the Fairs?”

“
I didn’t hear,” Eslingen said. “I wasn’t there that long.”

There was something odd in his tone, and Rathe gave him a sharp glance. Eslingen had his eyes firmly fixed on the pa
mphlet again, and Rathe decided not to pursue it. “Do me a favor,” he said, and Eslingen looked up at once, smiling.

“
Of course.”

“
Keep your ears open, and if you do hear anything—”

“
I’ll let you know,” Eslingen answered.

At least he was not the only person carrying a noisy basket, Eslingen thought as he made his way to the New Fair. There were any number of otherwise entirely respectable people heading in the same direction with baskets tucked under their arms, and the air was filled with the sounds of canine excitement. Children wielded rakes along the edge of every path, collecting scattered straw and refuse for the jakesmen and their cart, but the air still smelled strongly of dog and stable.

To his surprise, however, there were three people waiting at the tavern door, a young woman and a young man, both in the sturdy leather aprons that seemed to mark the trainers, and the third in a threadbare astrologer’s robe. The woman trainer stepped forward, seeing him.

“Lieutenant vaan Esling? I’m Besetje Naimi.”

Eslingen shifted the basket to his other hip and accepted her e
xtended hand. “A pleasure, dame.”

“
Felis Tibeë,” Naimi said, with a nod to the other trainer, “and Dame Herridey. She’s our astrologer.”

“
A pleasure to meet you,” Eslingen said, clasping hands with each of them in turn. “I appreciate your willingness to consider taking on my dog.”

“
Why don’t you come round the back, and we can have a look at him and his horoscope?” Naimi said. The words had a rote quality, a formula learned but not fully understood, and Eslingen nodded.

“
Lead on.”

The tavern’s yard was even louder, with temporary kennels stacked along three of the four walls, and a good dozen w
oven-withy pens set up on the bare ground. The smell of dog was even stronger. Naimi led them to one of the pens, and Tibeë slipped inside, carefully securing the gate behind him.

“
If you’ll hand me the dog, Lieutenant?”

Eslingen handed him the basket, and Tibe
ë set it carefully on the ground, bracing it between his feet as he worked the cords loose. Sunflower sprang out before the lid was fully undone, knocking it askew, and Naimi grinned.

“
Well, he’s got spirit.”

Sunflower raced in circles, barking, and Tibe
ë gave a judicious nod. “No obvious faults there. Though the barking wastes energy.”

“
It doesn’t matter so much,” Naimi said. “Did you bring all his papers, Lieutenant?”

Eslingen produced them from the cuff of his coat.
“I did.”

Naimi took them, handing the horoscope off to Herridey, and u
nfolded the pedigree herself. Tibeë came to look over her shoulder, while Herridey studied the horoscope. After a moment, the astrologer refolded the paper, then fumbled in the pocket beneath her skirts to come up with a small, well-worn astrolabe. She adjusted it, checked the settings against the horoscope, and made several more adjustments before she finally nodded.

“
I don’t see any obvious flaws in his stars, dame, sieur. I’d warrant him sound to run.”

Eslingen took back the horoscope, and Tibe
ë caught the dog, turned him squirming onto his back. Sunflower barked and twisted, but made no attempt to bite, and Tibeë set him down again.

“
Good boy.” He straightened. “He’s a nice one, Besetje. If you don’t want him—”

“
But I do,” Naimi answered. “I like the look of him. These black brindles generally do well for me.”

Tibe
ë sighed. “All right, then. But if he doesn’t suit—or if Besetje doesn’t suit you, Lieutenant—I’d like a chance at him.”

“
Thank you,” Eslingen said. Tibeë let himself out of the pen, expertly keeping the dog back when he would have followed, and Eslingen held out two seillings. “At least let me buy you dinner for your trouble. And you, too, Mistress Herridey.”

They both accepted the coins—Eslingen suppressed a wince, suspecting that dog ownership might become as e
xpensive as Rathe had warned—and Eslingen looked over the fence at the dog now sprawled panting in the dust. “I’m interested in your training him, dame, but I haven’t a lot of coin to spare.”

“
Call me Besetje,” Naimi said, absently. Her eyes were on the dog. “I’d be interested in running him in one or two maiden races, and the step-ups if he qualifies. If you wanted to share out the prize money, I’d be willing to adjust my fees accordingly, but you’ll understand I’ll have to have something.”

“
Of course,” Eslingen answered.

They haggled for a bit, and settled on three seillings a week through the end of the meet, with the rate to be renegotiated before the twelfth day of the Horse Moon.

“By then,” Naimi said cheerfully, “you’ll have an idea of whether he’s a racer, and you can plan accordingly.”

“
And what if he doesn’t race?” Eslingen asked.

The trainer shrugged.
“They make good ratters, of course, and nice companions, if you don’t mind a dog with personality. Or this one’s well bred enough that someone might want him for side-stud—that’s a less expensive way of bringing certain characteristics back into a bloodline, breeding with a lesser member of a good line.”

Eslingen nodded, unaccountably reassured, and Naimi slipped i
nto the pen to scoop Sunflower into his basket. He made no more than a cursory if vocal protest, and she lashed the lid down tight.

“
I’ll get him settled with the others. I’d like not to run him for a few days yet, until he’s had a chance to settle in and get the scent of everyone, but I’ll send word when I do. If you’d like.”

“
That would be kind.”

“
Oh, and there’s this.” Naimi rummaged in the pocket beneath her skirt, came out with a wooden disk about the size of a baby’s hand. Eslingen took it, turning it over to see DeVoss’s monogram on one side and her racing seal on the other. “You’re always welcome in the kennels, or at the practice runs. If anyone says anything, show them that and tell them you’re one of DeVoss’s owners.” She gave him a fleeting smile. “But I doubt anyone will ask. Most people know who you are.”

And that was another reason DeVoss was willing to take him on this late in the season, Eslingen knew: he was one of the Sights of Astreiant, a good draw for her dogs and her kennel. He was willing to oblige, not least because it gave him an excuse to hang about in Fairs’ Point, where he might hear something useful about Beier.
“If I wanted to see other dogs running?” he began, and Naimi pointed toward the yard’s side entrance.

“
The practice yard’s through there. Someone’s bound to be working.”

“
Thank you,” Eslingen said, but she’d already turned away, the shaking basket balanced easily on her hip.

Eslingen ducked through the narrow gate, and found hi
mself on the edge of an even busier space. The dogs were at least no louder—he doubted it was physically possible for them to make any more noise than they did already—but there were far more people, trainers in their leathers mixed promiscuously with gorgeously dressed spectators. One of the practice runs was clearly in use, and Eslingen drifted toward it, leaning against the fence of wooden rails that stood outside the woven walls of the run itself. From there, he could see behind the stacked hay bales, where a knot of men and women in sturdy leathers milled about, waiting for the next race. On a platform above and behind them, a pair of apprentice-aged boys were winding a crank—it must be the one that powered the dogs’ lure, Eslingen guessed, remembering the drawings in Beier’s pamphlet. One of the boys stopped winding, and the other snapped on a brake, then both of them raised their arms in signal. The milling trainers straightened, their attention focusing down the length of the course, and Eslingen leaned on the rails to see a trio of dogs being loaded into the central compartments of the row of boxes that stretched across the far end of the course. There were half a dozen low jumps between the boxes and the bales, perhaps ankle height, no real impediment to a running dog.

“
Training jumps,” a woman said, at his left hand, and then started. “Seidos’s Horse—it’s Eslingen, isn’t it?”

He turned, frowning, to see a tall, broad-bodied woman in a d
ecent blue suit. It had been trimmed in the summer’s latest style, pale silk flowers and knots of silver cord, but the decoration couldn’t hide that skirt and bodice were several years old at best. Her parasol was new, her hat old, woven straw perched on graying hair worn longer than he had ever seen it before, and the scar across the back of her left hand showed bone-white against her tan. “Colonel Ospinel? A pleasure to see you again, madame.”

There weren’t many women with the stars to take them to command of heavy cavalry, but Ospinel had always had them—and a good thing, too, Eslingen thought. She was the fourth or fifth daughter of an Ajanine landame, thirty-two quarterings of nobility and not a demming to her name except what she’d taken by the sword. And she’d always been quick to put her troop in the way of plunder.

“And you,” Ospinel answered. “Though—I think I owe you an apology. I believe it’s vaan Esling now, and a commission.”

Eslingen bowed slightly, and she smiled, showing good teeth.

“My congratulations.”

“
Thank you.”

At the end of the track, the boxholders were loading the last dogs into the compartments, and Ospinel turned eagerly to watch. Eslingen leaned slightly to one side to avoid her par
asol, and she collapsed it with a murmur of apology. The boxholders stepped back then, lifting both hands to prove they were offering neither help nor hindrance to their dogs, and a woman lifted a white handkerchief.

“
Ready?”

There was no call of protest, and she dropped the handke
rchief. In the same instant, an apprentice threw a lever, and the doors of the boxes sprang open all at once. On the platform behind the bales, one of the other apprentices released the lever, and a bedraggled ball of fur began bounding down the track. The dogs leaped from their boxes in pursuit—well, all but one of them, who leaped on his nearest neighbor, wrestling him into the dirt. Their boxholders scrambled over the boxes to separate them, but the rest of the dogs ignored the fight, hard in pursuit of the bobbing bit of fur. They took the jumps in stride at first, until a black-and-white dog misjudged the third jump and caught his front paws as he went over. He fell in a rolling ball of fur and dust, nearly tripping the two dogs behind him, but was up again in an instant, following the pack. The leaders were over the last jump, heading for the tiny opening in the hay bales. For a second, Eslingen thought a brown dog had the victory, but a stockier white dog muscled him aside at the last possible moment, diving under him to get through the hole first. The other dogs followed, and there was a whirl of activity behind the bales as the leather-aproned trainers caught and controlled the yelping pack. It was no wonder they wore the aprons, Eslingen thought. Even well-clipped claws would tear clothes and skin to pieces.

Beside him, Ospinel shook her head.
“That one won’t keep his mind on the business. Floreis ought to geld him.”

It took Eslingen a moment to realize she was talking about the dog that had tried to start a fight at the beginning.
“Or a muzzle? I see some of them have them.”

“
Or both.” Ospinel brought a set of tablets out of her skirts, began making notes in the stiff wax leaves. “You never used to be a gambler, Sergeant—Lieutenant, I should say.”

“
I acquired a dog at the Redistribution,” Eslingen answered. “I thought I’d see what he could do before I sold him. I take it you’re here for the races yourself? Have you a dog, then?”

Ospinel gave a sideways smile, and tucked away her tablets.
“I do not, sad to say. Someday, perhaps. But, no, I’ve been in the city all the winter. Sibilla t’Anthiame has stood patronne to me these ten years, and the least I could do was stand with her.”

Eslingen suppressed a groan. T’Anthiame was the other claimant to Malfiliatre, the losing claimant. It was just Osp
inel’s luck that her patronne would be on the wrong side of the case. “I’m sorry for her loss.”