Fairs' Point (21 page)

The main fairground was packed, women shoulder to shoulder around each of the training tracks, parasols and hats bobbing as the ones at the back tried to catch a glimpse of the running dogs. A
pprentices bustled by with buckets of water, small buckets for trackside, bigger ones slung on shoulder yokes for the kennels, and at the far end of the grounds a carter was trying to force his way through the mob, his cart piled with barrels intended presumably for the taverns. Eslingen groaned, and turned back toward Mama Moon’s. If he went through the side alleys, he’d come out by the river, and could walk back to Dreams from there in relative peace.

The first alley was shadowed but not cool, stinking of the mi
dden, and he picked his way carefully through the oily puddles, only to emerge in a blast of noise and stink behind someone’s temporary kennel. The banner that hung limp beside the door showed a treed gargoyle and a pair of dogs, and he fumbled for the name before he came up with it: Stines Djala, an up-and-coming trainer who also apparently tended dogs for other women. Eslingen picked his way around the edges of the pens, and came out at last onto a quieter street where small shopkeepers sold broken goods salvaged from the fairs. Most of them were open, though they didn’t seem to be doing much business; he shook his head at a lurking apprentice and kept moving, the sweat damp on his neck after the cool of the morning.

The noise came from his left, between two houses, a sharp cry abruptly cut off. Eslingen looked up sharply, recognizing the note of real fear, and reached for his sword before he remembered he’d come out only wearing his legal knife. There was another shout, a different, angry voice, and Eslingen swore. The shouts had come from the narrow alley, and he started toward it, loosening his knife. There was a knot of boys at the dead end, four or five of them clu
stered against the brick wall, and as he opened his mouth to shout, another boy fought his way free and darted for the alley’s mouth. His nose was bloodied, coat wrenched open and one stocking around his ankle; he saw Eslingen and tried to swerve around him, but tripped and went sprawling as the other boys rushed him. Eslingen swore again and hauled the fugitive to his feet, setting him against the wall behind him.

“
What in Seidos’s name are you about?” He put a sergeant’s snap into his voice, and the other boys checked at the sound.

“
He’s a thief,” one of them said, and another picked up the call.

“
A dirty, stinking thief—”

“
And where are the points?” Eslingen heard a window open above his head, but didn’t dare take his eyes off the attackers. “This is Astreiant, not some border town.”

“
We’re taking him to the points,” the first boy said. “Him and his silver.”

“
I’m not a thief!” the fugitive shouted back. He was twelve or so, with a trainer’s badge around his neck, a blue and ochre eye on a white background, but Eslingen couldn’t place the image. “It’s my money, I earned it!”

“
Liar!” A third boy lunged for him, and Eslingen cuffed him back.

“
Leave him be, it’s not your place to pass judgement.”

“
He’s a thief,” the leader said again. “He’s got four seillings in his purse, and there’s no honest place a motherless dog-sucking boxholder could get that kind of money. We’ll take him to the points, no worries.”

Eslingen doubted that. They’d take the money, more likely, beat the boy solidly and divide the coin among themselves.

“And however did you come to know what’s in his purse?” he asked, trying to buy time. They were boys still, the oldest no more than sixteen; he could certainly take them, but not without doing them some actual harm.

“
Saw him in Mother Anjele’s shop, trying to buy a hat,” the leader answered. “She sent him off with a flea in his ear—”

“
To match the fleas in his coat!” someone else shouted.

“
And you saw his money then?” Eslingen asked. “And what, pray tell, were you doing looking in his purse? Planning a theft of your own? It seems there’s definitely need of the points here.”

“
We’re not thieves,” the leader began, but Eslingen rode ruthlessly over him.

“
If it is his money, and he can prove it, then they’ll call the point on you for assault, and that’s not just a fine. Best you walk away now. I’ll undertake that he won’t press the charge.”

Shutters opened above his head, slamming loudly against the brick.
“I see you, Anric Perrin,” a woman’s voice called, and the leader flinched. “Your mother will hear from me—”

“
Best leave before things get worse,” Eslingen said.

The leader glared at him, then jerked his head toward the street.
“Come on, boys.”

Eslingen turned smoothly as they streamed past him, keeping his body between them and the fugitive, who pressed himself hard against the bricks, as though he could melt into the stone.

“That’s taught them,” the voice said from overhead, and Eslingen squinted up at the open window.

“
Thank you, dame.”

“
They read too many broadsheets,” she retorted, and slammed the shutters closed again.

Eslingen looked at the boy, who was dabbing unhappily at his bleeding nose with the edge of his torn sleeve.
“Whose kennel is that?”

“
Texier. Please, don’t tell her, she’ll sack me for fighting. I’m an apprentice there.”

“
I don’t think she’ll need to be told,” Eslingen said. “I’ll walk you back to the kennel.”

“
Thank you.”

“
Is is true about the money?”

The boy hunched his shoulders.
“It’s mine. I earned it.”

“
Not from tips, you didn’t.” Eslingen didn’t know much about racing, but he’d seen what people gave the boxholders after races, and apprentices earned even less. “What’s your name?”

“
Colyer.” The boy hauled his stocking into place, knotting the piece of ribbon that served for a garter.

“
Where did the money come from?”

“
I found it.” Colyer straightened, his expression desperate. “Please, sir, it’s the truth.”

“
Four seillings?” Eslingen raised his eyebrows. A pickpocket’s discard, perhaps, though most pickpockets were experts at retrieving every last piece of coin. “Come on, let’s get you back to the fair.”

“
Not all at once,” Colyer said. He stopped abruptly. “You’re vaan Esling, aren’t you?”

“
Yes.” Eslingen repressed a sigh.

“
It’s a secret,” Colyer said. “If I tell you how I came by the coin, do you have to tell the points?”

“
It depends,” Eslingen answered. He put his hand on Colyer’s shoulder, both to steer him toward the fair and to keep hold of him in case of trouble. “If it’s not points’ business, then, no, I don’t have to tell them. But if it is, I will. I have to.”

“
Because he’s your leman,” Colyer said, with an understanding nod.

“
Because it’s the law,” Eslingen said, but had to admit the boy was mostly right. If it wasn’t for Rathe, he wouldn’t have discovered serving the law.

“
It’s not a points matter,” Colyer said, after a moment. “The University, maybe, but not the points.” He took a deep breath. “There’s an alley, behind Mama Moon’s. You can walk there in daylight all you like, and there won’t be anything. If you go there in the right stars, on the right night—the walls weep silver. All the boxholders know. If you look hard, you’ll find a coin stuck in a beam, or wedged between two bricks. That’s where I found them.”

“
That’s quite a story,” Eslingen said, and kept his voice neutral.

“
It’s true!”

“
What stars are those, then?”

Colyer shook his head.
“I can’t tell you that. That’s our secret, us boxholders. But I swear by the Great Hound, that’s where I found the coin.”

They had reached the entrance to the fair, the crowds thickening again, and Eslingen nodded.
“All right. I believe you. Now let’s get you back to Texier.”

He walked the apprentice back through the crowd and turned him over to Texier’s chief assistant, swearing that Colyer had been the victim and had done nothing to start the fight. The assistant looked skeptical, but seemed disinclined to send the boy away, and Eslin
gen tipped his hat and started back toward Dreams. Rathe’s friends at the University could surely deduce the stars required to make a wall ooze silver coins; more to the point, Rathe might have some idea how they’d gotten there. Eslingen lengthened his stride in spite of himself. Or, best of all, it might be a thing they could investigate together.

“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Rathe said. “Silver coming out of the walls?”

They were sitting in one of Wicked’s side rooms, a plate of bread and cheese between them. Eslingen had a pitcher of beer, of course, to match Rathe’s wine, but the fact that he wasn’t complaining about it only served to underline his seriousness.

“That’s what Colyer said.” Eslingen gave a half-shrug. “Of course, I went down the alley myself after I took him back, and I didn’t see anything. Mind you, at that hour it’s not exactly private, but my impression is that the boy didn’t have to look too hard.”

“
Or work that hard to dig them out?” Rathe tipped his head in question.

“
He didn’t say. But I didn’t see any obvious gouges in the walls.”

“
I wish you’d brought him to me,” Rathe said. He knew he was being unreasonable, but the early morning was dragging at him. “I’d have liked a chance to talk to him.”

Eslingen poured himself another glass of beer.
“I couldn’t, not without making it Fairs’ Point’s business one way or another. It seemed better to keep the points out of it altogether, since I suspect Adjunct Point Voillemin isn’t in a mood to believe tales of walls that ooze silver. I thought you might have a word with him off the books, though. Colyer, I mean.”

“
Not a bad thought.” Rathe cut himself a slice of cheese, wondering when Eslingen had developed such a careful sense of precedence among the points. And of procedure. And, for that matter, when exactly he’d come to rely on the Leaguer quite so much. It was dangerous, particularly when the man wasn’t a pointsman and couldn’t be one, and yet it was impossible not to turn to him. He wondered abruptly if that was why Eslingen wanted the City Guard so badly. But the Guard wasn’t the points, that was the problem—couldn’t be, not if Coindarel was its master, and he put the thought aside, too tired to worry at it now. “It’s a good thing I asked Istre to join us. He might have something useful to say.”

“
It sounds like magists’ business, all right,” Eslingen agreed, yawning.

“
That’s always an alarming statement from the pair of you,” b’Estorr said. As always, he’d moved unobtrusively enough that he seemed to materialize in the doorway, his white-blond hair pale in the lamplight.

Rathe kicked a stool away from the table and b’Estorr seated himself, looking warily from one to the other.
“I take it there’s been some new horror since you sent to me this morning?”

“
Philip will tell you,” Rathe said, and poured them each a glass of wine.

Eslingen did so, nothing loath, a concise, clear report that Rathe wished some of the juniors at Dreams could duplicate. When he’d finished, he drained the last of his beer and folded his hands on the tabletop, looking expectantly at the magist.

“Don’t look to me,” b’Estorr said. “I’ve never heard the like.”

“
There has to be something,” Rathe said.

“
I’m damned if I know what,” b’Estorr retorted. “I’ve had a word with Vair, about the thefts, that is, and she can’t think of a way it could be done. Well, I take that back, she had an idea that you could use a bit of aurichalcum to prime the silver, but you’d need to use more of it than the silver was worth.”

“
That would seem to rule that out,” Eslingen said.

“
Makes the theft a bit moot,” Rathe agreed. “I don’t suppose you’ve got anything useful on Poirel?”

“
Not much more than Fanier already told you,” b’Estorr said. “The wound in his chest killed him, and as far as either of us can determine, that wound was caused by the piece of silver Fanier found in it. Bu
t
ho
w
it hit hard enough to do that much damage—” He shook his head. “I just don’t know. There’s not much to work with when a body’s been in the river that long.”

Rathe grimaced, thinking of the corpse, and took a long swallow of his wine to wash the taste from his thoughts.
“All right, what about this story of silver in the walls?”

b’Estorr spread his hands.
“As I said, I’ve never heard anything like it. The most interesting thing is that the boy said it mattered what the stars were—that the stars determined whether you’d find silver?” He looked at Eslingen, who nodded.

“
That’s what I understood.”

“
It shouldn’t be anything too complicated,” b’Estorr said. “Not if the boxholders can calculate it.”

“
That’s not necessarily true,” Eslingen said. “Most of the trainers have an astrologer on their payroll—they cast the dogs’ horoscopes to help figure out where to run them, how to train them, even what to feed them. The boxholders know a lot more than you’d think, and they have people they can ask.”

b’Estorr reached into the pockets of his coat, and brought out a small brass orrery.
“There’s nothing really obvious here, no unshakable correspondences, but maybe…” He fiddled with the rings, clicking them back and forth, and finally shook his head. “I’ll need to work this out in a good deal more detail before I can give you an answer. I’m guessing it has something to do with the triple conjunction, sun, moon, and Argent, but how that would work is beyond me.”

“
Might be easier just to ask Colyer,” Eslingen said, and Rathe nodded.

“
Let’s try that. Can you take a day off, Philip, give me an introduction? Strictly off the books, just you and me going to see that dog of yours.”

Eslingen grinned.
“Sunflower will be glad to see you, too.”

“
Sunflower?” b’Estorr gave them both a doubtful look.

“
Philip’s share of the redistribution,” Rathe said. “A reasonably well-bred basket terrier which he’s decided to race.”

Eslingen shrugged.
“Why not? I can’t sell him for what I’m owed, might as well try to make something back.”

“
Speaking of Malfiliatre,” b’Estorr said, “have you heard the latest?”

Rathe shook his head.
“I’m almost afraid to ask.”

“
She’s offered to endow a chair at the University—possibly the one that Beier held, if Vair’s friends speak true—and the Fellows can’t decide what to do about it. Tempers are running high, and rumor has it that two of them actually came to blows over the question.”

“
What’s her game?” Eslingen asked.

“
Respectability. To make people forget she dumped her brother’s debts.” b’Estorr tucked his orrery back into his pocket. “To make herself liked, I suppose.”

“
Good luck with that,” Eslingen said. “Nobody’s going to forget what she did.”

“
How are the students taking it?” Rathe asked.

“
The Three Nations are, as always, divided,” b’Estorr answered. “The proctors and provosts are trying to keep a close watch on them, but I don’t think any of them care too deeply. It doesn’t touch them personally.”

“
Good.” Rathe closed his eyes. The last thing the city needed was for the students to take an interest in the question. The Three Nations, the students’ loose confederations, were always looking for an excuse to fight, whether it was over internal matters like the relative merits of astrology and alchemy, or over the University’s rights and privileges within the city. It had been a few years since the students had rioted, and he didn’t want to see it again any time soon.

“
I’ll talk to some of my colleagues about the possible stellar configurations,” b’Estorr said. “And about the thefts, if you’ll get me that list.”

“
I’ll see if Dame Calaon has it yet,” Eslingen said.

“
Thank you,” Rathe said. He shook his head. “I’m sure there was something more I wanted to ask, but I’m dead on my feet.”

“
Get some sleep,” b’Estorr said, practically, and Eslingen hauled himself to his feet.

“
The man has a point,” he said, and held out his hand. Rathe took it, and let himself be tugged upright. “Things will make more sense in the morning, right?”

“
They’d better,” Rathe said, and smothered a yawn.

Eslingen slept until just past the second sunrise, rose as the theater clocks were striking nine and scribbled a note to the Masters of Defense, canceling his only lesson for the day. In the normal course of events, he’d pick up a full slate from habitués of the Salle eager to say they’d had a lesson with him, and he couldn’t help wincing a little at the thought of the lost income. But the chance to work with Rathe was too good to pass up, and Duca would simply assume he was taking another day to steady his nerves before he came back to teaching.

The weaver’s boy proved willing to deliver the note for a spider, and Eslingen took the opportunity to haul a bucket of fresh water back to their room. He had just finished shaving when Rathe rea
ppeared, looking unusually self-satisfied.

“
Breakfast,” he said, and tossed a leaf-wrapped ball in Eslingen’s direction. Eslingen caught it by reflex, recognizing a honey loaf, and set it on the table.

“
Careful.”

“
I am officially at liberty,” Rathe said. “Trijn’s given me the day off.”

“
I see,” Eslingen said, and began to peel the leaves away from the soft, sticky bread, fragrant with honey and Silklands spice.

“
And what’s more reasonable for a man on holiday than to go to the races?” Rathe unwrapped his own breakfast, grinning.

“
As long as Voillemin doesn’t see you,” Eslingen said, “but I daresay we can manage that.”

“
We should be in the kennels most of the time,” Rathe answered, with what Eslingen suspected was unwarranted optimism.

“
You still want to talk to Colyer, then?”

“
Yeah. Off the books, like I said.”

“
Then we’ll really need to stay out of Voillemin’s sight,” Eslingen said.

“
He should be in the station most of the time,” Rathe said, around a mouthful of the honey loaf.

“
All right, we’ll watch the races,” Eslingen said, the holiday mood infecting him as well. “And you can make much of Sunflower, who is doing very nicely, thank you, and maybe we could finish with a play?”

“
There’s nothing good at the Bells,” Rathe said. “And the Tyrseia’s dark until after the races, and the Gallenon’s between shows—”

“
But the boxes at the Bells have locks,” Eslingen said, in dulcet tones, and surprised a laugh from Rathe.

“
Come to that, this door locks, and the bed’s more comfortable than those chairs. Not to mention it comes free with the rent.”

“
But, Adjunct Point, don’t you want to be wined and dined?”

“
No need for bribery.”

“
It’s for me.”

“
I’ll hold you to it, then,” Rathe said, and reached for his coat.

The air was still cool as they made their way through the streets, but the doubled sunlight promised a hot afternoon to come. At the edge of the Fair, Eslingen stopped to buy a parasol, oiled paper painted with enormous blue-violet flowers. Rathe rolled his eyes, but forbore further comment. Eslingen settled it jauntily on his shoulder, and they headed further into the New Fair.