Fairs' Point (26 page)

“
Nothing at all,” Eslingen answered, slurring his words just a little. To his shock, b’Estorr made a sound that was almost a giggle.

The pointswoman rolled her eyes.
“Take it within doors,” she advised. “Move along, masters.”

Eslingen doffed his hat, making the gesture too broad, and turned away. b’Estorr tucked his arm through his, leaning enough of his not inconsiderable weight against Eslingen’s shoulder to make him stagger, and they made their way out of the alley.

Once they were out of sight, b’Estorr disentangled himself with a rueful smile. “And sorry again. No offense, I hope.”

“
Thanks for backing me,” Eslingen said. He felt profoundly awkward, for all he was fairly sure Rathe and b’Estorr had never been lovers, and cleared his throat. “So you’re sure there was magistry involved?”

“
I’m not sure what else could be doing it, honestly,” b’Estorr answered, looking relieved himself at the change of subject. “But, yes, if there was any doubt, that’s laid it. Something was done, there in the alley or in Mama Moon’s, that’s drawing the silver.”

“
They’re neither one the place I’d choose for such a thing,” Eslingen said.

“
Nor would I.” b’Estorr shook his head. “And yet, that seems to be the only answer. I’ll need to think on it, do some reading, but then maybe I can come up with an answer. And to that end—back to the University, I think.”

“
Good luck,” Eslingen said, and the other man turned away.

There was a fountain in the alcove just inside the deadhouse lobby, a plain fish-shaped spout above a spotless alabaster basin, a polished brass coin box set into the wall beside it. It was a demming for each use, according to the equally tidy notice pinned above the faucet, but Fanier had long ago showed him the trick. Rathe pressed the fish’s left eye and scrubbed his hands beneath the resulting stream of water. He caught the last of it in cupped hands, drank thirstily, then wiped his chin and dried his hands on the front of his coat. He wanted to stay, watch the experiments over Fanier’s shoulder, but he knew he couldn’t spare the time. There was too much other business to attend to during the races; even in Dreams, their workload had doubled, particularly now that the Patent Administrator had gotten himself into the swing of things and was issuing complaints about unlicensed book-writers and astrologers-without-patent three times a day. He wiped his hands on his coat again, knowing he’d trespassed on Trijn’s good humor already, and started for the door.

“
Nico, wait.”

That was Fanier, pushing hastily through the doors that led to the inner rooms, and Rathe turned, frowning.

“Trouble?”

“
There’s a body,” Fanier said.

“
Mine?” Rathe asked, his stomach sinking, and the alchemist shrugged.

“
Customs Point called us, but they say it came from Point of Knives. My journeyman says Aulard was none too pleased about it when they brought the cart. And it’s a nasty one.”

“
They usually are,” Rathe muttered. “Close to the Court, was it?”

Fanier nodded.
“Been dead a while, too, though why you’d keep a dead body…”

Rathe swore. The Court of the Thirty-Two Knives was technica
lly part of Point of Knives, but in practice the warren of tumbledown mansion and outbuildings that was the actual court remained its own fiefdom, and the points went there only armed and in numbers. To make matters worse, Mirremay, the head point there at Knives—she wasn’t allowed to call herself a chief—was a descendant of the bannerdames who had controlled the area for generations. But even Mirremay had no real standing within the Court, and if she’d refused to take responsibility for the body, left it for Customs Point—

“
The main thing is,” Fanier went on, “I think it’s Beier.”

“
Astree’s tits.”

Fanier nodded.
“You know him better than I, and I thought it might save us some time if you could say yea or nay.”

Rathe sighed. If Fanier said it was nasty, it would be, and if it was Beier—but they had to know.
“Let me borrow a runner, let Trijn know what I’m doing. Then—yeah, I’ll take a look.”

“
Thanks.”

The journeymen had brought the body into one of the larger rooms, and lit great bundles of save-all and other herbs in the brackets at each end of the slab where the body lay. The air was colder than ever, a preservatory hastily applied, but even so there was a distinct whiff of rotting flesh. The only attending journeyman was older, a scar-faced young man Rathe didn’t recognize, and the apprentices had been shooed away: not a job for beginners, he thought, and swallowed hard.

The body was still covered with a pale sheet, the smoke from the burning herbs drawn to and over it, lessening the smell, and the journeyman looked up at their approach.

“
He’s stable now, master.”

“
Good,” Fanier said, taking his glasses out of the tangle of his hair. “That’ll buy us some time, anyway.” He took hold of the top edge of the sheet, and glanced over his shoulder. “Ready?”

Rathe nodded, bracing himself. Fanier folded the sheet away from the face, the movement unexpectedly gentle, and Rathe winced.

“His own mother wouldn’t know him.” The man had been dead some time, all right, the skin mottled and stretched; the lips were peeled back over blackened gums and teeth that showed too large even without the swollen tongue protruding between them. The hair was right, gray and untidy, but it was missing in places, as though great hanks had been yanked away. There were wounds in the neck and into the collarbone, disappearing beneath the sheet; one ear was missing, and the cheekbone on that side looked as though it had been chewed.

“
Wait,” Fanier said, and made a series of passes. The smoke from the smudges shifted, swirling back toward the body. It glided over the dreadful face, then took shape above it, a mask that removed the ravages of time and decomposition. Rathe flinched again—the image was smiling, smug and self-satisfied as the man had been in life—but nodded.

“
That’s Beier.”

Fanier gestured again, and the image dissolved, the smoke r
etreating, and Rathe swallowed hard.

“
What killed him?”

“
I’m not sure yet.” Fanier folded the sheet the rest of the way back, revealing more cuts in the body, all down the torso and across the belly and ruined sex and into the mottled thighs. The skin had split and blackened in places, and Rathe looked away.

“
Gods below.”

“
There’s more of the same on the back, flayed to the ribs in a couple of places.”

“
I’ll take your word for it,” Rathe said. He swallowed, his mouth tasting of copper, and to his relief Fanier drew the sheet back up over the ravaged body.

“
At least some of that was done after he was dead. Maybe all of it, I’ll have to test it. But any one of those chest wounds—and the ones in the back—any of them could have killed him.”

“
Who’s his next of kin?” Rathe asked.

“
I’ve no idea. We sent to Fairs’ Point—you know we had to.”

Rathe sighed and nodded. Fanier was right, they’d had no other choice, particularly since Customs Point had already passed it on, but that meant there wasn’t much time before Fairs’ Point claimed it, and knocked him off the case, and he found that he didn’t want to let it go.
“What can you find out before they get here?”

“
As much as I can.” Fanier walked slowly around the table, and Rathe looked away as the smoke began to swirl again, tracing ugly and uncomfortable shapes against the sheet.

“
Were there any belongings?”

“
No.” That was the journeyman, who looked distinctly disapproving. “He was stripped, either by whoever killed him or after.”

“
After, for my guess,” Fanier said. “The corpse has been moved, and more than once.”

“
Why?” Rathe began, and answered his own question. “No, I know, to hide the body, and then if that wasn’t safe enough, moved again, or if they needed to search the body.”

“
All of that,” Fanier said, almost absently, his attention still on the patterns that blossomed in the smoke. “And then some. Geffres, you test it.”

The journeyman stepped forward obediently, his hands tracing the same complex gestures, and then he frowned.
“That doesn’t make sense.”

“
No, but it’s the answer I got, too,” Fanier said. “Moved at least five times, and quite possibly more. Someone wasn’t going to let him lie in peace even after he was dead.”

“
These post-mortem wounds,” the journeyman said thoughtfully. “I almost think they’re repeating—enlarging?—ante-mortem injuries.”

“
Do you, now?” Rathe said, and Fanier lifted an eyebrow.

“
Go ahead, test for it, then.”

Geffres folded the sheet back again, exposing all the injuries, and Rathe looked away again. Geffres traced another series of gestures, then shook his head.
“Or maybe not?”

“
No, no,” Fanier said. “You almost had it.” He made what looked to Rathe like the same movement, and a cluster of sparks flew from his fingertips to gather on the body. “Some days after death, I’d say.” He looked back at Geffres. “You needed to add in more time.”

Geffres nodded thoughtfully.

“So the body was moved, more than once,” Rathe said slowly, “and while he was being moved, someone—what, cut into the original wounds?”

“
That’s what it’s starting to look like,” Fanier said, and looked at Geffres. “Fetch the tell-all, will you?”

The journeyman obeyed without question, returning with a sto
ppered jar the size of a child’s head. Fanier pulled a leather glove from his pocket, slipped it onto his right hand, then took the jar in the crook of his other arm. He worked the stopper loose, and set it aside, then reached in with gloved fingers to draw out a pinch of dark gray powder that glittered oddly in the magelights. He dribbled it on the slab around the body, drawing a thin outline, then took a larger pinch and blew on it, so that it fell in a shimmering haze across the corpse’s face. He spoke a word that Rathe couldn’t hear, and the outlining powder rose like smoke, draping itself across the body like a veil. Fanier made a satisfied noise and set the jar aside, careful to seat the stopped securely.

“
Let’s see now.”

Rathe looked away, not wanting to watch the rest of the examin
ation. In spite of the smoke and the preservatory, he could smell death in the room, death and decay. Beier hadn’t deserved this. He’d been an annoying man, right enough, a thorn in the side of the University and the Patent Administrator, every last one of them, but nothing he’d done seemed worthy of a death like this. He wrote broadsheets for bettors, touted horoscopes for dogs: you might as well kill the woman who wrote the broadsheet that listed the week’s plays at the Gallenon or the Bells. It simply didn’t matter enough, not to the women who made money from racing. Or if it did, it mattered more to their pride than to their purses, and the trainers were nothing if not practical women. He’d have expected them to go after Beier’s art, his livelihood, not his life.

There was a sharp knock at the door, and Fanier looked up, frowning. Geffres moved to answer, spoke quietly to the apprentice at the door, then shut the door again.

“The woman from Fairs’ Point is here already.”

“
Damn it,” Rathe said. “We’ve a claim, of sorts—he fathered a child for a woman who lives in Dreams, and she came to us about him—but there’s no question Fairs takes precedence.”