Fairs' Point (33 page)

“
I wondered if we couldn’t shift some of the work onto Solveert’s office,” Sohier said, diffidently. “If we sent them a general answer—a list of all the names and possible points—it would be up to them to decide which ones to follow up.”

“
I like that,” Rathe said. “They may just send it back to us, but it’s worth the try. And, Lizy—make the list in the order you had them in your tablets.”

She grinned appreciatively—the astrologers were listed there in the order that she’d found them, which would make it that much harder for the Patent Administrators to determine who was actually worth prosecuting—and pushed herself to her feet.
“Right, boss. Anything else?”

“
Not at the moment.”

“
Then I’m going to get breakfast first,” she said. “Want anything?”

Rathe shook his head.
“Thanks anyway.”

He bent his attention to the morning’s summonses, finalizing the drafts for the station’s scrivener to put into fair copy that afternoon, and had just put his name to the last one when the station’s senior runner tapped on the door frame.

“Excuse me, Adjunct Point, but there’s a runner for you from the deadhouse.”

“
Not another body,” Rathe said, in spite of himself, and Ladoi shook his head.

“
He says it’s just a message, but he’s come in a cart.”

“
I’ll come down.” Rathe rolled his drafts into a neat scroll, securing it with a twist of string, and handed it to the duty point when he reached the bottom of the stairs. “Pass these on, please, and if I don’t come back, tell Trijn I’ve gone to the deadhouse.”

“
Right, Adjunct Point,” the duty point said, and tucked the rolled papers into the basket with the rest of the scrivener’s work.

Rathe went on out into the yard, looking around for the dea
dhouse runner. There was no cart at the front gate, but a battered two-wheeler was drawn up at the side, an elderly cart-horse dozing in the traces, and an older youth just at the start of apprentice-age holding the reins. He straightened at Rathe’s approach, and Rathe nodded.

“
You were looking for me, I think. I’m Rathe.”

“
Yes, Adjunct Point.”

He hadn’t been with the alchemists long, Rathe thought, or he would have learned disrespect. He suppressed a grin, and the boy went on as if he hadn’t noticed.

“Fanier says, he and Magist b’Estorr have come up with something he thinks you’d like to see, you and the lieutenant.”

Rathe looked up sharply at that.
“Did he tell you to ask for Eslingen, too?”

“
Yes, Adjunct Point.”

They had something, then, something solid. Rathe rubbed his chin, considering, then said,
“Wait here. I’ll have to send for him.”

He ducked back into the yard, and beckoned to Ladoi, who was hovering by the gate.
“Take a note for me,” he said, and fumbled in his purse for a scrap of paper. He scribbled a note on it, folded it, and handed it to the runner along with a couple of seillings. “I want you to go to Fairs’ Point—take a low-flyer, the time matters—and find Lieutenant Eslingen. Give him this and tell him to meet me at the deadhouse. Tell him it’s important.”

Ladoi’s eyes widened almost comically—this was the stuff of bad plays—but he nodded.
“Right away, Adjunct Point,” he said, and darted off. Rathe turned back to the side gate.

“
All right,” he said, to the waiting runner. “Let’s go.”

Despite the horse’s apparent age, they reached the deadhouse in good time, and a journeyman brought Rathe back to the same workroom where Fanier and b’Estorr had done their first exper
iments. The necromancer was nowhere in sight, but Fanier was frowning over a sheet of scribbled notes, and looked up as the door opened, setting his spectacles on top of his head.

“
Oh, good. Istre’s just gone to fetch an ephemeris. Is your black dog coming?”

“
He’s at the races,” Rathe answered. “I’ve sent for him.”

“
That’s good. He may have something to say about this.” Fanier put his glasses on his nose again, and scowled at the paper.

“
Care to tell me what it’s about?” Rathe asked.

“
We’ve got one solid answer,” Fanier said, “and quite a few interesting suppositions. But I’d rather wait till the others get here. There’s tea on the stove if you want some. Perfectly wholesome stuff.”

Rathe grinned, but poured himself a cup, and settled on the bench to wait. To his surprise, Eslingen appeared before b’Estorr, looking both slightly disheveled and entirely pleased with himself, and Rathe poured him a cup of tea.
“Good day at the races?”

“
Sunflower won,” Eslingen answered. “That puts him through to the next race in the ladder, the last before the final, and I turned back the purse. Naimi thinks he’s got a chance of winning that one, too, given the dogs that are left to run. We had a break when a couple of the favorites stumbled.”

Rathe nodded, a new thought running through his mind.
“How many of the owners and trainers turn back their prizes, do you think?”

“
A fair number. It’s a reasonable bet, at least at this point in the season.”

The workroom door opened before Rathe could pursue the que
stion, and b’Estorr let himself into the room. “Sorry. I had to go all the way back to the University to find a copy.”

“
Alchemists don’t use ephemerides?” Rathe asked, and Fanier snorted.

“
We do, but not that kind. It’s a little—fine-grained—for our work.”

b’Estorr set the volume on the worktable with an audible thud.
“It may, I admit, be overkill, but I want to be sure I’m reading the planets around the winter-sun correctly, and DeBryck is the only one who gives the tables on a daily basis.”

“
The outer planets just don’t move that fast,” Fanier muttered.

“
Relative to each other,” b’Estorr said. It had the sound of an on-going argument, and Rathe pulled himself up off the bench.

“
Why don’t you start from the beginning, and tell me why you wanted us here?”

He was looking at Fanier, but the alchemist shook his head.
“It’s Istre’s idea, not mine.”

“
Istre?”

“
Ah.” The necromancer looked faintly embarrassed. “Well. I had an idea about how the silver was being moved—assuming, of course, that the intention of what’s been happening is to move silver from one place to another by magistry, and that what I observed in Beier’s rooms was in fact the residue of such an operation—”

“
Istre,” Rathe said.

“
I’ve worked out how I think it’s being done,” b’Estorr said. “That’s what Fanier’s looking at.”

“
And, for what it’s worth, I agree with Istre,” the alchemist interjected.

“
It partly depends on the angles between Oriane and Sofia, and Oriane and the winter-sun,” b’Estorr went on, “and it certainly helps that Oriane and the winter-sun are in conjunction—that’s what I wanted to get from DeBryck, some idea of what the tolerances are. But—to make a complicated matter somewhat less so—someone has worked out a way to use the stars as they currently stand to send large amounts of silver from one place to another.”

Rathe stood still for a moment, his thoughts whirling.
“Do you know where they’re sending it? And do you have any idea who? And—you said this took an enormous amount of energy. How are they raising it?”

“
The races,” Eslingen said, and Rathe stopped abruptly.

“
Of course. The crowds, the focus, the cheering—”

“
The riot,” Eslingen said.

“
And that.” Rathe nodded. “Damn it, I’d like to know what Fairs’ has found out about who started it.”

“
I think you’re right,” b’Estorr said. “The riot would be better than the races themselves—the focus is singular, rather than spread across a group of races.”

“
But if that’s the case,” Rathe said, “I know what they’re after. The last day of the races, the strongroom at Fairs’ Point will be stuffed with all the purse money, ready to be paid out—because everyone wants to see the flash of coin—not to mention all the bonds ready to be reclaimed.”

“
I agree,” b’Estorr said. He shook his head. “And, unfortunately, I don’t have the answers to any of your other questions. I don’t know where it’s being sent, and I most certainly don’t see any indication of who’s behind it.”

Rathe swore.
“Has to be someone who knows magistry, though.”

“
Or someone who can use it,” b’Estorr said.

“
You’re thinking that’s what she hired Beier for,” Eslingen said. “To create this conjuration. And then killed him when he got somehow out of hand.”

Rathe swore again.
“Caiazzo.”

“
He’d never—” Eslingen began, and Rathe shook his head.

“
No, he’s definitely not the man, but—he hired Beier per usual to write his pamphlets, and Beier begged him for an extension, said he had another matter in hand that wasn’t quite finished. It’s not proof, but it’s suggestive.”

The others nodded in slow agreement, and b’Estorr said,
“You’d need someone with an education, I think. This isn’t a simple conjuration.”

“
How much education?” Rathe asked.

“
Education’s the wrong word,” Fanier said. “Familiarity, more like, or comfort.”

“
Well, I suppose, but if anything goes wrong,” b’Estorr began, and Rathe interrupted.

“
Could I do it? Without Beier holding my hand?”

“
I don’t know,” b’Estorr said, and Fanier shrugged.

“
You’d have to be very, very careful, and it would take twice as long as it ought.”

“
This seems to be coming off very neatly each time it’s tried,” Eslingen said, and it was Rathe’s turn to nod.

“
Someone who’s been to University, then?”

“
Or someone whose trade or art depends on magistry,” Fanier said.

“
That narrows it down a bit,” Eslingen said.

Not as much as one would like, Rathe thought, but swallowed the words.
“It’s a help. But we need something more to go on.”

“
We might be able to give you that,” Fanier said slowly. “We’ve had some thoughts, Istre and I.”

“
It’s a complicated bit of magistry,” b’Estorr said, “and it takes a lot of power, which means it leaves a trail. You heard it, Eslingen, when we were in Beier’s room. There’s an echo, and it lingers. I think we might be able to make a sort of compass to follow that trace.”

“
You mean you could use it to track the woman who’s doing this?” Rathe asked. “Or man, I suppose.”

“
We could track where the silver went,” Fanier said. “That I’m sure of. The other—we could try, but the correspondences are much less sure.”