Fairs' Point (42 page)

The crowd’s response was an ambiguous mutter, but Rathe thought they’d go in the end. He looked at Coindarel.
“Solveert’s clearly the main mover in all this—”

“
And the only,” Voillemin snapped.

“
Liar!” Malfiliatre tore herself from the Racing Secretary’s grip and slapped him across the face, sending him staggering. “You petty pimp of a pointsman, you murderous scum, you’re not going to get off scot-free.”

“
The woman’s mad!” Voillemin protested, but one of his fellows caught him by the arm.

“
Let’s hear her out,” he said.

“
Yes, indeed,” Claes said, and Voillemin subsided.

“
He was as much part of it as Solveert,” Malfiliatre said, “and I wish to all the gods he’d died, not Gaeten.”

“
You were part of this,” Rathe said, and she went to her knees beside Solveert’s body, smoothing the hair away from his face. A coin had smashed his cheek to ruin, but she didn’t seem to care.

“
What does it matter? He’s dead.”

“
You and Solveert—and Voillemin?”

“
That pimp.” Malfiliatre looked as though she wanted to spit. “Solveert fee’d him to help, to keep the silver where it was and to keep the other points away. Much good it did—what use are you, who can’t even stay bought?”

“
But why?” Rathe asked. “You had what you’d worked for all these years, you’re the Soueraine of Malfiliatre.”

“
There’s no money left in the title,” she said bitterly. “Even repudiating my brother’s debts wasn’t enough. Gaeten learned something from that Dis-damned astrologer, some trick or other, and he said he could move the silver. And he could, which is more than anyone believed possible. But—oh, gods, he’s dead.”

“
I’ll take it from here, Rathe,” a familiar voice said, and Rathe looked over his shoulder to see the Surintendant climbing to the stage. “You’ve done your part, and well. The rest is mine.”

“
Yes, sir,” Rathe answered, and took a step back. He found himself next to Eslingen, still looking shaken, and took the Leaguer’s arm. “Are you all right, Philip?”

“
I should have realized.”

“
What?”

“
The coins. They were—buzzing in the sack. I should have realized what they wanted.”

“
To go back to the one who’d sent them.” Rathe shook his head, thinking of Beier. “Not a good death, but I won’t say he didn’t deserve it.”

Eslingen shook himself.
“Seidos’s Horse, what a mess!”

“
It could have been worse,” Rathe said, with fervor, as Eslingen nodded. “It could have been so much worse.”

Rathe woke to brilliant sunshine and a familiar weight pressed against his hip, and reached down to pet his childhood dog before he was fully alert. There was nothing there, of course, the sensation vanishing: it was fully ghost-tide now, and his most usual ghost was the curly-tailed mongrel who’d been his companion from the last of his school years through apprenticeship. The memory was a fond one, but his smile turned to a wince as he tried to move. As he’d expected, the previous day’s unaccustomed exercise had left him stiff and sore.

By the angle of the light, it was past nine, and the other half of the bed was empty. Presumably Eslingen had gone to collect his prize money, if it really was that late, though it would have been kinder of him to wake his leman before he left. Rathe dragged himself out of bed and pulled on shirt and breeches, swearing under his breath. What he really wanted was an hour or two at the baths, but he would be needed at Dreams.

Eslingen had left the swaddled teapot on the table, along with the new loaf wrapped in a towel. Rathe started to pour himself a cup, and saw the note tucked beneath the pot. It was Eslingen’s newly-familiar hand
:
Trijn sent a runner to tell you not to come in before noon. I’m off to the Fair, suggest you try the baths
.
A wooden bath token lay beside the note. Rathe regarded it gratefully, then dressing and limped off to Tajan’s Bathhouse.

The hot water was reviving, and he spent the demmings he’d saved by using Eslingen’s token on a painful but restorative ma
ssage. Thus fortified, he reached the station at Dreams just as the clock struck noon. Trijn’s mercy did not extend to his paperwork: there was a stack of statements on his table, waiting for him to read and initial them, and the runner who brought him a fresh pot of tea informed him cheerfully that the Surintendant was sending someone round to interview him.

That someone arrived almost on the runner’s heels, a fresh-faced young advocat with dyed fingertips and a bodice cut low beneath her scarlet gown. She had brought a scrivener with her, and took Rathe through the events of the past week with brisk good humor. By the time she was done, he felt as though his thoughts had been extracted from his skull, beaten free of dust the way a householder beats her carpets, and returned to him neatly docketed. She left him with a smile, promising fair copies for his signature in the morning, and disappeared in search of Sohier.

Rathe looked at the now somewhat diminished stack of paper still waiting for his attention, but couldn’t muster the enthusiasm. He pushed himself away from the table instead and went down the hall to Trijn’s workroom.

“
Chief?”

“
Go home, Rathe.” Trijn didn’t looked up form her own work. “Take tomorrow off, too.”

Rathe opened his mouth in automatic protest, then closed it with a snap.
“Right, Chief,” he said, and took himself away.

He made a detour to Wicked’s to collect a couple of bottles of decent wine, on the theory that it couldn’t hurt, and dragged hi
mself up the stairs to his room, planning to send Eslingen to fetch their dinner later. To his pleased surprised, the Leaguer was there ahead of him, stripped to shirt and breeches and printed dressing gown and stretched out on the bed reading a broadsheet. There was a basket on the floor at the foot of the bed, and as Eslingen sat up on his elbow, Sunflower wriggled out from beneath his arm, barking a challenge.

“
Don’t tell me,” Rathe began, and Eslingen shook his head.

“
It’s just for tonight. DeVoss is moving her kennel today, and Naimi didn’t want him disturbed after all he’d done.”

Sunflower wormed his way out of Eslingen’s grasp and jumped off the bed, hackles up as he sniffed suspiciously at Rathe’s ankles.

“I live here,” Rathe said. Sunflower gave him a doubtful look, and resumed sniffing the air around his feet. He barked twice, and bowed, laying his forelegs on the boards. A moment later, he leaped away, tail wagging, and disappeared under the bed.

“
What in the world?” Eslingen asked.

“
Mud, I think,” Rathe said. “My dog, the one I had when I was a boy. I see his ghost, this time of year—”

“
And Sunflower’s found a friend,” Eslingen said, swinging himself off the bed. “Why not?”

Rathe decided he wasn’t capable of answering that question.
“So you got your prize?”

“
I got a vowal. And if that’s from Wicked’s…”

Rathe took the hint and opened a bottle. He poured them each a cup and took a swallow himself, savoring the cool, tart liquid.
“Only a vowal?”

“
That’s what everyone got,” Eslingen answered. “Being as the silver’s still active, and no one wants their coin to be trying to find its way back to the strongroom at Fairs—a vowal seemed a better bargain.”

Rathe nodded. Anyone who’d been at the Fair last night, who’d seen Solveert’s death, would be unwilling to take that chance.

“The University has figured out a way to—defuse the whole mess,” Eslingen went on, “get rid of the excess energy, but they weren’t able to do more than a few sacks of it overnight. They’ve promised to have the rest taken care of by the end of the Dog Moon.”

“
That’s not too bad.”

“
No. And there’s better news, or so I hear. It seems Solveert’s conjuration depends on a particular conjunction of stars, so it’s not really something the average merchant-resident needs to worry about—or that the average thief can make use of. Mind you, that’s not stopping the University, and probably half the magists in Astreiant, from promising charms against it, but either way, I don’t think it’s going to become common practice.”

“
That is good news,” Rathe said, and felt a weight lift that he hadn’t known was there. If this was just a fluke, luck of the stars, some clever villain spotting a window that had never before needed to be locked—that was ordinary, business as usual, and they all knew how to deal with that. Something bumped against his ankles, and he looked down: Sunflower, not his ghost.

“
Beier,” Eslingen said, settling himself at the table. “What really happened there? You can imagine how many different stories I heard this morning.”

“
It’s a good question.” Rathe had read Malfiliatre’s statement, alternately defiant and trying to shift the blame to others, and still wasn’t sure how much of it he believed. Voillemin was refusing to speak while his mother and aunts rallied to his defense, but there was little they could do in the face of Malfiliatre’s accusations. “Malfiliatre says the whole thing was Beier’s idea, that he was the one who found the conjuration in the first place, and that he took it to Solveert and they planned the theft together. But Beier threatened to go to the points unless Solveert increased his share, so he pretended to agree, and the next time they tested the conjuration, he made Beier the target.” He seated himself, wincing, and reached for the wine, pouring a second cup. “It could have happened like that, I suppose. It’s not really like Beier, though—he hated Solveert. And if he’d worked out a way to make silver vanish, he’d be more likely to publish it to make a mockery of the University. He’d have liked to see them scramble to find a counter, and he was an honest man, more or less. My guess is that he was planning to do just that, but his printer became faint-hearted when she read the draft—or perhaps she saw a possible profit and took it to Solveert. Then Solveert challenged Beier to prove it, or maybe he did talk Beier into joining him at least for a bit…and the rest happened the way Malfiliatre said.”

“
And it’s not likely you’ll find the printer, not after all this,” Eslingen said. “It’s ugly no matter how it happened. What about Poirel, did she say what happened to him?”

“
Bad luck. Or so she says, but I think I believe her in this one. He saw them moving Beier’s body, and tried to get a few seillings in exchange for his silence. Solveert gave him the money, all right—”

“
Just straight to the heart.” Eslingen shook his head. “They were playing a long game, her and Solveert. How long do you think it would take for the energy to dissipate enough for them to retrieve the money?”

“
The silver was overcharged,” Rathe said, quoting from one of the reports he’d read that afternoon, “and so was unstable enough to seek either the magist who had performed the working or to return to the place where the conjuration had been performed. They didn’t say how long it would be that way, but I doubt it would be quick. The coins were still trying to get back to Beier’s room a good ten days after he died.”

“
So they were just going to sit here and go about their business until it was safe enough to start taking the money.”

“
I’d guess that was one reason for choosing the vineyard hut,” Rathe said. “Solveert could visit it without arousing suspicion, but that nice solid door would keep the coin from hitting him if he hadn’t left it long enough.” They’d never have been able to take much, either, not at any one time—well, Malfiliatre might have, everyone thought her lands had a generous income even after what had been spent on the trial, but not Solveert. It took a cold mind and a cold heart to plan a crime that could only benefit you slowly and in the very long run. And if it was true that Malfiliatre had looked to him to father her children, she’d made no promise of marriage. He wondered how long she might have lived after a daughter was born. “Still, your old colonel’s likely to benefit from this,” he said, with deliberate good humor. “Rumor says the court’s decision will be overturned, and that gives the souerainitie to t’Anthiame.”

“
She always did land on her feet,” Eslingen said. He turned his cup slowly in his fingers, not meeting Rathe’s eyes. “Speaking of that—Coindarel spoke to me today. He’ll make me captain—he can make me captain, after what we did—but I have to give him my answer now. I told him I needed a word with you first.”

Rathe’s breath caught for a moment in his chest. He knew how much Eslingen wanted this, and it was both gratifying and terrif
ying to know that he could say yes or no and change his leman’s life
.
It’s going to happe
n
: Trijn’s words came back to him, a relief and an excuse
.
It’s going to happen, and Eslingen’s the man we want in charge
.
It was true, and there was no one he’d rather trust. He felt the pressure of a dog’s body, and then another, one against each ankle beneath the table, didn’t look to see which was past, the ghost, and which the present. “You said the uniforms were blue?”

Eslingen blinked once, then gave a tentative smile.
“Yes, in point of fact.”

“
Then you should take it,” Rathe said. “Tell him so, Philip.”

Eslingen reached out to take his hand across the tabletop.
“And if I’d said they were red?”

“
You’d look dreadful in red,” Rathe answered, and Eslingen grinned.

“
Blue is better, yes.” He sobered quickly. “Nico, you’re sure?”

“
It’ll be best for both of us,” Rathe said, and hoped it would be so.