Point of Knives (18 page)

“Right,” Eslingen said. “I can’t say that I’m reassured.”

“At least we can be sure Caiazzo won’t be in the way,” Rathe said, and snagged a piece of the tart.

“Oh?”

“I told him what we were doing,” Rathe said, somewhat indistinctly. “And told him to stay home.”

“Let’s hope he does it,” Eslingen said.

“If he doesn’t, then any points called are his own damn fault,” Rathe said.

They made their way to Dame Lulli’s house as the day-sun was brushing the tops of the houses, their shadows stretching long behind them. Lulli herself was waiting at the alley door, let them in to the back garden. She looked both weary and afraid, Eslingen thought, and Rathe treated her with care.

“Grandad’s room is as you left it, Adjunct Point,” she said, as she led them down the dark hallway. “And since you chased off the bailiffs, no one’s made inquiries, bar a woman from the judge. But I’ve kept my man on duty day and night, and hired a second to help him.”

“That’s probably why you haven’t had any trouble,” Rathe said, with a fleeting smile.

“At what I’m paying him, I should hope so,” Lulli answered. “Do you want the loan of one or both of them? You might find them useful.”

“No, thanks,” Rathe answered. “It’s better if we keep it a points matter.”

“As you please,” Lulli said. She fished under her skirts, and came up with a ring of keys. “This is for all the house,” she said, and began to name them, Rathe nodding attentively. Eslingen let his attention wander, surveying the parlor and the other rooms off the hall. The house was sturdily built, not the sort of place where the mere thrust of a pike could break open the shutters, and he allowed himself to relax just a little. If Rathe were right about van Duiren’s plans—and that was his job, to know what people like her would do—they stood a decent chance of stopping her, particularly if they could take her by surprise.

Eslingen watched from the back door as Rathe escorted Lulli to the alley gate, and then barred the door behind him as he returned. The bar looked sturdy, and he looked at Rathe.

“I thought you wanted her to get in.”

“I do.” Rathe tested the bar, and nodded. “But we can’t make it look too easy. A burglar’s jemmy will lift that without much trouble.”

“If you say so,” Eslingen said, and Rathe grinned.

“It’s a bit like my universal key. You have to be a bit of a specialist to want one, but—they do work.”

Eslingen shook his head. “Now what?”

“First we get set up,” Rathe said. “And then we take a look at Grandad’s things.”

Grandad’s room was toward the back of the house, across from the pantry. It had probably once been a second storeroom, Eslingen guessed, but it was a convenient place to put a man who minded the door and lit the first fires in the mornings. The lock was covered with a huge blob of wax, marked with an imperfect impression of the seal on Rathe’s truncheon. Rathe lit the dark lantern, though he left the shutters open, and drew his knife, holding the blade to heat in the flame.

“Another unsuspected talent,” Eslingen said. He slipped his pistols out of the bag that had concealed them, and checked the priming powder.

“Don’t tell me you never stole anything in all your days soldiering,” Rathe said.

“We never worried about hiding our tracks,” Eslingen said.

“I suppose you wouldn’t, at that,” Rathe said. He held the knife’s blade close to his palm to test the temperature, then slid it behind the knot of wax. The hot blade slid a little way and then stuck. Rathe pulled it free, reheated it, and tried again. It took a dozen passes, heating and reheating the blade, before the wax gave way. Rathe caught it in his cupped hand and set it carefully aside. He looked into the room, checking that the shutters were still sealed, and then picked up the lantern. Eslingen followed him into the room, one pistol in his belt, the other ready in his hand.

The space was definitely a converted storeroom, still smelling faintly of candles and Silklands spice. It was comfortably furnished, a curtained bed wedged into one corner, a chest at its foot, and there was a small table and a pair of chairs against the opposite wall. Their paint was shabby, but the cushions were new, as were the bedcurtains and the neatly folded blankets. His house altar was a traveling shrine hanging above the table, the double doors folded shut. Eslingen opened them carefully, saw without surprise that small statues of Oriane and Seidos flanked an incense burner shaped like the Sea-bull. A small candelabrum stood on the table, and a lamp hung at the head of the bed: ship-shape, Eslingen thought, every inch of space put to good use, and everything tucked carefully away.

Rathe was already kneeling by the chest, universal key in hand, and a moment later lifted the heavy lid. There was a tray inside, and Rathe lifted it out, checked quickly through the clothes below it before lowering the lid gently into place.

“Nothing else in there,” he said, and rose to set the tray on the table.

Eslingen set his pistol aside and lit the candles, and together they went through the miscellany that Grandad had accumulated. Most of it was unimportant—a few pieces of jewelry, an ivory statue of a Silklands dancer, one foot cracked and broken, an oiled purse that held a handful of larger coins—and Rathe shook his head.

“Nothing.”

“The papers?” Eslingen pointed to a bundle tied with blue string, but Rathe was already picking at the knot.

“They look like letters,” he said, and spread them on the table. “No, hang on, I’ve got some contracts here, old ones—and I think these are charts. Take a look.”

Eslingen took the packet eagerly, unfolded the sheets in the overlapping circles of the candle’s light. “Charts, yeah, but for Silklands ports. Nothing in Astreiant—nothing even in Chenedolle.” He folded them back together, frowning. “Young Steen said his father didn’t make maps.”

“I know,” Rathe said. He shook his head. “And it looks like he meant it. Nothing here that’s of any use.” He retied the string around the bundle. “But if Old Steen wasn’t leaving something with his father, why kill the old man?”

“Because he was a witness?” Eslingen asked.

“If you wanted to avoid witnesses, all you’d have to do was wait until Old Steen left the yard,” Rathe said. “That way you wouldn’t have to worry about someone in the house seeing you. There has to be something here.”

Unless you’ve gotten it all wrong,
Eslingen thought, but that was something he couldn’t say. Rathe frowned again, staring at the accumulation of material, then reached for the pouch of coins. He spread them out on the table, turning them each heads up, and in spite of himself Eslingen leaned closer. They were mostly larger silver coins, and mostly foreign, a pair of Chadroni demi-marks, silver staters from half the cities of the League, and Rathe picked out the gold, sliding them away from the others. It was a tidy hoard, Eslingen thought: a Silklands gold-pillar as long as a finger-joint, a notched Chadroni kingsmark, an Altheim stater that looked bright and new. Even as he frowned at the thought, Rathe reached for the stater, turning it in the light.

“This is it,” he said. “Look, no customs mark.”

Eslingen took it from him. Sure enough, the stamp was missing, and he cocked his head at Rathe. “All right, this may well be from Old Steen’s cargo—”

“I’d lay money it is,” Rathe said. “The other coins are all marked.”

“But what good is one coin?” Eslingen handed it back.

“Doctrine of Resonances,” Rathe said. “The part can stand for the whole, right?”

“Right.” Eslingen knew he sounded doubtful.

“I’ve seen this before,” Rathe said. “With the right spell—which I don’t know, but any competent magist can deduce, it’s a well-known class of spells—you can use one object of a group to lead you to all the others. This one coin will lead us to the rest.”

“Then let’s pack this up, and go find it.” Eslingen knew before the words were out of his mouth that Rathe wouldn’t buy it, but he went on anyway. “Come on, Nico, surely the most important thing is to secure this untaxed gold before some dubious magist tries to turn it into cut-rate aurichalcum.”

“The most important thing is catching the person who killed Grandad and Old Steen,” Rathe said. “And if that wasn’t van Duiren, she knows who did.”

And without the coin, no one else would be able to find the missing chest. Eslingen nodded. “All right.”

They put the room to rights and blew out the candles before retreating to the hallway. Rathe busied himself reapplying the wax seal to the door—not a perfect job, Eslingen thought, but it would certainly pass in the dim light. He turned to the storeroom, pushed back the door, pleased to find the hinges well-oiled, and looked inside. There was no window, but there were counters where they could wait, and with the door half open they had a decent view of Grandad’s door. Rathe came to join him, carrying the dark lantern, and Eslingen stepped back to let him in.

“What if they come in through the windows?” he asked.

Rathe shrugged. “I doubt they will—if they’re going to slip a bar, might as well use the door, it’s easier. But if for some reason they do, we’ll hear them. Grandad’s door’s only held by the wax.”

That made sense. “How long do you think we’ll have to wait? I don’t have your experience in these matters.”

“Well, if it was me,” Rathe said, “I’d break in between sunset and second sunrise, when everything’s nice and dark.”

“Soon, then,” Eslingen said, and slid the lantern’s shutter closed.

Rathe’s voice came out of the dark. “Yeah. So be ready.”

Rathe rested his hips against the counter, every shift of weight seeming thunderous in the silence. Behind him, he heard Eslingen sigh, and then the counter creaked as it took the Leaguer’s weight. He slipped his hand into his pocket again, running his thumb over the rough surface. Altheim’s coins were crudely made, but this one would serve its purpose, would lead anyone who knew the spell to the missing chest and its contents. Eslingen had backed off once, but they’d have the discussion again, he knew. If he gave it to Monteia, Mirremay would claim at least a half share; if he gave it to the Surintendant—well, he’d be going over Monteia’s head, depriving her of the reward, and would earn an enemy where he couldn’t afford one. If only there was some way to lose the damn thing. Eslingen would never consent to that, though, and he dragged his mind back to the moment.

Van Duiren had to be coming soon, he thought. It was getting close to second sunrise, and the winter-sun still gave enough light at this time of year that surely someone would see anyone who tried to break in through a locked alley gate. Unless she wanted to wait until much later, when she could assume everyone was abed—but the winter-sun was even brighter then, and Point of Hopes patrolled here regularly. No, by all sense, she should have been here by now.

Unless he’d gotten it completely wrong. He winced at the thought, made himself go back over his reasoning. Van Duiren wanted the gold—probably to sell it to rogue magists, but that wasn’t all that important. What mattered was that she could get her hands on it, and for that, she needed the key that Old Steen had left with his father. Presumably she had known about that, or she wouldn’t have killed Grandad—

He swore under his breath. There was one other way that she could get her hands on Old Steen’s goods, and on all of them, not just things he’d left with his father. The court had impounded them, yes, but the marriage lines were good enough to convince; if Caiazzo hadn’t posted his complaint, Young Steen’s case wasn’t solid enough to justify keeping a man’s goods from his lawful wife. And Caiazzo—he’d agreed to stay out of things just a little too easily. What were his exact words?
I won’t be anywhere that Dame van Duiren can complain of.
And of course she couldn’t complain of his presence, if he was meeting her at her behest.

I got it wrong. I’ve gotten it all wrong, and Hanselin Caiazzo is going to die because of it.

He controlled his racing thoughts, reached for the lantern and snapped the shutter open.

“What?” Eslingen slid off the counter, lifting his pistol.

“If Caiazzo was going to meet someone, make a deal, a trade, where would he go?”

“What?” Eslingen said again.

“Think, damn it!” Rathe shook himself. “Philip, I got it wrong. Van Duiren’s not coming here, she’s going to kill Caiazzo. How else can she get control of Old Steen’s goods?”

For what seemed an eternity, Eslingen stared at him, and then Rathe saw him take a deep breath. “If Caiazzo’s really meeting her—I’d guess the Snake and Staves, by the Causeway. It’s a neutral spot.”

Rathe swore again. That was at the easternmost edge of the city, too far to walk—maybe too far even in a low-flyer. But they had to try.

He sent Eslingen ahead to find a low-flyer, stayed just long enough to lock the doors, then headed after him. At the crossroads, he looked around, hoping against hope to see a runner or a patrolling pointsman, but there was no one in sight.

“Nico!” Eslingen leaned down from the step of a low-flyer, and Rathe caught his arm, hauled himself aboard. The low-flyer jerked into motion, and Eslingen opened the trap to give directions to the driver. Rathe saw the man nod, then heard the crack of the whip as he urged his horse to greater effort.