Point of Knives (7 page)

“Right, Adjunct Point,” the duty point answered, and did a fair job of hiding her curiosity.

Rathe led the way out of the station and down Carrick Street toward the river, Eslingen following docilely in his wake. He’d thought at first that they could go to Wicked’s, but he was too well known there, too much a regular for Eslingen’s reappearance not to be remarked, and while he could stand the teasing, he didn’t want to have to deal with explanations. He settled instead for a travelers’ tavern on the edge of Point of Sighs, and let the waiter talk him into the private cubby he’d wanted in the first place. Eslingen’s eyebrows rose, but he slid without complaint into the narrow space. It held no more than the table and a pair of short benches, and the unlit stove beneath the table, and the walls that rose almost to the ceiling were thick oak planks, inlaid with brass disks that guaranteed protection against eavesdroppers.

“How very—intimate, Adjunct Point.”

“We need to talk,” Rathe said.

Eslingen sobered instantly. “We do. Nico, this was not my idea.”

“I didn’t think it was,” Rathe said. “It’s got Caiazzo’s handprints all over it.”

“True enough. But he’s told me off to help you, and I believe he means it.”

“Why would he do that?” Rathe demanded. The waiter appeared again, and they broke off to order a pint of wine and a pot of beer for Eslingen, as well as a plate of bread and cheese. When the waiter had bowed himself off, Eslingen shrugged.

“I don’t know, except that he doesn’t like being cheated.”

“Hanse has ways of dealing with that,” Rathe said, “and they don’t usually involve the points. This had better not be like this summer, him and his gold smuggling.”

“Not as far as I know,” Eslingen said, but there was the faintest hint of unease in his tone. “And he never had political motives, anyway, you know that.”

“No, but it was political, all the same, and Hanse was in it up to his neck.”

Eslingen dipped his head in acknowledgement. “True. And I think I can go so far as to say that this business is an attempt to recoup some of the summer’s losses. But it’s all by way of business, nothing to do with the queen or the succession or anything else political.”

Rathe considered him for a long moment. He thought Eslingen was telling the truth, at least as far as he knew it, and it was certainly the case that Caiazzo had never had any real interest in politics. Or, more precisely, not in any one idea or candidate above any other. He was perfectly happy to make money from other people’s political ambitions—he was behind half the unlicensed broadsheet printers in the city—but he had none himself. And much of his power would vanish if the laws or the monarch changed too drastically. “Fair enough,” he said. “But that still leaves us.”

“Yes.”

Rathe hadn’t expected a direct answer, and leaned back in relief as the waiter returned with their order. After they’d sorted it out and the waiter disappeared again, he said, “Truth is, I wasn’t expecting this. I’d—we’d settled things, I thought.”

“We had.” Eslingen nodded. “I was honest with you before about my situation, Nico, and it hasn’t changed. I haven’t got the money to leave Caiazzo’s service. A month ago, I could maybe have found a place with a company, but I’d have had to leave Astreiant. And now nobody’s hiring. I’m trapped worse than I was before.”

“And that’s my doing,” Rathe said.

“No, it’s not,” Eslingen said. “I could have told you to go drown yourself when you proposed the idea back at midsummer, and I could have hired out any time these last three months. I made my choice, and I’m prepared to stand it. But that’s not really the question, is it?”

“So what is the question, then?”

“Caiazzo wants me working with you, and I’ve no objection to that,” Eslingen said. “None whatsoever. I don’t much like that Old Steen was killed under my eye. But beyond that—I rather liked the perks of the job, Adjunct Point. I’m hoping to come to some arrangement there as well.”

There was color in Eslingen’s cheeks despite the insouciant words, and Rathe suspected his own face was pink as well. “If we go on with it, Philip, we’ll have to part at the end.”

“I know. I didn’t say I liked that bit.”

Rathe shook his head. “I’ve done that once already.” It had hurt more than he wanted to admit to have to stop seeing the Leaguer, to no longer have him even as a friend. He didn’t want to have to learn that absence again.

“This may be all the chance we’ve got,” Eslingen said. “And, who knows, something may come up. I could find another post, or we could fall out, or….”

His voice trailed off as though he’d run out of ideas, and Rathe stared at him. “Or one or both of us could end up dead,” he said at last. “I’m not entirely encouraged, Eslingen.”

Eslingen grinned. “Well, I don’t intend to drive you off, no. Or to get myself killed, for that matter. But—look, when a company goes into quarters, it’s common enough to pair off, to take a winter-lover, knowing you’ll part at the spring thaws. I promise I don’t ask for more than that.”

It was tempting, so very tempting. To have Eslingen at his side, in his bed, without having to worry about being seen or having tales get back to the Surintendant of Points…. And Eslingen was right about one thing, they might never get a better chance.

“All right,” he said, and held out his hand across the table. Eslingen clasped it, his touch both firm and caressing, and in spite of himself Rathe’s breath caught in his throat. He released his hold, swallowing hard, and reached for his glass. “To—what did you call it, winter-lovers?”

“To winter-lovers,” Eslingen echoed, and they touched glasses to seal the bargain.

Eslingen leaned against Rathe’s very comfortable pillows, smugly aware that he had managed to collect all of them, leaving Rathe braced less than comfortably against the carved bedstead. He was feeling remarkably pleased with himself, and life in general, happily sated for the first time in a month. The open window let in a pleasant breeze, and the ruddy light of the setting sun spilled across the worn floorboards. Rathe stretched, running both hands through his untidy hair, and Eslingen smiled again, watching the play of muscles across his chest and arms.

“Are you hungry?” Rathe asked.

“I couldn’t possibly,” Eslingen answered, fanning himself, and Rathe shook his head.

“Idiot.”

“I suppose we ought to eat,” Eslingen said. “But do we have to go out?”

Rathe reached for his shirt, and Eslingen sat up, sighing. Somehow his hair had come loose, and he caught it back again, then reached for his own discarded clothing.

“I could send the weaver’s boy down to Wicked’s for the ordinary,” Rathe offered. “And I’ve a decent bottle of wine, if you don’t mind that instead of beer.”

“That sounds lovely,” Eslingen answered, and Rathe finished dressing, went down the stairs to find the neighbor’s son. Eslingen watched from the window as he crossed the courtyard, a tough, wiry man in a shapeless coat: a common laborer, you would have said, a typical southriver rat, unless you spent the time to talk with him, to tease out the intelligence and humor lurking behind the pointsman’s mask. He was more fond of Rathe than he’d ever expected to be, and only hoped he could keep his word at the end of this business. He’d never had a winter-lover he wanted less to leave.

He shoved that thought aside, and turned to light Rathe’s candles, glancing around the room as he did. The building had once been a good-sized mansion, fallen into common hands and cut up now into a series of apartments; Rathe’s room was large and comfortable, with a generous bed and a sturdy stove and a table and chairs that were clearly second-hand, but clean and well-made. The pointsman certainly didn’t spend his coin on clothes, but he didn’t stint on other comforts.

The door opened again, and Rathe came back in, a pitcher in one hand. He set it on the washstand for later, and nodded to the candles. “Thanks. Want I should open the wine?”

“Please,” Eslingen said, and the simple domesticity of it all clawed at his heart.

The boy appeared with their food before they’d finished the first glass, and they settled to the meal. When only scraps of the berried tart were left, Rathe lit the stove and came back to the table to pour the last of the wine. Eslingen stretched, extending his legs carefully, and Rathe rested both elbows on the table.

“This cargo of Caiazzo’s,” he said.

Eslingen picked idly at the last of the tart, brittle pastry crusted with sugar. He’d been dreading the question since Caiazzo had come up with this brilliant plan, and still hadn’t decided how to answer. “There’s only so much I can tell you,” he began, and Rathe gave him a rather nasty smile.

“Oh, come on, Philip, you have to trust me sometime.”

“No, I don’t,” Eslingen said automatically.

“Then so much for all those fine words.”

“Unfair.”

“And I’ve got two dead men on my books,” Rathe said. “What’s fair about that?”

“That has nothing to do with Caiazzo’s business,” Eslingen said. Rathe quirked an eyebrow, and Eslingen sighed. “Not directly, anyway. Look, fair’s fair. Promise this won’t go toward calling a point—unless it turns out to be part of the murder, which it won’t—and I’ll tell you what I know.”

“You’d trust me that far?” Rathe asked. He sounded almost surprised, and Eslingen shrugged.

“You’re trusting me.”

“Fair enough.”

The silence stretched between them for a long moment, long enough that Eslingen heard the tower clock strike at Point of Sighs, followed by a fainter cascade of chimes from Point of Hearts further up the river.

“That was your cue,” Rathe said. “This is where you show me all you know.”

“Why, Adjunct Point,” Eslingen murmured, and Rathe shook his head, smiling.

“Business before pleasure, damn it.”

Eslingen laughed, burying the uncomfortable thought that he was buying Rathe’s favor with someone else’s secrets. “All right,” he said. “If you promise that then—”

“Philip.”

“Right.” He took a breath, trying to order his thoughts. “Caiazzo’s short of ready money,” he said. “He’d been funding his caravans out of that gold mine, and when he lost that—he’s been struggling and the Old Dame would like very much to find an excuse to put her fingers in the pie. So when Old Steen sent word that he had money to change outside the law—of course he jumped at it.”

“Of course,” Rathe said.

“I was carrying an offer,” Eslingen said. “A legal payment, crowns and pillars, solid coin of the realm, this realm. And no worries for Old Steen about taxes or foreign coin to explain.”

“And Caiazzo would have sent it right back out with the caravans,” Rathe said appreciatively. “So he wouldn’t have to worry about foreign coin, either.”

Eslingen nodded. “But that raises the question of who else could afford to take on this much untaxed coin? Dame van Duiren didn’t look like any merchant resident—or merchant venturer, for that matter.”

“She’s somebody’s agent,” Rathe said. “That’s obvious. But, as you say—who needs the trouble of foreign coin?”

Eslingen nodded. Chenedolle’s Queen taxed foreign monies, either on its arrival or as it was exchanged or in a half dozen other places as it circulated in her markets. She kept the rate low enough that most people preferred to change their coin legally, and the Queen accumulated foreign coin that only she could spend. There was simply nothing for an ordinary person to gain from trading in it, except for the metal itself. “Goldsmiths? Jewelers? Most of the Silklands coinage is fairly pure.”

Rathe stared at him. “Goldsmiths—Astree’s tits. Philip, you great lummox, it’s the Dis-damned gold again. And that is political, and I will see Caiazzo dance at a rope’s end for it.”

Eslingen shook his head. “It’s not aurichalcum. It’s ordinary gold. All right, it was taxed and bound in the Silklands or the League or the islands—maybe even in Chenedolle, some of it—but it was taxed and bound. You can’t use it any more than you can use a crown out of your purse. If you had a crown. Can you?”

“I don’t know.” Rathe calmed as quickly as he’d flared. “It’s untaxed. Illicit. That may well give it magistical properties.”

“Ask your necromancer,” Eslingen said.

“He’s not my necromancer,” Rathe said. “And anyway, what would a necromancer know about metallurgy? But he probably knows someone who does.”

“So we ask him,” Eslingen said. “Maybe that’ll tell us who’s willing to take the chance of crossing Caiazzo. Because that’s a risk not many want to run.”

Rathe nodded. “I’ll do that. And I’ll ask some other folk I know what they can tell me about Dame van Duiren. I’ll admit to some definite curiosity about that woman.” He straightened. “And you, my Philip, can talk to Young Steen. See what he’s found for witnesses, help him if you can—he’ll trust you, you’re Caiazzo’s knife.”

“I’ll do that,” Eslingen said, and couldn’t repress a grin. “But—surely it can wait till morning?”

“I do keep my promises,” Rathe said, with an answering smile. “Come to bed.”