Point of Hopes

“Yeah, well, some of us had work to do,” Rathe muttered, but gri

“Trouble?” Jiemin asked, and Rathe shrugged.

“A–disturbance–over a runaway apprentice that could easily have gotten someone killed.” Rathe ran his hands through his hair, feeling the sweat damp beneath the curls. It was still hot in the station, and the air smelled more than ever of someone’s inexpert cooking. “Guildmaster set a journeyman to bring the runaway home, and the good citizens along Apothecary Row decided this was our child‑thief.”

“Not good, Nico.” Jiemin looked down at the daybook, trained reflex, checking the day’s events. “You managed all right, though?”

“This time.” Rathe shook his head again. “Next time, I’m not so sure.”

Jiemin nodded, soberly. Before she could say anything, however, the door of Monteia’s office opened and the chief point looked out. She had removed her coat and neckcloth and loosened her shirt, but still looked hot and irritable, a few strands of hair straggling across her forehead.

“Didn’t the surintendant send for you?”

Rathe suppressed a sigh. “I just got in. And I need to talk to you. We nearly had a riot in the Apothecaries Row over a runaway apprentice.”

Monteia grunted. “Can you say you’re surprised? Come on in.”

Rathe followed her into the little room, sweltering despite the wide‑open window. There was little breeze in the back garden at the best of times, and the river breeze never reached this far into Point of Hopes.

“So what’s this about a riot?” Monteia asked.

Rathe told the story quickly, but wasn’t surprised when Monteia grunted again.

“Guildmaster should take better care of her apprentices, if you ask me. Bah, it’s not good, any way you look at it.”

“No. And there’s more.”

“There would be,” Monteia muttered.

“The butchers are blaming Devynck for their missing children,” Rathe said, bluntly. “No cause for it, I don’t think, but they’ve never liked having a League tavern on their doorstep.” He ran through that story quickly, too, and Monteia muttered something under her breath.

“Chief?”

She shook her head. “Never mind. So, you think this knife–what was his name, Eslingen?”

“Philip Eslingen, yes.”

“You think he was telling the truth there, about what he said?”

Rathe nodded. “I do.” I rather liked him, he added, silently, almost surprised by the thought, but said only, “He seems to be sensible.”

“He’d better be,” Monteia said. She sighed. “Well, we expected this, didn’t we? Or should have done. And you shouldn’t be keeping the surintendant waiting, though I wish to all the gods he wouldn’t keep drawing off my best people when they’re supposed to be on duty.” She reached under her skirts, flipped a coin across the desktop. Rathe caught it, surprised, and she went on, “Take a low‑flyer. Doesn’t do to keep the sur waiting, does it?”

Jiemin had anticipated the order, and the youngest of the ru

“The Tour de la Citй, please,” he said. The woman nodded, straightening easily, and Rathe climbed into the narrow cab behind her, wondering if it wouldn’t ultimately have been faster to take a boat. She threaded her way through the traffic that jammed the Hopes‑point Bridge quite competently, however, and then through the maze of the Old City, drawing up at last in the cleared square in front of the Tour in no more time than it would have taken him by the river ways. He climbed out, handing over the spider Monteia had given him, and made his way across the court to the main gate.

The Tour had been built five hundred years ago as the gatehouse of the then‑walled city, and no matter how much the city’s regents and the various royal and metropolitanate officials who had inhabited it over the intervening years had tried to change it, the building still had the feeling of a fortress. Rathe’s heels echoed on the stone floors, and even the red‑coated judiciary clerks seemed chastened by the heavy architecture. At least it was cooler inside the massive walls, Rathe thought, as he made his way through the narrow, badly lit halls, and at least the regents had the sense to use mage‑fire lamps instead of oil or candles. Or maybe it was the judiciary: he didn’t have clear idea who paid for what inside the Tour.

The surintendant’s rooms were at the midpoint of the south tower and boasted two narrow windows overlooking the city square. Rathe gave his name to one of the hovering clerks and settled himself to wait. To his surprise, however, the surintendant’s voice came almost at once from behind a half‑open door.

“Ah, Rathe, good. Come in and sit down.”

Rathe did as he was told, his eyes on the surintendant. Rainart Fourie was a merchant’s son from the Docks by Point of Sighs, had begun by buying his place as an adjunct point, but had risen to chief on his own merit, as even the most grudging critics were forced to admit. His appointment was still something of a novelty–until him, the surintendancy had generally been held by gentry, the sons of landames and the like whom the queen owed favors–and he was sometimes more aware of the politics of his situation than Rathe felt was good for either him or his people. At the moment, Fourie was dressed very correctly, the sober tailored black of the judicial nobles, his haircut as close as a Sofian renunciate’s. Though that, Rathe added silently, probably had less to do with devotion or politics than with the fact that his mouse brown hair was thi

“Your former patro

Rathe exhaled. One thing about Fourie, he reflected, he always was direct. “You mean Maseigne de Foucquet?”

“Do you have another patro

Rathe shook his head. He had begun his working life as a ru

“She asked for you specifically,” Fourie said.

Rathe sighed, acknowledging the ties of patronage and obligation, wondering, too, why Fourie, who usually defended his people’s autonomy, seemed willing to countenance this interference. “So who is– he, she? How old, what’s the family?”

“He’s thirteen, and his name is Albe Cytel. His mother is assizes clerk at Point of Hearts.”