Point of Dreams

“Madame,” Holles said. “Do you deny me?”

Gausaron hesitated. “I do not see evidence–”

“I will have this murder investigated,” Holles said. “I would prefer with your blessing, madame, and the blessing of the regents, but I will act without it if I must. The points bear the queen’s authority, the regents oversee their activities only in that the points operate within the walls of the city. I am the queen’s advocat, the points serve the queen’s law. And the queen’s law has been violated, and that takes precedence over the city’s dignities.”

Gausaron shook her head, but Rathe thought he saw defeat in her eyes. “You are determined to proceed in this course? Despite the scandal, the notoriety, that will inevitably ensue?”

Trijn made a noise in her throat, but her face was impassive. Holles’s head lifted. “Being murdered is not a scandal, it is a tragedy. It is certainly not a disgrace. I’m not afraid of scandal, because there will be none. There will be truth.”

“Even if you have to pay for it?” Gausaron snapped. “Be very wary, Advocat, that what you get is truth. You are at least entitled to value for money.”

Her eyes were on Rathe as she spoke, and in spite of himself, his fists tightened. “As Madame has doubtless heard, I don’t take fees.”

Gausaron smiled thinly. “No. Nor will you in this case. Because it will not fall to you, pointsman.”

“He’s my senior adjunct,” Trijn said tonelessly. “Address him by his proper rank.”

An angry flush rose in Gausaron’s cheeks, but she inclined her head. “My apologies, Adjunct Point. But this is a matter that needs to be handled with a certain amount of delicacy, of diplomacy, since the advocat insists that it be pursued. And such are almost unknown southriver. Point of Hopes, that is where you were last stationed, is it not, points–Adjunct Point?”

As you damn well know. Rathe controlled his temper. “Yes.”

Gausaron smiled at the Regent on her right. “And southriver is so recently popular, at least on the common stages. However, the unfortunate events of last summer–an honest guildsman shot dead, near riots in the streets–we ca

“Satisfactory to whom?” Holles demanded, and Rathe saw him bite his lip as though he’d betrayed himself.

“It is not your place to tell me how to run my station,” Trijn said.

“This or nothing,” Gausaron answered. “Our responsibility is to the well‑being of this city and its people, and that will not be served by another rout like last summer. That is our decision.”

The dismissal was palpable. Holles hesitated for an instant, as though he wanted to say more, but then swept a bow that was a hair too deep for sincerity. Straightening, he turned on his heel and strode from the room, the scarlet robe billowing around him. The others followed, less gracefully, but no one spoke until they were outside All‑Guilds. Rathe glanced up at the massive doorway, carved with yet another version of Heira’s Banquet, and couldn’t suppress a wry smile. Heira was one of the Pillars of Justice, but in this place, that incarnation was far from honored.

“So, Advocat,” Trijn said, “what in hell has the advocacy done to earn the enmity of the regents?”

Holles rubbed his eyes as though they pained him. “I thought that was done with years ago–Gausaron wasn’t even on the Council then.” He shook himself. “It’s not the advocacy, it was Bourtrou. The queen determined that the chamberlains should be chosen from among the judiciary, not just among the regents, since the position has a direct effect on the health of the entire realm, not just the city. Bourtrou wrote the brief in support, and the regents blamed him for it, instead of the queen.”

Rathe gri

Trijn held up a hand. “No, Voillemin can look for suspects among the regents, and by Sofia, I am inclined to set that particular dog to hunt.”

“This Voillemin,” Holles said. “Is he any good at all?”

“He wouldn’t be one of my adjuncts if he weren’t,” Trijn snapped, “I don’t care who he’s related to.”

Holles’s eyes sought Rathe, who shrugged infinitesimally. It was the kind of case that could make a pointsman’s career, or destroy it, and from what he’d seen of Voillemin, he wasn’t suited to that kind of pressure. If anything, he felt sorry for the man–and sorrier still for Holles, whose leman’s murder was being used to punish the points.

“I just don’t want it made–convenient,” Holles said, almost helplessly, and Rathe wished he could reassure him. But anything he could think of, any words of comfort, sounded sour, almost hypocritical in the face of the regents’ evident reluctance, and he could see the same thought in both Trijn’s and b’Estorr’s faces.

“No,” Rathe said quietly, when no one else spoke. “I’ll do what I can to keep an eye on Voillemin, Advocat, that’s my proper duty, and I can at least promise that to you.” It wasn’t much, but it would have to be enough– at least for now, at least until he makes a mistake–and from the look on the advocat’s face, relieved and grateful, it might be. Rathe sighed. So long as he was able to make good on the promise.

The Masters of Defense had their own hall, a long, low building that might once have been a rope walk or a sailmakers’ loft, hard by the river at the western end of Point of Dreams. The ground floor was broken up into a warren of rooms–classrooms on the river side, where the light was best, but also what looked like a students’ commons and even a small library, where a lace‑capped woman frowned over a stack of foolscap. She glared at them as they passed, and rose, skirts rustling, to close the door against intrusion. Caiazzo ignored her, as he ignored the crowd of students chattering outside one of the practice rooms, and Eslingen copied the merchant’s carriage, bowing gracefully to a young man who seemed to want to take offense. That was one complaint the broadsheets made against the Masters, that their students, once half trained, spent too much time looking for an excuse to test their skills, and it was, Eslingen thought, probably true enough. The same thing happened in every regiment he’d ever served with–he’d probably done it himself, if he wanted to think about it; the only difference was that your fellow soldiers were quicker to beat those pretensions out of you, if only to save their own necks.

At the end of the long hall a stairway rose to a second floor, framed in a window that must have cost a young fortune. Caiazzo slowed his pace, and a scrawny, grey‑haired woman–no, Eslingen realized, with some shock, a man in skirts and a woman’s square‑necked bodice, carrying a bated sword–appeared in the doorway of the nearer classroom.

“Master Caiazzo.” He bowed, magnificently unconscious of his strange dress. “Master Duca says you should go on up.”

“Thank you,” Caiazzo answered. Eslingen blinked, schooling himself to show no reaction, but the merchant‑venturer’s gaze flicked toward him anyway, and the dark man smiled.

“Don’t worry, Philip, I’m sure they won’t waste you in dame’s parts.”

So presumably the man was rehearsing for, being trained for, one of the midwinter farces, short, silly plays for the short, cold days, Rathe had called them, where the players played against type and women dressed as men–and vice versa, apparently. Eslingen had been looking forward to seeing one, but it had never crossed his mind that he might be expected to participate.