Point of Dreams

“Give me a hand,” Rathe said, and Eslingen obediently braced himself, offering bent knee and cupped hands. Rathe chose the knee, and stepped up, clinging to the sill. This window was frosted, too, and he rubbed a little of the ice away, peering through the gap. The hall was dark, but in the faint light of the fading fire, he could see a woman curled in the settle, a child–Bice, he remembered, the girl who had first escorted him through the house–snuggled in her lap. They looked like any sleeping family, mother and child, except that there was a huge arrangement of flowers, at least three times the size of the one in the stables, looming like a pale shadow on the sideboard. He dropped back to the snowy cobbles, and knew he was shivering with more than cold.

“Yeah, they’re all asleep there, too, or at least what I can see of them.” He saw the same unease he felt reflected in Eslingen’s face, and went on more roughly, “Let’s go. At least we know no one’s going to bother us.”

“Unless Aubine’s home,” Eslingen answered, and Rathe grimaced.

“Let’s hope not.” But if he isn’t, where is he? he wondered, and then shoved the thought aside. Time enough for that after they’d gathered enough hedgebroom to neutralize the theatre arrangements.

The glasshouses almost filled the courtyard, unlit now, but steaming gently from the warmth within. There was no snow on the roofs, but the eaves dripped softly, their puddles hardening to ice as they flowed away from the glass walls. Rathe slipped on one and swore, catching himself against Eslingen’s shoulder, and both men stepped more carefully after that, watching the ground as well as the overshadowing buildings.

“Seidos’s Horse,” Eslingen said under his breath, and shook his head. “Four of them?”

“I thought you knew,” Rathe said.

“I suppose I’d heard, but I thought…” The ex‑soldier shook his head again. “I suppose I thought they were smaller, or something. Not like this.”

“One for each season,” Rathe said, and narrowed his eyes, remembering. The glasshouse where he’d spoken to Aubine had been filled with summer plants; logically, the autumn house should be the one to its left. He reached for his picks, worked the lock with ease, and opened the door into the unexpected warmth of an autumn evening. He heard Eslingen swear again, softly, and shut the door behind them, sealing out the cold wind. There should be lamps ready to hand, Rathe knew, and found them almost at once, tucked neatly beneath the nearest bench, flint and tinder ready to hand. It was just where his mother would have left them, just where any gardener would have put them, and he shook his head. How could anyone who had made these houses and the nurturing of so many plants and species his lifework have murdered five people? The one didn’t follow, he knew, and he shoved the thought aside, concentrated on lighting the candles in the narrow lanterns. They were both sturdy, practical things, each with a metal hood and a glass door to shed the light, incongruous with the good candles they held, and he smiled in spite of himself. Only someone as rich as Aubine would use wax instead of tallow. He shook that thought away, too, and handed one lantern to Eslingen.

“You know what we’re looking for,” he said, and forced himself to speak in a normal voice. “You take the right‑hand aisle.”

“Right,” Eslingen said, and lifted his lantern.

Rathe nodded, and turned away, lifting his own lantern to throw more light on the narrow aisle between the benches. Aubine was true to his seasonal theme, he thought. The central bench was lower than the others, and the long trays were filled with the tall flowers of the harvest, daymare and co

And then he saw it, the first stand of it, tucked into a heavy stone pot as big as a washerwoman’s cauldron, the stems poking free of the string, flowers bright even in the wavering candlelight. There were more pots of it, too, a haphazard selection of clay and stone and even a wooden half barrel, as though Aubine had pressed every available container into service to make sure he had enough of the panacea. And very wise, too, Rathe thought, and I’m in the peculiar position of being grateful to him for his foresight. He glanced around, found a clear space on the opposite bench, and set the lantern there, reaching for his knife to begin the harvest. .

“Philip–”

“Nico! Over here!”

There was a note in Eslingen’s voice that stopped the pointsman in his tracks, and he resheathed his knife, moving to join the other man. His voice had come from the back of the house, and he rounded the last pot of hedgebroom to see Eslingen standing well clear of one of the long tables Aubine preferred for his workbench. A body was laid out there, arms folded across its chest–Aconin’s body, Rathe realized, and in the same instant saw the playwright’s chest move. So, not dead, but deep asleep, more deeply even than the watchman or the household servants. There were flowers at his head and feet, two plain, alabaster vases filled with greenery and a single weeping branch from a familiar tree. Both were heavily in bloom, studded with flowers only a little smaller than a man’s palm, each streaked with pink and red.

“Love’s‑a‑bleeding,” Eslingen said, and gave a shaky laugh. “Even I know that one.”

Rathe nodded. Each of the flowers looked vaguely like a tear‑streaked face; in the shifting candlelight, it was as though a hundred mourners wept for Aconin. “Lad’s‑love, we call it,” he said. A snatch of an old song ran through his head, incongruous– lad’s love is full of folly, sorry tears, and no tomorrow; maid’s love is true and gay, full of laughter all the day–and he shook it away.

“He’s not dead,” Eslingen said, and his voice was suddenly hard and cold. “I say we leave him–we’ll know where to find him when it’s over.”

Rathe hesitated–it was a tempting thought–then shook his head. “We can’t. Think, Philip–you yourself said Aconin knows more than he’s telling, he’s our best evidence against Aubine. Gods, he’s our only evidence, as it stands, he’s the only person who can say it was Aubine who bespelled him.”

“If he can,” Eslingen said.

Rathe sighed. That was true, there was always the chance that Aconin had been taken by surprise, had no idea who had attacked him and left him here… “No,” he said aloud. “He has to know more than that. He wouldn’t have been attacked if he didn’t.”

Eslingen nodded. “All right. But how do we break this?” He waved a cautious hand toward the flowers in their twin vases.

Rathe hesitated. At the theatre, all he had done was shove the stems of hedgebroom blindly into the arrangement, stabbing them haphazardly into the greenery until the pressure, the sense of the river’s waiting presence, had eased, and Eslingen had drawn a whooping breath. Too close, he thought, and forced his attention back to the matter at hand. “We have to use the panacea,” he said. “Well, we could try taking it apart, flower by flower, but I don’t know where to start.”

“And that could be crucial,” Eslingen said.

“Yeah.” Rathe reached for his knife again. “Let’s try the hedgebroom.”

Eslingen followed him with only a single glance over his shoulder to where the playwright lay in solitary splendor. He had left his lantern, Rathe saw, and as he stooped to cut the hedgebroom, he saw the light flicker on the motionless body. Metenere send I’m right, he thought, and sawed through the first tough stem. He cut half a dozen, and then cut them in half, so that he and Eslingen each had six stems, each with at least a few flowers blooming on them.