Текст книги "Point of Dreams"

Автор книги: Melissa Scott

Соавторы: Lisa Barnett
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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

“And?” Trijn asked.

“At the same time, I saw someone had come from Little Chain saying she had information about the death, but Voillemin had written it off–said it was just a printer trying to get details for a broadsheet.” Rathe took a breath. “So I told him I thought he should speak to the woman.”

“It’s possible,” Trijn murmured, “but he should have gone. All right. Go on.”

“Then yesterday, after I dealt with another body at the Tyrseia– you did get my report on that matter?”

“I did,” Trijn said. “There are too damn many of them, Rathe. I suppose we’re still waiting for the alchemists’ report?”

Rathe nodded.

“Then I can assume you went to Little Chain yourself to talk to this woman.”

Rathe sighed. Put like that, he was at fault–he’d been warned off the case by the regents, for one thing, and for another, he had no right to interfere in another pointsman’s case without gross evidence of neglect. “I did,” he said, and Trijn made a face.

“Damn it, Nico, I thought better of you.”

“Chief.” Rathe took a careful breath. “I had cause–I had reason to think it was important. And I believe I was proved right. The woman who sent to us is a flower‑seller, she sold the intendant the makings of a bouquet that she believes came from an edition of the Alphabet, and which she feared might have harmed him.”

“That sounds like misadventure to me,” Trijn said.

Rathe shook his head. “The ghost was bound,” he reminded her, and she swore.

“So it was. Could it have been the Alphabet that bound him?”

“Chief, I don’t know. But I don’t think it can be written off until we find out.”

“Damn the man for a fool.” Trijn glared at the summons, then shoved it back across the tabletop. “And this–this is outside of enough. I’m not best pleased with you, Nico, you should have come to me, not handled it on your own, but Voillemin has overstepped himself. I’ll deal with him later, but in the meantime…” She lifted an eyebrow. “I’m glad you brought this to me. I’d half had you written down as the sort of hero who’d try to face them down by yourself.”

Rathe laughed, and knew Trijn heard the anger in it. “I’m not that much of a fool, Chief.”

“Then let’s be on our way.” Trijn rose gracefully to her feet, reaching for a fur‑trimmed cloak. “If they’re in such a hurry, they can deal with us in our working clothes.”

Rathe glanced down at his own coat, well aware that he’d worn it to shapelessness. Trijn, on the other hand, was almost as neat as a regent, though her wine‑red skirts were brighter. He looked even more common by contrast, wondered if it was fully wise to provoke the regents even further, but Trijn seemed unaware of any potential problem. “We’ll take a low‑flyer,” she said, and swept out of the narrow room.

They were early to All‑Guilds, thanks to a wall‑eyed coachman who took the bridge at a speed to make the apprentices curse him, but Trijn paid him off with a look almost of satisfaction. She led the way into the hall, moving through the chill passages with an unsettling familiarity, finally paused in the doorway of a clerks’ room to beckon the woman nearest the door. The blue‑robed woman, barely out of girlhood, rose with alacrity, smoothing her gown over her skirts, and bobbed a curtsy.

“Can I help you, madame?”

“Tell their mightinesses the regents that Chief Point Trijn–and Adjunct Point Rathe–are here now, and wish to see them.”

The clerk’s eyes widened, and for an instant Rathe thought she would protest, but Trijn raised an eyebrow. The clerk swallowed whatever she would have said, and bobbed another, deeper curtsy. “I’ll tell them, madame,” she said, and hurried off, her skirts billowing.

Trijn nodded with satisfaction, and Rathe’s eyes narrowed. If it had been left to him, he would have looked for a doorman, not a clerk, certainly wouldn’t have invaded the clerks’ working space even though that seemed to be the correct procedure. “You’re known here,” he said aloud, and Trijn gave a weary nod.

“I suppose it would out at some point. Yes, I’m known.” She forced a wry smile. “Most people have relations they would prefer not to claim. My burden is my sister. Madame Gausaron.”

“The grand bourgeoise,” Rathe said, and knew he sounded breathless.

“Herself.”

Rathe started to say something, then closed his mouth over the words. “I’m so sorry.”

Trijn choked back a laugh as the clerk reappeared, but there was no mistaking the amusement in her eyes.

“The regents will see you, madame,” the clerk said with another curtsy. “And sir.”

“Good,” Trijn answered, and the clerk flung open the heavy doors.

“Chief Point Trijn and Adjunct Point Rathe, of Point of Dreams.”

“You’re very peremptory, Chief Point,” Gausaron said from her place at the center of the dais, and Trijn shook her head. Even knowing they were kin, Rathe could see no similarity between them, wondered if they had perhaps had a different father.

“You have overstepped yourself, madame,” Trijn said. “What do you mean by summoning one of my people without notifying me? Courtesy alone would have required it, procedure demands it. If you have fault to find with my adjunct point, I expect to be notified of it first. It is my place to correct my people, not yours.”

“Adjunct Point Rathe has intervened in the matter of the Leussi death,” another regent said. She was a thin woman, with deep lines bracketing the corners of her mouth, the pallor of her skin set off by the deep, true black of her high‑necked gown. “As he was expressly forbidden to do. This was brought to our attention. If you cannot rectify the situation on your own, Chief Point, you must not be surprised when we are asked to intercede.”

Neat, Rathe thought. If Trijn says she didn’t know I’d interfered, that she didn’t know Voillemin was unhappy with it, they can accuse her of not keeping enough of an eye on her own affairs. He bit his tongue, knowing he had to keep silent as long as possible. He was his own worst enemy here– let Trijn handle it, he told himself, and clasped his hands behind his back, tightening his grip until his joints ached.

“The matter was brought to my attention this morning,” Trijn answered, “as it should have been, by the man whose concern it most is. The matter was brought to your attention because Voillemin is your spy in my point–and I will not tolerate that, madame, not a day longer. If you have a complaint, and I’m sure you have, you can address it to me now, as you should have done from the beginning.”

Gausaron’s mouth thinned. “As you well know, not only was the matter assigned to another, but Adjunct Point Rathe was explicitly ordered to keep his distance from it. And he has not done so.”

“The death of a royal intendant is a grave and delicate matter,” a third woman said. “We were certain you, Chief Point, would understand this.”

“It cannot be handled like a southriver tavern brawl,” Gausaron continued. “It must not bring embarrassment upon the family, who have suffered quite enough by this loss. Rathe’s–Adjunct Point Rathe’s actions threaten to bring offense to a very important family.”

“And those were?” Trijn asked.

Gausaron blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“What has Rathe done to bring offense to the family?” Trijn said. She spread her hands. “We are here at the request of the intendant’s leman–”

“His kin,” the thinfaced regent said. “His sister. By rights, she should have had the final say in this, it’s indulgence enough that we allowed it reopened without consulting her.”

That was true enough, and Rathe winced, hoping the regents didn’t see. A leman’s rights were limited in law; without a wife, Leussi’s legal kin would be the women of his mother’s family.

“There was a risk that this would all end up in the broadsheets,” the third regent said. She had a bright, high voice like a singing bird’s. “That would have been grave offense indeed.”

“And this is what Voillemin told you,” Trijn said, “that Leussi’s sister was afraid of the broadsheets.”

“She is a woman of probity and discretion,” Gausaron said. “One can hardly blame her for her fears.”

Trijn looked at Rathe. “Has this been noted in the daybook, Adjunct Point?”

Rathe shook his head. “No, Chief.”

“Then I must speak with Voillemin as well.” Trijn favored the regents with a bleak smile. “If such a warning is not posted, then it cannot be obeyed. You should be grateful that it was Rathe who spoke to the flower‑seller, not some excitable junior.”

“He should not have spoken to anyone concerned with this matter,” Gausaron snapped. “No one at all.”

“Adjunct Point Rathe came to me this morning to say that he had stumbled across evidence that Adjunct Point Voillemin had failed to fully follow–evidence that came to him in the course of other cases, and which, at this moment, seems to suggest misadventure rather than murder–and to ask me to take further action. Rathe is my senior adjunct, it is his right and duty to oversee the actions of the other pointswomen and ‑men under my authority.” Trijn glared at the regents, moderated her tone with an effort. “It is my considered opinion that he has behaved properly in this matter, and my very grave concern that Adjunct Point Voillemin has not. You yourselves would dismiss any clerk caught doing what he’s done.”

That was a home truth, Rathe thought, seeing heads nod almost involuntarily along the line of regents.

Gausaron frowned. “Adjunct Point Rathe acted against our express orders–”

“To do his duty,” Trijn countered. “And he has put the matter in my hands. Isn’t that right, Adjunct Point?”

“Yes, Chief,” Rathe said, his mouth suddenly dry. I’ve been manipulated just as neatly as the regents. I just hope I can trust her to carry through. But Trijn understood the issues, he told himself, understood why it might still be murder, would still be murder unless the plants had somehow also bound the dead man’s ghost. She wouldn’t let it go to appease a complaint that might never have happened.

Gausaron sat back in her chair, her face without expression. “Very well, Chief Point, we will accept your explanation. But if this comes before us again, we will recommend to the Surintendant of Points that he look to his stations with a more careful eye.”

Trijn’s gaze flickered at that, but she managed a court‑deep curtsy, her skirts almost puddling on the floor. Rathe bowed, knowing better than to copy her irony, and followed her from the room.

She did not speak again until they reached the main hall, where the cold air seeped in from the main doors to turn the floors to ice. Rathe held the smaller winter‑door open for her, and she swept past him into the sunlight of the open square. She stopped there, squinting against the sudden brightness, and shook her head.

“She’s going to go to Fourie, and expect him to listen to that?”

“He might not have a choice,” Rathe answered. Of course, with Fourie, he might advance Trijn to chief at Temple Point just to infuriate the regents: one could never predict how the surintendant might react.

“Fourie always has a choice,” Trijn answered. “That’s how he’s gotten as far as he has.” She took a breath. “I’ve backed you this far, Nico, and I expect you to help me now. Find me this formula, this recipe for a posy, and I’ll see it gets to the proper authorities at the university. I’m well aware it may still be murder, I won’t let myself be talked out of it to convenience the sister–if she even exists.”

“And Voillemin?” Rathe asked.

“Leave him to me.” Trijn gave a grim smile. “I will keep my eye on him, and on his handling of this matter–I’ll have him reporting to me on the hour like an apprentice, if I have to. But if the regents decide they have reason to summon you again, I may not be able to protect you.”

Rathe nodded. He’d been lucky to get away with this much, he knew, knew, too, that he would do it again. “I’ll be careful,” he said, and Trijn’s eyes narrowed as though she would comment on the ambiguity.

“See that you are,” she said after a moment, and lifted her hand to summon a hovering low‑flyer.

They made it back to Point of Dreams in less than record time, and Rathe resettled himself in his workroom to retrieve Leussi’s copy of the Alphabet of Desire. It looked like most of the others, a simple octavo volume with a formula in verse on the recto and a woodcut of the finished posy on the facing page. The woodcuts were better than most of the editions he’d seen, however, good enough that he could actually recognize most of the plants in the illustrations, and he paged slowly through it, looking for the bright spikes of the trumpet flowers. They appeared in perhaps a third of the woodcuts, he saw–in fact, the corms predominated, perhaps because they could be forced in all seasons–but finally he found the page for which he was looking. The posy was labeled “for Concord” and he made a face at the irony. If a posy intended to bring peace had somehow killed… Poor Leussi, he thought, and poor Holles. He reached for a scrap of paper, began copying out the formula while he thought out what he would say. He would send it to b’Estorr, he decided–well, he’d ask Trijn to send it to b’Estorr, but there was no reason he couldn’t write the query himself. Trijn would give him that much leeway. He finished copying the formula, added a quick note asking b’Estorr either to analyze it himself or to recommend a magist who could, and took the sheets along to Trijn’s office. She scanned them without comment, but nodded, scrawling her own name below his, and added the station’s seal.

“I’ll see this is sent,” she said. “Now, what about the theatre murders?”

“Still waiting for Fanier’s report,” Rathe answered, and retreated to his workroom.

The runner arrived a little after noon, not the deadhouse runner he’d been expecting, but a skinny boy on the edge of apprenticehood, his hair cut short except for the one long lovelock that aped the consorts of the bannerdames of The Drowned Island. Even if he hadn’t been wearing a badge identifying him as belonging to Point of Knives, the hair would have betrayed him, and Rathe eyed him without favor. No one among the points liked the idea that the inhabitants of the Court of the Thirty‑two Knives might take new pride in their disreputable past.

“Well?”

“Sorry, sir, but the chief–Head Point Mirremay thought you should be informed.”

The boy held out a folded scrap of paper–torn from an old broadsheet, Rathe saw, unfolding it, and he flattened it deliberately on his table before he scanned the flamboyant penmanship. Flamboyant and hard to read, he amended, squinting at letters scrawled with a pen that definitely needed mending, and looked up at the boy. “And?”

The boy seemed used to the question–as well he might be, if he had to deliver writings like this one on a daily basis, Rathe thought. He shifted his feet, hands clasped behind his back in a loose‑jointed parody of a soldier’s stance, and said, “Please, Adjunct Point, the– Head Point Mirremay says you might be interested in this complaint of Master Aconin’s.”

Rathe glanced at the note again. With that broad hint, he could make out the gist of the note, which was that Chresta Aconin had come to Point of Knives less than an hour ago with the complaint of a theft from his rooms. Someone–he couldn’t make out the name– had been dispatched to document the complaint, and what she had found had sent her pelting back to Mirremay. And Mirremay had sent for him. He looked back at the boy. “Tell me about it.”

The boy didn’t seem to need much encouragement, but then, runners rarely did. He bounced forward on his toes, then seemed to remember where he was, clasping his hands behind his back again. “Please, Adjunct Point, they say it was a mess, the worst anyone’s ever seen. Everything spoiled, and all his papers burned, and his coats cut up, and–” He stopped abruptly, as though remembering his dignity. “And the chief says she’d take it kindly if you’d lend a hand, seeing as you’re already dealing with the theatres.”

“Does she think they’re connected?” Rathe asked, but he was already on his feet, reaching for his coat.

“He’s the playwright.” The boy shrugged. “And the chief says she’d swear he knows what’s going on, but he says he doesn’t. And he doesn’t want you called in, I heard him arguing about it.”

Sofia forgive me, but that would probably make me go even if I didn’t already think it was important. Rathe shrugged on his jerkin, grateful for the extra layer, and slipped his truncheon into his belt. “All right, my boy, let’s get on with it.”

Point of Knives was exactly as he remembered it, a blocky, foursquare building that had once been an armory. It had been rebuilt since then, and the neighborhood’s clock perched awkwardly in an afterthought of a gable, but it still turned windowless walls to the street on three sides. The windows that faced the open market Square were little more than slits along the second floor. Dark and cheerless for any pointsman who lodged there, Rathe thought, with sympathy, and noisy, with the clock gears ticking and grinding overhead night and day. I’ll lay money Mirremay lodges elsewhere.

The doorway was thick and defensible, with old firing points hastily boarded over to keep out the chill, but it opened into a surprisingly pleasant day room smelling of herbs and only incidentally of dinner. There were a dozen mage‑lights spaced along the walls, supplemented in this cold weather by a hanging chandelier, and a pair of runners kicked their heels on a bench by the stove, each one at an end to make room for the dice and counters spread between them. A pointsman in a cracked jerkin was polishing his truncheon by the enormous empty fireplace, and a woman in last summer’s fashionable brimless cap looked up at their approach.

“Good, you found him. Thank you for coming, Adjunct Point, the chief will be glad to see you.”

“It sounded–intriguing,” Rathe said, and the man in the cracked jerkin looked up quickly.

“That’s one word for it–”

“If you’ll come with me?” the woman interrupted smoothly, and Rathe allowed himself a quick glance over his shoulder as he followed her. The pointsman’s head was down over his truncheon, and Rathe wondered what he would have said.

Mirremay’s workroom was on the second floor, almost at the head of the narrow stairs. It wasn’t at all as he had suspected it would be like, was, instead, a comfortable room, dominated by one of the narrow windows, and Rathe cocked his head, trying to hear the dull tick of the clock through the ceiling. Mirremay herself leaned one hip on the edge of her worktable, frowning at Aconin in the visitor’s chair. She was a short, round woman, with a heart‑shaped face and knowing amber eyes, and Rathe hid a frown, remembering too late what gossip said of her. Mirremay had been the name of one of the thirty‑two knives, and before that of a bannerdame; in joining the points, Mirremay had been re‑creating a family fiefdom here on the edges of the Court. Perhaps that was the reason that the surintendant had been so reluctant to advance Point of Knives to the status of a full station: no one wanted to make a Mirremay chief point of anything, least of all Point of Knives.

“Thanks for coming, Rathe,” she said, and Rathe nodded, grateful that she’d decided to let him avoid the awkward question of her rank.

“I’m grateful you sent for me.”

“Well, I’m not.” That was Aconin, still lounging in the visitor’s chair. A decorative pose, Rathe thought, but the playwright couldn’t hide the tension in his muscles. “Honestly, Mirremay, this isn’t worth his time. It’s just another theft, that’s all.”

“And what, then, is missing?” Mirremay asked, mildly enough, but Aconin frowned.

“How can I tell that, when you won’t let me look?”

Rathe lifted an eyebrow, and Mirremay smiled. “Oh, yes, that’s what we have here, just another housebreaking in the Court. Except that Master Aconin can’t tell me what was stolen.”

“I have valuables,” Aconin said. “The place was such a mess that I couldn’t tell if they were there or not.”

“Still, it seems odd that so many things should be happening to the people involved in this thrice‑damned masque,” Mirremay said. “And I say it’s Dreams’s problem as much as mine.”

She gave Rathe a challenging look, and the other spread his hands, automatic suspicion rising in him. No chief point, and she was that in stature if not in name, gave away cases, unless they were likely to cause more trouble than they were worth. “I couldn’t take it out of your hands, Mirremay, not without Trijn’s approval, but I am glad you called me.”

Mirremay smiled again. “Wait till you see the rooms before you say that. And, speaking of it–”

“Mirremay–” Aconin began, and the round woman held up her hand.

“Don’t bother. He’s coming with us.”

Aconin subsided at that, straightening his wig as he rose, and Mirremay reached for her own full coat. “Let’s go.”

Aconin lived on the edges of the Court–even he hadn’t dared to move into the rookery at the center, the decayed mansion, now broken up into a hundred or more one‑room flats, where the thirty‑two knives had held their macabre reign. The pointsman Rathe had seen in the day room–Sentalen, his name was–tapped at a lower door and, when it opened a crack, spoke briefly to someone hidden in the shadows. Then she vanished again, the edge of a dark blue skirt whisking back out of sight, and Sentalen turned to Mirremay.

“Same as before, Chief. No one’s been in or out–she says.”

Aconin rolled his eyes, but Mirremay smiled, and started up the outside stairs. It would be a nasty climb at midwinter, Rathe thought, stepping carefully, and wondered why the playwright chose to live in this neighborhood. Probably to keep his enemies at bay, he thought, and glanced over his shoulder to see Aconin hesitating at the bottom of the stairs. That was unlike him–to give him his due, Aconin never feared the results of his attacks–and in the same instant, the playwright started after them, so quickly that Rathe wondered if he’d imagined the hesitation. But it had been real, he decided, seeing the tension in Aconin’s body, in the tightness of his hands on the narrow rail. Mirremay was right, this was no ordinary theft.

At the top of the stairs, Mirremay paused, looked over her shoulder, and Sentalen handed up an old‑fashioned iron key. Rathe shook his head. Whoever had broken into the playwright’s room had broken the locks already–kicked it in, he guessed, from the way the frame had splintered. Mirremay worked the lock, her shoulders bunching with the effort, and the door fell open under her touch. It had been the lock itself that had been holding it, and only barely, the iron striker wedged awkwardly back into place. Mirremay caught the door as it swung on twisted hinges, then stepped back to let Rathe join her on the landing.

The runner’s description hadn’t done it justice. Aconin’s single well‑lit room had been a pleasant enough place, but it would take days of effort just to make it habitable again. Clothes lay strewn across the floor, linings ripped out muddy, sleeves torn away, the press itself kicked in, so that the painted panel hung in splinters, and there were footprints visible on some of the better fabrics, as though whoever had done this had deliberately wiped his boots on the best the playwright owned. Both windows had been broken, the glass punched out into the street below, and the mirror–a large one, in an expensive frame–had been smashed against the bedpost, so that the torn bedclothes were strewn with broken glass. Paint pots and perfume bottles, a good dozen of them, had been emptied onto the bed as well, the containers trampled into the floorboards, and the room smelled of musk and sweetgrass. A larger paint pot, or maybe an inkwell, had been thrown to smash against the far wall, leaving a fan of black across the whitewash. One chair had been overturned and broken; the other stood forlorn beside the table, where a spray of flowers stood in an untouched vase, wilting a little, as though the destruction had shocked them. Beyond the table, the door of the stove lay open, a drift of half‑burned paper scattered across the hearth, and Rathe crossed to that, knelt to examine what was left of the writing. Some of it looked familiar, scenes from the Alphabet, and he glanced over his shoulder, to see Aconin framed in the doorway.

“Was it like this when you found it, or did you pull it out?”

“I pulled it out,” Aconin said. Beneath the remnants of his paint, he looked very pale. “They’d overfilled it, the damper shut down, so it was just smoldering.”

“Lucky,” Mirremay murmured. She had come a little farther into the room, careful not to step on spilled paint or torn clothing, stood with her hands on her hips, surveying the damage with a disapproving air. She wore her skirts short, well above her ankle, and her stockings were expensively clocked.

Rathe nodded, turning the papers over. Aconin used the crabbed university script, all abbreviations, harder to follow even than Mirremay’s scrawl, but from the crossed‑out lines and words, and the notes scribbled in the margins, these had to be rough drafts of Aconin’s work. “This was personal,” he said, and set the papers carefully back where he’d found them.

“I’d’ve said business,” Mirremay said.

Rathe glanced at her as he pushed himself to his feet, brushing the ash off his fingers, and the head point met the look guilelessly. “Burning these papers, Aconin’s work, surely that’s a personal thing.”

“I told you,” Aconin said wearily. “None of my enemies would do something like this.”

“I thought better of your enemies,” Rathe said, and to his surprise, Aconin managed a short laugh.

“So did I.”

Rathe took a deep breath, willing himself to remember that this was a point, that he had a job to do no matter how he felt about Aconin. “Aconin. Less than a week ago, someone took a shot at you– did you think Philip wouldn’t tell me, when he was there? And now this. Who have you offended this time?”

“I wish I knew.” Aconin spread his painted hands, a gesture that should have dripped sincerity. “As far as I know, this was theft, at least an attempt at it. I won’t know that until you let me see what’s missing.”

“Not that much,” Mirremay said. She reached out with one pointed shoe, lifted the torn collar of a lavender coat. An enameled medallion tumbled free, not expensive, but certainly salable; she kicked the coat a little harder, exposing a scattering of gilt embroidery at the skirt. “Now, I grant you, that wasn’t worth much, and it might have taken too much time to cut that gold thread free, but those buttons would fetch a few demmings, and that’s just one stroke of the knife. And there’s not a thief in this city who’d smash a pretty clock like that one, not with the fences paying two or three pillars for a piece like that.”

She nodded to her right, where the attacker–Rathe was more than ever inclined to agree that this was no thief–had swept a single shelf clear of all its ornaments. Dishes lay broken beneath it, spoons and a dinner knife scattered, but someone had taken the time to stamp on the carriage‑clock that had stood with them. Its case lay broken, the mechanism crushed, and in spite of himself, Rathe winced at the sight.

“Damn it, Aconin, this is personal. Whoever did this, whoever had it done, that’s someone who wants you harmed, or worse.”

“I can’t think who,” Aconin said flatly. He had moved into the room, was staring now at the untouched vase of flowers, and out of the corner of his eye, Rathe saw Mirremay nod thoughtfully.

“Or it’s a warning, maybe. There’s the altar, too.”

Rathe turned to look where she’d pointed. Aconin had kept his altar in a scholar’s cabinet, with a double‑doored shrine at the top and a drawer for supplies above a set of shelves. Books had been emptied from the shelves, leaves torn out and crumpled; one lay forlorn, facedown, the binding snapped and scarred as though someone had stamped on it. The drawer had been pulled out and tossed aside, its contents scattered, and each of the little figures had been roughly beheaded. The candle that served as Hearth had been cut into two pieces–one more bit of proof, Rathe thought, if we’d needed it, that this wasn’t an ordinary thieving–and the incense burner had been flattened. Cheap metal, Rathe thought, irrelevantly, not like the clock, and stepped closer to examine the shrine itself. There was no sign of blood, on the altar or on the floor around it, and he looked back at Mirremay.

“I think we should have a necromancer in, just in case.” The surest way to curse a person was to kill something in their household space or, worse still, on the altar itself, and at this level of destruction, he wanted to be sure that more ethereal means weren’t being employed against the playwright.

“Oh, for Sofia’s sake,” Aconin said. He pulled a flower from the vase, tossed it accurately through the broken window. “To what end?”

Mirremay nodded as though the playwright hadn’t spoken. “Sentalen. Send a runner to the university.”

“There’s no blood,” Aconin said. “Nothing’s been killed.”

“You’re very sure of that,” Rathe said.

Aconin paused, another flower dangling broken‑stemmed between his fingers. It was out of season, Rathe saw, forced to bloom in some expensive glasshouse: the posy was no ordinary gift, and he wondered briefly if that was why it had been spared.

“There’s no blood,” Aconin said again, and dropped this flower after the other.

“Dead doesn’t need blood,” Mirremay said.

“Chief Point–” Aconin began, and the woman shook her head.

“Whatever troubles you’ve brought on yourself, Aconin, I’m not having this loose in my district. Send for a necromancer, Sentalen.”

“Ask for Istre b’Estorr,” Rathe interjected, and looked at Mirremay. “He’s one of the best.”

“Which we want,” Mirremay agreed, and nodded to the pointsman still hovering in the doorway. He backed away, and Rathe looked down at the broken figures that had stood on Aconin’s altar. One had been hooded Sofia, no surprise there, and another the Starsmith, but the other two were less obvious, the Winter‑Son, god of wine, ecstasy, and suffering, and Jaan, the northern god of doorways and borders. Not that odd a choice, when you consider he comes from Esling, but still. He frowned then, a memory teasing him. Something Eslingen had said, some story about his days with Coindarel–about partisan raids along the borders, breaking into the leaders’ houses to smash the altars. It had meant something very specific, a deliberate message, but he couldn’t remember what. He shook his head then, seeing Aconin drop a third flower, and then a fourth, through the broken glass. He would ask Eslingen, of course, but he doubted it meant anything. It wasn’t likely that Astreianter bravos would know a Leaguer code.