Point of Hopes Read Free

she
said, but the man heard the doubt in her voice.
    “ Maseigne, what can I do to
convince you? I only want what you want, the accession of a proper
queen to the throne of Chenedolle, and an end to the erosion of
noble privilege. And I assure you, if the clocks—and very, fine
clocks they were, too, which is part of the problem—if they had
stayed in the manor, our plan would be betrayed as soon as I begin
the first operations. They cannot remain—and none can be brought
back into the household, not by anyone, maseigne. Otherwise, I
cannot offer you my services.”
    His tone was as deferential as always, eager, even,
but the landame heard the veiled threat beneath his fawning. “Very
well, I said. There will be no clocks in the house.”
    “ Thank you, maseigne, I knew you
would understand.” The man bowed deeply, folding his hands in front
of him as though he still wore his magist’s robes. “I think, then,
that I can promise you every success.”
    “ I trust so,” the landame said,
grimly.
    “ I assure you, maseigne,” the man
answered. “The time is propitious. I cannot fail.”
     
     
Chapter 1
     
     
    It was, they all agreed later, a fair measure of
Rathe’s luck that he was the one on duty when the butcher came to
report his missing apprentice. It was past noon, a hot day, toward
the middle of the Sedeion and the start of the Gargoyle Moon, and
the winter-sun was just rising, throwing its second, paler shadows
across the well-scrubbed floor of Point of Hopes. Rathe stared
moodily at the patterns thrown by the barred windows, and debated
adding another handful of herbs to the stove. The fire was banked
to the minimum necessary to warm the pointsmen’s food but the heat
rolled out from it in waves, bringing with it the scent of a
hundred boiled dinners. Jans Ranazy, the other pointsman officially
on this watch, had decided to pay for a meal at the nearest tavern
rather than stand the heat another minute, and Rathe could hardly
blame him. He wrinkled his nose as a particularly fragrant wave
struck him—the sharp sweet scent of starfire warring with the dank
smell of cabbages—but decided that anything more would only make it
worse.
    He sighed and turned his attention to the station
daybook that lay open on the heavy work table in front of him,
skimming through the neat listing of the previous day’s
occurrences. Nothing much, or at least nothing out of the ordinary:
this was the fair season, coming up on the great Midsummer Fair
itself, and there were the usual complaints of false weight and
measure, and of tainted or misrepresented goods. And, of course,
the runaways. There were always runaways in the rising summer, when
the winter-sun shone until midnight, and the roads were clear and
open and crowded enough with other travelers to present at least
the illusion of safety. And the Silklanders and Leaguers were
hiring all through the summer fairs, looking for unskilled hands to
man their boats and their caravans, and everyone knew of the
merchants—maybe half a dozen over three generations, men and women
with shops in the Mercandry now, and gold in their strongboxes,
people who counted their wealth in great crowns—who’d begun their
careers running off to sea or to the highways.
    Rathe sighed again, and flipped back through the
book, checking the list. Eight runaways reported so far, two
apprentices—both with the brewers, no surprises there; the work was
hard and their particular master notoriously strict—and the rest
laborers from the neighborhoods around Point of Hopes, Point of
Knives, Docks’ Point, even Coper’s Point to the south. Most of them
had worked for their own kin, which might explain a lot—but still,
Rathe thought, they’re starting early this year. It lacked a week
of Midsummer; usually the largest number took off during the
Midsummer Fair itself.
    A bell sounded from the gate that led into the
stable yard, and then another from above the main door, which lay
open to the