Point of Knives
• A novella of Astreiant •
Melissa Scott
Published by Lethe Press at Smashwords.com
Copyright © 2012 Melissa Scott.
all rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilm, and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published in 2012 by Lethe Press, Inc.
118 Heritage Avenue • Maple Shade, NJ 08052-3018
www.lethepressbooks.com • [email protected]
isbn: 1-59021-381-5
isbn-13: 978-159021-381-0
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imaginations or are used fictitiously.
Cover and interior design: Alex Jeffers.
Cover artwork: Ben Baldwin.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Scott, Melissa.
Point of knives : a novella of Astreiant / Melissa Scott.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-59021-381-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Gay men--Fiction. 2. Murder--Investigation--Fiction. I. Title.
PS3569.C672P67 2012
813’.54--dc23
2012009418
• Praise for the Novels of Astreiant •
Point of Knives
“Scott returns to the intrigue-laden city of Astreiant in this novella, which bridges the gap between 1995’s Point of Hopes and 2001’s Point of Dreams…. Primarily an intriguing pseudo-police procedural, this fantasy also serves as a satisfying romantic story, with strong world building and great characterization that will leave readers wanting more.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Blood, alchemy, sexual tension, murder, intrigue, and truly wonderful characters: Melissa Scott’s Point of Knives delivers them all, in a world that seems so real, I’m surprised to look up and find I’m not living in it.”
—Delia Sherman, author of The Freedom Maze and The Porcelain Dove
“Rathe and Eslingen are fascinating to follow as they navigate the deadly intrigues and dangerous magic of Point of Knives.”
—Ginn Hale, author of Wicked Gentlemen
“The city of Astreiant with its complex loyalties and magics is one of the realest imaginary places I’ve had the privilege of visiting. An unlooked-for pleasure, then, to read a new adventure of pointsman Nicolas Rathe and out-of-work soldier Philip Eslingen. And what an adventure! Murdered pirates, royal and academic and metallurgical politics, wild guesses and careful detective work—and just the apt touch of romantic tension. Point of Knives is an engrossing addition to the small canon of fantastical mystery stories.”
—Alex Jeffers, author of You Will Meet a Stranger Far from Home
“Points of Knives is gorgeous addition to the Astreiant series. Melissa Scott takes this fantasy, fills it with memorable characters, and gives the reader more by incorporating a fully developed romance and a police procedural with enough twists and turns to satisfy the most finicky of readers. Highly recommended.”
—Impressions of a Reader blog
Point of Hopes
by Melissa Scott & Lisa A. Barnett
(Lethe Press edition now available)
“Scott and Barnett use elegant and well-crafted language to carry the discerning reader into a world where astrology works. The two handle the interwoven characters, plots, and subplots with skill and an understated sense of wit.”
—L. E. Modesitt, Jr.
“An historical fantasy with a rich understanding of history and human motivation…. Half the pleasure of this unique book is in discovering its intricately detailed setting. Couple this with strong main characters and a vivid supporting cast and you’ll find a fantasy well worth seeking out.”
—Middlesex News
“Like Scott and Barnett’s previous collaboration, The Armor of Light (1987), this book features good writing, good characterization, and exceedingly superior world-building. Astreiant has a marvelous lived-in quality…. Place this one high in the just-plain-good-reading category.”
—Booklist
Point of Dreams
by Melissa Scott & Lisa A. Barnett
(new Lethe Press edition this fall)
“A warmly inviting story where astrology and magic work, and ghosts sometimes name their murderer.”
—Romantic Times
“The scenario’s unusually well developed and intricately plotted…. Solidly engrossing.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Readers of police procedurals will recognize the form of Point of Dreams, if not the details, which are necessarily changed by the fantasy setting…. Scott and Barnett blend the genres deftly, transposing their mystery plot seamlessly into their magical world, effectively building suspense and scattering both clues and red herrings with panache. The writing is skillful, as is the characterization…. Best of all, though, is the world-building. Scott and Barnett have created a setting so densely detailed that it’s at times hard to remember you aren’t reading about a real place…. Point of Dreams is a thoroughly rewarding reading experience.”
—SF Site
~
For Steve
Thanks for asking!
~
Contents
Chapter One ~ Bodies at Dawn
Chapter Two ~ The Summer–Sailor`s Wife
Chapter Three ~ The Coils of the Law
Chapter Four ~ The Royal Metal
Chapter Five ~ The Counting House
Chapter Six ~ Best–Laid Plans
Chapter Seven ~ Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Chapter One ~ Bodies at Dawn
Nicolas Rathe dragged himself awake at the sound of fists on his door, groped for flint and steel and the candlestick beside the bed.
“Who’s there?”
“Jiemen, Adjunct Point. You’re wanted, sir.”
Rathe suppressed a groan and got the candle lit, carried it to the table and went to open the door. The winter-sun was sinking, hidden behind the city’s roofs, and the sky outside the open window was just beginning to show light in the east. “What time is it?”
“Half past five,” Jiemen answered. She came into the narrow room, lantern in hand, set it on the table beside the candle, opening the slide to cast a better light. She’d been on the overnight shift, was dressed and ready, leather jerkin over a wool bodice and skirt, stout shoes showing at her hem. Truncheon and knife both hung ready at her belt.
Rathe reached for his breeches—there was no need to stand on ceremony with a fellow pointsman—and began to dress. The air from the window was chill, but it would warm up later on, two days past the Fall Balance, and he grabbed linen stockings instead of wool. “What’s amiss?”
“It’s Grandad Steen,” Jiemen said, and Rathe’s fingers stumbled on the buttons of his shirt.
“What?”
She nodded grimly. “Dame Lulli sent to us just past second sunset, said one of her boys had tripped over him in the yard. Murdered and robbed, she said.”
“Damn.” Rathe hastily wound his neckcloth to close his collar, and shrugged himself into his coat. Grandad Steen was one of the sights of Point of Hopes, claiming seventy-five years of age and a long career as a summer-sailor—a pirate—and if someone had killed him, it was probably because they’d been fool enough to believe his tales of lost treasure and distant islands where mermaids haunted the lagoons, kidnapping unwary sailors to father their finny children. Rathe’d asked once, when he was an apprentice, how they’d stolen the sailors without drowning them, and Grandad had spun him a story o
f eel-skin head-bags to hold the air, and houses half in, half out of the water, connected to the sea by underwater tunnels too long for any but a mermaid to swim…. Glorious nonsense, all of it, and a loss to the city, though he doubted he’d find too many others to agree. “Do we know when?”
Jiemen shrugged. “Not yet. Dame Lulli said she sent to us straightaway, and told off her knife to be sure things were left as they found them.”
“Oh, she has a knife, does she?” Rathe found his tablets, slipped them into his pocket with his purse, and took his jerkin from its hook by the door.
“Not because she has a business to protect,” Jiemen said, with vicious mimicry, “and certainly not because she’s in the business of supplying certain ladies with suitable and fertile company—though that’s in her mind practically a public service—because any such business would require her to be licensed and bonded, but only because she’s giving him a job out of the kindness of her heart.”
Rathe grinned in spite of himself. “I’m sure that will go over well in the courts. How many guests were there—poor ladies benighted whom the dame took in out of pure pity, I’m sure.”
“I don’t know.” Jiemen saw that he was dressed, and picked up the lantern. “I sent Baiart on ahead.”
“Good.” Rathe hooked his truncheon onto his belt and blew out the candle. “Let’s go.”
The city of Astreiant was only just beginning to awaken, a few lamps showing in back kitchens and stableyards. They passed a pair of sleepy-looking live-out apprentices heading for the Hopes-Point bridge and their masters in Manufactory Point, and a few minutes later an empty cart overtook them, the driver sitting sideways on the tongue behind the plodding horse.
Jiemen looked sideways. “Oh, and I sent to the dead-house, too, Adjunct Point.”
“Good.”
Lulli’s house was easy to pick out, the only one with all the doors open and lanterns and torches blazing in the yard. The neighbors were up, too, peeping out their windows, one or two substantial dames hovering in their doorways, but Rathe ignored them. Biatris Austor, the newest apprentice at Point of Hopes and so the one assigned to the overnight shift, was hovering at the alley gate, and swung it open at their approach.
“He’s out back, ma’am and sir.”
Rathe nodded, and looked at Jiemen. “Stay here and wait for the alchemists. And keep the neighbors away.”
“Yes, Adjunct Point.”
He didn’t have to tell her to keep an eye out for anyone who was a little too interested in the business: they’d both been on the job long enough to know how often the murderer came back to check on her or his handiwork, and the more so when it was a killing as senseless as this one. He nodded again, and made his way down the narrow alley between the houses into Lulli’s back garden.
She made good use of it, that much was clear. The fence was high and new, the privy recently whitewashed, posts ready to hang laundry and a thriving kitchen garden at the back step. Someone, Lulli or her cook, had set cloches over the more delicate herbs, trying to eke out a few more weeks’ harvest before the frosts set in hard. Lulli herself was standing in the doorway, a scarlet wrapper thrown over her shift, blood-bright in the rising light. Her arms were folded across her chest, hugging herself hard even though the air was not so cold, and Rathe gentled his voice as he approached her. It seemed she had been fond of the old man, too.
“Dame Lulli.”
She blinked at him from under her cap, and her frown eased a little. “It’s Rathe, isn’t it? The adjunct?”
“That’s right.” Rathe glanced over his shoulder, saw Baiart squatting by a shapeless lump that must be the body. He’d had the sense to fetch a blanket, covered it against the arrival of the alchemists from the dead-house, and Rathe looked back at the woman. “Dame, I’ll want to talk to you and to the household, but first I need to see the body. If you want to go in and make yourself a cup of tea—” Or something stronger, he added silently. “I won’t need for you a little while yet.”
“Thank you.” From her voice she’d been weeping. “In a bit. Who’d do such a thing?”
“We’ll find out,” Rathe said, and turned to the body.
Baiart came to his feet at Rathe’s approach, and shook his head. “A bad business, sir.”
“Yeah.” Rathe went to his knees, folded back the blanket. “You closed his eyes?”
“Yes, sir. I didn’t touch anything else.”
Rathe nodded. The old man lay all in a heap, legs bent one way, arms outflung, the front of his patched shirt drenched with blood. Stabbed and then searched, Rathe guessed: Grandad’s coat was spread wide, the cuffs and hem slit, and the pockets of his breeches were pulled out. He looked up. “No purse?”
“No. They took his tobacco-pouch, too.” Baiart lifted the lantern, trying to minimize the shadows,and Rathe gave a nod of thanks.
“And his hat, it looks like.” Grandad usually wore a waterman’s knit cap with a long tail, and sailors were known to keep a coin or two knotted in the fabric. “Do we know what he was doing up so early?”
“Dame Lulli says this was his usual time, more or less,” Baiart answered. “He tends the stoves for the house.”
Rathe nodded again, and eased the bloodied shirt open to get a look at the wound. A single stab wound, more or less to the heart—an up-and-under thrust, by the look of it, but not entirely expert. He lifted Grandad’s right hand, cold and already stiffening, and wasn’t surprised to see the knuckles bloodied. “No knife?”
“Not on him,” Baiart said. “Seems to me he usually wore one, but I wouldn’t swear to it. And at home—who knows?”
“He counted this as home?” Rathe rose to his feet again, scanning the beaten earth around the body.
“So Dame Lulli says.”
There was a son, Rathe remembered, vaguely, and maybe a grandson, but he didn’t know any more than that. He didn’t know anything about the mother, but it wasn’t that uncommon for a woman to leave an unintended son with his father rather than raising it herself. Had Grandad said something about that once, or was that just a part of one of his stories?
Another darker spot in the dirt beyond the body caught his eye, and he crouched to touch it warily. “Baiart?”
Baiart brought the lantern, and Rathe wiped his fingers on his handkerchief, unsurprised at the rusty stain. It could always be Grandad’s, he thought, they wouldn’t know for sure until the alchemists arrived, but he had a feeling….
“Give me the light,” he said, and Baiart handed him the lantern. Rathe held it high, looking for more signs. Sure enough, there was a larger pool by the body, but the first spot he’d found was well separated, and there was a scuffed place in the dirt, not quite a footprint. And then he saw a second spot, and a third, leading toward the mews-gate, and he looked back at Baiart. “I’ve got a trail.”
“I’ll go with you,” Baiart said.
Rathe shook his head. “Stay here, wait for whoever the deadhouse sends. I doubt it’ll go far, but….” He squinted at the sky, lightening further as sunrise approached. “I want to get as far as I can before it’s muddled. Tell Dame Lulli I’ll be back to speak with her, though.”
“Yes, sir,” Baiart said.
Rathe let himself out into the narrow mews. It was a short lane, bounded on both sides by high fences, and the ground was soft, rutted from the night-soil carts and the the rag-and-bone women, but he could still pick out the blood trail. It led him out of the mews and and down the side street that ran parallel to Bridge Street, toward the maze of little shops and warehouses that lined the river’s edge. That made it seem even more likely that it was someone who’d believed Grandad’s tales of piracy, and Rathe hoped there would be a simple end to the case. Grandad deserved better than this.
The light was better in the street, a good thing, since the trail was fading. Rathe lifted his lantern again, found the next mark, and then a scuffed place beyond it, as though the person had stumbled. Rathe frowned at that. It looked as though the at
tacker was worse hurt than he’d thought, and he quickened his step.
A few yards further on, there was a larger spot of blood, and when he looked up, there was a bloody smear on the whitewashed corner of the next building. He swore under his breath and drew his truncheon. The last thing he needed was to trap an injured murderer. But there was no help for it, no time to send for help. He opened the lantern’s slide all the way, and stepped briskly around the corner.
At the end of the little alley, a man knelt beside a heap of old clothes that quickly resolved itself into a body. His hat was tipped to hide his face, but it was obvious that he was about to go through the fallen man’s pockets.
“Hold hard,” Rathe said, but the next words died in his throat as the kneeling man turned. “Eslingen?”
“Oh. Hello, Nico.” Philip Eslingen sounded more sheepish than anything as he pushed himself to his feet. “I might have known it would be you.”
“What are you doing?” Rathe asked. He refused to be distracted by his liking for the man. They had worked well together over the summer, when they’d hunted down the city’s stolen children, and slept together more than once in the heady aftermath of that success, but they served incompatible masters, and had, reluctantly, agreed to part. And that was where the matter had to rest, whether he liked it or not.
“I’ve found a dead man,” Eslingen answered, his voice suddenly sober. “Old Steen’s all the name I know.”
“What?” Rathe checked, startled, then moved in so that the light fell squarely on the body. That was the last thing he’d expected, to come chasing Grandad’s murderer, and find instead his dead son. But it was Old Steen all right, lean and wiry, cap missing and his lank brown hair trailing in the mud. He was a man well known to the points and even better to the pontoises who had jurisdiction over the river, but he’d never been on bad terms with his father, was said to bring him the occasional treat from the Silklands and the Further North.
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