The main room was only moderately crowded, and he guessed that Devynck made most of her profit from her beer. He found an empty table beside one of the streetside windows, and lifted a hand to signal the nearest waiter. The man nodded back, but took his patron’s orders before coming over to Eslingen’s table.
“You’re the new lodger—Eslingen, isn’t it? I’m Loret.”
“That’s right.” Eslingen eyed him curiously, recognizing a wrestler’s or blacksmith’s breadth of shoulder beneath the loose smock, and wondered if Devynck often had trouble here.
“Then you get the ordinary. Do you want beer with that? It’s a demming extra for a pitcher.”
“That’s fine.”
Loret nodded, and Eslingen watched him walk away, dodging tables on his way to the kitchen hatch. Loret had the look of country boys who enlisted out of ignorance and deserted after their first battle, good boys with all the wrong stars, more often than not—which was hardly fair, he told himself, considering that Loret was probably born and bred in Astreiant. And big men weren’t all gentle; he’d learned that the hard way, years ago.
It wasn’t long before Loret returned with the tray of food and the sweating pitcher of beer. He set them neatly down, and waited until Eslingen had paid for the beer before answering the next customer’s shout. Eslingen made a face at the caution, but had to admit it was probably justified. Devynck’s clientele would be no better than the average. The food was good—a thick stew, Leaguer style, with a decent serving of beef to supplement the starchy roots that made up the bulk of the dish, and half a loaf of good wheat bread with a dish of soft cheese on the side—and the beer was better. It had been a while since he had eaten Leaguer food—Coindarel’s quartermasters had been mostly Chenedolliste, like their men—and he took his time, savoring the rich meat broth.
“Philip! Philip Eslingen!”
The voice was unexpectedly familiar, and Eslingen looked up, startled, to see Dausset Cijntien waving at him from the center of the room. Eslingen waved back, wondering what the other was doing in Astreiant—the last he had heard, Cijntien had signed on with a longdistance trader, leading a caravan-guard on the six-month overland journey to the Silklands. But then, that had been almost six months ago, he realized, and in any case, Cijntien was obviously back, and equally obviously looking for work. Midsummer was the hiring season for the longdistance traders, and the sea captains, for that matter; there was rarely any shortage of work for experienced soldiers.
Cijntien collected his refilled pitcher, reaching over the heads of the people at the nearest table, and then threaded his way through the crowd to Eslingen’s table. The room had filled up since he’d arrived, Eslingen saw, and glanced at the wall stick. It was blind, the light no longer falling to cast its shadows, but from the look of the sky outside the windows, it was getting close to the first sundown.
“It’s good to see you again,” Cijntien said, and settled himself on the stool opposite the other man.
“And you,” Eslingen answered, and meant it. “You’re looking well.”
“Thanks.” Cijntien took a long swallow of his beer, and Eslingen smiled, watching him. They had served together years before—more accurately, he had served under Cijntien, had been a corporal and then a company sergeant under Cijntien, and had stepped into Cijntien’s office of major sergeant when the older man had left soldiering for the less dangerous life of a trader’s man. Or at worst differently dangerous, Eslingen amended. From the looks of Cijntien’s hands, flecked with the dark specks of a recent powder burn, longdistance trading had its own hazards.
“I thought you were with Coindarel these days,” Cijntien went on.
“We were paid off,” Eslingen answered. “This morning, in fact.”
“Hard luck. Or maybe not so hard, depending.” Cijntien leaned forward, planting both elbows on the table. He was wearing a light jerkin over a plain shirt, and the grey brown leather matched the faded brown of his hair. “Have you another place lined up yet?”
Eslingen shook his head. “Not this season.” He hesitated, but Cijntien was an old friend, and was probably one of the few who’d appreciate his promotion. “I had my commission this spring, you see. I’m not inclined to go back to mere sergeant so quickly.”
Cijntien nodded in sympathy. “The stars have been against you, my Philip. Have you tried a good astrologer?”
Eslingen laughed. “Have you ever met an astrologer who could alter the stars once they’re risen? Give over, Dausset.”
“They can mitigate the worst effects,” Cijntien answered, and Eslingen shook his head. Cijntien was old-fashioned—he had been born in Guisen, the most conservative of the northern cities, back when it was part of the League—and undereducated; no one had ever been able to convince him that even the greatest magists could work only with what the stars gave them.
“I’m planning to consult someone,” Eslingen said. “Tomorrow or the next day. But, no, I don’t have a place, and I wasn’t planning to look until the winter season.”
“As it happens,” Cijntien said, and smiled. “As it happens, my Philip, I’ve a place for you, if you want it.”
“Oh?” In spite of himself, in spite of knowing what it must be, Eslingen felt his heart quicken a little. He was a fish out of water in Astreiant, and that was frightening as well as a challenge; it wouldn’t be bad to have familiar work, or to be serving with Cijntien again… Then common sense reasserted itself. He had no desire to serve six months to a year in a trading company—of course a shipboard post would probably be shorter, assuming Cijntien had moved from the caravans to the more prestigious trading craft, though he himself had never sailed on anything larger than a river barge, much less fought from one.
“My principal’s still hiring for this winter’s caravan,” Cijntien said. “It’s a good trip, I’ve done it five times now, up the Queen’s-road to Anver, cross the Marr at Breissa and then over the land bridge into the Silklands.”
“I thought that was all desert,” Eslingen said, but couldn’t suppress a surge of curiosity. He had always liked travel—men were generally wanderers by their stars, and he was no exception.
“It is, mostly. But the rivers fill in winter, and the nomads—they’re Haissa, there, mostly, and a lot of Qaidin—come to the city-sites to trade.” Cijntien looked past him, not seeing the tavern crowd. “It’s a sight to see, Philip. The sites, they’re nothing, just the walls for houses, but then the people come in, pitch their tents, and make a city. They’ve a traders’ peace, too, at least in the cities, so the various clans can do their business. We were early once, saw the Haissa setting up at Saatara. It was like magists’ work, I’ve never seen anything like it. We came in at first sundown, pitched our camp, and there was nothing there, just mud brick walls and dirt. And then, just before second sundown, we heard the Haissa arrive—they’d been held up, their camp mother said, a storm or something—and the next thing we knew the city’d sprouted roofs and doors. All oil-silk, mind you, and those heavy carpets everywhere. When the light hit them, at first sunup, gods, it was like you’d fallen into a jewelbox. And there was nothing there before, nothing at all.”
Eslingen shivered, caught by the picture the older man had conjured for him. He had met Silklanders before, of course, had served with any number of them, but they were mostly dark-skinned Maivi, from the center of the empire. He’d never met a true Hasiri, from one of the tribes, though like all Leaguer children he’d been raised on stories of the wild nomads who roamed the roof of the world; it would be wonderful to see.
“After that,” Cijntien went on, “we take it by easy stages down the imperial roads to Tchalindor. My principal’s factor is there. And then we come back by sea.”
And that, Eslingen thought, was the rub. It would be a glorious journey, certainly, but it would take the rest of the year and well into the next spring to reach Tchalindor—the land bridge was only passable in the winter, when the rivers were full—and by the time he could get a ship b
ack to Chenedolle or the League, the best captains would have filled their companies for the spring campaigns. Still, if the pay was good enough, he could afford to wait for the winter season… “What’s your principal offering?”
“Two pillars a lunar month, paid at Tchalindor, plus bonuses. And of course food, mounts, and shot and powder are his business—and weapons, too, if you don’t want to bring your own.”
Which wasn’t enough, not even if he skimped—and besides, Eslingen told himself firmly, he’d always been a soldier, not some caravan guard. He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Dausset. I can’t afford it.”
“Can you afford to have your head blown off, somewhere up in the Ile’nord? Or your throat slit some dark night, more likely?”
Eslingen laughed. “But I’m good, Dausset. Besides, if it’s in my stars, it’s in my stars. By all accounts, you can get your throat cut just as neatly on the caravan roads.”
Cijntien shook his head, the smile fading from his lips. “I wish you’d come with me, Philip. This is not a good time for Leaguers in Astreiant.”
“What do you mean?” Eslingen reached for the pitcher, found it empty, and lifted a hand to signal the nearest waiter. The room had definitely filled while they’d been talking, a mix of Leaguers, marked by their lighter skin and hair and the wide hats they wore even in the tavern, and soldiers and former soldiers, equally marked by their boots and the various scars. But there was a small knot of people whom he couldn’t identify immediately sitting close together at the tables by the door, and another larger group—this one with the leather aprons and pewter Toncarle badges of the Butcher’s Guild—at the big table closest to the bar. Locals, all of them, and they didn’t look particularly happy. The waiter—not Loret, this time—brought a second pitcher, and Eslingen paid, waving away Cijntien’s perfunctory and insincere offer of coin. “So what do you mean, this is a bad time for Leaguers?”
“Haven’t you heard?”
“I got into the city two days ago,” Eslingen answered. “Not even Astreiant proper, the camps out along the Horse Road. And I wasn’t paid off until this morning. So whatever it is, no, I haven’t heard.”
Cijntien leaned forward again, lowering his voice. “There’s something very wrong in this city, Philip, let me tell you that. And the Astreianters are being very quick to blame everybody else before they’ll look in their own stars.”
Eslingen made a noncommittal noise.
“Their children are disappearing,” Cijntien said, leaning forward even further. “Lots of them, just vanishing, no one knows where or why. They say—” He jerked his head toward the doorway, the city beyond it. “—they say it’s Leaguers, or maybe the caravaners and Silklanders, needing hands for the road. But I say it’s a judgment on herself, for being childless.”
Eslingen caught his breath at that, barely kept himself from looking over his shoulder. “Have a care, Dausset.”
“Well, she should have an heiress by now,” Cijntien said, stubbornly. Neither man needed to say who he meant: the Queen of Chenedolle’s childless state had been the subject of speculation for years. “Or have named one. The Starsmith is moving, it’ll enter the Charioteer within the year—”
“Or next year, or the year after,” Eslingen interrupted, his voice equally firm. Anyone in Chenedolle—in the known world—knew what that meant: the Starsmith was the brightest of the moving stars, the ruler of death, monarchs, and magists, and its passage from one sign to the next signaled upheavals at the highest levels. The current queen’s grandmother had died during such a transit, and the transit before that had been marked by civil war; it was not unreasonable to fear this passage, when the current queen was no longer young, and childless. But the tertiary zodiac, the one in which the Starsmith moved, as opposed to the zodiacs of the sun and winter-sun, was still poorly defined, its boundaries the subject of debate even within Astreiant’s university. The Starsmith might well pass from the Shell to the Charioteer this year, or not for another four or five years; it all depended on who you asked.
“At least you don’t say never,” Cijntien muttered. “Like some godless Chadroni.”
“Whatever else you may say about me, you can’t call me that.”
“Godless?”
“Chadroni.”
Cijntien laughed. “I have missed you, Philip, and I don’t deny it’d be good to have you along this trip if only for the company. But I mean it, this is not a good time to be Leaguer here.”
“Because of missing children,” Eslingen said. “Missing, you said, not dead?”
“No one’s found bodies, at any rate,” Cijntien answered.
“So how many of them have just decided to take to the roads?” Eslingen asked. “It’s Midsummer, or nearly, fair season—hiring season. When did you leave home, Dausset, or did you start out a soldier?”
“As it happened, yes, and I left home at the spring balance,” Cijntien said. “But that’s not what’s happening, or so they say. It’s the wrong children, not the southriver rats and rabble, but the merchants’ brats from north of the river. Those children don’t run away, Philip. They’ve got too much to stay for.”
Eslingen made a face, still skeptical, but unwilling to argue further. In his experience, the merchant classes were as likely to run as any other, depending on their stars and circumstances—he’d served with enough of them in various companies, even with a few who had taken to soldiering like ducks to water. “Still, there’s no reason to blame us. It’s past the campaign season—gods, if I couldn’t find a company hiring, how will some half-trained butcher’s brat? If they’re looking to blame someone, let them blame the ship captains.”
“Oh, they’re doing that,” Cijntien began, and a hand slammed down onto the table.
“And what do you know about butcher’s brats, Leaguer?”
Eslingen swallowed a curse, more at his own unruly tongue than at the stranger, looked up to see one of the butchers staring down at them. He was a young man, probably only a journeyman yet, but he held onto the table as though he needed its support. Which he probably does, Eslingen added silently, wrinkling his nose at the smell of neat spirit that hung about him. Drunk, and probably contentious— there’s no point in being too polite with him, but I don’t want a fight, either.
“Little enough,” he said aloud, and gave the youth his best blank smile, the one he’d copied from the Ile’norder lieutenants, sixteen quarterings and not a demming in his pocket. “A—figure of speech, I think it’s called, an example, a part standing for the whole.”
“There’s a butcher’s brat gone missing,” the journeyman went on, as though he hadn’t heard a word the other had said, and Eslingen was suddenly very aware of the quiet spreading out from them as people turned to look and listen. “This morning—last night maybe. And I want to know what you know about it, soldier.”
“This morning,” Eslingen said, speaking not so much to the drunken boy in front of him but the listeners beyond, the ones who were still sober and could cause real trouble, “I was with my troop at the Horse Road camps, being paid off by Her Majesty’s intendants— and I was there the night before, too, for that matter, making ready for it. There’s a hundred men who’ll witness for me.” He could feel the tension relax—he wasn’t likely quarry anyway, was too new to the city to be the real cause—and pushed himself easily to his feet. “But no harm done, my son, let me buy you a drink.”
He came around the table as he spoke, caught the journeyman by the arm and shoulder, a grip that looked a little like linked arms but made the slighter man gasp sharply. He started to pull away, and Eslingen tightened his hold. The journeyman winced, subsiding, and Eslingen propelled him toward the door, talking all the while.
“No? Well, you’re probably right, you’ve probably had all you want tonight. I hope you have a pleasant sleep and not too hard a morning.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the other young men from the table of butchers all on their feet, but hesitating, not quite cer
tain what to do, and he favored them with a broad, slightly silly smile. “I think he was just going, don’t you? And one of you should probably see him home, there’s good chap, thank you. Devynck would want it that way, I’m sure.”
The senior journeymen exchanged glances, and then the older of the two nodded. “I’ll see him home, thanks.”
Eslingen nodded and smiled, but kept his grip on the younger man until he was actually in the doorway. The senior journeyman followed him, the rest of the butchers trailing after him, pausing opposite Eslingen. The wind from the street was cool and smelled of the middens outside the butchers’ halls, the sharp green scent of vegetables.
“You were paid off today? Sergeant, is it?”
“Lieutenant,” Eslingen answered. “I was. I give you my word on it.”
The senior journeyman looked at him for a moment longer, then, slowly, nodded. “Come on, Paas, let’s get you home.”
Eslingen released the journeyman’s arm, and let the rest of them file out past him into the street. They went quietly enough, embarrassed more than anything, and he was careful not to say or do anything more. Let them forget as quickly as possible that Paas disgraced himself, he thought, and that’ll do more to keep the peace than any threats or arguing. As the last of them left, he turned back into the tavern, glancing around the room more out of habit than because he expected more trouble. The conversations were already returning to normal, nearly everyone more concerned now with their drinks or a last order of food. He’d pulled it off, then, and as neatly as he’d ever done. He allowed himself a slow breath of relief, and Devynck said, “Not bad.”
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