Point of Knives by Melissa Scott

Author:Melissa Scott [Scott, Melissa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: (Retail), Adventure, Fantasy, Mystery, Romance
ISBN: 9781590213810
Google: juulr42wSKkC
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 13557183
Publisher: Lethe Press
Published: 2012-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

They made their way back toward town in thoughtful silence. The breeze had picked up, as it often did toward evening, blowing dust and strands of hay across the road, while in a field between two houses a pair of young bay horses chased leaves and each other across their paddock. Eslingen gave them an appraising glance, regretting again the rangy chestnut he’d sold at the beginning of the summer, but there was no possibility that he could afford to keep a horse in the city. Nor would Caiazzo stand for it. The merchant-venturer kept no stable of his own, and Eslingen had never known him to do more than borrow a horse from one of his caravaners. Still, those were pretty creatures, and he glanced back in spite of himself, until the turn of the road cut off his view.

“This doesn’t make things any better,” Rathe muttered, and Eslingen shook himself.

“More politics, you mean? No, it doesn’t.”

“And the University,” Rathe said. “I’m sure Istre will help, but—we’ve never had much luck asserting our authority over the Three Nations, never mind their masters.”

The Three Nations were the students, Eslingen knew, who were notorious for what he felt was a distinctly unscholarly tendency to drop their books and draw knives over the most unlikely quarrels. He said, “Do you think she’s right?”

“That there is some sort of political conspiracy within the University?” Rathe shrugged. “I wouldn’t bet against it.”

He was looking uncommonly discouraged, Eslingen thought, not like him at all. They had almost reached the wine bower, its banner rippling in the breeze, and he touched Rathe’s shoulder. “I promised you an early supper,” he said.

“And a bit more besides,” Rathe said, but the words sounded forced.

“Food and a decent bottle of wine to start,” Eslingen said, “and a private place to talk. For the rest—we’ll see.”

The bower was uncrowded at this hour, the midday crowd long past, the evening not yet begun, and Eslingen turned his best smile on the young hostess. She agreed to rent them a private table and to serve up a pint of the pale Silklands wine that was Rathe’s current favorite along with a plate of bread and cheese to stay their appetite until the evening’s ordinary was ready. They were led toward the rear of the bower, across the central garden where the grass had been trampled almost to bare ground by the summer’s hard use. The private tables were set up within small tents of brightly painted canvas, divided from each other by hedges of thorny rose; there were small braziers in each one now, and lanterns hanging from the center posts, but at the moment the sun on the canvas kept them warm enough. The chairs were piled with cushions—enough, Esingen noted, to make quite a comfortable bed on the grass between the table and the tent’s rear wall—and the air smelled of late roses and the oil in the lamps. The waiter fetched their order, and offered with a leer to close the curtains, but Eslingen shook his head.

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