There were pointsmen on duty at the Horsegate itself, two men in the heavy leather jerkins that served them for rough‑and‑ready armor, crowned truncheons at their belts. At the sight of the little party, the older of the pair stepped into the gate, holding up his hand. “Hold it, soldier. Those are well outside the limits.” He pointed to the caliver, and then to the cased swords. “You’ll have to leave them, or pay a bond.”
Eslingen sighed ostentatiously–he had been through this routine before, every time he came to Astreiant–and slipped his hand into his purse. “I’m taking them to the Temple for safekeeping, pointsman, surely that’s allowed.”
“They’re still oversized,” the older man said. “And that means a bond. A horsehead a piece, that’s the law–that’s two seillings, Leaguer, our coin.”
Eslingen bit back his first answer–there was no point in antagonizing the points on his first day in Astreiant–and pulled two of the silver coins from his purse. “Two seillings, pointsman. May I pass?”
The pointsman stepped back, bowing too deeply, his plumed hat nearly brushing the ground. “Have a pleasant stay in our city.”
Eslingen ignored him, and walked through the sudden cool of the gate, almost a tunnel in the thick wall, to emerge into the bright doubled sunlight and the bustle of the city’s center. He took the easiest route toward Temple Fair and the Aretoneia, down the broad expanse of the Horsegate Road to the Horsefair itself. No one sold horses there anymore, of course–Astreiant was too large, too prosperous, to buy and sell horses within its richest districts–but the law still kept the space open and beaten flat, the dust damped three times a day by water‑carriers in city livery. At this hour, it was busy with the afternoon merchants, selling everything except food from vividly painted pushcarts. Eslingen sighed to himself, seeing the rolls and figures of lace laid out on the black carts clustered in front of the Laciers’ Hall, but turned resolutely away. It would be apprentices’ work–masters’ work was sold within the hall, free of the dust and dirt of the street–but it was still beyond his means to have lace at his cuffs and collar.
He turned instead toward College Street, slowing his steps so that the boys could keep up with him in the press of people. The younger boy was breathing hard, but he and his fellow seemed to be managing their burdens well enough. Still, it was a relief to step into the shadow of the overhanging buildings of College Street, out of the cheerful bustle of the Horsefair. This was another of the old neighborhoods, not as rich as Riversedge or the Mercandry, but prosperous enough. The shop signs were freshly painted, some showing touches of gilt and silvering, and more than half displayed the snake‑and‑gargoyle design of the Merchants‑Venturer above the doorframe, promising goods brought to Astreiant by the longdistance traders. He smelled Silklands spices as he passed one open door, and saw a woman emerge from a side door carrying a string of bright red peppers; at the next door, an apprentice sat in the sunlight outside the door, a tray of polished stones balanced on her lap. It was a nice display, Eslingen acknowledged silently–the stones were rivvens from Esling, gaudy enough to catch the eye, but not worth stealing–and touched his hat as he passed. The girl–young woman, he amended–looked up at him, a smile lightening her intent face, but then went back to her work.
The Aretoneia lay on the western edge of Temple Fair, at the mouth of a street where most of the buildings still carried the wrought iron lanterns that meant they belonged to the university. Most of them were rented out, either to shopkeepers and craftsmen, but here and there the lanterns were still lit and once he saw a scholar in an ochre‑banded gown leading a class in recitation. A toddler clung to her skirts, and she stooped, lifted it without missing a beat. Temple Fair was as busy as ever, travellers clustering around the Pantheon, the broadsheet sellers doing a brisk business at their tables under the awnings along the east side of the square, the book‑printers and their apprentices trying to look aloof beyond them. Eslingen hesitated, tempted by the tables of broadsheets and the sample prophecies displayed on the sun‑faded boards, but turned instead into the narrow door of the Aretoneia: business, after all, before pleasure. He nodded to the senior of the two soldiers on duty at the door–both older men, past the rigors of a campaign season but not too old to put up a decent defense, not that anyone would be stupid enough to attack the Aretoneia–and shouldered past them into the temple.
Tapers blazed in half a dozen hanging candelabra, and stood in rows in sconces along the walls. More candles, smaller votive lights the length of a man’s finger, flickered at the foot of the central statue of Areton, the god of war and courage, throwing odd shadows across the statue’s archaic leg armor and making the base of his long spear seem to waver. This was not Eslingen’s favorite incarnation of the god–he preferred the younger shape, dancing, before he turned to war–but he touched his forehead dutifully anyway before turning toward the money changers.
Their booths lined the side walls of the temple, each one marked with familiar symbols–the cock‑and‑hens of Areill, the rose and wine‑cup of Pajot Soeurs–but he made his way to the biggest booth, the one marked with the ram’s head of Areton’s own priesthood. Enough of Areton’s old servants retired from soldiering into banking, drawing on the sense of value and exchange gained over a lifetime’s fighting in every kingdom from the petty lands west of Chadron to the Silklands themselves; their commissions might be higher than some of the others who rented space in the temple, but the rates of exchange tended to be better.
“Wait for me here,” he said to the boys who were standing wide‑eyed, staring at the thanks‑offerings of guns and swords pinned like trophies to every pillar, and took his place in line at the table marked with the ram’s head. The clerk at the next table, a pretty, dark‑skinned boy, smiled at him.
“I can offer good rates, sir, and no waiting.”
Eslingen shook his head, but returned the smile. The clerk’s hands were painted with a pattern of curving vines, black picked out with dots of red and gold, vivid in the candlelight. If that was the fashion in Astreiant now, Eslingen thought, it was a handsome one, though hardly practical. Then the man ahead of him had finished his business, and he stepped up to the table, reaching into his pocket for one purse, and under his shirt for the other. The clerk–greying, one‑eyed, ledger and tallyboard in front of him, abacus laid ready to a hand that lacked part of a finger–looked up at him shrewdly.
“And what do you have for me–sergeant, isn’t it, from Esling?”
“From Esling, yes, but I earned my commission this season,” Eslingen answered, and set the purses on the table.
“Congratulations,” the clerk said, busily unfolding the letters of credit, and Eslingen allowed himself a sour smile. Words were cheap; the ephemeral commission was unlikely to get him an improved exchange rate for the Leaguer coins. The clerk poured out the small horde of coins–the gold disk of the royal crown that had been this season’s wages, warm in the candlelight; the heavy silver square of the pillar that was Barthias’s gift; a pair of Altheim staters hardly bigger than sequins, but bright gold; a scattering of miscellaneous silver, Chadroni, League, and Chenedolliste equally mixed. The clerk grunted, fingering them neatly into the holes of the tallyboard, then spread the letters of credit beside them, bending close to read the crabbed writing. He grunted again and flicked the beads of his abacus, the maimed finger as deft as the others, then chalked something on his slate and flicked the abacus again.
“You have four crowns and three pillars by my reckoning, sergeant–lieutenant–all good coin of Her Majesty. Do you want it now, or do you want to bank it here and gamble on the exchange?”