Bloodhound

by Tamora Pierce

  "What about the false coin?" Goodwin asked. "What happened to that?"

  "Took to the palace," Jewel said. "No one'd leave that in a common kennel, where it might vanish, like."

  "I had word of a gambler that won eight silver nobles that turned out to be six of 'em coles," I said. "Near Glassman Square. My Birdie had no names, though."

  Goodwin spun her dagger point down on her fingertip. She did that when she was thinking. We all watched her. "We've folk passing coles in the Lower City and Flash District, but no word from any of the other districts," she said at last. "Just down here. This baker, Garnett, took in some coins, there's this gambler Cooper heard of, and its river dodgers in Flash District."

  "It might pay to check the Lower City end of the riverfront, to see if other gamblers are passing fakes," Tunstall pointed out.

  "The Barrel's Bottom," Goodwin said. She flipped her dagger into the air, caught it by the hilt, and sheathed it. I've yet to manage that trick without cuts. "That's the biggest for gambling, this time of the week. We should start there."

  I winced. My luck in the Barrel's Bottom has not improved since I kept my first journal. I've been caught in seven large brawls in that outsized scummer-pot, the first when I was a Pup, the rest since. Last time I got my arm broken.

  "If any cole passers know of the two who got caught in Flash District, they'll be shy," Jewel warned Goodwin. "They see you come in the front door, they'll be gone out every rathole in the place. You'll need company." Our team and Jewel's were too senior to have fixed patrols, but it was expected that we didn't work the same streets at the same time.

  Tunstall smiled. "I'll talk with Ahuda."

  She must have been in a good mood, or Tunstall talked extra well. Not only did Ahuda give us leave to take Jewel and Yoav to the Barrel's Bottom, she let us pull Birch and Ersken off their regular patrol of Rovers Street. Having Birch and Ersken along was an extra blessing. Birch has walked Rovers Street for years. He knows all the Barrel's Bottom exits.

  It helped that Friday night was quiet, so we could all be spared. It was hot, too hot to do much. Plenty of folk were out of the city working the harvest. Walking down Jane Street, me and Ersken listened as the Senior Dogs wagered on when the streets and drinking houses would fill up with returning harvesters. Autumn is the Dogs' busiest season. Along with the harvesters and those that come to buy their winter's supplies come the thieves and gamblers to clip them. It's best we get this business of coles done with now. It will make a pretty mess once the crowds come.

  Around the corner from the Barrel's Bottom, the Senior Dogs halted to give us our assignments.

  "Ersken goes through the front door," said Birch. "Walk about slow-like, lad. Look over the games, and now and then give a pile of silver a wee poke with your baton, but not so much as to disturb the coins. Let them know you're there, eye-in' the money. If you're payin' a bit too much attention to the coin, they'll sweat. They won't know why you're lookin', but they'll know it ain't good. Like it says in The Book of Law, the guilty run first. We'll be waiting for them."

  "Don't interrupt the games," Goodwin cautioned. "They hate that."

  All of us nodded.

  "The regulars know Ersken," Birch told us. "They'll know I'm hard by."

  "And them with aught on their consciences will scatter for the bolt holes," Jewel said.

  "Which I'll be showing you," Birch replied. "Wait till I return, Ersken."

  As he led us away, I looked back at Ersken, worried. He's put on weight and muscle since our Puppy year, and he's better with his baton and those brass knuckles that Kora gave him. Birch wouldn't have kept him if he thought Ersken wasn't tough enough for Rovers Street. All the same, there's a difference between working the street with a tough Dog and walking into the Bottom alone.

  He has his whistle, I told myself. We're all close enough to hear.

  Then I saw Pounce sit down by Ersken's feet and felt better. Pounce is as good as another Dog.

  Birch put me at a side door that opened on a tiny alley. A pair of torches over the door gave me light as I waited there, my baton in hand, my sap in easy reach. In my free hand I kept a piece of spelled mirror that Kora had given me for Midwinter. It would show me anyone who might try to sneak past under the cover of magic. I never asked her how much it cost, but to me it's worth my weight in gold. I've bagged five mage-spelled Rats using that mirror. With it and my weapons, I might be outside the rowdiest den on Rovers Street, but I was ready to bag me some Rats. And if there was a brawl, I would do my part.

  But there was no brawl. Folk were too hot, seemingly. Instead, they ran. The first three that scuttled out my door were known to me. They were part of Aniki's band of rushers: Bold Brian, Reed Katie, and Fiddlelad. They grinned when they saw me and held up their empty fambles.

  "Back with Goodwin and Tunstall?" Reed Katie asked me with a wink, a laugh in her sweet voice. Word moves fast in the Lower City.

  "What do you think?" I asked her. "And why are you three sliding out the back way? Put your hands down."

  They lowered their arms. "You don't fool us," said Bold Brian. "Westover's in there, lookin' as innocent as a babe. If he's about, Birch isn't far behind."

  "An' if the two of them's huntin' in the Bottom, we're off," Fiddlelad told me, running his fingers over his fiddle. "We thought Rovers Street would be restful once Birch got him a first-year Dog for partner, but Westover's sharp. 'Tis best to tread a measure when they're about."

  "'Specially when Westover wears that baby face of his," Reed Katie added. "He comes in looking all innocent, you know sommat's in the wind."

  Mayhap I've been worrying over Ersken for naught. Seemingly he's building some repute for himself. I prodded Reed Katie's purse. "So what were you up to in there, you three? Gaming? Winning silver?"

  They laughed and showed me four silver coins between them. "We don't gamble, not in the Bottom," Fiddlelad said. "Play's too rough here."

  "We was havin' but a cup of ale, whilst Fiddlelad earned coin playin'," Bold Brian told me.

  All of their coins were cut to show they were silver clean through. The three of them were earning better since Rosto became Rogue, but most of their purse coin was still copper.

  "Since when do you cut your silver?" I asked them. "Or were you given these already marked?"

  "Checked 'em ourselves." Bold Brian had given me two silver nobles. "Aniki warned us about coles this afternoon."

  "Just mind who you tell that to," I said, worried. "We need no panics."

  "Aniki said the same," Fiddlelad told me. "Brian only mentioned it now a'cos we're talkin' with you, Cooper."

  Bold Brian said, "You don't mind, Cooper, we'll clear out. Time we let you be about your business."

  In case I run into trouble, I thought, but I waved them on. Five more mots and coves came through the door, but only one of them carried silver, and that was true coin. I was starting to get bored when I saw a reflection in my charmed mirror – a fat Yamani fellow inside a curtain of magic. I turned as if to look inside. When he eased by me, I checked the mirror a second time to make sure I knew his height and where his head would be. Then I snapped my baton around his neck from behind. Whilst he choked, I threw him against the side of the building and groped for his hands so I could tie them. With that done, I felt for the magic charms at his neck and cut the cords they hung on. He started cursing me then.

  Once I saw him clear, I hobbled his ankles with a second thong, then searched him for weapons. He carried only a pair of daggers and a dice box. Seemingly he relied on magic to keep him out of trouble. Though his skin and features were Yamani, he wore his hair like any cove of the Eastern Lands, cut along the sides of his head instead of in a topknot. His clothes were the tunic and leggings most local coves prefer.

  As I went through his pockets, he complained, "How might such a pretty lass be so cruel?" His accent was that of Port Caynn.

  "Compliments do you not one whit of good," I said as I took the purse from his belt. I
inspected its contents in the torchlight. It held a few coppers and at least ten silver nobles. A search of the rest of him gave me another purse, hidden inside his tunic. It was stuffed with silver coins. "And I hate colemongers."

  "I know naught of coles!" he protested.

  I took out a silver coin from the hidden purse and cut its face with my dagger. Brass gleamed at the bottom of the cut. I dropped that coin on the ground and fished out another, cutting it as I had the first. It, too, was a cole.

  He was sweating. "I won them in play on the boat from Port Caynn."

  "From who?"

  "Some fellows. Decent enough, but – they'd not like my giving their names to the law in Corus, I'm certain."

  I grabbed his hair and banged his head against the wall. "You'll not like what will happen to you if you don't tell me who you won those coles from."

  "I cannot tell, Guardswoman! I must have played five people on that boat!"

  "Then we'll round all of them up," I said. He shook his head and kept shaking it, though he wrenched his own hair in my hand as he did it. "Very well, then. Who are you?" I asked.

  He refused to speak.

  "Tell me or tell the cage Dogs, it makes no difference. They will get the truth out of you sooner or later," I warned him. Sometimes just the threat of the cage Dogs will make a Rat spill. Not this one, though. He was still holding his tongue when the other Dogs came for me. They'd caught another cole-monger, a mot built like a barge. She looked like a fighter of some kind, dressed as she was in a metal-studded leather jerkin, leather breeches, and boots, with metal-studded gloves folded over her belt. She wore empty sword and dagger sheaths on the belt. Jewel had her weapons.

  My cove lit up when he saw her. "Tell them! Tell them we won the coles on the boat! This stone-hearted doxie won't believe me, but maybe these fine Guardspeople will!"

  "He's a gabblemonger, but he's tellin' the truth," the mot told us as we walked them down the street. "And it's a gold noble for each of yez if you'll send for the advocate to the Gem-cutter's Guild. She'll bring a mage with truth spells. We'd as soon avoid any rack or Drink or thumbscrews your cage Dogs got waitin'."

  "It's true," my Yamani said. "The guild will pay our fees and yours. All our wrong lay in gaming with the wrong folk."

  "The Gemcutter's Guild," Nyler Jewel repeated, just to be certain.

  "We carry packages for the guild, to and from Port Caynn," said the Yamani.

  Jewel groaned. He looked like he'd bit into a pickle with a rotten tooth. Tunstall spat on the street. Yoav swore. Some of the city guilds could walk their people away from plenty of things. If we couldn't prove these two guilty of cole passing, the Gemcutter's Guild would have them out of the cages before dawn.

  "Gambling's a pleasant way to pass the time. She's my guard until the packages are delivered." The Yamani nodded toward the mot. "We spend a night in the city, and in the morning we take goods back to the port."

  "Be reasonable," the mot said. "You know cage Dogs get lies as often as not with their tortures. A mage is a certain thing. Just send to the guild – they'll get someone to come for us. And the advocate will pay them gold nobles over to yez, nice as honey in the comb."

  I could nearabout hear the Senior Dogs' teeth grinding. I asked, "If you're so clean and you're to be bought free of cages and charges, you may as well give up the names of your gamester friends and that boat you came on."

  "And your own names as well," Goodwin said.

  The mot gave us a hard grin. "We will, once our release papers are signed. If yer cage Dogs haven't been gnawing on us. Then we'll be happy to say what you want to know."

  I looked down so no one could see me smile. She had sack, this mot, giving back hard answers when she'd been nabbed by hard Dogs for passing coles. I hope she is honest.

  Birch and Ersken came out of the Barrel's Bottom. "It's clear, and the staff inside cursing us," said Birch. "Are these two all we have to show?"

  "It gets better," Tunstall growled. "They work for the Gemcutter's Guild." He ruffled his hair. "One of us will have to go to the Guild's Advocate. And why should the advocate believe we have two of their Rats?"

  "Hey!" cried the Yamani, insulted. "We're no Rats!"

  The mot acted like she hadn't heard. "Where's the magic charms he wore about his neck? That's your proof. And I'd give a rosy copper to know how he got caught with them on, unless he was so rattled he forgot to work the spell." She gave the Yamani a scornful look.

  "I worked them!" he said. "But the young Dog there caught me all the same, the mot with the ghostly eyes."

  Jewel and Birch looked at me. Ersken and my partners knew about Kora's Gift. "My friend Kora gave me a mirror that shows what's behind an illusion," I explained. I pulled the Yamani's charms from my pocket. I'd hoped Kora would tell me how I might use them, but that was out now. I wouldn't be allowed to keep them. They'd go to the Senior Dogs, or maybe even the Watch Commander.

  The mot selected one made of the costly blue stone called lapis lazuli. She handed it to me. On it was carved the sign of the Great Eye, for eyesight, but there was something wrong about it. I turned the charm about and realized the Eye was carved upside down on one side and closed on the other. "Show it to the Gemcutter's Advocate," the mot said.

  I left Pounce with my partners. I knew where the advocate lived from my days as a message runner from the different kennels. She was well enough, for someone who was paid to get Rats out of their rightful sentences. Still, there were times when we nabbed someone wrongfully, and then the advocates have their uses.

  It was a fair way from the Barrel's Bottom, and I took it at the trot. The servants didn't keep me waiting at the gate very long. Scarce ten minutes after I'd handed that strange eye charm to the manservant on duty there, he returned with the advocate, who was pulling on her robe as she walked.

  "Fetch my horse and two grooms suitably armed and prepared to ride," she ordered the servant. To me she said, "How many of our people do you have, Guardswoman, and where are they held?" She is always that way, straight to the point and no mucking about.

  "Two of them, Mistress Advocate, and they'll be at the Jane Street kennel," I replied.

  "Very well. You may go about your duties," she told me.

  And that was that. She did not ask me the prisoners' names or the charges. They never do, these busy, important folk. She and I both knew she could buy them out of the cages, given the guild's heavy purses.

  I returned to my partners as quickly as I had left them. Our captives were gone, tucked into a cage cart for transport to Jane Street and their advocate. We six Dogs and Pounce returned to Rovers Street.

  We spent the rest of the night in every drinking den and gamblers' hall on the side that lay within our district. We brought in seven others with more than two of the silver coles, but we'd no good feeling from them. The Yamani and his guard were our best bet for a scent of the colesmiths responsible for this run of false coin.

  "So who told the colemongers there was good coin to be made here?" Ersken asked after we'd mustered out. We were yawning over our reports, wanting to get them wrote up before we went home. I kept having to shove Pounce over to write mine. He likes to nap on my papers. "One of those colemongers that Flash District had?" Ersken suggested.

  I shook my head. "I'm thinking mayhap it's whoever made the coles, or who's in charge of passing them on. Gambling's a good way to do it, right? Folk will gamble for silver when they won't buy things with it. Silver makes folk like them that live in the Lower City crackbrained. They gamble and win, they gamble and lose. If you've a fistful of coles and you know how to gamble, you can trade your coles for coppers and your coppers back for good silver at the games. Your gamblers go out and play with other folk, sending your coles further along. No one asks your name, they hardly look at your face."

  "And they can't describe you for the Dogs," Goodwin said over my shoulder. She took my finished report from me and read it over. "Good, Cooper. Tidy, as ever." She gave Ersken an
d me a sheet of parchment each. "Flash District sent these over and Ahuda had them copied. We'll show them around. It's the cole passers they had, and lost."

  We looked at the drawings. They could have been anyone.

  "I know," Goodwin said. "Come on, you two. Let's have a late supper at the Mantel and Pullet. Lady Sabine is buying."

  As much as I wished to see my lady, and as much as it pained me to turn down a free meal, I was near asleep on my feet. I begged off. Walking home woke me enough to write in my journal. I've been thinking hard to see if there's aught I've forgotten, turning the fire opal stone I got as a Puppy over in my fingers. The bits of bright color my candle strikes from it spark my thinking.

  So is there a colesmithing ring in Port Caynn? Or just a lone colemonger like the Yamani or his river dodger mot?

  Time for bed.

  Saturday, September 8, 247

  Noon.

  Poxy, plaguey, sheep-biting Tunstall.

  The morning came on even hotter and more miserable than yesterday. The pigeons were pecking at my shutters. I was rolling over for another hour of sleep when someone hammered on my door, shaking dust loose from the cracks.

  "Murrain take you, I'm a Dog and I'm dragging you clean to Outwalls!" I cried at last. Clad only in my nightdress, I grabbed my baton and undid my bolts, ready to break someone's nob. "If y' think this be a joke, ye'll chuckle through gaps – " I yanked the door open. There stood Tunstall, looking fresh and cheerful, wearing a cityman's clothes instead of uniform.

  "Cooper," he said, shaking his head in a woeful sort of way. "Talking cant like a Lower City gixie. And you such a careful-bred thing. I take no pity on you. I left my beautiful lady all sweet in bed so we could go and roust Mistress Tansy's baker."

  I scowled at him. I wished I could do more than scowl, but I like him too much. "When was this decided?"

  "Last night, over supper. Goodwin tossed me for it, and I lost." He shrugged, a true eastern hillman. The gods had decided on the toss of a coin, and that was that.