Bloodhound

by Tamora Pierce

  I looked at him. "Do you gamble?"

  Haden laughed. "Me? I'm not so bored with coin in me hand that I'll throw it after dice or a horse. My da'd haunt me to my grave, sure he would."

  I looked at him. Now he made sense. "Nestor said you're a street lad?"

  "Aye." Haden shrugged. "Truda, too. Then Nestor caught me stealin'. Truda came at him with a knife, and her no bigger than a scrap. He said he figgered he oughta keep hold of us afore we kilt some'un. It were a struggle."

  Goodwin smiled. "So you'll train as a Dog when you're of age, like Cooper?"

  "Dog trainin'!" Haden snorted. "No, I study the music and fightin'. Okha's teachin' me those. Truda's learnin' to do hair and face paint for the lady-coves, and the fightin', too, from Okha."

  I couldn't help it. I started to laugh at the look on Goodwin's face. She was used to poor children coming into the Dogs. The idea of Haden preferring to work for entertainers was not what she expected.

  "It seems like a waste of a good tracker, that's all," Goodwin said.

  Haden shrugged. "Nestor's put me to use plenty, and he'll do it even more afore I'm good enough with pipes and drums t' please Okha. Now, see, here's a good street to know, Trinket Alley. You'd think with the name it's cheap stuff, but it's not." So he kept Goodwin from trying to convert him to Dog work, by showing her where the scales of the port did business on Trinket Alley and other streets near the docks.

  The city clocks were chiming one as we reached Serenity's. I hoped for a nap, but Goodwin said that we must write our reports. Gods be thanked she wrote the one on our suspicions that the Goldsmith's Bank knows there is a problem with silver coles. She called on me only for my exact report of my talk with the clerk who changed my gold coin, writing it down as I remembered it. She had me write up the pickpockets' switch of good purses for red ones filled with coles. I wrote of my morning for my Lord Provost back in Corus, including a separate copy of our encounter with Pearl. Then Goodwin made copies of the bank report and the pickpockets' switch. Once everything was done, she sent me to my room to rest before supper, reminding me that only five days past, I'd had my head broken. Instead I began to write today's events in cipher in this journal.

  Slapper came back from his ramblings with five lady pigeons. Two carried ghosts. I listened to them and took notes of their complaints, though I did not know the three names they mentioned. I will put them into the reports that went to Nestor. Mayhap he will recognize the names. Once that was done, I returned to writing in my journal. It was when I wrote of our meeting with Hanse and his introducing himself to us that his name snapped into place for me. Hanse Remy. Otho Urtiz, the Player with the crazed slave, had told me that name scarce a week ago. I banged on Goodwin's door.

  She opened it, looking grumpy. "Cooper – "

  "Hanse Remy. The Player Otho Urtiz told me he won a lot of coles from a cove who'd come down the river named Hanse Remy," I told her. "They bet on a horse race."

  Goodwin rubbed her nose. "Pox. Pox, pox, and swive-all luck. No, we did know Hanse might be involved somehow, if only because he gambles. He could know something, he could know naught." She sighed. "I'll add it to the report. To my lord, not Sir Lionel."

  I scratched my nose. I wasn't sure I trusted Sir Lionel to handle things right, not when he was the one who let Pearl snatch Dogs off the street.

  "Oh, and that dust spinner?" I said. "It gave me sommat useful. Pearl's got Dogs she has bought in Sir Lionel's service, waiting on him personally."

  Goodwin nodded. "That stands to reason, Cooper. Rosto's probably got his own folk in Lord Gershom's house."

  I ground my teeth. This is a boil on my bum. I know who two of them are, but my lord won't hobble them. He says it's better to know who the spies are than to suspect all his household. I don't see Lionel of Trebond being so forgiving, if he even knows who Pearl has set to spy on him.

  "I'm glad you're able to tap your Birdies here," Goodwin said. "We need sources that are dependent on no one else, even if they're limited. Now, get some rest. I've a feeling we have a late night ahead."

  Sunday, September 16, 247

  Ten of the morning.

  I should have written about last night when I came in, but I could not stay awake. I was not drunk, for I drank little, compared to my companions. Not that I could have known that Goodwin was drinking, had I not seen her raise and lower tankard or cup to her lips. Where does she put it all, a magic pocket?

  No mind. I've yet to get my sleeping hours straight. I just woke, and must set this journal to rights before embarking on the day.

  Truda came for the reports yestereve when the clock struck five, as Nestor promised. I watched the gixie trot off through the backyard of the lodging house, worried. If she was watched, or we were, she could have a hard journey home. Then Haden emerged from the bushes with two lads and a lass dressed just as Truda was. They closed around her and took the bridge over the stream away from the house. I smiled and went back inside.

  Then I had to dress. It was possible Dale might join us, which made me edgy-like. I had but two dresses for walking out, plus a third for every day, so I had no reason to dither all night over clothes. I chose the blue dress with ivory, yellow, and pink embroideries. The sleeves are wider than fashionable, but they have to be. I strap flat knives to the inside and outside of my forearms, and I need to be able to reach them in a hurry. There are slits in the skirt's seams so I may get at the flat daggers that hang from the sash around my underdress. The outer dress tied with a yellow cord that matched my embroideries. That had weights at each end so I could use it as a weapon at need. I hung my purse and my eating knife from that. My leg knives were belted firmly around my calves.

  I wear no earrings, since an enemy can rip them from my flesh. I do own a couple of necklaces of beads. They too can be turned against me, but I must have sommat pretty, and they are so cheap a good tug will break them. One of them was made of yellow glass beads, the color of my sash. I put that on. My hair I wrapped in a braided coil around my head, fixing it in place with my mother's ivory combs. They'd been her only nice things. Finally I put on a wrapped blue cape, using a fold to veil my hair like a proper mot. I pinned it on one shoulder with a brooch in the shape of a flying heron. That I'd bought myself, because I like herons, with my first wages as a full-fledged Dog.

  "What do you think, Achoo?" I asked her.

  Achoo put her head on her paws and sighed.

  "I'm sorry," I told her. "I cannot take you where I'm going. It wouldn't look right, and you'd be bored." I gathered the rope I used to tie her up in the yard at home. "Tumit." I opened the door, but Achoo had not gotten to her feet. "Achoo, I begged the cook for some nice chopped meat for you. You knew when you joined the Provost's Guard that duty isn't always easy. Now tumit!"

  Achoo rose with a groan, as if she were a crone instead of a mot of only two years. Down the stairs behind me she went, grumbling in her throat. She looked so pitiful that the cook insisted on adding a gravy to the bowl of chopped meat, which brought a slow tail wag from my shameless hound. I tied her in the yard and made certain she had a nice, deep bowl of water as well.

  "Sergeant Ahuda would be ashamed to see one of her Dogs acting like a mumper," I whispered.

  Achoo only sniffed and poked the meat with her nose, as if she might find the strength to taste it. I looked back at her as I entered the kitchen. She was devouring her meat and gravy, her tail happily a-wag. "Mumper," I called, and went inside.

  Goodwin raised her eyebrows at me when I met her in the sitting room downstairs. She wore a dress much like mine in a kind of coppery wool, with a darker brown cape. It was pinned with a crescent moon at the shoulder. She wore a small round hat, brown with copper embroideries, instead of a veil, fixed in place with bright beaded pins.

  "Not bad, Cooper. I always say you clean up well. Are the animals safe for the night?" she asked me.

  "Achoo's out back, and Slapper is asleep on the roof," I told her.

  "Poor creatur
es," Goodwin said. "They don't know what they miss."

  I was trembling a bit. I've never gone to a place where I was expected to be friendly with folk I barely know. "I wouldn't mind missing it," I muttered.

  "You're so much bolder in uniform, I forget what a mouse you can be," Goodwin said as we went outside. A sedan chair waited for us. Goodwin had asked a housemaid to summon one for this hour. We climbed in, me trying not to step on my hem. My sister Lorine would kill me if I ruined her sewing.

  "Pay attention," Goodwin told me as the chair lurched up and forward. "At least one of those coves will be there to see you, and that one the best-looking of the lot – though Hanse might be fun as well." She voiced an evil chuckle that shocked me. "Enough, Cooper, I didn't stop living when I married. I can look. They took to you during that riot, and you're going to be friendly if I have to shove you all the way. Pretend to be the person who wears that dress. I know you've been with men before. Surely they knew you liked them somehow."

  "It's easier during the festivals," I replied. "And the first one I knew from my lord's house."

  "Well, now you'll learn how other mots do it when they haven't grown up with the cove and there isn't a festival." Goodwin sighed. "Goddess, I wish Tom was here. They say this Merman's Cave has good mussels, and my Tom does love his seafood."

  "Couldn't he have come?" I asked. "He would've been good cover, you and him visiting the port, seeing the sights, gambling a bit, buying things for your house."

  "No," Goodwin replied. "He's his own work to do. Let's not talk about work, though." She drew back the curtain on her side and pointed forward and back, to the men who carried the chair. I winced. I'd forgotten we had ears on us, coves who might pass on anything we said.

  "Sorry. I'm all rattled from the day, I expect," I explained. "I'm not used to getting picked up and dragged before strange Rogues."

  "She's harsh, isn't she?" Goodwin's voice was admiring. "You'd best mind your manners around her. She's no Rosto you can flirt with."

  "I don't flirt with Rosto!" I said, knowing I could be heard. I giggled, settling into the dress and the necklace and the cape. Suddenly I wished I had some scent to make me feel like even more of a mot out for a good night. All this fuss over clothes and such, it could serve me like my uniform, as a different face from plain old Beka Cooper.

  Now that I remember it, I'll pick up scent when I have a chance. Mayhap a blackener for my brows and lashes, and a bit of red for my lips. Or not. It's a careful balance, how much is too much. Okha might advise me. He uses far more face paint than Goodwin.

  The Merman's Cave turned out not to be in the Flowerbed, but just a few blocks past Gerjuoy and three blocks up from the docks. There was a deep porch all the way around the front of the place, and windows with only one of a pair of shutters ajar. During the warm summer months they must set tables out and open all the shutters to keep the place cool. The night was cold for September, though. The fog had swamped the street, shaping the torches into globes of fire.

  Goodwin paid off the chair men. I followed her through the double doors carved in the shapes of long-vanished merfolk. Once inside we saw a small room set off to the left. Two good-sized rushers who stood on either side of the entrance looked us over, then turned their gaze to the cove who entered behind us.

  "The sword and the dagger, sir," one of them said. "Leave 'em here, if ye'll be so good. And whatever's hidden that might make for an unpleasant night for others of our guests."

  Goodwin and I raised our brows at each other. Seemingly we looked too respectable to be asked to give up our weapons. We moved on into the eating house proper.

  The noise swamped us. The smoke that floated along the ceiling made our eyes sting. It came from the fire in the great hearth where kettles full of wines and ales heated. Sweating mots wearing thin dresses and aprons filled pitchers from the kettles and handed them over to serving folk, then refilled the kettles to heat a new batch of drinks. I could smell spices, ale, wine, roasting meat, and hints of puke and piss. The tables around the huge main room were crowded with mots and coves drinking, eating, talking, and laughing. A cove walked past me carrying an eel pie. It smelled so good my mouth began to water.

  "There they are!" Only Hanse could roar like that. He beckoned to us from across the room. As if they were a wave rolling back from the land, those in our way moved off. Goodwin and I walked through like proper mots, holding our skirts above the floor and watching where we stepped. Though I have to say, the rushes were fresh, and as yet there were no nasty messes to avoid.

  Hanse had changed clothes for the night. He wore a dark blue tunic with red and gray embroideries, very handsome, with white embroidered bands down both sides of the front. He even wore a short gray cape clasped with a twisted gold ring brooch at the shoulder. This was a man who didn't care if folk grabbed for his jewelry in a fight. He wore gold earrings and a broad copper wristband. There was a short knife and an empty loop hanging from his gray sash. They had taken his sword.

  Steen sat with him, in the same tunic he'd worn at the Court of the Rogue. He had added two silver earrings in his left ear, though, and a handsome gray pearl in the right.

  "Aren't you lookin' fine," Hanse greeted us. The coves helped us to seats inside their booth. "We feared mayhap you'd be thinkin' the better of joinin' us, after runnin' afoul of Queen Pearl."

  Goodwin laughed in a coarse, brassy way as Hanse slid onto the bench next to her. "We won't say we weren't a bit twitched, will we, Cooper?"

  I shook my head, since she wanted me to. Steen took the place next to me.

  "Truth to tell, Pearl needn't have bothered," Goodwin went on. Now she was playing the part of the loose Dog for all she was worth. She sounded like other mot Dogs her age, bawdy and loud, not the daughter of respectable tradesmen. "Oh, Cooper here forgot her orders this morning. She's supposed to be resting while we're in town. We'll not meddle in Rogue business, not away from Corus. Never intended to. I put a word in Cooper's ear. She'll mind me now."

  I looked down at my hands as if I were Achoo and I'd been scolded for sneaking food off the table. I was pretty good at guessing Goodwin's cues.

  "You be talkin' riddles," Steen told Goodwin. He waved to a barmaid and signaled for drinks. "Ale's all right with you?"

  "I'm happy with it, but don't expect Cooper to drink much. She's got some little bit of bird magic that makes her sick if she overdoes."

  "Some mages is like that," Hanse said with a nod. "Others you could pour a trough full of mead and they'd drink it, then turn the trough into a horse and ride it away."

  "Two pitchers of ale, and what manner of twilseys and waters have you?" Steen asked the mot.

  She looked at him as if he'd turned into a winged horse, but said, "Raspberry and apple cider twilsey, and coriander water, sir."

  "I'll have the apple cider twilsey," I said quietly. I would thank Goodwin later for making sure I'd do little drinking.

  Hanse turned back to Goodwin as the serving maid left us. "You said you won't interfere in Rogue's business here? But what else is a Dog to do?"

  Goodwin scowled. "Do her interfering at home, where she may make a profit at it, by Mithros!" She smacked the table. "My lord wants Beka away from some nasty Rats, with me to watch her, so off we go to Port Caynn to see how your Dogs work. That means we're assigned to no watch, with no share of a Happy Bag or the normal coin we'd get for doing good service. That's two-thirds of our income gone, by all the gods! No, I'll not stick my neck out getting up your Rogue's nose for one-third pay. No more is Cooper. We'll keep our skins in one piece and enjoy our holiday."

  "Then you've run into the right fellows for that, haven't they, lads?" Dale Rowan had come up while Goodwin was talking. I near jumped when he spoke, then smiled up at him. He looked even better than he had on the boat, decked out in a blue wool tunic that brightened his gray eyes. His blue cape was fixed at the shoulder with a gold owl. He wore a broad gold hoop in one ear only, and a sparkling blue gem in the other.
He grinned at Goodwin and said, "Between the three of us we can give your holiday a good launch, Mistress Goodwin."

  "Clary, if you will," she replied. "It's hard to tell how good it will be with the ale not even here."

  Luckily, since all three coves turned to yell for the serving maid, she was right there with the tray of ale and twilsey. And somehow, in the bustle of the drink service and our ordering food, Steen moved to the outside of the table and Dale sat next to me.

  "To new friends met in riots," Hanse toasted when Dale had a tankard. We all laughed and drank to that. When Hanse praised the ale as a proper way to start the night, Goodwin said he was used to watery seaside ale. She, Hanse, and Steen started to compare ales of different towns from up and down the river.

  Dale turned to me. "I heard you made Pearl Skinner unhappy today."

  I followed Goodwin's lead. "So has all the town, seemingly. It was a mistake," I said tiredly. "I forgot I'm not at home and I'm not supposed to nab folk while I'm here. Why is everyone making a fuss? The gixie escaped."

  "That surprises me," said Dale. "I don't see many filches getting out of your grip, Beka Cooper." He was leaning closer so I could hear him speak quietly. His breath stirred the hair around my ear.

  Suddenly the cloth over my peaches felt over-tight, and I was finding it a little hard to breathe. I dared to meet his eyes for a moment, even though they were closer than a cove's eyes have been to mine in a long time. I forced myself to make a face and look away.

  "She wouldn't have gotten away, Dale Rowan, if some big rusher hadn't rammed me in the back and sent me facedown in the street," I told him. "Nice work your filches have, if they all have bodyguards."

  He ran his finger down the curve of my ear. How is a mot supposed to think? "Mayhap you should have the bodyguard."

  "Dale," Steen interrupted, "tell Clary what Pearl said when you won that ruby necklace off her!"