Bloodhound

by Tamora Pierce

  Zolaika ducked the blow, but Nestor was waiting for it. He clubbed her arm with his baton. Bone cracked.

  I did not see Pearl. I turned and glared at the barkeep. "Where is she? Where's Pearl Skinner?" He glared at me. I leaned down, grabbed his tunic in my fist, and pulled him up. "She's the reason half your silver is bad, you scut. Tell me, or I'll name you as her conspirator in colemongering."

  He stared at me, then said, "She went to the privy."

  Of all the idiot things to happen! "Where!" I demanded. It certainly wasn't by the kitchen entrance.

  "Go right between here and the booths. There's a little hall, then the door t' the courtyard. Please don't give me the curse eye no more!" he babbled.

  My eyes. It's always my eyes with folk.

  I dropped him.

  "Achoo, kemari!" I cried over the noise. She came to me as I clambered out from behind the bar. I put the tooth under her nose. She sneezed only lightly this time. Then she took off down the little hall I hadn't even seen yet, being that it was tucked back near the last of the curtained booths and the wall of the bar. She pawed at the narrow door, whining. I settled my baton in my hand, said, "Tumit," and kicked the door open. The fog lay outside.

  The privy doors in the stinking courtyard outside were open. No sign of Pearl. The gate on the opposite side of the yard swung wide, too.

  "Achoo, mencari!" I whispered. Achoo went for the open gate. I followed.

  The drink was ebbing from my veins, but something else was helping me along. I was close. The gate had still been swinging when I passed through it. Where could she go? Her last two loyal people were doing battle with my fellow Dogs. No one would shelter her. And I had Achoo.

  Achoo knew our quarry was close, too. She led me down the block. I followed her into a stable, dodging the bites of sleepy horses. There was a door in the rear of the stable. We passed through that into an old courtyard.

  At its center a grate lay beside an opening in the ground. Achoo stopped at it and whined. Her prey was in that hole.

  "Pox," I whispered as I peered inside. Iron rungs led down into the dark. I ran back to the stable and stole a lantern. I left a gold coin in its place. It was all I had left, and Pearl had probably stolen a lantern, too. I waited to light the lantern with my flint and steel until I was outside again. Beside the hole with Achoo, I cut the tunics I'd been carrying in my pack, tying them into a rough sling.

  "First the light, and then the hound," I told myself. I climbed down. It wasn't far. I set the lantern on a ledge, then went back for Achoo. When I settled her in the sling, she gave me a look that told me she had decided she would do any mad thing I asked, even though it might be truly mad. I scratched her ears and carefully fitted us both through that hole in the ground.

  The moment she set foot on the ledge, she found the scent. She trotted quickly, all business, following each turn that Pearl made off that branch of sewers. A four-legged rat came at Achoo and squealed. Achoo snapped at it and trotted on while it dodged. It ran around me while I stood against the wall. I'm not afraid of animal rats as some folk are, but I've been bitten twice in the last year. I won't pay a healer mage for cleansing again if I can help it. Two more such rats came, and then more. What was the matter with the curst beasts? Was it Pearl that frightened them so?

  It was when I heard splashing that my tired mind remembered something important. Something Pearl forgot, something I forgot, but something these smaller rats knew very well.

  The tide was coming in.

  I looked at the sewer. The water had risen almost to the ledge where we walked. Pearl must be closer to the harbor ahead, to be splashing.

  "Achoo, cepat!" I whispered. Achoo picked up speed. I too moved faster, fear being a wonderful spur. Somehow the rats who were left ran through Achoo's feet and around me. There were less of them now. Most had found safety already, I guessed. For a brief, mad moment I wondered if Dale would like me now, dirty, weary, and wading in scummer. I'd need a daylong soak in a bathhouse before I'd feel fit to bed him again. I shook my head and forced myself to think of my quarry.

  Pearl was not stopping. Her splashes ahead were louder, as if she floundered in deeper water. The flow was now up to my shins. Wavelets pushed at Achoo. The water was up to her chest. When the tiny waves shoved her off her feet twice, I knew we had to do sommat. There was an entry to my right with a stair, not a ladder.

  "Achoo, kemari!" I whispered. I ran up to the top. The door opened up into the floor of a small shed. I looked outside that into a courtyard.

  Achoo slunk behind me, whining. The scent was down below. She didn't want to leave, the silly beast. I took her leash from my pack and fastened it first to her collar, then to the latch of the door to the sewer, on the outside. "Tunggu," I told her as she complained. "Dear one, you'll drown. Tunggu!"

  I was crying as I ran back down the steps, Achoo's barks growing dim behind me. She'd earned the right to be in at the last, and I had betrayed her.

  At the foot of the stair, I was unnerved to see the water now lapped the first step. I was even more unnerved to see that Goodwin waited for me there. The slash on her face was still bleeding, and the top of the ear on that side of her face was cut off. Once again she had the Dog tag in her hand. I was so relieved I almost kissed her.

  "Gods be thanked for those tags," I murmured instead, keeping my voice down. I didn't want Pearl to hear.

  "Now what is your excuse for running off?" she demanded in a whisper, glaring at me. "Tell me a god took you, because that's the only thing I'll accept!"

  "All of you were fighting," I told her quietly. "I thought Pearl had just run out to the privy and I could snag her! But she kept going – "

  Goodwin put a hand on my shoulder. "So should we. Later we'll talk about you leaving partners, girl. Now, look at the wall, at shoulder height."

  I looked where she pointed. Some thoughtful soul had fixed a series of metal handholds there. If the water got too deep, me and Goodwin could hold on to one and not be swept away. I can swim, but I don't know if I'm strong enough to fight the tide.

  "Gods all bless whoever did that," I told her. She grinned and motioned for me to take the lead. I nodded and plowed back into the vile water, which now came as high as my knees. It felt stronger, with more power behind the wavelets. Soon we could hear Pearl splashing along.

  We pushed ahead as hard and fast as we could manage. Even when the most dreadful kind of trash brushed past us we said naught, straining to hear Pearl ahead. The water was up to my ribs when I saw her at the edge of my lantern's light, clinging to a handhold. She had lost her own lantern. With her free hand she fought to push away a mess of kelp, pieces of wood, dead animals, and whatever else had flowed in.

  Unlike me, Pearl didn't have that drink to keep her strength up. She looked half dead.

  I tried to draw closer to her. The waves were stronger. Twice my feet went out from under me. Goodwin hung on to a grip and caught me with her free hand, while I thanked the maker of those handgrips a dozen times for my own near misses.

  A swell of water yanked Pearl from a grip and pulled her under. She surfaced with a scream and scrabbled at the wall until she seized a handhold by pure accident.

  "Pearl Skinner, we arrest you in the King's name!" I cried.

  "Not so very ambitious," I heard Goodwin mutter at my back.

  I saw a niche higher up in the wall. I bounced down low and let the water help me to leap high, so I might set the lantern there. I sank down into the water again, wincing as some manner of trash tangled around my feet.

  "Give up, Pearl! You can't fight us and the sea!"

  "Pox rot you and all gutter-bred bitches!" she screamed. "I should have gutted you!"

  "Wait a moment," I heard Goodwin say. She wrapped her arms around me from behind, then let go. I felt something tug at my waist and reached to feel as she fumbled at my back. Goodwin always carried a hank of thin, strong rope in her pack. She had tied a loop of it around me.

  "Go," she
said.

  Pearl was but ten feet away. She had turned to face us. I pushed myself forward off the wall, diving across the water's surface for the length of several grips. I grabbed on to one. Then I launched myself forward a second time. I had my free hand, the one that didn't grip the wall, under the water, where Pearl couldn't see I held a knife.

  "Hands up," I said, bobbing in that curst water. Here the waves were swells. Shadows lay everywhere around us with the lantern half hid in its niche. "You're going back to Corus to face your trial." I risked a glance back. Goodwin was coming forward more slowly, passing the end of the rope through two handgrips and tying it off.

  Pearl shoved herself off the wall and came at me, darting across the water. She had knives in both hands. I learned that when I caught one knife on my dagger's hilt, and took the blade of her second knife along my right hip. It hurt like fire had chopped into my side. I jammed my free hand up under her chin and locked my legs around hers. Down we went into the deep water at the center of the tunnel, sinking. I twisted my knife hand around her arm, trapping it. Pearl shook and thrashed, trying to make me let go as the tide dragged on us. I could not see or hear what else was going on, but I could feel another force tugging Pearl back by her upper body, or mayhap her neck. Goodwin was in the fight, gods be thanked. Pearl was jerking her free arm, trying to stab Goodwin, I think. Their movement thrust me back until I hit the tunnel wall. I ground Pearl's trapped hand against the stone until her fingers opened. She dropped that knife. The pull on her body stopped. Somehow she'd made Goodwin release her. I clung to her arm as I came up for air.

  I'm a poor swimmer, or mayhap I could have stayed down longer. I unlocked my legs but still clung to Pearl as I kicked for the surface. A bad, ragged pain dug into the wrist I used to grip her arm. I beat on Pearl's head with my free hand as long as I could, but I'm no hero of old. A bite hurts. Mayhap someone like Callun the Dead Man or Lita Flyingstar could have held her, but they were not there with scummer bouncing off them and four-legged rats swimming by. I let Pearl go.

  She came up a yard from Goodwin and me, gasping. In her open mouth I saw three pearl teeth were shattered. One other was missing, but that was the one I had in my pocket, I think. She had a newly swollen eye as well as a broken nose that Goodwin must have given her in the water.

  "Bitches!" she cried. "All of you, even the coves! Slinking, bum-licking bitches for any noble with the coin!" The tide shoved her toward us. I lunged and seized her shirt, Goodwin her arm. Pearl slashed at us both, having drawn another blade. We let go as the tide thrust her deeper into the sewer.

  She thrashed and tried to paddle now that she had knives with both hands. Her head went below the water. She came up again, choking. Now the water was rushing back toward the sea, pulling her into the center of the sewer pipe, out of reach.

  "Better the sea than your poxy law!" she cried, and she went down again.

  "None of that," I whispered. I dove out after her. She would face her trial.

  Somehow in that muck I found her and her knives. She cut me several times, light slices. I got behind her and wrapped my arm around her neck, settling her chin in the crook of my elbow. Now she could not bite. I shoved us up to the surface, where I choked her until she dropped the blades. And Goodwin reeled us in with the rope she'd tied around my waist.

  We didn't really take Pearl from the water. Goodwin swiftly bound her arms behind her, working underwater, a skill I should practice. Then she untied the rope from the handgrips, and looped it around the bindings on Pearl's arms so there would be two ends to hold. Goodwin took one end and I the other. Those we tied around our waists. We went back up the sewer that way, towing the cursing and gasping Pearl along as we went from handgrip to handgrip. Goodwin retrieved the lantern from its niche when we reached it. It kept the rats at bay.

  It seemed to take forever to find the stairs where I'd left Achoo. I knew they were the right stairs because there sat Achoo, looking at me as if I'd just killed her pups. She was covered in mud and dragging part of her leash. The free end was well chewed.

  I blinked at her stupidly. "You're a mess," I said as we halted there. "What have you been doing, wallowing in street muck?"

  Pearl struggled to her feet. I looked at Goodwin to see what her orders were. Let Pearl stand, or shove her into the middle of the sewer, where she would float? She seemed harmless enough, swaying on her feet from exhaustion, but she had gotten rich from her work as a liar.

  "Keep an eye on our friend here," Goodwin ordered me. I kept my knife to Pearl's throat as Goodwin hobbled Pearl's ankles. She could walk in small, shuffling steps, but that was all.

  Goodwin looked at Achoo and the steps, then at me. "I think you'll find a hole dug under the door up above. That and her being soaked from coming down here explains Achoo's state. I don't know what explains yours, Cooper. What's this?" She reached down and poked my hip. That was when I screamed and fell to one knee on the ledge, in the water. My vision went all white. I dug my fingernails into my hands until it came back, slowly.

  "Idiot Pup," Goodwin muttered. She got an arm under one of mine and helped me higher up the stairs to one that was dry. Then she went back and tied Pearl to a grip in the stone, after testing it to make certain that she could not break free. I wanted to study the knots she tied, but my head was spinning by then, and throbbing.

  Goodwin climbed back to me and set the lantern down. Then she took off her tunic and folded it in a square. All she wore beneath it was her breast band and hidden knife sheaths. "There's no help for it. All we have is soaked in scummer. Put this on your hip and hold it there to stop the bleeding." She helped me do as she'd ordered. "Why did you say nothing about being wounded?"

  I blinked at her. "I was busy. You're wounded, too." I pointed at her arm.

  "I'm going for help. Do not die on me, Cooper. Do you understand? Do not die. Promise me."

  She seemed very intent, so I promised. Then she left us there.

  "Let me go, Cooper," Pearl said. "You ever seen some'un boiled in oil? You'll never forgit the stink. I'll make you rich, you set me free."

  I tried to find a comfortable position for my hip. I wanted to puke. Achoo came and sat beside me, so I was warmer, at least. "Would you?" I asked while my teeth chattered. I was so very cold. "Will you do the same for all them that got the Drink when your filchers gave them purses full of coles? The poor loobies got caught passing them, but you meant them to, so I think you owe them."

  "Cork it," she snapped.

  I kept talking. "There's naught you can do for Hanse and Steen and their caravan. They're all dead. No more can you make it up to any of the folk killed back in Corus at the Bread Riot."

  "They'd have served me the same, given the chance," she told me. "So would you."

  "You're a wicked, vicious mot, and I will be there when you die."

  I think I said it.

  Friday, September 21, 247

  Guards House

  written Sunday, September 23rd

  Goodwin and Pearl and I slept while mages worked on us. A scummer bath will kill someone that's all cut up unless Lord Gershom pours coin into mages' hands, saying, "Don't you let them die."

  So I was told, anyway.

  Saturday, September 22, 247

  I slept while mages worked still more on Goodwin and me.

  Sunday, September 23, 247

  Goodwin and I slept most of the day, though Goodwin says she was up by afternoon.

  Sunday, September 23, 247

  Guards House

  Near midnight.

  I wasn't awake for three-odd days. Mage healing, losing blood, all of that.

  When I did wake, I was in a small bedchamber on a bed with curtains drawn on one side. I saw wax candles burning wastefully on the window ledge, a fire in the hearth, and more wasteful still, a brazier next to my bed, burning something that smelled lovely and expensive. I tried to sit up, but that required more strength than I seemed to have.

  "Easy there, Mistress Bl
oodhound." The voice came from behind the curtain. Lord Gershom drew it back. Over his shoulder as he helped me to sit I saw that there was a writing desk near the other window. He too had wax candles to work by. Outside the windows – all glass! – the day was gray and rainy.

  As he settled my pillows to keep me upright, I drew lines on my coverlet with my thumbnail. "My lord, it isn't fitting that you do these things for me."

  "Well, I'm here. We can't hardly talk with you flopping on your back." There was a pitcher and a cup on a table beside the bed. He filled the cup, then helped me to hold it as I drank. It was barley water with something tangy, mayhap lemon, in it. Then he drew a chair to my bedside and sat there.

  "First, you're in Guards House," he told me. "Goodwin's here, too. Not everyone in this cursed cesspool of a city believes that their Rogue was behind the colemongering. They believe you and Goodwin hung the evidence on her."

  I took a breath, about to protest, but my lord held up his hand. "It keeps them from blaming Nestor, Axman, and the other local Dogs, so you'll forgive me if I don't rush to try and change their minds. I'm not certain that I could. You two will come home with me as soon as you're able, and we'll make certain you don't return to Port Caynn for a long time. Understand, Beka?"

  I didn't like it, but I understood it. "Yes, my lord." Briefly I wondered what would become of Dale and me, but I had no time to worry the problem now. My lord had more to say.

  He patted my arm. "Good. Third, we had to get mages in to heal both of you and Pearl. Your wounds were poisoned, from her weapons or the filth down below, we can't say. But that's why you're so weak. They had to do something much like burning you out, top to toe."