Terrier

by Tamora Pierce

  Tunstall, Goodwin, and I charged across the road, batons in hand. Lady Sabine and Aniki were right behind us, swords out. I heard Ahuda blow the signal for the attack. I looked over my shoulder and saw her burst from the tall grass, Dogs at her back. One of them carried a hammer that looked near as big as I was.

  Kayu’s two mounted rushers jumped to the ground and closed in to protect her. The horses yanked free and ran, knocking down the one who had carried the torch. He lay where he fell, his skull broken.

  One rusher came at Tunstall, sword raised high. The cove didn’t even see Goodwin lunge in under his strike. She struck him full in the belly with her baton. He doubled over, retching. She knocked him out. “Idiot,” she said.

  The third rusher tried to run. One of the Dogs who’d come up from the tall grass took him.

  The Dog who carried the big hammer gave it to Tunstall. Roaring like a bear, Tunstall smashed the door with it. He was the first one through the opening, Goodwin and me behind him, Lady Sabine and Aniki on our heels.

  There was lamplight within the house. From the back and sides I heard the smash of wood. The other Dogs were breaking in. Guards attacked us from ground floor rooms, swords raised. Goodwin and me ducked low as my lady and Aniki caught the swords on their own blades. I clubbed my attacker hard across the shins on a swing to the side. He – I think it was a he – cried out, knees buckling.

  I don’t know what happened to him, or what Goodwin and our swordswomen did to get the upstairs guards out of the way. Things went so fast after Pounce’s huge roar, I only remember them in flashes. With Kayu down, my only thought was that the cellar guards might already be killing the diggers.

  Down the front hall there was an open door lit by two lamps. I could feel a damp draft coming from it – cellar air. I ran down the hall, through that door, and down the stairs. Tunstall was ahead of me.

  The guards below were attacking the diggers, just as I feared. The diggers fought back with picks. Two people lay bleeding on the floor already. I struck at the guards. I tried to bring my prey down but not kill them. I wanted their masters.

  The mage marks glowed on the guards’ hands, flickering, then fading completely. Berryman and Kora had bound up Kayu’s magic or killed her. The guards would not die, not from mage marks, at least. They’d live to tell who hired them.

  I kicked a guard’s feet from under him and knocked him to the floor, then stood with a foot on his shoulder. A digger came at us, pick raised. His eyes were locked on my prisoner. I raised my baton, keeping it between us as the digger moved around me. He was determined to bash my Rat’s head in.

  “In the King’s name!” I cried. “This man is arrested and will stand trial!”

  The digger paused. He was shaking.

  “In the King’s name,” I repeated. “Kill him and I’ll hobble you for murder.”

  He stood there for longer than I liked. Finally he lowered his pick. I looked around me. The cellar was bigger than I’d expected, and deeper. Just as well, because there were ten Dogs here as well as the captives and the guards. Some Dogs gently took picks from the diggers’ hands. Goodwin and two others hobbled the guards who were alive.

  Everyone was staring, whatever their hands did. Those who’d worked here had put water in shallow bowls cut in the rock walls. In them were pieces of raw fire opal. In the cellar torchlight they shone with spangles and veils of red, blue, purple, gold, and emerald fire. Deep green, crimson, orange, and amber pockets glinted like dragons’ eyes from two walls of pink stone that had been dug out twelve feet below the eight-foot-deep cellar.

  Opals vanished that night. I know they did. The bowls were empty when the house was cleared out and placed under guard by the army. I blame no one, Dogs or diggers, nor even Aniki or Kora, if they helped themselves. I don’t know that I could have stopped myself if I’d not had something bigger on my mind. I’m not sure if Goodwin or Tunstall got any. The ones we’d had before, the finished ones, had all gone into the Happy Bag. I know, because I was there when we logged them in. If they took some this night, they didn’t talk about it.

  As I hobbled my guard and dragged him to his feet, the digger actually helped me. “They were going to kill us,” he said. “I heard two of them talkin’ when I carried stones upstairs. That’s why they made us swear to tell no one we’d been hired. My children would have been left to starve – ” He dropped the Rat’s arm, letting the man sway against me. “My little ones!”

  “They’re safe, Master Ashmiller,” I told him. It had taken me a moment to recognize him. He was caked in dirt and thinner by far than he’d been when I’d last seen him. “Safe and sleeping on my floor.” I shoved the Rat toward the corner of the cellar where the rest of the surviving guards were kept.

  “Cooper,” Master Ashmiller said. “The determined one.”

  “No more determined than your younger daughter,” I called over my shoulder.

  We cleaned up as fast as we could. The cage wagons rolled out with full loads. Ahuda wanted to get paper issued against Crookshank, his paymistress Norwood, and the hiring man Poundridge, then have them arrested before they could flee the city. The diggers, including Jack, had to see healers and tell the kennel’s clerks what had happened to them. I told Jack I would take him to his children when I came back to the kennel to muster out.

  Berryman and Kora got rides on the seat of the cage wagon that held the bound and magicked Kayu. She would go to the mages’ prison. Our two mages would have to undo their spells once they got there, to let the King’s mages apply their own.

  Aniki and Lady Sabine vanished. I think they feared they would have to give reports to the kennel clerks.

  Soldiers came down from the Northgate barracks. A crowd was gathering, drawn by the shouts and the fighting. The soldiers would keep them out of the house until the Magistrate’s Court decided what to do about the vein of gems under it.

  The rest of us gathered outside. With the diggers and their guards on the way to the kennel, we could take a breath. Our Dogs leaned or sat. I wondered if the excitement had rushed from their veins as it had from mine, leaving them feeling old. We would have to go back to Jane Street. We had reports to give. For those of us still on Evening Watch, it was too early to muster off. Kayfer’s folk were still in the streets, looking to take vengeance on Crookshank’s raiders.

  One wagon had not left. It held shovels and twenty sheets of canvas. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to deal with that wagon, but my hope was cracknobbed. Out of the dark came pigeons. They flew down to the ground in front of me, all seventeen of them.

  “They know something, don’t they, Cooper?” Tunstall asked me as Pounce wound among the birds. “Can they show us?”

  “Show us what?” one of the tired Dogs asked.

  I pointed to the shuttered house down the alley. “That place and another two doors down on Mulberry,” I said. “I’ll bet it’s them two.”

  “Shovels,” Tunstall ordered. “Spare handkerchiefs.” He gave me a shovel and showed me how to tie a pair of handkerchiefs together to make a mask over my nose and mouth. Goodwin took another shovel, Jewel a third, Otterkin a fourth. Tunstall kept a fifth for himself. All tied on masks.

  We walked down the alley behind a group of Dogs who kept the crowd back. I was glad to have a mask to hide behind. My tripes were a solid knot. I would have given a year’s pay not to enter that lonely looking building. It was a ramshackle place, peeling and cracked, the roof collapsed inward on one side. Only the shutters and the door looked solid.

  Someone handed along the hammer from the first house. Tunstall put his shovel aside and smashed the door out of its frame. The others passed lamps to the rest of us. Goodwin led the way inside.

  Down the stairs we went, into the cellar, while my heart drummed in my chest. The area under the place was a big hollow, though not as big as in the last house. Pink rock showed on two sides, and the floor had been dug down fifteen feet. Half of the cellar was under a huge mound of dirt.

 
; I gagged. The smell was dreadful, like a Cesspool butcher’s dump in the summer heat.

  “Breathe through your mouth, Cooper,” Jewel said. He sounded kind, his voice muffled by the handkerchief. “It’s not so bad that way.”

  It was still vile.

  “Quickest done, quickest over,” Tunstall said. Carefully he set his shovel to the mound of dirt and started to dig. We all began to help.

  We worked gently, fearing what we might hit. I’d just felt the tip of my shovel touch sommat when we heard wings in that hot space. Eight pigeons had followed us down.

  They lined up on a shelf, their eyes glittering. I wasn’t sure, color being so strange, but I think Ashes, Pinky, and Spangles sat there, waiting on us.

  We found eight dead there. Nine in the other closed-up house. The pigeons had gone all that day in the hope that we would get to those sad bodies and set their ghosts free. It was why they had driven off all the other ghosts. Being left there, unmarked and unmourned, had driven them mad. Once we brought their poor bodies into the open, the birds flew out into the night and were gone.

  We needed morgue carts for the dead and more soldiers to guard the houses. The crowd was growing. It was too quiet for a Cesspool gathering. I didn’t have to be a longtime Dog to know that. I was a Lower City girl. The best crowds are the ones that laugh and make jokes. Silent ones mean trouble.

  Dogs are taught to break up crowds when we can, but none of us had the strength for it. It made me feel better to see the senior Dogs were as weary as me, reduced to slumped shoulders and blank stares by what we’d found in those cellars.

  We should have returned to the kennel for muster, but Jewel led the way to a bathhouse instead. The nobles are starting to split up by sexes, lords bathing separate from ladies, but this was an old-fashioned place. We all soaked in the hottest water we could bear and soaped ourselves over and over to rid our hair and skin of the stink. Even Pounce dove into a tub after one group of us left it, rolling over and over in the water. I took a handful of soap and washed his fur. He’d never taken a proper bath before. I supposed he’d never been in summer graves before, either. The attendants looked like they wanted to object. Someone would have to clean the fur from the tub, after all. Pounce meowed at them. I was not to know what he said. Whatever it was, they closed their gobs and kept them closed.

  When I was done, Goodwin held a clean uniform out to me. It was long in the arm and leg and there was no Puppy trim, but it was good enough. The veteran Dogs tipped the attendants well. It was enough to turn their fearful looks over the muck we’d carried in with us into small smiles. They even thanked us for our custom, though they did not invite us to return.

  Seemingly word had gone out as to our whereabouts. Ersken, Berryman, Kora, Lady Sabine, Aniki, and Jack Ashmiller all waited outside the bathhouse for us. Ersken bore a message from Sergeant Ahuda. He delivered it wide-eyed. “The Sergeant says come in early in the afternoon and write up your reports. She had a talk with the Provost’s Advocate at the Magistrate’s Court. He says you will all present your cases next week, not tomorrow.”

  My head spun. I’d forgotten I would have to tell Sir Tullus about the robber that I’d run down on Beltane. Now I had a reprieve. I was so grateful it hurt.

  Goodwin read Ahuda’s note. “She says we’re to have supper, on my lord Gershom’s orders.” She looked at Ersken. “She also mentions Lord Gershom’s coin.”

  “Oh.” Ersken grinned and held out a small pouch of coins. “Sorry, Guardswomen, Guardsmen.”

  Tunstall took the pouch and handed it to Jewel as Senior Corporal Dog. “Come on,” Jewel said. “We never pass up a meal. All of us,” he added, looking at our friends. “We have all earned a real feed.”

  Jack hesitated. He wanted his children. I swallowed. I was wobbling with hunger, but if the man needed to see his little ones…

  “I would be grateful for a meal,” Jack said. “A quick one.”

  In silence we trooped to the Mantel and Pullet. Our evening had left us wordless. Even for veteran Dogs, this was not a normal watch’s work. I felt like what we’d done was just too big for talk.

  “It’s not often we can be proud of a night’s striving,” Lady Sabine told us when the maids had served our supper and filled our jacks. She had a cup, befitting her place as a guest and a noble. She raised it. “Let us savor it, and pray the Black God’s mercy for the souls that were set free.”

  “Black God’s mercy,” we all whispered, and drank.

  Jack was good about me needing food, but he ate fast all the same. To thank him for his consideration, I ate fast, too. Nobody said aught but good night when we left with Pounce.

  “I’ve been thinkin’,” Jack said as we walked home. “When I’ve built me strength up a bit…” He dug his hands in his pockets. I heard something click, like rocks. “I mean to train for a Dog.”

  I stopped and stared. “You’ve been in a cellar too long,” I said flat out. Pounce leaped to my shoulder and added his noises to mine. “You’re a cove with children – “

  “I saw tonight the good that Dogs can do for coves with families,” he said.

  “Think long and hard,” I told him. “I buried a friend from training already. And Dogs get precious few nights like this.” I saw a lump of dark clothing where Pottage Lane met Jane Street. Surely the Night Watch could have rousted a drunkard in so public a place.

  I went over and prodded the lump with my baton. Torchlight from nearby taverns gave me a better look. This was no drunkard. It was someone laid flat, with a black veil cast over his face. I tugged at the veil.

  Fulk lay there, eyes wide in death. Around his neck hung a leather cord. On it was a gold coin.

  “Guess you didn’t escape Kayfer after all, you stupid cuddy,” I whispered. I put my whistle to my lips and blew the summons for a murder.

  Monday, May 11, 246

  Though it is several hours past dawn and the room is hot, I have done no more than dress and move out onto the landing with my journal. To do it, I had to leave my bed without waking Tansy, then dress and cross the floor without waking one of the four Ashmillers. Lucky for me, everyone was worn out from our late night return. I spent the quiet time writing up yesterday, since I can hear no sound from any rooms but my landlady’s on the ground floor. Seemingly my other housemates are also tired from yesterday.

  I wonder what Rosto was up to, since he did not catch up with us.

  The children are stirring. Mayhap I will go to Mistress Noll’s and buy a treat to celebrate Jack’s –

  That mess happened because someone whistled so loud from the ground floor that my hand jerked. My pen went clear out of my hand. I ruined a whole page in this journal. I went running downstairs. Even seeing the lad’s armband with the Provost’s badge on it didn’t stop me from saying, “Don’t you know folk are sleeping? And that after a sarden lousy night?”

  He shrugged. “I’m told Puppy Cooper lives here.”

  I tried to stay cross, but I’d been a runner, after all. And a runner wouldn’t be after a Puppy unless the matter was important. “That’s me.”

  “Riot duty. They’re calling the Fourth Watch and the Evening Watch in for backup duty. Muster at Westberk and Koskynen,” the lad said. “They told me you might know where I’d find Puppy Ersken Westover.”

  Riot duty? Pox and murrain, I thought. “I’ll get Ersken,” I said, my gut twisting. “What happened?”

  The lad grinned at me. He was missing two bottom teeth. “They found four dozen dead folk in one of Crookshank’s houses, and the mob wants t’ tear ‘im apart. So I hear.” He dashed off down the street, on his way to rouse some more Dogs.

  Upstairs, I heard Jack’s little boy start to cry. “Piss,” I said. I ran up to Kora’s rooms and pounded on the door. The door was new. I remembered why and stood to one side of the frame so as not to get blasted.

  “Wha?” I heard Ersken moan inside.

  “Riot backup duty!” I called. “Get dressed!”

 
I went upstairs and put on my uniform, boots, belt, and armor. “There’s a riot, if you didn’t hear,” I told the Ashmillers and Tansy. All of them watched me with scared eyes. “If it comes this far, go to the kennel. They’ll protect you. Pounce, stay with them. A riot’s no place for a cat, even you.” I closed the door behind me and trotted downstairs. Ersken and Kora lingered at her door, kissing.

  I grabbed him as I passed. “I’m not having fun, you’re not having fun,” I told him as I towed him along.

  “You sound more like Goodwin every day,” he mumbled.

  “I begin to see how she got the way she is,” I said.

  Even as we approached the mustering point, we could hear the distant roar of the riot. Gooseflesh spread over my skin. Anyone of the Lower City knows that sound and fears it. Folk caught up in a riot aren’t our cousins and sisters, our brothers and uncles. They are part of a big animal with many arms and claws, armed with stones and sticks.

  Armorers handed out rectangular shields. We lined up for ours, then found our Dogs. To my shock, Goodwin grinned when she saw me. “Days like this, you’re glad you’re a Dog, admit it, Cooper,” she said.

  Tunstall scratched his head. All of his short hair stood on end. “She acts like this when she’s worn to the bone,” he told me. “You’ll get used to it. No Master Pounce?”

  “He’s too wise to come out here,” Goodwin said, putting her helm on and doing up the strap. “Why should he? He’s not paid to get kicked in the head.”

  The Night Watch Commander was still in charge, since the riot had started on his watch. He passed among us, giving orders. “Keep calm,” he told us. “With luck, you won’t be needed.” Other Dogs were out already, in the thick of it – Night Watch Dogs and Day Watch. Soldiers were in place to the south and west, he told us, squeezing the mob. It was our duty to wait and to be ready, just in case.

  After he moved on, I asked Tunstall, “Is it true? The mob wants Crookshank?”