Beka Cooper 1 - Terrier

by Tamora Pierce

  Back to Tansy's floor I went. I checked room after room. Looking out a window, I saw folk down below had formed bucket brigades to douse the fires on the ground floor. Once I was certain everyone on the third floor was gone, I went to the second floor to look for Goodwin. I'd had a notion she wasn't clearing the household out. My notion was right.

  "Cat, this is a bad time and place. Do your business outside, you idiot creature!"

  Her voice led me to rooms that had to be the ones shared by Crookshank and his wife. It looked as if she'd been searching his papers and cupboards. She stood in the middle of his workroom with a ledger in her hands, taken from a table stacked with them. Pounce stood on the big desk, digging fiercely in a pile of letters.

  Goodwin shut the ledger with a snap and put it with the others. "Crone's teeth, if he ruins anything useful, Cooper – "

  "Pounce, stop that," I said, though I could tell he was looking for something. He knew I wasn't serious. I helped Goodwin pick up some papers that had fallen to the floor. "It looks as if they've got the fires controlled. Though the smoke's still nasty."

  Pounce mrted. With a snap a wooden panel in the desk's surface popped open, almost smacking him. He jumped back, tail switching, and yowled in triumph.

  Goodwin straightened, papers in her hand. "You pesky little beast, how did you even know that compartment was there? Cooper, you saw him, same as me. He deliberately went after it."

  Goodwin went to the desk and checked the compartment for booby traps before she removed what it held – a small sheaf of notes.

  "He does things like that," I told her with a shrug.

  Goodwin set aside the other papers she'd gathered. She looked over the notes from the compartment, swore, then closed the lid and stuffed the notes down the front of her tunic. "Let's get out of here before they come looking for us." She picked up the things that Pounce had scattered and tossed them on the desktop so it looked like it had never been disturbed.

  I followed Goodwin. The fires were almost out. Smoke had ruined Crookshank's fancy things downstairs, but he could well afford to replace them. Hardly a person in the crowd that had gathered didn't wish the house had burned to the ground.

  I found Tansy on her own, shivering in her wet sheet. The spring night had gotten chilly. I peeled the sheet off. "You'd think they'd pity him, losing a great-grandbaby," I said. I looked around to see if anyone had fetched blankets. Tansy's belly was a mound against her thin housedress. At least she wasn't in bedclothes at this early hour.

  "Why should they?" she asked, hugging the pillow slip with her jewels. "Enough of them have lost a child lately, and no one's raised a fuss about theirs."

  I guided her to a fountain bench, but it wasn't all from the goodness of my heart. On our way I grabbed a blanket from a maid's hand. She yelped and yanked, then let go when I glared at her. She wasn't wet and pregnant. I got Tansy wrapped around before I made her sit, whispering as I did, "What do you mean?"

  She rolled her big blue eyes at me. "Everyone says it's just slave catchers calling themselves by a nightmare name. They say little ones always go missing down here. But some are different. See that thin mot over there? With the round scar on her cheek? Her ma left her a spell book, onliest bit of value the poor thing ever had. Middle of the night a cove's voice beside her bed tells her where and when to leave it for the Shadow Snake, elsewise she'll weep for it. Gave her a week. She didn't do it, not the only thing she had from her ma. After the week, her little girl, only four years old, vanished. Just like that." Tansy's lips trembled. "The Dogs say little ones vanish all the time in the Lower City, did she try the slave traders? Of course she tried the slave traders, for all the good it did. She searched for months. She still looks at girls that age with white blond hair, just in case. It was fifteen months ago."

  "But it could've been anybody," I said. "Just 'cause someone says she'll be sorry – "

  "They drew a snake in ash on the little girl's apron and left it hung on the clothesline for the mother to take down," Tansy whispered. "They left it on her pillow inside the house, too. When the whisper in the night came again, that poor creature thought of her two younger children and left the spell book where she was told."

  I clenched my hands. Preying on folk who had so little was more than bad, it was vicious. "But it's only one time this cove says he's the Shadow Snake, Tansy."

  "Watch my finger, Beka. I'm not going to name them for you." She pointed again and again and again. Twelve times she pointed at different people in the crowd. "It's been going on almost three whole year. All of them have a piece of their child's clothing with that Shadow Snake on it. They had something the Shadow Snake wanted. Them that didn't give it up right off, well, some of 'em got their little one back, all right – as a corpse. Some never saw their little one again. Grandpa Ammon got a bit of paper asking for something. He said no Snake would ever wring him like a three-month-old hen. Only they didn't wring him, Beka." Tears rolled down Tansy's plump cheeks. "They wrung my little Rolond."

  "I pay for protection!" I recognized Crookshank's ragged screech. He was yelling at my Dogs. "I pay more into that Happy Bag than anyone on this street. For that I expect protection!" He swayed on his steps, shaking a bony finger at Tunstall and Goodwin. Three of his rushers stood at his back, hands on their weapons. Smoke still rolled out of the broken window behind them.

  I belonged up there with my Dogs, but I didn't want to leave Tansy. I looked around until I spotted Annis. She came over. "Come on, girl," she said, gathering Tansy up, blanket and all. "Let's stop Father from making even more of a fool of himself."

  Tansy yanked free. "Why? I don't owe him. He got Rolond killed."

  Annis grabbed her arm. "We're stuck with him." She spoke in Tansy's ear. The words were not meant for me, but I have very good hearing. "And we have more to lose. Don't think we're free just because Rolond's gone. You need to think of the babe that's coming. Now be an obedient granddaughter-in-law."

  As she tugged Tansy over to the steps, I cut around them to stand behind my Dogs. Tunstall was saying, "You'd have to pay ten times what you do to get enough Dogs to guard against the Rogue's wrath, my friend. These lads know it as well as we do." He nodded to Crookshank's rushers. "Did you think Kayfer Deerborn would let your speech last night go unspanked?"

  Crookshank stared at him, trembling in fury.

  "Why do you think he had a hand in killing your great-grandson?" Goodwin asked, her arms folded over her chest. "Last night you accused him of it. What have you got that he might want that bad?"

  Crookshank went dead white under the soot on his face. He spun and rammed through the wall of guards behind him to dash into his house, smoke and all. The rushers looked at each other, then followed, covering their noses and mouths with their arms.

  "Well, that shut the old vulture up," Tunstall said cheerfully. "Where's Cooper and the cat?"

  "Right in back of us," Goodwin said. "Let's go. I'm past hungry. We'll be lucky if there's any ham left at the Mantel and Pullet."

  I moved so they could pass us and muttered, "They could've waited to burn the place till we had supper."

  Both of them turned to face me. Pounce looked up at me and meowed.

  "She spoke," Tunstall said. "Goodwin, did you hear? She actually made a joke. It was practically conversation."

  Goodwin elbowed him. "Don't let it go to your head. Look, she's going shy again."

  It was true. I could feel the ground draw my eyes toward it. Pounce jumped onto my shoulder and settled across my back, just behind my neck. To console me for making idiotic remarks where my Dogs could hear, he began to purr.

  We weren't lucky. There was no more ham at the Mantel and Pullet. The chicken had been on the spit so long it was dry. The bread, warming by the hearth since before the supper rush, was also dry. At least the fried greens were passable. The cook was so heartbroken at putting such a poor meal before longtime customers like Tunstall and Goodwin that she quickly fried some almond cakes and served the
m drizzled in honey. The ale was free. The cook brewed rose hip tea for me.

  Once they had done hovering, Goodwin fetched the papers out of her tunic. All four of us, including Pounce, leaned in to look. Goodwin placed each piece side by side, the back of the note face up. Each was signed with a long double-curved snake writ in ash.

  "'When you grub in the Snake's earth, you owe a payment to the Snake,'" Tunstall read softly. He pulled a second note over to read it. "'Fifteen stones to the Snake, left in a leather purse behind the Lonely Journey altar, Death's temple on Glassman Square, a week from today, or you will pay with your own kin.'" He whistled. "Not very nice."

  Goodwin leaned her head on her hand. "I thought maybe I'd mistook it when I glanced at it in the house. We were wrong, my buck. There is a Shadow Snake, a real one. We've the evidence right here." She smiled crookedly. "The bogey is real."

  "I'd druther he wasn't," I said. "Are the other notes the same?"

  "'You think yourself safe,'" Goodwin read from the second one. "'A Snake finds gaps in every wall. The child is now in the Snake's coils. One week from today, thirty stones in a leather bag, behind the Lonely Journey altar, Death's temple on Glassman Square, or there will be blood.'"

  "He didn't pay up the first time, so the Snake doubles the tally, takes Rolond, and gives him a new week to pay," Tunstall said. "I'm surprised Crookshank didn't have an apoplexy. He gets half mad when folk give him orders. Arranged for his rushers to beat a Captain of the Guard who turned him back from the palace gate. The cove was crippled when they'd done."

  Goodwin read the third note. "'You have more to lose. Forty stones, you know where to leave them, the night of the full moon.'" She made a face. This Snake isn't done with Crookshank, and the old man knows it."

  I was cold. I gave Rolond horsey rides in the Daymarket once. I let him chew my braid when he was teething, the times Tansy escaped Crookshank's watchers. Might I have put a stop to this, had I known? But I hadn't. While Crookshank was getting those notes, when Rolond was taken, I was moving into my new home. After, when I heard, the old man had the house under such tight guard that Tansy couldn't get out, nor I get in. My first real talk with her in three months was on Monday. Why didn't she tell me then about the Shadow Snake? I wondered. But I knew the answer already. Tansy was so much happier, and sillier, before Rolond was killed. After, she had learned to keep secrets.

  "But I think Crookshank did know the Snake meant business," I said, clenching my hands.

  "What?" Goodwin asked.

  Pounce crawled into my lap and began to purr. I stroked him as I told Tunstall and Goodwin what Tansy had told me about the missing children and the sign of the Snake left behind. Of the things the Snake had wanted from those parents. I even said, "She told me some of them went to the kennel and reported it, but nothing was done. Did you know?"

  I mustered my courage to look at them. Surely they didn't turn their backs on the poor of the Lower City, not Tunstall and Goodwin. But Tunstall was carving a piece from the table as a toothpick.

  Goodwin frowned. "What do you want from us, Cooper?" she asked. "Do you know how many robberies there are in a day in the Lower City, how many burglaries, how many purse cuttings, rapes, brawls.... Folk disappear or die all the time, children in particular. We don't have a third of the Dogs we need to cover the Lower City alone. We do what we can."

  I wanted to ask, You didn't seek on any of them? but the words stuck in my throat. I know the numbers. We were made to memorize them our first day of training and to repeat them when asked. We learned them by district. Each district, from Palace to Highfields, had a particular place in every Puppy's memory, with its numbers for disorder and crime, its numbers for Dogs and for mages who might be problems, and its chiefs under the Court of the Rogue. I could say them in my sleep.

  "It could have been me that went missing," I said. "My brothers, my sisters. Any of us. Vanished or dead in a gutter, a snake on our pillows and Mama heartbroke. She was so frail. It would've killed her before her time." I looked at them. "It could still be one of them, if they wasn't safe in my Lord Provost's house."

  "Wake up, Cooper." Goodwin said it, but she did not seem angry. "Do you know how many mothers drown newborns and tots in privies or rain barrels? How many fathers and uncles toss them into the rear yard with broken skulls?"

  "Someone they know or some stranger who offers a solid meal hurts them and leaves them to die." Tunstall's eyes were sad. "And plenty sell 'em to the slavers. Instead of telling folk and face the shame, they say the child just vanished. Savor your good luck, Cooper. Savor it for you and your family. If we catch this Snake, we'll catch him. But there aren't enough of us to chase every vanished cove, mot, and child. Not near enough."

  Goodwin rubbed the scar on her cheek. "Tunstall says you've word of seven missing mots and coves. We haven't heard anyone hunting for them, let alone the odd vanished child. Let's get moving. And toughen up, Cooper, that's my advice." She got to her feet. "Before you jump into the Olorun or slice your wrists. We lose five Dogs a year to the Black God's Option. Don't you be one."

  "We look around on patrol, Cooper," Tunstall said as he stood. "But it's harder once it gets dark. Not many littles around, and their faces aren't clear. And it hurts. You find enough dead ones, you don't want to know, after a while. The older ones, they went looking for it most of the time. Not the dead children."

  In the Lower City we're supposed to give up pretty ideas and dreams. I'm vexed with myself, to find I've nursed some about these two. They are only human. And their people aren't from here. Tunstall is a barbarian from the eastern hills. Goodwin's family are respectable members of the Carpenters' Guild. My Dogs don't know what it's like to have no one fighting for them. They do their jobs and that gives them plenty of work, looking out for them that fill the Happy Bags.

  I won't content myself with filling the Happy Bags. Not ever. The Lower City is mine. Its people are mine – its children are mine. If I find them that's doing all this kidnapping and murdering, they'd best pray for mercy. Because once I get my teeth in 'em, I will never let them go. And I start with the Shadow Snake.

  We washed up from supper and left for the last two hours of our watch. I had plenty to think on. Luckily we returned to the Nightmarket, where it was too busy to give me time to think. I was taken up learning to tell the differences between minnows and pikes, and learning how to spot the best of the Nightmarket foists and sutlers. I came home with eyeballs that jumped from trying to look everywhere at once, to write in this journal.

  I have only been a Puppy three days, yet it feels like three year. I feel I have changed so much from the mot who wrote her account of that first day. Who will I be by week's end?

  Saturday, April 4, 246

  Afternoon, before training.

  What woke me this morning wasn't Pounce's washing, but a pigeon's good hard peck on my cheekbone. I yelped and threw the beast off. Back he came, landing on my crown and digging his claws into my hair.

  Pounce had opened my shutters. I forgot my gratitude. "Y' mangy fleabag!" I yelled through a mouthful of cover. "Y' want us murdered in our sleep?"

  "She'll think I run off," a cove whispered. "She'll think I di'n't love 'er an' the girls. She'll think I got a decent job an' pay an' run off with it."

  Goose bumps raced over my flesh. I reached up slow with both my hands. A hard beak fastened in the tender skin between my thumb and forefinger and twisted. I closed my fingers around the bird, growling from pain, and brought him around where I could look at him.

  Slapper.

  I worked his beak free of me and tried to shift my hold so we were both easier. For my trouble he got a wing free and smacked me full in the face. It was a pigeon's punch. He clipped me on the nose as the spirit that rode him said, "She'll think I run off."

  "I heard you." I took hold of Slapper's wing and tried to wipe my watering eyes on my shoulder. That blow hurt. "Tell me where I'll find your corpse. Then she'll know you're dead and can't go to her."r />
  "She'll think I run off," the ghost moaned. "I'm dead in the ground."

  Slapper turned his head and bit my cheek. I yelped and let go. The curst bird took off out my window.

  He would be back. Or I would find him, and his rider, with other pigeons. Should I feed them? Or try to find the murdered folk the dust spinners spoke of? I checked for my clothes. I looked out the window. From the sun's angle, it wasn't quite yet nine in the morning. I had time, and I needed to do chores.

  I had to wash a uniform today. At least I had a clean one ready now, thanks to Goodwin. I would soak the soiled one free of wrinkles, then hang it with weights on overnight. If I mucked up today's uniform, I would have a clean one for the morrow.

  I was pulling on breeches when I heard a mot's shriek. Something crashed on my stairs. I beat Pounce to the door and pulled it open. The door to the rooms opposite mine was wide open: moving day for a new neighbor. Someone came up the stairs backward and half bent over, carrying a wooden table legs up. Atop the table were some packs and a small trunk. Another person down below supported the other end of the table as it bobbed and swayed.

  The bearer who was almost to my level looked over her shoulder and grinned. It was the swordswoman Aniki, wearing breeches and shirt, her sleeves rolled up. She looked back at the other end of the table. "Rosto, leave that box! Kora can get the curst thing. If you try to grab it, you'll dump everything else down the stairs!" She told me, "I think we overloaded it." She backed up again. Here came the rest of the table, with Rosto the Piper holding up the wobbling end.

  "Told you I liked the look of the street," he said to me. "And here's this place, with three sets of rooms nice and empty, for cheap. I rented 'em last night – me and Kora have the two just downstairs, and you've got Aniki for a neighbor."