Beka Cooper 1 - Terrier

by Tamora Pierce

  "Would you remember the mot who told you about that pendant?" I asked her. "Might she be at the fountain again soon?"

  Kora gave me her tricky, sidelong smile. "I can do better. I can take you to her home."

  "How do you know where she lives? Did you follow her?"

  Kora picked up Pounce and laid him across the back of her shoulders. "I put a spot on her, that I might find her again at need." She raised a fingertip. A circle of green-blue light appeared there. It vanished. "I can always find my spots again."

  I hardly knew what to say, but I knew I should tell her something. Finally I said, "That is a good idea."

  Kora scratched Pounce's chin, not looking at me. "A child killer got my older sister. Not a cold Rat like the Snake, who kills for gain. A mad one. But I hate all child killers, whatever their reasons." She took a breath. "You'll need to dress like a gixie. In plain breeches you give off a whiff of Dog."

  I put my hand on her arm for a moment. Quietly I told her, "I have two sisters. Whenever I pass the Goddess's shrines, I thank the Lady they live safe in Provost's House."

  Kora nodded.

  I went to my clothespress and took out a gown.

  Kora's glowing spot led us into the streets beyond Glassman Square. The mot she'd spoken to yesterday had a small house of her own, on an alley lined with them. I heard children in the back and the thump of a butter churn. A woman spun flax on the stone path to the side yard. A big, short-haired dog slept on the doorstep. When we walked through the gate, the dog rose and growled, hackles rising. I reached for a baton I did not carry. Kora's magic glowed around her fingers.

  Pounce walked forward and meowed forcefully. The dog looked at him and whuffed. Pounce called him what sounded to me like a name. The dog's tail began to wag. Mayhap Pounce just had to prove he was a Lower City cat. I was not sure.

  The mot halted her spinning. "My Brute hates cats." She watched Pounce and the dog, a strange expression in her eyes. She then inspected Kora and me. To Kora she said, "I know you. You are the laundress and herb girl. You gave me the salve that healed those burns of mine." She pursed her lips. "And you asked me about stolen children."

  "I did," Kora said. "This is my friend Beka. She, too, is interested in stolen children."

  "She is a Dog," said the woman. "Dress or no, she stands like a Dog."

  "Work on that, perhaps," Kora murmured to me.

  "Beka?" the woman asked suddenly. "Cooper? As works with Tunstall and Goodwin? The terrier Puppy, that chased Orva Ashmiller to Northgate?"

  I looked at the four-legged dog. I did not want to talk about Mistress Ashmiller. "Is he friendly, your Brute?" I stepped forward, my palm held up. Kora took a breath, but seemingly Pounce had opened the way for us. Brute came up, his tail wagging slowly. He smelled my hand, then let me scratch his ears. "You're a fine boy," I told him.

  "I have children of my own," the woman whispered, to me or to Kora, I wasn't certain. "They could be taken from me."

  I scratched Brute on the rump. "There are plenty of folk with children in the Lower City, mistress." I kept my voice low. "Many of them already lost children to the Snake who took your neighbors' girl. Too many of those did not see their children come home alive again. When the Snake frightens more of you into silence, you make it possible for him to do it again. And again." I met her eyes with mine this time. "Right now all anyone can see is that you have friends to visit, the laundress from the square and one other. They must be friends, because this fine, handsome guard of your house is wagging his tail. What they think elsewise depends on you."

  The woman ladled water onto her flax to moisten it, taking time to think. At last she said, "Come around here. There is a bench." It was placed so she could talk with us as she spun. Once we were settled, she began to work again, though her thread was uneven. She was frightened. I understood that.

  Brute followed us. I scratched his ears and rump. Kora talked about people from the fountain square until the mot was calmer. When Kora nudged me lightly, I leaned forward over Brute's heavy shoulders.

  "Has anyone you can name given you cause to fear since your neighbors' child was taken?" I asked, keeping my voice soft. Only two of the children I'd heard outside had come to peer at us through the house's open door. They ran away the moment I looked at them. Their mother had trained them to be wary of strangers. I suspected the wall out back was high and mayhap covered with thorny vines.

  The woman shook her head. "Brute was a year old then. He guards us well."

  I nodded. "Mistress, you told my friend about a necklace."

  She halted her spinning. In the distance, we all heard thunder's distant boom. We looked up. There was a thin arm of black clouds reaching over the wall. Mayhap there would be a good spring rain later.

  "We were all jealous of it, we mots," she whispered. "Such a pretty thing. Her man had a second job for weeks to pay for it. She thought he was helping a friend to build his house for naught. He give it to her for her birthday, the same day as they'd been married five year. Enamel work and gold. She wore it everywhere. 'Fine work is meant to be seen,' she told us, which scorched our feathers, didn't it? Then the Shadow Snake took her little girl and demanded the necklace."

  So quiet were we that I could hear Brute's tail stir the dust as he leaned against my knees. Behind the house I heard the children squabble.

  Gently I moved Brute and went to stand next to the mot. "Mistress, what did the pendant look like?" I asked her. "So pretty a thing, you must remember. Can you draw it for me?" I picked up a stick and handed it to her.

  "I'm no hand at picturing," she whispered, but she took the stick. She didn't need to be the greatest hand at drawing. The design was simple, the kind of thing that stayed before the eye in a person's mind. Curved lines turned up, like cupped hands. I would remember it if I saw it again.

  I thought of something. We'd been taught what questions to put when a crime had been done recently. No Dogs had asked about this crime. No one had reported the child's kidnapping to Jane Street. Still, why not ask? "Did you see anyone, the days before the child was taken, or the days before she was returned? Anyone as didn't live here? Folk delivering aught, lazing about? Folk talking with the children?"

  "It was forever ago," she whispered. "No. I am a liar. It were two year, three months, eighteen days. I was so afeared. I've never been not afeared ever since, but I've no coin to go to Barzun, nor family to help me get a new start there."

  "You remember it to the day," I said. "You remember the necklace. And this is the Lower City. We always watch down here. Especially folk with comely children." The two little ones who'd come to peer at us had been golden-haired and blue-eyed, slavers' meat.

  "Why ask?" she whined. "What difference does it make? The family is gone. The Shadow Snake chews on Crookshank now, gods' blight to them both."

  "You might have seen the Snake or the Snake's rushers," I said. Ahuda had taught us that cityfolk always squirmed like fishes on hooks. Patience got us farther than a box on the ear with them that weren't lifetime Rats. "Because this is how Dogs do it, mistress. We ask who was here. Who was strange? Who asked about the little one or her family? The Snake didn't just walk into that house. The Snake knew where the child slept. He knew when that household went to bed. He had to, if he was to take her with the family sleeping. He had to know if there was someone like this fine Brute in the house, or even my Pounce. Cats have inconvenient tails for the stepping. Who did you see?"

  She gave me three names at the last. I set them in my memory. When we said our farewells, the sky was darker, Brute had gone to sleep across the doorstep, and the mot was trembling. I fear we ruined her spinning, but I had three names for it.

  We'd gone halfway down the block before Kora got my attention. "What now?"

  I stopped and took a deep breath. I was trembling. I looked at her. "I think I need a map."

  She went on to run her errands, and I ran mine before the rain began. My lord had shown me a trick he used when some co
mplicated Rat hunt took place in any part of the realm. I would follow his lead and use a map. I had some already. My lord had noticed my love of his and given me a packet of them for my fifteenth birthday. They were a costly gift, showing different parts of the realm, various cities, and, best of all, the different sections of Corus. I had one map alone of the Lower City, as complete as any in the palace.

  I went to the Daymarket and haggled mightily for pins and sealing wax. Then I trotted home and took out my map of the Lower City. Carefully I nailed it to the wall. I marked the head of one pin with a ball of blue sealing wax and thrust it into the spot where Crookshank's house would be, on Stuvek Street. That was Rolond's marker – blue would be the color for the dead children. Next I marked another pin in red for the gixie who'd been returned to her family. I set it on the alley that Kora and I had just visited.

  When I have more pins, more real news, I will bring it to my Dogs. If I find anything new on Rolond, I will take it to Jewel, since he and his partner, Yoav, are supposed to be searching for Rolond's killer. But this is for me, to help me to remember.

  Very well. And to paint a better picture of the Snake. I have heard of no one doing such a picture, and I believe one is needed. Mayhap I am only a Puppy, but I have seen how well this works for my lord. If I can show my Dogs a picture of what the Shadow Snake has done, mayhap they will not mind that the picture has come from a Puppy.

  Please, Goddess and Mithros.

  Please.

  At night's end.

  Tonight was the night of the Happy Bag. After muster we went up to the Court of the Rogue again. I could not relax and look about me there as I did last time. I could not amuse myself thinking of the mots who sighed over how handsome Kayfer was in his younger days. All I could think on was the mothers and fathers who came here, hoping that he would find their little ones or give them justice for the Shadow Snake. How he and his chiefs had seen how poor they were and sent them away.

  Rosto should have let Crookshank stab the Rogue. Except then Rosto would not be standing with Ulsa now, coming to power here. Aniki would not have her place among the rushers who waited at Dawull's back.

  After we handed the Happy Bags over to the horsemen for transport back to the kennel, Tunstall, Goodwin, and I headed on up into the Cesspool.

  "Findlay Close?" Tunstall asked Goodwin. To me he said, "Crookshank owns every house there."

  Goodwin nodded. "Worth a look," she said.

  On the street that lay between Stormwing and Mulberry, Tunstall took out the small, magical pearl light he'd used on the fire opals. Keeping it mostly covered from the view of the families that lived thereabouts, we looked around the outsides of the rough houses. In spots the pink city rock broke through the surface, gray in the lamp glow. Folk used it here as foundation stone, doorsteps, and parts of the walls. It gave no hint of the treasures to be found in it somewhere below, not here on the street.

  We saw no heaps of dirt or rock dumped outside those houses to show digging went on inside. Some of them were collapsing. Their doors and shutters were nailed shut to keep the little ones or mumpers from getting in. Folk could be digging inside those and we'd have no way of telling. We didn't get to talk to the handful of folk we saw. They fled the sight of us.

  On we moved to Mulberry Street and straight into a bare-knuckles fight. We even got to watch some of it. The first match was between two coves I knew from my runner days. I would have bet on Drew if I hadn't been watching my coppers. I would have won money, too. Then I saw the pickpocket. I grabbed him by the collar before he saw me. I heard curses. Goodwin and Tunstall each had their own little quick fingers.

  That's when the fight turned into a brawl. The moment a mot saw we had pickpockets in hand, she spotted a fourth. Seemingly a gang of them has been working on Mulberry Street of late. They've been finding dice games, cockfights, and fistfights. They strike all four at once and escape before anyone guesses they've been picked.

  The crowd turned on the pickpockets, which left us with no choice. We were forced to let the light fingers go whilst we held off near thirty vexed mots and coves. I closed up with Goodwin and Tunstall, blowing my whistle as ordered. Two more pairs of Dogs got there to help us break up the crowd. We never even got to see the last two fights.

  I'm impressed by that pickpocket gang, though. Someone there has wits.

  We had some robberies, some tavern fights, a cove smacking his wife. Then a lucky chance. Stout Robin, wanted by the Magistrates for three killings in Port Legann, was drinking in the Gray Goose. A cattle drover who was drinking there recognized him and went for the first Dogs he could find – us. That's a ten-silver-noble reward to the cattle drover, paid when we brought Stout Robin in. Tunstall showed the drover another way out of the kennel, so with luck he'll reach his lodging with the coin still in his pockets. Ahuda says it's another ten silver nobles to us when we're paid, and Goodwin says two of those are mine, because Stout Robin was a handful in the hobbling.

  Not a bad night for the Cesspool, not at all.

  Friday, April 10, 246

  At day's end.

  After so good a night in the Cesspool, I opened my shutters to a spring storm. I woke also to the sneezes and a cough. All I wanted was for the pigeons to talk to me before I crawled back into my bed. Surely they would tell me where their ghosts' bodies were buried. Or give me their living names, at least.

  They came to tell me again only what they'd said before. Each time I sneezed or coughed, the loobies would flap off all at once. Then they would return until the next time.

  I hate pigeons.

  All nine of the diggers came for a time. For all they said, I told Pounce they could have just sent one. And they left feathers on my floor.

  Rosto wouldn't even come in my rooms, not that I opened the door wide enough. Aniki wrote down names and the locations of two visits by the Shadow Snake and returned later with a crock of hot soup. She is a good friend.

  Kora brought potions for me, which have made me feel better, or at least they make me spit disgusting slime. Ersken fetched tea. Verene sang songs to me whilst they, Aniki, and Kora had breakfast on the landing outside the door.

  How did I do without friends?

  Pounce curled up with me as I slept the morning away and part of the afternoon. I cannot tell if it was the soup, the tea, or the potions, but I was well enough for duty.

  Nightmarket work was exhausting.

  Kora was home when I came home. She had more potions.

  I am going to bed. Curse all colds. Curse spring. Curse rain. No, no curses on rain or spring, only colds.

  Good night.

  Saturday, April 11, 246

  I hate pigeons with nothing new.

  I hate the Cesspool.

  I hate festering, ranky, puling, gob-clogging, sarden colds.

  I hate dragging my sorry sniffling hacking bum through duty.

  I love my warm soft cat.

  I have good friends who bring me things.

  I love my bed.

  Sunday, April 12, 246

  In the morning.

  Kora:

  one gixie – Dragon Mews – December 5, 245 – price 8 silver nobles inheritance

  not paid – found dead in mother's garden

  one lad – Festivity Lane – August 31, 244 – price sandalwood box with mother-of-pearl inlay

  not paid – found dead in own bed

  brother taken two nights later

  price paid – brother found alive on doorstep morning after payment

  one gixie – Mulberry Street – February 13, 246 – price 20 silver nobles in savings

  paid – child found in shrine where payment was left two days before

  Aniki:

  one lad – Rovers Street – May 8, 245 – price 3 Yamani silver coins

  not paid – found dead on doorstep

  sister taken one week later

  not paid – sister never found

  Pox and murrain on the Shadow Snake. Mithros burn his
eyes in his sockets, Goddess wither his eggs and the eggs of all his children, or her children.

  At night's end.

  As healers go, it is a good thing Kora has other talents. I still blow fearsome amounts of slime from my nose and throat. Goodwin tells me it is also a good thing we are not required to watch a Rat in silence, for she fears my breathing can be heard at the palace. She has given me a potion from a mage friend of her own, which she says will help. I pray it will, for we are in the Magistrate's Court tomorrow. If I must snuffle and whuffle through the day's worth of cases, I fear I shall put my head through the floor.

  At least I know I will not be called upon to speak before Sir Tullus. There was no Rat we hobbled this week who was in my sight alone for so much as a sneeze. I can hide behind my Dogs.

  We have had no word on the diggers, not even a whisper. Or that is, we have whispers of all manner of folk who are missing. Tunstall and Goodwin have a list of names other Dogs brought to them after they checked to see if the missing folk are truly missing. It is a long list. The time to check each name is scarce. Dogs are rarely allowed to do anything that is not part of regular patrols, because there are so few of us to keep the peace. Chasing missing coves and mots just because they are missing isn't a good enough reason to take time from stopping folk from breaking each other's heads or robbing each other blind.

  Worse, the spring storms continue. It means no fleets are coming to port, which means no work. If Crookshank has hired anyone to dig his fire opals in secret, they won't speak of it. They know them as are desperate for any kind of work at all could well beat them up to take their place on the digging crew.

  Crookshank, or whoever hires the diggers for Crookshank, will count on that. They'll hire a new crew of diggers and make them swear to hold their tongues.

  And then they'll kill them to keep them quiet, like the last nine.

  Being sick makes me gloomsome. I'm taking Goodwin's potion and going to bed.