Tuesday, April 14, 246
At nine in the morning.
I can't bring myself to go back to Provost's House this week, for all that I bear no bruises. I even feel better, after Goodwin's potion. But I can't face my sisters and brothers again after that farewell last week. They seemed shamed. I will let the memory fade for them.
Besides, Granny Fern says we never spend enough time at her place. I can have a nice visit with her. At breakfast Kora said she would be finished with her washing by noon, if I cared to talk to some of the Shadow Snake folk she had met.
So Granny's it is.
At day's end.
Granny was glad to see me this morning, and glad, too, for the coppers I gave her to help with housekeeping expenses. "The birds follow you as much as ever," she said as we hung out her wash. "Do they help in your work?"
Mayhap it was because Granny taught me how to hear the pigeons and the dust spinners. I told her about the diggers and Rolond. I had the sense to keep my voice low, and to have her swear by the Crone never to tell a soul what I had said. It was Dog business. But I can trust Granny. I told her all I'd heard before I was a trainee, all the bits and pieces I would pass on to my lord or the kennels.
I just feel I must be extra careful to act like a real Dog now that I am almost one.
Granny was bad troubled about the Snake and the diggers. "What have you done about this?" she asked.
I told her. She was pleased to hear that Goodwin and Tunstall are seeking the diggers. She liked the tale of my map and told me three Snake cases she knew of herself.
She did not like it that I had not told my Dogs about the map. "You say they know better. Either they know better about everything you do, or they do not," she told me. And she cuffed me on the side of my head for my trouble.
She's right, you know, Pounce said. He lay in the sun, glaring at Granny's tomcat.
Sometimes I wish my granny Fern was not so tough a mot. But I knew she was right. Just because I feared they would mock my idea for the map – and that when I'd only done as my lord did – was no excuse not to tell them. So I will tell them tomorrow.
Kora returned an hour after I got home from Granny's. She roused Aniki, who had gone back to bed for a nap. The three of us went out into the city, to the house of someone Granny had named.
The lad's da had woke one autumn night last year to find him gone, a snake drawn in ashes in his crib. His ma worked all night in a tavern down by North Gate. A customer had gifted her just two weeks before with a pair of garnet earrings.
"We had to get a priest to read us the note," she said as her man watched us. By rights he should have been on the docks, loading and unloading barges from Port Caynn. The only trouble was, with the storms, he had no work just now. He could only whittle and pray and stay away from drinking and gambling dens. "It said I was to leave the earrings in a pouch at the shrine of the Carthaki Graveyard Hag, at the burying ground on Stormwing, a week from the day," she told us. "If we did as we was bid, we'd have our lad back with no harm done."
Her lad did not come out from behind his da the whole time we were there. When I smiled at him, he began to suck his thumb. I felt like I'd turned into one of them giant spiders with human heads Mama always said would eat us if we wasn't good.
Next we went to a woman who told Aniki the Shadow Snake had taken her little girl. She was shifty-eyed. Two nights ago I'd seen Goodwin talk with a cove who'd acted much like this. I looked at Kora and Aniki. Something in the way they stood told me they smelled bad meat in the pot, too.
I tried to think what Goodwin might say. "So it was nighttime?" I asked the mot.
She nodded.
"Before the midnight bell, would you say, or after?" I stood as Goodwin did, arms crossed, weight on one hip. I kept my eyes steady on the mot's face.
"A-after, I think."
"And she was a pretty gixie, was she? Like you?"
"Oh, well enough. Folk gave me compliments. I was a pretty little thing at her age."
"Before the midnight bell, you said?" I looked around the little room. "Did you go out, at all?"
"I might have done." The mot was looking down now. "You know, to talk with friends."
"So they were outside, your friends. With their little ones?"
"The older ones were up."
"There was some light in the sky, then." I could see a little sweat on her face now. There was no sign anywhere of a child's toys or bed, though the gixie was gone just recent. A near-new coverlet lay on the bed, and the mot wore a necklace with earrings that matched. "Around twilight, not later. She might have wandered off."
"No, I took her – "
The mot covered her mouth with her hands.
I finished what she'd been about to say, because now I was certain. "You took her and you sold her. The Snake didn't make the profit, mistress. You did."
She slapped me.
I slapped her back.
Aniki said, "Don't hit her again, Beka. Let me do it next time."
"Get out of my house!" the mot screamed. "Get out, you dirty trulls!"
Kora leaned toward her. "We didn't sell our child, mistress. And if I hear you have another, my eye will be on you."
Aniki smiled at her. "So will mine."
I just spat at her feet.
We talked with five other folk who'd said they'd been bit by the Snake. One cove threw us out of his house when Kora mentioned the slave market. He was red with shame. The rest did see that snake figure writ in ashes on a sheet, on a pillow, on their floors. Three whose children were taken in the last fifteen months had all paid up. They knew the Snake meant what he said. They'd heard about the others.
We had supper together at a cheap eating house. For once I had a tankard of ale to wash the taste of the work from my mouth.
"You'll catch 'im, Beka," Aniki told me. "We'll help you."
"That was a pleasure, watching you break that mot down," Kora said.
I shook my head. "I was just being Goodwin."
"If you're going to be someone else, you should be the best," Aniki said. "I'm going to be Lady Sabine."
"Is any of you goin' t' be generous?" Mother Cantwell had found us. She shook her begging bowl under our noses. "I have somethin' for the Puppy here if she'd like to share her crumbs."
In the end I bought her two meat pasties. She gave me six more pins for the map.
I was so maddened once I added Mother Cantwell's Snake attacks to my map that I did not wish to write tonight up at all. This journal keeping is harder than I expected. Mastering my thoughts demands time. There is always mending or cleaning to be done. I feel like my walls grow mold with all the pigeon scummer that collects around my window. And the mice will move in if I do not sweep up all the corn and bread crumbs and breakfast leavings every day.
Pounce will not lower himself to catch mice. He calls them "little brothers" and says he will not take other creatures' lives when he is so well fed. I threaten to starve him. I tell him this is why his mother cat threw him from her litter when he was but a kitten, because she knew he was unnatural.
All he has to do is walk forward with his whiskers pointed to me and jump on my shoulders and purr like thunder in my ear. I forgive him and find a treat for him.
Enough. I came home to put Mother Cantwell's six on my map, though I broke one of the pins when I struck it too hard out of fury. Two children returned to their families alive. One was in her teens, the oldest so far, but her mama had a gold brooch and no other children to take. The gixie had been hooded the whole time and never saw the Snake or his helpers.
"So it's that he takes the easiest, or the most lovable, or one so young the slave sellers won't buy 'em so the family wants to keep them for a time at least." I said it to Pounce and to the pigeons and their moaning ghosts on my sill, since no one else was about. Despite the dark I had my shutters open to air the smell of strong soap from my rooms. "Mayhap the Snake prefers children because he knows folk are likely to still care about their
little ones. Even if they just mean to sell them later, they'll care about any coin they might bring in."
Sensible, Pounce said. Not at all pleasant, but most sensible.
"I don't think the Snake can even spell the word 'pleasant,'" I said.
Two children were returned alive, then, because their families believed the Snake's notes. Three children of Mother's reported six were found dead. As near as I could tell, they were taken in that first year when no one believed the Snake was real. And one child was still missing.
I drew up a list of what I had on a precious sheet of paper. I can't show my journal to Tunstall and Goodwin tomorrow. They will want a written account of the names of them that was taken, the prices asked and paid for them, the home they came from, and where the child was found, if ever. I've added green wax to the pins that mark what turned out to be false reports. I made certain I wrote them down, too.
Once that was done, I settled to sewing. Aniki and Kora aren't very good at it. I'm not Diona or Lorine, but no girl raised by my lady Teodorie is bad with a needle. To thank my new friends for helping me when I was sick, I've taken over their mending. I'd begun work on my third of Aniki's shirts – does she gnaw the shoulder seams with her teeth? – when Ersken and Verene ran up my stairs.
"Dormice have a better time than you!" I heard Verene cry from below. "It's our lone day f'r fun, you're not sick, and the fan makers are havin' a dance! They love it when Dogs come!"
Ersken banged on my door. "Let's go, Beka," he called. "All the off-duty Puppies from our class will be there. You can hide behind us and still get a look at the new summer fans."
I hadn't seen most of our class since the day we ended training. We'd all promised to stay friends and talk often, but I'll wager that they're near as tired as we are when their watches are done. I wanted to see them and hear what their first two weeks were like.
Besides, maybe they'd heard of the Snake.
"Let me put on a dress," I yelled.
When I got to my feet, Pounce curled up on the mending and went to sleep.
Wednesday, April 15, 246
At day's end.
When I told my Dogs about Snake seeking, after muster, and showed them my list, they demanded to see the map on my wall. Goodwin stared at it for the longest time, while Tunstall read the list. I had made some changes to it after breakfast this morning. Phelan gave me three more additions, Rosto two. It's getting so my belly knots with each new pin.
I opened my shutters to let in as much of what remained of the sun as possible, as well as lit my lamps. Of course the pigeons came to see if I had aught for them. I swear they keep a watch on my place. I laid out bread for them but kept an eye on my Dogs.
"What's this scratched out?" Tunstall asked, pointing to the list.
"Kora found out last night the lad was taken, but it was his father's people," I said. "He and his papa are with the Bazhir. Seemingly they want none of their blood raised outside their tents. So I crossed him off."
"Ah." Tunstall passed the paper to Goodwin.
She asked, "What are these red spirals on the map?"
"Dust spinners," I said. My hands were damp with sweat. "I thought I should mark them down."
Goodwin stood aside to let Tunstall look closer at the map. She read my list. Behind me a pigeon cried of her wedding day being near. She didn't see how she could have gone walking home one night and never got there. My guess was that whoever killed her caught her from behind.
Go away, I thought to her as I watched my Dogs. I can only think of one or two things at a time. Crookshank's people are out there to hire more diggers, if they're not hired already. That's one thing. The Shadow Snake is two.
When I dreamed of being a Dog, I never believed this would be my fate. I never believed there might just be too many hurt by bad folk for me to seek.
"One at a time, Beka," my lord told me once. "We hobble them one at a time, like all mortals do."
"My lord does it this way for cases that reach across the realm," Tunstall said, poking the map with his thumb. "We've seen these maps in his study, right, Clary? And we told Ahuda we could use maps like this. We're all taught the memory tricks, to keep news straight in our own minds." He was thinking aloud. "But for something as twisty as the Snake case, going back three years with no one keeping track...This could show a pattern. Mayhap use pins to mark where the payment is left. He likes shrines. Plenty of folk coming in and out, priests serving from the temples, not living there. He knows the shrines well, the Snake."
I can get white wax to mark the shrines. I never realized the places where the Snake collected the payment might be important. I've just been looking at who gets taken and where they're taken from.
"Cooper, did you ever think this might offend us?" Goodwin asked. "That we'd think you are trying to teach us our jobs?"
My tripes turned to water. It was one of those gooseflesh moments. I'd feared only that they might laugh at my map. I never meant to anger them!
I stammered a lot of things. I think I mentioned seeing maps at my lord's house. Mayhap I said my friends go everywhere. I'm sure I said I never meant it to look like I thought I knew better than the likes of Goodwin and Tunstall.
Goodwin sighed. "Cooper, you're eager, and you're quick-witted. You did this because my lord does it. We've been in his house, so we know that. And it's as well for you that you told us about this. But it's one thing to know aught in your head, and another to know it from the street. There's Dogs with clouds for brains that can sniff out a robber because they learned to on the street. And they're the ones as will bite your arm off if you go poking around – as they would see it – behind their backs."
"But it's a fine idea," Tunstall said. "And you do have Birdies, feathered and human. Most Puppies don't. Most Puppies don't live with three young folk on the rise in the Court of the Rogue, either."
"Do us paper sketches of the map," Goodwin said. "With the markings." She gave me a silver noble. "That should pay for paper for a while. Let me know when you run out. Report to us each day. For your day off we'll give you our maps so you can mark them current. And remember, you're a Puppy. Gather word only. All information comes to us."
I was so relieved I could but nod. The hardest part of Dog work for me – apart from not getting my head kicked in – is knowing how folk will bounce. I wish I could see or hear what people think. Mayhap then I'd never step wrong. This time I'd got lucky, thank the Goddess. Next time, maybe not.
"Now, these dust spinners of yours. Tunstall saw you talk to one," Goodwin said. "I want to see it, too. Is there anything that prevents you from taking us to one now?"
Of course there wasn't. I rushed to close the shutters and to collect some of the street dirt I brought to my spinners as presents.
"But we're on Nightmarket, Clary," Tunstall said.
"Nightmarket can wait for an hour," she told him.
I blessed Granny Fern. I'd stepped on the edge of thin ice. Gods alone knew how deep I might've sunk if I'd put off telling my Dogs what I was doing for much longer. It really would have looked like I meant to go behind their backs if I'd done so in a couple of weeks or a month.
Off we went to visit Hasfush. Without the burden of nine dead people screaming within him, he had shrunk to just five feet tall. As the sun faded, there was barely enough light to show him up. My Dogs didn't see him until I pointed out the small, upside-down cone of stirred air that was his foot at the corner of Stormwing and Charry Orchard.
I stepped inside his circle and released the gift of dirt I'd brought for him. Instantly Hasfush filled my ears with several days' worth of gabble. I apologized in whispers for not coming around sooner. It's hard to explain work to a creature that just exists without needing coin to live on or aught to do with himself.
When he'd forgiven me, he let go of all he'd picked up. I heard songs, fights, whingeing, laughter, baby wails and giggles, whispers. Somehow bird and dog noises and the clop of horses' hooves never stick to spinners. Nature
's sounds just fall away from their winds. I hear every bit of human cackle, though. I sorted it as I always had, ignoring what was too blurred or nonsensical to work through. There was nothing about the Shadow Snake there, nothing. And nothing about fresh diggers hired for wells in the Lower City.
There was something of importance, though. I walked out of Hasfush to say, "A dancer was murdered just a bit ago on Emerald Street, over in Flash District. Him as did it still has got her blood on him and her bells in his pocket. From what he told his friends in the Daymarket, he's coming this way. He's bound for the Court of the Rogue."
Tunstall and Goodwin hesitated, looking at each other.
Pounce, on patrol with us as ever, scolded, You either believe her or you don't. Decide!
I don't know if they understood him. But Tunstall put his whistle to his lips. He blew the call for two more pairs of Dogs and one of the four-legged kind. Phelan and his partner were the soonest to arrive, with their scent hound Achoo. They'd named her for her habit of sneezing when she got a scent. Achoo was a pert, medium height mongrel with tight-curled fur, amber in color. It was said that button-eyed Achoo's nose was so keen she could track a mouse in a flooded sewer.
Achoo backed up when she saw Pounce. My cat just blinked at her, waiting. Bit by bit Achoo crept up until they touched noses. Then she sneezed, twice. Her tail began to wag. Pounce jumped back when his new friend tried to wash him.
"I've never seen the like," Phelan's partner muttered. "She ran from the last five cats she met. Since that ragged-ear tom clawed her on the nose..."
Phelan shrugged. "Pounce isn't every other cat," he said, hands dug in his breeches pockets.
"We're not even sure he's a cat," Tunstall muttered to Goodwin. "I say he's a god, shape-changed."
Pounce meowed, Do I look as stupid as a god to you?
Tunstall turned his head to give Pounce an owl-like blink. For a moment I feared Tunstall had understood my dreadful cat.
"This is sweet, but Springbrook and Evermore had best arrive soon," Goodwin said, her voice cold. "If they're canoodling on watch again, Ahuda's going to hear about it. They should have come before Achoo, shouldn't they, girl? Since you and your handlers came from farther off?"
Beka Cooper 1 - Terrier Page 23
