Bloodhound

by Tamora Pierce

  "Most citywomen don't jam knees into a cove's cod." Rosto spoke seriously, but his black eyes were laughing.

  Tansy shook her head, blushing fiercely. "You don't understand," she said. "I've worked so hard to give our business an honest name! Dealing in coles – it would be the ruin of me and my whole family, if word got about. No one would buy from us! We'd lose everything!"

  "And there's being boiled in oil, if they think you guilty of colesmithing," Kora murmured while she played with Aniki's cat. "Or getting your hand lopped off if they just think you're passing fakes along. Why aren't you in the cages?"

  "I bribed the baker, of course," Tansy said, and sniffed. I took out one of the handkerchiefs she tucked in her clothes and put it in her hand. "He called off his guard when I wouldn't stop crying... And he said he's had two other good customers come in with false coins. Silver, all of them." She blew her nose. "He let me go, but folk were laughing, and that rusher who worked for him said such a thing to me!"

  "I'll send a cove around to have a word," Rosto said. "Don't you worry about that, love."

  "Try not to make it a matter for the Dogs," Ersken told him. "Friendly is always best."

  Rosto gave Ersken a grin that was all teeth. "I'm the friendliest cove around, Westover," he said. "Ask anyone."

  "Living," Aniki murmured.

  Rosto glanced at her. "Well, it's Beka you ask if you want to talk to the dead ones, isn't it?" he inquired, all innocent-like.

  Fuzzball attacked my fingers. I let him do it, as I was thinking. This baker, Garnett, had seen three customers lately with false silver coins? Respectable folk at that. Tansy's grandfather-in-law had been the Lower City's worst scale and landlord, but since his death Tansy, her husband, and her mother-in-law had gotten rid of the old man's crooked businesses. They'd lost a great deal of money to get straight with the law.

  I'd bet a copper of my own that these three false silver cases Tansy mentioned aren't the only ones, not if a baker is hiring guards. How many silver coins does a baker see in a day? Most folk buy with coppers, unless they shop for a group, or a big household.

  "It's not you that's behind this, is it?" Tansy asked Rosto. "Because it would be wrong, very wrong! I don't care if you are the Rogue, I'll speak my mind! You can't meddle with people's livelihood, Rosto! Silver coles hurt us all. If a silver noble won't buy what it's supposed to – "

  "Will you hush?" Rosto asked, slapping the table. "Mithros's sack, woman!"

  Tansy went silent, but she was breathing hard.

  "You should learn from Beka," Rosto said. "She says her bit and then waits for a cove to answer. No, I've no hand in these fakes. If you'd a whit of sense, you'd know it. Coles hit the Court of the Rogue even harder than they hit the merchants. You make a bit of coin at first, but if the price of silver goes down, it goes down for all. We'd be cutting our own throats to deal in coles."

  Tansy sniffed and blew her nose again. Even as a little girl she would never admit she let her tongue run away with her. "Then you'll keep an eye out?" she asked Rosto. "Afore there's folk begging in the street this winter?"

  Ersken and I both sat up. "Hear now!" I said. "Catching colesmiths is Dog business!"

  Tansy made a rude noise. "This is serious, Beka," she said. "This is money. Were it a killer, I'd come to you two, of course I would. But Garnett's hired guards. He's afraid he'll be arrested for counterfeit passing, at the least. He's so fearful he's willing to risk offending good customers. That's more than Lower City Dogs can manage, unless maybe it's Goodwin and Tunstall. And you haven't got them, only old flat-footed Silsbee."

  "She hasn't got him, either," Aniki said with a smirk.

  That distracted Tansy from money, sure enough. She turned to gawp at me, then rolled her eyes. "Mother's milk, Beka, what happened this time? Did you kill him?"

  I got up and left, Pounce at my side. So much for hoping Tansy would stand by me. She was more worried about her purse than her oldest friend.

  No more can I blame her, despite my stung feelings. She's come a long way from Mutt Piddle Lane, where we both once lived. To be accused of passing false money like a common street mot would have skewered her deeper than any sword. And coles in the marketplace meant her silver that she worked so hard for might not be worth the value stamped on it. She'd be smelling Mutt Piddle Lane just outside her door, if I knew Tansy. Goddess knows I would.

  As I climbed the stairs to my garret rooms, I told myself that Goodwin and Tunstall would be glad to take me back. Though I curse when I don't succeed with a new partner, I do like going out with my old ones. We find Rats, and we cage them. Not one- and two-copper Rats, but big ones. Each time Ahuda puts me with Tunstall and Goodwin, I can hear the Lower City's Rats groan.

  Inside my rooms, I collected my pack, putting bags of cracked corn and bread pieces in it. I made sure it also held my pouches of dirt from all over Corus. I was still thinking about Goodwin and Tunstall as I locked up again. It would be different if one of them took a promotion to Sergeant, like both of them have been offered. Goodwin's a Corporal, Tunstall's a Senior Dog who's turned down promotion to Corporal because he hates the extra writing. I'd happily pair with either of them. But they've been partnered as street Dogs for years. They don't even have to talk, most of the time, they know each other's minds so well. I'd like to have my own partner like that.

  Have faith that the gods know what they are doing with your life, Pounce said, following me down the stairs.

  I don't want the gods meddling with my life, I told him silently as we walked out into the street again. I want to do it myself. Gods are trouble.

  You don't have a choice, Pounce said.

  I don't like the sound of that. I don't like it at all. I can manage on my own, tell them that! I said, glaring at him. And you never mentioned anything like this before!

  I thought it would cheer you up, Pounce said.

  I began to trot, not to escape Pounce so much as to get away from what he was hinting at. I've accepted for five year gone that Pounce is magic. Kora was the one who first told me he was a constellation, as close to a god as makes no difference. But he's never spoken of the gods in my life before, and I wish he hadn't. Look at all the folk who have had the gods muck with their lives, folk like Jehane the Warrior, that was burned alive, or Tomore the Righteous, beggared and beheaded, or Badika of the Blazing Axe, who drove off the Carthakis, only to be torn apart in one of their arenas! It never goes well for the god-chosen! Pounce can just tell the gods to leave me be.

  Pounce and I got to Glassman Square, where one of my flocks of pigeons was waiting for us, as they do every day. We settled there, me to feed them, Pounce to watch. Slapper was the first to land on me, as ever. I think old Slapper is a high priest among the pigeons, the way he commands the others, here and elsewhere in the city. His blue-black feathers were wet and gleaming today. He must've come straight from a bath in the square's fountain.

  I steadied his clubfoot with my hand, not looking him in his staring yellow eyes. He's got tiny, tiny pupils. No one ever thinks of pigeons as mad, but I think Slapper has carried so many ghosts that he's cracked in the nob with it. He'll hit me as soon as look at me, for all I feed him corn and wrap warm cloths around his clubfoot in cold weather. Ungrateful feather duster. Now there's one that's god-touched.

  I gathered the complaints of the dead from the pigeons while they ate. There were few ghosts complaining of their lot today. None of them said anything I could pass on as good information to my fellow Dogs. Slapper had no ghost at all. He hasn't carried one for more than a week. I wonder if he misses them, or if he is glad not to have some dead human moaning in his ear. I wonder, too, if the Black God ever asks the pigeons if they want to carry ghosts.

  On we went to see my dust spinners. For them I brought packets of dust, gravel, and dirt from other parts of town. Stuck in one place like they are, their veils of air spinning tall or small depending on the weather, they savor the taste of other places. In return they give me the bit
s of talk they've gathered since my last visit.

  They're funny creatures, spinners. I don't know how old they are. When I was small, I learned to gather conversations from Hasfush, the one I met first. I think Hasfush is the oldest of the city spinners. My Granny Fern, who taught me how to use this family magic, told me my five-times-great-grandda had listened to Hasfush.

  Today we called on Hasfush first. He was spinning short, a whirl of dust, leaves, and tiny stones that rose barely a foot into the air. It was all he could manage with the weather so hot and still. When I entered his circle, I gave him a nice packet of grit from the Daymarket. That cheered him so much that he sped up, growing and rising to my shoulders. He released all the bits of conversations he'd collected over the last week, giving them to my hearing.

  As ever, much of it was sheer nonsense, a handful of words or less. There were even pieces in a language that I think was Yamani. That was a guess. I've only heard it spoken twice.

  Then I heard, " – at this! I won eight silver nobles off the mammerin' scut, an' six of 'em is coles!" It was a cove who spoke, a whiny one.

  A mot replied to him. "So find a game and lose 'em to someone else. You want – "

  Those two voices were gone.

  The next whole bit that I heard sent goose bumps all over me.

  " – rot in the rye?" That was a mot, an old one.

  "All that rain they've had in the northeast this summer." This was a younger mot, all business. "We'll be lucky if this year's rye harvest is half what last year's was."

  "We will sell the rotten stuff. Mix it well with the good. None will notice." The old mot's voice was hard.

  "Are you mad? That stuff kills! I'll have no – "

  That mot left the old one, from the sound of her voice.

  Hasfush was empty of his week's gatherings. I ground my teeth. I would have liked the name of the mot who wished to sell rotten rye, which brings madness and death. It wasn't Hasfush's fault that the two mots had moved on, nor was it a care of his. Spinners take no interest in what comes to them on the breeze.

  I thanked him. Then Pounce and I moved on to visit two more Lower City spinners and more pigeons. Neither spinner had anything about coles. One pigeon carried a ghost who nattered about grain crops overall.

  I'd give my news to Sergeant Ahuda. The grain inspectors would get the word to check the rye, at least. Hasfush had done the city a favor. I'd add some spices to his next packet. He always likes those. I know by the way his breezes warm as they circle me.

  Troubling as the crop news was, my regular meetings with spinners and pigeons did raise my spirits some. We now had advance word on the rye, so I didn't feel so useless. And I'll get another partner. Ahuda wants me to do well. She'd assigned me to Goodwin and Tunstall in the first place. She will keep trying me on whichever Dog is partnerless until the right one turns up. And when it doesn't work out, Goodwin and Tunstall will take me back.

  It could be worse. I could have been sent to one of the other districts, which is the last thing I want. I belong in the Lower City. The Lower City needs Dogs like me, Dogs that love it for all its bad and good faces.

  Once I'd used up all my bird feed and talked to my spinners, I made my way home. I meant to do some cleaning and to write in this journal, but Tansy waited for me on the doorstep of my lodging house.

  "I'm sorry," she said before I could open my gob. "I'm sorry I didn't wait for your news. I'm sorry Silsbee is a looby and a lazy one at that." Her eyes were puffy. "Beka, I need a favor." Pounce leaped into her arms and licked her cheek. "Dearest cat, that's sweet, but it scratches. My skin looks dreadful from weeping as it is." To me she said, "Beka, please – come home and help me test my silver."

  I stared at her.

  Tansy kept her voice very quiet when she said, "Beka, Garnett cut three of my coins. I had five silver coins in my purse this morning, and two of them were false. Two of five. If the rest of my house money is like that... My man is too hotheaded – he'll talk. I trust only you to keep it secret."

  My tripes turned into a knot. I knew each soul in that household, from the baby to the kitchen maid. I knew their names, their families, even their birthdays. If Tansy's strongbox was lousy with coles, they might be lucky to live in a hut on Mutt Piddle Lane.

  So back to her house we went. We slipped in through a side door and shut ourselves in the little room Tansy uses to work on the account books. With the sounds of the busy household all around us, we took out our belt knives and sharp-stones. Tansy opened the lockboxes. Quietly we tested each and every silver coin in them with a cut down the center. We found only three more false ones, in one hundred and twelve coins, which made Tansy cry from relief.

  When she calmed down, she hugged me and thanked me. Then she fetched my godsdaughter Joy and had Cook pack up a lunch for me. The noon bells were chiming by the time I got free.

  I came home to a pitcher of red gillyflowers in front of my door. Rosto. Once I was in my rooms with the door closed behind me and Pounce, I held them up and buried my face in them. I know why Rosto did it. Whenever aught that was good or bad happened to me, he left me gillyflowers, especially red ones. Goddess knows how he managed it in the wintertime, though I suppose the Rogue could get mage-grown flowers as easy as the King.

  It's not like I can give them back, because he won't take them. Still, he knows they won't buy him favors from me.

  I'll be that glad when the Dancing Dove's finished and he's moved there. Every time I think of knocking on his door, I remember the things he's done. That just doesn't keep me from thinking that his door is only one flight of stairs down from mine.

  I've written enough for the day so far. Time to change to uniform and get my bum to training.

  Two of the morning, after watch.

  When I got to training this afternoon, Ahuda took me aside. "Silsbee's been transferred," she said in her short way. "He'll be working at the Magistrate's Court from here on. I knew he was a lazy tarse. Now I know how lazy. You're back with Goodwin and Tunstall."

  I nodded. Given my druthers, I'd druther Silsbee hadn't been lazy.

  "He had no partner, and he was next in line," Ahuda said.

  I kept my eyes on the ground. If I hadn't known Ahuda better, I could have sworn she was apologizing to me. That didn't seem possible. Ahuda is a bulldog of a woman who's better at tearing pieces out of my hide for letting my guard down.

  She thrust me into the center of the yard. "You six." She pointed to half of the Puppies. "Baton work. Form a circle around Cooper here and attack her. Show no mercy. Cooper, try not to break any of them."

  So much for apologies.

  I broke none of them, nor did I let any of them break me. This year's Pups are spirited, but slow. The work did take my mind off the jokes of the second-, third-, and fourth-year Dogs, who had heard I was partnerless again. It also helped me ignore Ersken and my other friends' arguments with them, and Ahuda's orders for everyone to shut their gobs and train.

  As we gathered for muster, the hard Dogs surrounded me – not just Goodwin and Tunstall, but Nyler Jewel, his partner Yoav, Ersken's partner Birch, and their friends. The serious Dogs of the Evening Watch. They said naught about Silsbee. Mostly they patted my back or clapped me on the shoulder. Then they cleared the way for the Day Watch to assemble for dismissal. Goodwin and Tunstall stayed with me. Goodwin propped her fists on her hips, eyeing me, making me feel like she was the tall one, when I know full well she is two inches shorter than me. Her dark eyes looked me over, top to toe. I felt scruffy next to her, though my breeches and tunic were unwrinkled, my boots brushed. Tunstall, his head someplace in the air over mine, scratched his short gray and brown hair, looking more like an owl than ever.

  Finally Goodwin said, "We have to do something about this. There must be someone in the Lower City who isn't a waste of your time."

  Tunstall said, "I hope you have some tattle from your Birdies, Cooper. With half the folk out of the city working the harvest, it's quiet as the grave.
I'm bored." He patted a bicep that strained his tunic sleeve. "I'm getting flabby."

  I shook my head and told them, "There's naught of use from my Birdies. A gambler got coles in his winnings, but I've no way to track him. I do have this from Tansy." I took out the false coin I had persuaded her to give me and handed it to Tunstall. He looked it over, then passed it to Goodwin. I told them about Tansy's morning at Baker Garnett's.

  I'd just finished when the Day Watch cleared the room, and we took our places in the ranks. Once Ahuda sent us out on duty, we went into the courtyard. Instead of moving on into the street, though, Goodwin signed to Jewel and Yoav Goodwin showed them the coin and had me tell the tale all over again.

  Jewel rubbed his chin. "I was startin' to tell Goodwin and Tunstall that Flash kennel brung down a dice game on our court night. Two river dodgers as was gamblin' there had a fistful of false silver. One of 'em got away. One of 'em tripped and fell in his cage and broke his neck."

  Tunstall spat in the dust. Goodwin kicked him. "Hill barbarian," she said. "Hasn't Lady Sabine cured you of that?"

  Tunstall grinned. "She doesn't try to change me. That's why we're still walking out."

  Yoav opened her mouth, doubtless to make a joke about walking not being what they were doing. She caught Tunstall's look and closed her gob again. Folk can say whatever they like about Tunstall. He'll just blink those sleepy brown eyes. Say one word about my lady Sabine, and he'll put a hand of iron around your throat. My lady may not care that folk joke about her bedding a common Dog, but the Dog cares very much.

  "Where was this river dodger?" Tunstall asked Jewel. "Kennel cages or Outwalls Prison?"

  "Kennel," Yoav said. "Does it make a difference? Cage Dogs turn their backs on their mothers' murder if they're paid enough."