Bloodhound

by Tamora Pierce

  Achoo and I began to run, dodging tables, chairs, and bodies. The two Dogs dashed outside. I fell once as a rusher on the floor grabbed my foot. I kicked him in the face, struggled to my knees, and caught up with Achoo. She had beaten me to the dead bird. She nosed it, whimpering.

  Slapper lay over the court's threshold. The blade that had cut him was dreadful sharp, slicing him crossways. Doubtless he never felt a thing, I told myself.

  I pushed his pieces together with hands that shook, not thinking of his blood on me. Wouldn't the Black God mend such a good servant? He must be able to.

  Mayhap the god wants to give him a rest, Slapper working so hard for him while he was alive.

  And Hanse – he would be gone. I'd never known a spirit to return if sommat happened to his bird. I did look, both times it had happened before. My guess is that the Black God takes them, whether their business is finished or no.

  Time was passing.

  Achoo whined. Her head was up, her nostrils were wide. She had a scent. She wanted to follow it.

  I wiped my hands on my breeches and took two of Slapper's feathers, being as he won't need them anymore. I slid them over my shoulder, into my pack. And I remembered that picture, the two people walking through the open doors in stolen uniform tunics, the bird on the attack, and Jurji.

  "Achoo, ban," I told her, pointing to the ground beside the door where Jurji had stood. His footprints were clear in the soft dirt there. Achoo sniffed it and the frame of the door, where a bit of cloth was caught in the splintered frame. She sneezed once, then went back into the court, tracking Jurji and, most like, the two in the stolen uniforms, back to where they'd hid themselves in the crowd.

  I gathered up Slapper's poor body and carried it over to a small patch of grass. It bore a spindly tree. I placed him there, so what was left of him might return to the Goddess's good earth. He deserved better, but I had no time. I wiped my hands as clean of the rest of his blood as I could on the grass.

  Inside, Achoo had circled back to the door. She was about to go outside, still on her scent, when I told her, "Berhenti." She looked at me, whining, and sneezed again. She didn't want to hear "stop" from me. I knew how she felt.

  I looked around. My lord, Nestor, and Goodwin were nowhere in view. They must have gone off to look at something else in the court. I was scared that Achoo might lose the scent. Then I remembered that Goodwin still had her Dog tag for me.

  I grabbed Ersken, who was standing guard over a clutch of hobbled, seated Rats. "I'm off with Achoo – we're tracking Jurji, one of Pearl's bodyguards," I said. "Tell Goodwin I need her to find me. She knows how. I don't dare let the trail get cold." I didn't mention the two in disguise, in case they were only minor Rats.

  Ersken scratched his chin. "Beka, maybe you should wait," he said, worried.

  "He killed Slapper," I said, swallowing a lump in my throat.

  Ersken's kind face went hard. "I'll find Goodwin and tell her. But how will she find you? She's no mage!"

  "But she has a magic thing. She'll explain, maybe," I said.

  Ersken clapped me on the shoulder and went looking for Goodwin. I returned to Achoo.

  "Menean, Achoo," I said. I should have told my seniors myself, but the trail was getting cold. And I confess, my heart was filled with rage. I wanted Jurji and whoever ran with him.

  Achoo took off down the street. I drew my baton and followed at a careful trot, keeping her in view.

  Jurji's scent took us down to the Riverside docks. Once there, we tracked it north, along the line of the warehouses. Folk saw us and turned their backs. I did not want to risk losing Achoo by stopping to ask anyone if they had seen our prey. She kept the scent in her nose and did not halt. The dock area ended by the breakwater, near a swampy mass of inlets. It was ground that was too wet for buildings. Achoo did not act as if she'd lost the trail because our prey had taken one of the little boats here. She trotted into a small gully that took us out of view of the docks and those who worked them. She stopped at the gully's bottom. Two uniform tunics lay there in a pile. Achoo snuffled them eagerly, then sneezed several times. Now she had not only Jurji's scent, but that of his companions. I bundled the tunics up and strapped them to the top of my pack.

  Footprints led from the tunics up the soft earth on the other side of the gully. Achoo scrambled to the top easily. I tried to follow, with less success. I began to slide back down again. Achoo grabbed me by the sleeve, digging in on the level ground as I clawed for purchase with my feet and hands. When I reached the top, I fished in the front of my pack for some dried meat strips. Achoo did not seem to object to the wet earth that clung to them from my hands. She gobbled them.

  "When this is done, I am putting a feast before you," I promised her. Once I gave her a drink from my palm and had my own drink of water from my flask, we got moving again. I fumbled out a handkerchief and wiped my hands and knees as well as I could while trotting forward. It did little good. Sadly, it was the only handkerchief I had, and Achoo was headed straight into one of the giant sewer openings that emptied out down here.

  I followed. Of course these Rats would take to the sewers.

  I'd have thought the stench would kill Achoo, but she never faltered. She seemed to know I could not run as fast as she did. Some light came down through grates high above, but Achoo understood I could not see as well as she could. She always managed to stop just at the edge of my sight, or just as my legs were getting tired. I began to feel bad for her, kept so much of her life to the slow pace of human living. She was clearly happy going at a trot with her nose in the air, all of her senses alive. I also realized how stupid I was, to leave alone like this. With more of us, one could always keep pace with Achoo while the others halted to rest, then caught up. For now, to my sorrow, it was impossible to mend my folly, only to pray Goodwin found me soon. The scent was in the air, Achoo had it, and I was bound to stay with her.

  I don't know how long we were down there. From time to time Achoo would turn and turn, sniffing. There were other scents to confuse her. Did she have Jurji and those who were with him now? I stood well back, letting the hound decide. What would I do if she lost the scent this time?

  But Achoo always sneezed twice or thrice and started forward again, her body purposeful. Once she was certain, she didn't waiver. I had to make her stop for water or a bite to eat. She obeyed, but she was restless. As clear as if she spoke to me, she was saying, "Very well, I know you want to keep my strength up, but scent fades, you know!"

  And I'd say, "I know, girl, but you're what I have, and I'm going to take care of you."

  Four times we met other folk. All of them looked at my uniform, my baton, and the hound. Then I would stare at them until they scurried away.

  Finally Achoo did not halt at an entry. She turned and raced up a very long stair, so long I had to stop twice to rest. I was breathless again when she halted at the top. There was a grate in the way. I came ahead and thrust it up. Slowly the iron thing moved. My shoulders groaned as I thrust it higher. Achoo passed under it into the open air. I managed to get myself out then, and let the grate down quietly.

  It was late afternoon. The air was chill and clinging, filled with the sound of great, ringing bells. They were too slow to be fire alarms. Was it some religious festival? Neither of us cared.

  We stood, panting, in a fountain courtyard. A maidservant, looking out a window, closed her shutters promptly. A couple of servants passing by saw us and rushed into another house. The place was deserted then. Achoo drank from the fountain while I refilled my flask. She cast around for her scent, sneezed in a way that was starting to comfort me, and trotted into the street.

  Following her, I glanced around, trying to see where we might be on the maps of Port Caynn I had studied. Below us on the foot of the hillside lay the river docks where we'd begun this hunt. "No wonder those stairs were so sarden long," I muttered to Achoo. We were halfway up the southern side of the ridge, ten blocks or so below High Street and five or six block
s southwest of Guards House. Seemingly Jurji and his two friends were avoiding it. I was grateful for that. I didn't want to get caught up in whatever mess was unfolding there.

  Achoo stopped in front of a town house. The torch over the front door wasn't burning. We went around to the back of the house. It too was locked tight. I cursed myself for ten kinds of fool. Mayhap the place was stuffed with Rats. Looby Beka, bringing no one else to help, and her whistle somewhere on the ground of Nightmarket!

  Achoo whined and scratched at the door. That was that. I could not let her lose a good scent.

  I hammered at the rear door with the end of my baton. "Open, in the King's name!" I cried. "Open!" Goddess, please let Goodwin get here soon, mayhap even now, I thought.

  "Go away!" someone cried.

  "Open, in the King's name!" I shouted, getting angry. It was a burning offense to invoke the King's name if I wasn't a guard. Everyone knew that. I hammered and hammered as windows opened all around us and the householder's neighbors began to yell. I moved to the side of the door, where I would not be visible when it opened.

  Suddenly a cove flung the rear door wide. He thrust out with a short sword that would have skewered me, had I still been in front of it. I seized the hand on the sword hilt, slamming my baton down on the forearm just above my grip. Bone crunched. I dragged the cove forward and slammed my knee into his belly, then sent him sprawling into the kitchen yard. The manservant behind him went the same way, though instead of breaking his wrist I cracked his skull. Achoo and I darted inside. I slammed the door shut, thrust the bolts to, and glared at the three servants – a man, a maid, a thin cook – who stood there staring at me.

  "Who's next?" I asked them. Achoo seized the cook by the wrist, though her teeth barely dimpled the mot's skin.

  "There's no one else," the cook whispered. Achoo growled fiercely around her mouthful. "Just us and Master and his man." She pointed to the door. It seemed I'd locked those two out.

  "You had visitors not too long ago," I said. I smelled ham, and fresh-baked bread. They sat on a table. I cut slices from the ham and chopped them into strips for Achoo. "Achoo, biarlah." She released the cook and came to eat what I'd cut up for her. I went to cut more for myself, but the maid had already done so, and sliced bread for me. I winced – I never should have let one of them pick up a sharp knife – and put my back to the wall as I looked at them. "Visitors," I repeated, as they all blinked at me. "Three of them, one a Bazhir. Like as not they smelled much like I do."

  "Master didn't want them here," the maid said. "He said he were done workin' for them."

  The manservant tried to signal her to be quiet. I pointed my baton at him. "I'm after colemongers. Unless you want to end up on the list of them that's involved, you'll stay out of this," I warned him. The manservant shrank back.

  "He said she'd ruin him. The Bazhir wanted to cut the master, but the mot said they didn't want to leave no blood trail," the maid told me. "She ordered the master to empty his coin box of gold and she'd go."

  "She?" I asked. "They had a mot with them?"

  The cook laughed. "Ye don't know who ye're chasin', wench? Then ye'd best draw off now, afore ye're gutted. Pearl Skinner don't like Dogs as try t'bite her."

  Pearl was with Jurji? But she'd escaped the dais, through one of the hidden doors, or the back way, in all the confusion! I'd gone for Jurji and his friends to avenge Slapper.

  Well, now I had more than I thought. I'd best snap to.

  "Did she say where she was going?" I asked.

  All three shook their heads. They looked nervously at the door. The master and his servant were hammering there, demanding to be let in. "But they didn't go out on the street," the cook said. "If you go out the side, there's a passage, like, between the houses, covered over so folk can visit the High Street markets in the rain. I'll show you."

  First I bundled up the food they'd given me in a cloth. Then I let the cook take me to the side door. She played me no tricks. I hoped for their sake that their master wasn't part of the colemongering. They seemed like honest enough folk.

  Achoo cast around at the doorstep of the side entrance, running scents through her snuffling nose. I offered her the bundle of discarded tunics from the gully, but she ignored them. She ventured a few steps past the door and sneezed heartily, her tail a-wag. Then she was off into the passage. For some reason it was getting dark early. What light we had came through arches that looked into other houses on this part of the ridge. Some houses were lit up for company, while others at least had torches in the kitchen yards.

  I could see the end of the passage on High Street and was thanking the gods, the climb from the house being a steep one, when I tripped and went tumbling. I'd fallen over a length of wood. I was getting up when a boot caught me in the ribs and knocked me onto my back. When it came down, heel first, to smash my chest in, I rolled to the side and scrambled upright.

  Two rushers and Torcall Jupp stood there. Jupp held Achoo by her collar, forcing her back on her heels so she could not lunge. He twisted her collar so she could not bite. It was the blond rusher who had kicked me. "Hardly a challenge, this," he said, showing me a gape-toothed grin. "She's all winded and tired after a day of runnin' about."

  He moved to my right, a cudgel in his hand. The other rusher slid to my left. He was armed with a long knife.

  "She don't look worth our trouble or pay," that one said. "Certainly not worth Master Jupp's time."

  I drew a boot knife with my left hand, my baton with my right, as I tried to decide which of them would lunge first. It was hard to guess in such bad light. The one I feared most was Jupp, standing in the shadows, my hound's life in his grip. He was the one with a longsword and dagger.

  The one on my right swung his cudgel, going for my baton hand. The one on my left lunged in. I darted away from the cudgel and back from the knife, slamming my baton down on the knife cove's shoulder. Behind him Jupp had moved two steps to my left.

  The knife man cried out suddenly, gaping at the ceiling. He shuddered, dropping his blade. He shouldn't have done that, him being left-handed and me striking his left shoulder. He began to fold at the knees, clutching the air as Jupp stepped away from him.

  Achoo, suddenly free, darted at the blond cove, snarling. She ripped at his tunic and jumped away before he struck her. As the cove turned, forgetting me to watch Achoo, I leaped forward and smashed my baton on his skull. He staggered, but he was still on his feet. I smashed him backhanded, across the temple, and he went down. I turned to face Jupp. He was calmly wiping his sword blade on the knife cove's tunic.

  "I would have killed that one for you, too, had you given me a moment," he said, not looking at me. "I was trying to spare you the added exertion."

  "What?" I asked him, panting. I felt plain addled. "What?"

  "I was entirely prepared to kill both of them for you," he repeated. "I have had enough of Pearl's disasters."

  I leaned on my knees, still panting. "Very convenient your timing is, Master Jupp."

  "I wished to live beyond my departure from Pearl's service," he told me. "Now that she has other things to keep her busy, I believe I may escape with my life. That wasn't possible before."

  I straightened up. "What's say I hobble you and take you before my Lord Provost? Mayhap he'll give you your life, too, once you've coughed up all you know."

  He smiled at me. He actually smiled. "My dear, do you truly think you could hobble me all on your own? There are no other Dogs within earshot."

  "Pox," I muttered.

  He nodded. "Pox indeed. Besides, I have something you will want very much."

  I snorted. "Not likely."

  Jupp dipped two fingers in his purse and came up with sommat small between them. He moved into a patch of light so I could see better. It looked like a tooth, but it had more of a shimmer to it. Then I realized what it was that he held. I stared up at him, startled.

  He smiled. "Just so. She will not give up sticky sweets, though the mage warns her
and warns her. She lost this only two days ago, and though we searched for it, we could not find it." He turned it over in his fingers. "I am told that magicked things like this are best of all for scent hounds. It is as if the magic that went to fix it in place takes on the owner's scent, and keeps it."

  I sighed. "How long have you been planning this?"

  "Since you and your partner came." He smiled sidelong. "Perhaps others believed your tale. I could not help but wonder why two such clever girls had been sent here for such silly reasons. It was only a matter of time until the counterfeiting scheme was revealed. I thought that you might be the advance guard of the law. And I was right." Jupp dropped the tooth into my hand.

  "Since you're being so helpful," I said, "where's Pearl got to?" I held the tooth down for Achoo to sniff, which started a storm of sneezes.

  He shook his head. "My dear, do you think she told me? I believe she suspected that, unlike Jurji, my loyalties were not what they could be. That is why she left me with these two dolts and orders to kill you. After that, she said, I am on my own. Were I Pearl, I would try to take ship away from Tortall, but were I the Lord Provost, I would have the ships watched."

  I nodded. Achoo was squirming and wagging her tail, running up the passage. As plain as if she spoke Common, she was telling me it was time to move.

  I looked at Jupp. "I see you again, I hobble you," I warned.

  "That is fair," he replied, and bowed.

  "Thanks for the help," I said awkwardly. "And the tooth."

  He grinned. It made him look ten years younger. "The pleasure was mine. Pearl has backhanded me on a number of occasions. Lately she has paid me with purses full of coles. This is how I express gratitude. Good hunting, young bloodhound."

  He stepped into the shadows and left. I checked the other two rushers, not wanting them to rise and come after me. They were dead.

  I took a breath. "Goddess, but I'm weary," I muttered. Achoo said, "Wuff!" softly, as if she knew we must be careful of other enemies, but she had to make me move along.