Bloodhound

by Tamora Pierce

  I let Achoo sniff the tooth again, which gave her another sneezing fit. I was beginning to worry when she stopped. With a sigh of relief I tucked the thing in the pocket where I kept my fire opal. "Very well. Achoo, maji" I said.

  The skies were darker, the air colder as we went on. The bells were still ringing in a steady, one-two pace. They sounded as if they were down by the harbors, river and sea, filling the air with ill omens.

  On this steep curve in the ridge, the passage was no longer smooth. Steps were built into it to help servants and their masters to reach High Street without sliding downhill in wintertime. And there, on High Street, the passage ended.

  Achoo's trail did not. She turned left, away from Guards House, and wove through the carts and horses on the street. Traffic was thin for late afternoon. Checking the faces of the passersby, the way they looked at me and cleared out of the way, I understood. If Port Caynn was anything like Corus, the law-fearing folk were behind locked doors and shutters, awaiting the outcome of the day's strange events. Word traveled through the city with every mumper and peddler. No cityman or mot would be out tonight, not with Dogs in pursuit of the Rogue herself, and Rats and Dogs fighting in the alleys and squares. I glanced back at Guards House. There was a force of Dogs armed for trouble at the gate. If only I could leave word with them, I thought, but I knew it would be no simple matter. I would waste time convincing them of the importance of a junior Dog's message, and I did not have that time.

  Achoo whuffed quietly from the mouth of a narrow alley to my right. "Coming, my lady," I muttered, but I had to smile as I trotted to keep up with her. She was a very polite hound. "You must have gotten those manners from Phelan," I told her as she led the way. "Never from that last brute that had you."

  Now I saw the cause of the early nightfall as Achoo led me sideways and down from the top of the ridge, toward the deep harbor part of the city. Half of the land basin on that side and all of the sea were under fog. Soon all of Port Caynn would be covered in it.

  I asked Achoo quietly, "How far ahead of us is she, do you think? She was mayhap a quarter of an hour ahead down in the gully. Jupp slowed us, what, another half hour? We lost time at that house, but so too did she. Mayhap she has half an hour's lead on us. Mayhap we can eat up some of that if I pick up my pace." I did, too, ignoring my weary legs. I could rest for days if I nabbed Pearl.

  Achoo led the way over a small bridge. I caught up to her as she went to the water's edge for a quick drink. Then she moved along the stream, following it downhill. "Aren't Pearl and Jurji getting tired?" I asked her. She huffed in reply.

  We were twelve blocks deep into the moneyed district behind Guards House when Achoo came to a halt at a gated courtyard. She whined, looked at me and wagged her tail, and whined again.

  Pearl had come this way. Danger might stand behind the closed gate, yet... Achoo said this was the path to follow. I switched my baton to my left hand and slid my back-of-the-neck knife from its sheath. With it in my hand, I used two fingers to raise the latch and pushed the gate open with my foot. Achoo darted inside and whuffed that all was safe for me beyond. I followed, listening and trying to see in the gray light. Then I took a breath. There was plenty to smell for us both. It would have been worse for Achoo, but it was no treat for me, that copper stink of blood, scummer, and piss. The dead were here. I closed the gate behind me.

  Inside a shelter where guards could stay out of the rain, Achoo stood at the edge of the pooled blood around two dead coves in livery. One had bought passage to the Peaceful Realms with a neck slash from a very sharp blade, the kind of slash that would hack a pigeon in two. I almost missed the death sign on the other cove, until I saw the blood that ran from his ear. I crouched to inspect the wound. At a guess, I'd say that someone very knowing in the ways of murder shoved a thin blade into the cove's ear all the way to his brain. He looked startled.

  "Pox and murrain," I whispered. "Boiling oil's too fast for any of them." I holstered my baton, stuck my knife in my belt, and rubbed Achoo's ears. "Mencari," I whispered.

  She led me through the open front door and we walked past the first body inside the house, a manservant. Two mots in the kitchen had died, like the manservant, of slashes from Jurji's curst sharp sword. The mot upstairs in a bedroom had a broken neck.

  We found the answer to why Pearl had come here, or enough to guess with, in a room that must have been the study upstairs. We also found a dead young mot and a dead little gixie as well as the master, slumped on his desk with his throat cut.

  There was a great brass stamp on the desk, and sealing wax, and a slotted wooden case with written forms. Those in one slot were mussed, as if they'd been put back wrong. They were Special Orders for Passage from the Harbor The brass stamp was the Harbormaster's Seal.

  So Pearl had come for that, and Jurji and Zolaika made sure that no witnesses survived their visit.

  I hovered over the desk. I couldn't make up my mind. My lord should know Pearl was bound for the harbor with a pass. But getting word to him would mean finding a messenger and losing time. Going to Guards House or searching out the nearest Dog would also cost me time. Shouting in the street might bring folk to deal with me that I didn't want, or them that would fetch no help at all. Pearl's scent would get cold. She might yet escape.

  Finally I wrote a note, telling him all I knew that he could use. I sealed it, wrote his name large on it, and used one of my knives to stick it to the front gate, where folk would see it.

  Achoo had picked up the trail in the garden. She'd found a tunnel that opened in the floor of some sort of open shrine. It led down into the ground, again. I made her wait, though she wriggled and whined with impatience, then set a gardening shed on fire with a lantern I found in the stable. That would bring folk. They would find my note, and get it to Lord Gershom. The shed was a small one, nowhere near the neighboring houses. I made sure of that. It was the only thing I could think of to get attention.

  I was not thinking at my best, but there was no one I could ask. With the shed starting to burn, I returned to Achoo. Down into the tunnel we went.

  I can barely see my page. I must sleep.

  Tuesday, September 25, 247

  Ladyshearth Lodgings

  Eleven of the clock.

  being a chronicle of the events of Thursday the 20th,

  beginning around four of the afternoon of that day

  As we followed the tunnels down into the slope of the ridge, I hung on to the lantern, even if it kept one of my hands occupied. I didn't like blundering about with no light of my own. What light I found came from stinking little oil lamps kept by the mumpers who slept here. They told us that Pearl, Jurji, and Zolaika had come by. They had the bodies of their friends who'd been too slow to get out of Pearl's way to show for it.

  We stopped for food and water from my flask. Well, Achoo did. I made the mistake of looking up and seeing the hunger in the eyes of the mumpers around me. These weren't the privileged tale spinners of the Court of the Rogue, with their false sores and dislocated joints, popped into place at day's end with no harm. These were folk with faces like skulls from hunger. I gave them my food. Then I gave them what copper coin and good silver I had.

  I know it's never enough. But it's something. And it lightened the weight of my pack.

  We left them behind as we followed the scent. They didn't like to get too far from the escape hatches, they said. The trail led us downhill, I could feel it. I wished I could stick my head aboveground to see where we were, but Achoo kept moving on. Then, in a space bare of all humans, she halted at a stair that headed deeper under the ground.

  "Not the sewers again," I said. I offered her the tooth so she might check the scent. She sniffed it, sneezed four times, then trotted down those pox-rotted stairs. I whimpered like a pup and followed. My leg muscles were cramping.

  Down and down we went. How much magecraft and how many people digging and dying had it taken to build these tunnels so deep in the ground? Every time I think m
ages are a pain in my bum, I should remember that I'd be wading in scummer if it wasn't for works like these. Except, of course, that nobody ever bothered to put such tunnels in the Lower City, so I do wade in scummer there.

  The stair opened onto a large and dry sewer pipe. This one hadn't been used in a long time. It barely smelled. Reaching it, Achoo raced down the ledge along one side. I ran after her, the lantern swinging in my hand.

  The dry sewer seemed to go on forever, perhaps because I was so very tired. My legs trembled with it, my neck and back ached. My arm and leg guards weighed so much now, when they had weighed so little this morning. I fell into a walk-and-trot gait, but the walking got longer, the trotting shorter. Achoo kept falling back, whining, as if to ask what was wrong with me.

  The tunnel got harder to travel, too. There were places where the ledges had fallen in. We had to climb down into the tunnel bed and climb back up again. In one spot the roof had collapsed. We were forced to squeeze through an opening not much bigger than me. When the tunnel opened onto a real sewer, Achoo halted at a short, broad stair that led to a closed door.

  "Achoo, tunggu," I said. We sat on the ledge, sharing out the last of the water. I gave her what remained of the dried meat. I wanted to rest so badly. When I began to nod off, I yanked myself to my feet and wearily climbed the few steps to find the door was unlocked. I was not as careful as I should have been. Shifting the lantern to my free hand, I thrust the door wider still and walked through with my hound.

  A rough, gauntleted hand seized me and dragged me against an armored chest. Someone else wrested the lantern away as I fought my captors. My exhaustion had doomed us.

  "Curse you for a stubborn, idiot Pup!" Goodwin snarled as she pounded my back. "Pox and murrain on you for all the worry you have given me this last day!"

  "Good girl, good girl," I heard another familiar voice say, but Nestor wasn't talking to me. He was ruffling Achoo's fur as Achoo licked his face. Ersken thumped me more gently while Birch waited with a cup of something in one hand and a dish in the other.

  Birch put the dish on the floor. Achoo made the contents vanish in three gulps. "Goodwin," Birch said patiently, "let the mot drink this, will you? She's near dead on her feet."

  Goodwin let me go and Ersken handed me Birch's cup. I sipped. The liquid in it tasted wonderful, like some kind of spice. I drank it down, and a fire roared from my belly clean to the top of my head. I felt more awake than I had since I'd begun Dog training.

  "Gods defend us, what is that?!" I cried.

  "Something the scent hound folk told us to give you," Birch said, refilling the cup from his flask. "They use it on a long trail, when the hounds can go farther than the handler."

  "How fresh is the scent?" Goodwin wanted to know. "I ought to kick your bum for vanishing on us like that."

  "I thought I was following Jurji and his friends, only it was Pearl and Jupp with him. They disguised themselves as Dogs – must've taken tunics off the ones on the floor. Didn't Ersken tell you?" I asked as Ersken gave me a turnover stuffed with lamb.

  "I told her," Ersken said ruefully. "Then she boxed my ear and called me a curst stupid scut. I didn't even know she liked me."

  I patted him on the shoulder and looked at Goodwin. "While you were all sorting the hound teams, I heard Hanse yell. Slapper was attacking two Dogs who were leaving." I looked down. Magic drink or no, I was too weary to weep. "Jurji killed Slapper. We gave chase because I wanted to get Jurji. I only found out a little while ago that one of the false Dogs was Pearl."

  I looked at Achoo. She was slurping down a bowl of water while Nestor grinned at me. "That's a good hound you've got there," he said, "but I'm thinking it's her mistress that's the true bloodhound. And I'm curst glad Goodwin had that Dog tag, or we might never have found you."

  Goodwin held hers up. "I told you they work," she said. "Nearabout drove us mad when the Dog tag showed we were right on top of you, until we worked it out that you must be underground."

  I looked around. We stood in an empty warehouse – long empty, from the boot tracks in the dust on the floor. Someone had set torches in the wall cressets. Three sets of footprints led out from the doorway that I had used, doubtless those belonging to Pearl and Jurji. I don't know how Pearl met with a third person, but I'd wager it was the killer Zolaika. Four more sets of footprints entered the place – that would be Goodwin, Nestor, Birch, and Ersken. I looked to the door they had used as entrance and Pearl as exit.

  Achoo barked. She needed to go. We needed to go.

  "Sorry, sorry," I told her. I gobbled the turnover that Ersken had given me. Goodwin went behind me to straighten my pack.

  Nestor checked the lantern and blew it out. "Low on oil," he said. "We'll stick with torches for now."

  The others all waited, their eyes on me. Finally Nestor smiled. "Cooper, you've got the scent hound. We're your squad. You have to issue the orders."

  Mithros's spear. Three Senior Dogs and one of my year mates, yet they waited for my order. I took that pearl tooth from my pocket and held it for Achoo. She sniffed it all over and sneezed heartily thrice. We'd moved away from the tunnel door so we wouldn't stir up the footprints cast by Pearl and her companions needlessly. Now Achoo cast briefly over them, barked softly, and trotted toward the door to the outer world.

  "Yes, Your Majesty," I said, running up to open the door. "A pity you need me for this."

  We set off down the street outside the door. The air was thick with fog, muffling our footsteps. Achoo led us toward the harbor, her legs picking up speed. We trotted with her.

  The city was as quiet as I've ever seen it, save for the fog bells singing from the harbor. The fog wrapped all of us around, making us draw closer so we might see each other clear. Those folk who were on the street rushed by on their errands, shrinking away from so many Dogs in a clump. When the clocks struck the fifth hour, I started at the sudden loud noise.

  We were three blocks from the waterfront when Achoo halted at the kitchen entrance of a drinking den. She looked at me, but she made no sound. Her quarry was inside.

  I needed to make sure. Birch hand-signaled that he and Ersken would stay on the kitchen door. Goodwin, Nestor, and I went around to the front of the place to see if Achoo picked up the scent again. She circled in front of the door, snuffling, then ran back to the rear. Goodwin and Nestor stayed in front as I followed her.

  When I got to the kitchen door, Birch and Ersken settled their weapons and gear as I did. Then they looked to me for the signal.

  "Achoo, tumit," I said. I opened the kitchen door and we walked in, my two fellow Dogs behind us.

  The smells of supper met our noses, and my belly growled. A hard-worked cook turned from her hearth to glare at me. "Here, you, this ain't no walkway! Just you back on out – " Then she saw my companions and my hound, and the finger I'd put on my lips. The maids were shrinking from us, eyes wide. Their mistress was made of sterner stuff. She slapped Birch's hand when he reached for a pasty and pointed the way to the front room.

  Birch bowed. He signaled that the maids and the cook were to stand with their faces to the rear wall. He and Ersken bound their hands and mouths with strips of the muslin they used to steam puddings, then tied all three of them together by binding each pair of hands to the other. They could escape, but it would be difficult. They'd know soon enough it was easier to wait for someone to come and untie them. It was safer for us and them. We didn't know if they were Pearl's allies, and this way Pearl's friends would know they had not helped us.

  Then we entered the front room. It was a tidy place, with tables and benches for common drinkers, a tap just to my right, and curtained booths along the wall past the tap. The stairs to the upper story were on my left. Only two booths had the curtains drawn. Did they hide folk having private suppers, or a captain doing business with a runaway Rogue?

  I saw all this in the blink of an eye as I darted at the bar-keep and put my baton up close to his throat. He knew I would crush his windpipe if h
e made any sound. Two sailor coves and a doxie were eating and dicing at a table near the stairs. They started to rise, but Birch shook his head at them. Ersken tied their wrists with their sashes or belts as Birch opened the front door to Nestor and Goodwin.

  We heard a slight creak of wood. Achoo barked. Jurji leaped down the stairs and hacked at Ersken. He might have cut him in two had Achoo's warning not caused Ersken to whirl around as Jurji hit the bottom of the stairs. That turn saved Ersken from the sweep of Jurji's sword, though it did not save the cove whose mouth Ersken had been gagging. Jurji's sword cut deep into his shoulder, slashing a great vein. He screamed through the gag.

  Ersken grabbed Jurji's sword arm and hooked one of his legs from under him, throwing Jurji onto his back. That was all I could see. I was binding the barkeep's hands while Birch, Nestor, and Goodwin went for the curtained booths. I made the barkeep lie down behind his bar as I roughly bound his ankles with his own cleaning cloths. I heard fighting on the other side of the bar and I was terrified my friends were getting hurt. At last I stepped out of that small space and looked into the room.

  Jurji was trying to get to his feet, but Ersken had his sword arm up behind his back and would not let go. Jurji's longsword was still in the man he'd killed. Ersken had yanked him away from that poor cove before Jurji could free it. Then Ersken knelt on Jurji's legs, making sure Jurji couldn't move.

  The curtains in both of the closed booths had been dragged from their rings. In one booth, two sailors had their hands in the air. Birch was tying the mot's hands. In the other booth, a cove in better clothes also had his hands in the air. "I'm an honest man!" he cried. He had a thick Barzun accent. "I am here to accept a passenger with a pass that will get me out of the harbor!"

  Nestor and Goodwin stood off of the booth on either side of a tall, gray-haired woman of Goodwin's age, dressed in a man's dark tunic and leggings. It was Pearl's doxie, Zolaika, without the mask of makeup, the wigs, and the fancy clothes she always wore. She was armed with knives in both hands. Her eyes, dark brown, were locked on Nestor, who was moving in on her with his baton. She'd already cut the left side of Goodwin's face from cheekbone to chin. The blood ran, but Goodwin didn't look as if she had noticed. She swung her baton sidelong, straight at Zolaika's shoulder.