Terrier

by Tamora Pierce

  But they are not pets. They are informants. Seated at the heart of this flock, I listened for the ghost voices. The pigeons cooed and chrred deep in their throats, vying for food. Slowly, out of their sounds, the words of ghosts rose.

  “Didn’t know he’d come home so early,” a mot’s voice said. “Why’d he come home so early?”

  “These dolts never tie doon the loads right.” The cove spoke with the burr that comes from the mountain folk of the north. “Sloppy work, sloppy.”

  “I don’t like this, Gary. That looks like a slave ship. I’m right, aren’t I? You’ve been trading in slaves!” The voice was a mot’s, and frightened. Seemingly her folk belonged to the growing faction that hated slavery.

  “Mama, I’m cold. Naught looks right. Mama, they took me away. I didn’t want to go, but there was a parrot, and then I was sleepy. I want to come home!”

  A dog ran through the pigeons, scattering the flock. I cursed as Pounce took off after the dog with a yowl, swinging his claws. The dog yelped as Pounce leaped to his back and dug in. Shrieking, the dog fled the square, Pounce still attached to him.

  I broke up more rolls, waiting for the birds to return. Unless a hawk was near, they would come back. They never forgot meals. Even the city’s beggars could learn from them.

  And here they came, recovered from their fright. I tossed out small pieces as they dropped to the stones, talking to each other. As they settled, once more the dead began to speak. I looked for the pigeon who carried that small child’s soul on his back.

  “There was a little girl and a little boy with me. They was scared.” That was him. Lucky for me that after they’re dead, even the smallest baby can tell its tale with a clear voice. Perhaps, as the priests say, the soul is ageless.

  “Why did the hooded men take us, Mama? There wasn’t a parrot. They lied, and then they made me sleep. They gave me porridge with bugs in it. And – “

  The entire flock took flight. I looked up. High overhead glided a red-tailed hawk. I sighed. It would be long before the birds came back if a hawk was nearby. My gathering here was done, for today at least. But now I knew something. A very young boy had been kidnapped and held with other children. It could have been slavers. Slave taking is disliked in Corus, but it isn’t illegal. Kidnapping children without their parents’ leave is illegal, though.

  He could have been Tansy’s Rolond.

  It was near half past one by the time I’d visited all my little flocks. I had time to see Granny Fern before my watch. I helped around her house, meaning I did work and she went around after me fixing what I’d done, explaining how I did it wrong.

  We talked about Diona, Lorine, and the boys as she made us a lunch of green pancakes with sorrel and ginger, then noodles with cheese. There was even cheese for Pounce. She finished with a winter apple tart for me. “And this,” she said, handing me a parcel wrapped in reeds as I was kissing her goodbye.

  I took it unthinking before the smell reached my nose. Fish.

  “For the furball,” she said wickedly, and closed her door in my face.

  “For my furball indeed,” I muttered to Pounce as we returned to my rooms. The city’s bells were ringing three of the clock. “Today was the first day she’s given you food. Just did it to score a bit of fur off of me.”

  Pounce said, She’s a wicked old woman. I like her.

  “You would,” I said as we climbed our stairs. “You’re wicked yourself.” I let us into my two little rooms.

  Pounce only looked smug and began to wash. I got ready for practice and watch.

  Night, after duty.

  As soon as I walked into the training yard behind the kennel for baton practice, the others began to jeer. I dumped my uniform bag on the side of the yard and picked up my training baton, wishing I could sink into the beaten dirt. It would have been bad enough only to have Puppies to comment on my shame, but life isn’t that simple. Three years’ worth of Dogs were also there to talk about my smelly fate of the night before. Baton practice is demanded of Puppies and Dogs for four years of service – three for the Goddess and one extra for Great Mithros. The higher-ups figure if you survive that long, you are getting plenty of practice on the streets.

  A group of my fellows circled me, sniffing loudly, saying the fish smell lingered yet. I thought about breaking the rule about no stick work without the training mistress in the yard, but Ahuda settled that for me. She arrived unnoticed. She knocked the feet from under two of them and raised dust from the quilted jackets of two more with her split bamboo stick. Even with padding and her armed only with bamboo they would show ugly bruises – she was that good.

  “You think you wouldn’t’ve been taken last night?” she asked them. “Not even when they hit you like this?” Her baton went sideways into Hilyard’s ribs. He collided with Verene, tumbling down on top of her. “Or this?” She got a second-year Dog named Phelan in her next blow, thwacking him over the shoulders. She swept the baton so fast I never saw it move, slamming Phelan behind the knees. He yelped. We had no padding there. I winced as Phelan pitched forward.

  Quick as that she jumped over him, her baton headed straight for my gut. I blocked it, holding my baton vertical and two-handed. I jammed my knee up into her side. She wasn’t there, of course. She never is. Her baton slammed the side of my left knee. She was nice about it, though. I stumbled, but I didn’t drop.

  On she went to Ersken. She showed everyone in the yard that it wasn’t wise to laugh at someone who got taken by surprise. That afternoon I would have sold an eye to be as good as she was. I loved her. She left them with no breath to laugh.

  After, when we had washed and climbed into our uniforms, Ersken walked over and hugged me one-armed about the shoulders. I looked into his blue eyes and smiled. Ersken handled my shyness from our first day by ignoring it. He liked to hug and stand with an arm about a mot. We mots got used to it. We even treated him the same. I used to wonder how Ersken, with his soft brown curls and gentle eyes, would fare as a Dog. Then when we were called in on a riot at Out-walls Prison, he worked as hard and as tough as any of us, putting new-learned fighting skills to use. He could be strong at need.

  He didn’t need it just now. “Fishpuppy’s going to wear off, Beka,” he told me. “The first time you startle them, they’ll forget it entire. Besides, if it hadn’t been you, it would’ve been me. I went full-front in the gutter last night. I’d’ve been Slimepuppy for certain, if not for you.”

  I giggled and gave him a quick hug back, then slid free of his kind arm. I wouldn’t want anyone thinking I could not stand on my own.

  My welcome inside the kennel was as cheerful as at training. The Dogs hooted and laughed when they saw me. “Hello, Fishpuppy,” called Jewel. “Guess you’ll remember that Rats have lookouts now, eh?”

  Someone yelled, “Fish for supper, everyone?” Even Ahuda grinned as the others laughed and whistled.

  I ground my teeth and saw my Dogs. Tunstall beckoned me over. When I fell in next to him, I heard Goodwin sniff the air. I looked at the floor.

  Then she said, “A kennel is no place for a cat, Fishpuppy.”

  I asked him to stay home! Yet here he was, seated right in front of Goodwin, looking up at her with his whiskers forward in his cat smile.

  “Guardswoman, I swear I didn’t bring him.” I felt sweat trickle down my back. “I swear by the shield of Mithros – “

  Tunstall put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t call Mithros into a small matter with a cat, even a purple-eyed one, Cooper. I believe you.”

  You would not believe me if I told you the truth, I thought. You would not believe if I said a Great God might be the only one who could tell you anything about Pounce!

  Goodwin crouched and tickled my traitor cat under the chin. “You know you’re a handsome fellow, don’t you?”

  Tunstall leaned down slightly to whisper to me, “She likes cats.”

  “I heard that,” she said. Pounce leaned into her scratching hand. “What’s not to like,
small lord?” she asked him. “Discreet, clean, following your own course in life. You take commands from no one, not even Fishpuppies.”

  I winced. Pounce, the nasty thing, leaped onto Goodwin’s shoulder.

  “Well!” she said, and actually laughed. She straightened, Pounce riding her shoulder as he did mine. “It seems he’s determined to go with us.”

  He knows who to grease to get his way. This time he chose Goodwin as the one to convince that he had the right to trot along with us like the four-legged dogs some pairs took with them. I could see those dogs from the corners of my eyes. They sat and watched my cat with mild interest. None of them showed any signs that they might chase him.

  “Muster up!” bellowed Ahuda. She looked as crisp as if she hadn’t just spent the last hour thrashing us. Everyone formed ranks. “First item. No word on Crookshank’s great-grandchild from the assigned pairs on the three watches. Goodwin and Tunstall got some conversation there, including words with the grandmother and the mother. Nothing useful, but there may be more where that came from.

  “Second item. Tonight’s collection night. Birch and Vinehall, check each coin as it goes in your Happy Bag. No more counterfeits. Hobble anyone who slips fakes into your Bag. The rest of you, keep an eye on your coins, too.”

  I could see the two Dogs she had mentioned turn deep red with shame. Not only had they brought useless coin to the kennel, but counterfeiters were worse than murderers. They could turn a kingdom’s money to trash in weeks if they weren’t caught.

  “Well, you curs aren’t filling Happy Bags sitting on your rumps,” Ahuda snapped. “Muster out. Not you, Goodwin, Tunstall. Master Fulk has time for you now.”

  I didn’t miss the trade of sour faces between my partners. I didn’t blame them, either. “I had to ask for him,” Goodwin said. She sounded almost ashamed. “If only so no one thinks we’re holding back what rightfully ought to go in the Happy Bag for the split. You still have the sparkly, Fishpuppy?”

  I dug it out of my pocket and offered it to her. She waved it off. “Give it to Fulk. Come on.”

  The three of us (and Pounce) went into the small office that served the mage on duty. There was Fulk, perched at his desk on a chair that guaranteed he would be head and shoulders above any working Dog. Mage Fulk was a nasty, grubby little man even on duty. He’d not shaved his gray and brown whiskers; his curling brown and gray hair looked like it hadn’t been washed in a week or ten. It was his eyes I liked the least: green and full, too moist, with brown stains under them, like he never slept.

  No, I disliked his eyes secondmost. It was his roaming hands, with their pinching and stroking fingers, I disliked even more. Every girl runner and trainee did. I’d heard more than one junior Dog complain of him, too.

  I kept to the back, letting Tunstall stand between me and the desk.

  “Well? Where is it?” Fulk demanded. “I haven’t got all night.”

  I offered the stone to Goodwin again, but she jerked her head toward the mage. The look in her eyes said I’d best not vex her by hesitating.

  “You let a trainee hold this thing?” Fulk made the word sound dirty. Then he smirked. “Trainee Fishpuppy, at that.”

  “We do when it’s our trainee.” Tunstall had such a warm voice, it was strange to hear it go cold. “And whatever we Dogs might call each other, you’re not a Dog, Fulk. Give him the stone, Cooper.”

  I stepped up (I couldn’t make my Dogs look bad, not when Tunstall had spoken for me) and put the stone on the desk. Quick as a snake, Fulk grabbed my wrist. He smiled into my eyes, his fingers rubbing my arm. I went still, thinking of the punishment I might get if I pinched his wrist until he bled.

  “Let her go, Fulk.” Goodwin’s voice was iron. The mage and I both looked at her. “Touch her again and I’ll start an investigation on you for continued breaches of the Goddess’s Law protecting women. I’ve heard whispers. Mayhap it’s time I looked to see if there’s anything behind them.”

  Fulk let me go. I looked at Tunstall, entirely confused.

  He gave me a smile. “At the last eclipse, the Mother of Starlight temple chose Magistrates. Goodwin’s now the Goddess’s Magistrate for the Lower City. She signs a writ, and the warrior mots with the sickles come for him.”

  Fulk grabbed the sparkly stone with fingers that shook. He released some bit of crimson light that sank into it. “I am a mage with power of my own, and the protection of the King,” he muttered, but he was sweating. Tiny sparks of light leaped from the stone, then dropped back into it. He held it up. From the look in his eyes, we were forgotten.

  He produced more red fire. It slithered over the stone and dripped to his desk. He muttered and passed his hand over the rock, his palm trailing red light. The stone shimmered, then went dark. “Valueless in terms of coin. A curiosity. I will test it further, then report to my Lord Provost. You Dogs are dismissed.” He looked at us and frowned. “I’m keeping it. Aren’t you supposed to be making collections?”

  Pounce leaped onto his back from behind his chair. Fulk yelled and thrashed, dropping the stone and breaking a couple of the jars on his desk. He scrambled after the stone. So did I, fearing that it might be fouled by the oil that spilled from the jars. The stone skipped from Fulk’s reaching fingers, spun onto the ancient floor, and dropped through an empty knothole in a plank. There was no telling where it had gone.

  Fulk screamed. “That cat! Who let it in here? I loathe cats!” He sneezed. “Get out! I must make a summoning spell…. Take that disgusting animal with you!”

  Despite the jumping and shouting and the leak of magical things, I had to duck my head to hide a smirk. All Corus knew Fulk couldn’t Summon. If he could, he might have his own work as a mage, not kennel work.

  Then I thought on the lost stone. I liked it. It was the best of the Lower City, ordinary enough, with tiny specks of real beauty where you would never seek it. It was gone. Like as not, some four-legged rat was carrying it off to impress his lady rat.

  We left Fulk’s office, Pounce leading the way.

  “What was going on in there?” Sergeant Ahuda wanted to know. “If you killed him, you get to find us a new one.”

  “He’s alive and whining,” Goodwin said. “We’re tired of playing with the mage. We’re off to the Court of the Rogue.”

  Goodwin and Tunstall were silent as we walked into the street. Pounce left us. Seeing my Dogs slip their batons from their belts to carry them two-handed, I did the same. As they settled into the walk that must be in their bones, I calmed down and began to think. With my brain working, I scarce noticed the calls of “Fishpuppy” from some of the folk we passed. The thought that had been waiting for my attention bobbed to the surface. Did my Dogs notice the thing that I had seen? The light was very bad in Fulk’s lair. I was the only one standing close to him.

  Surely they had seen it.

  Still, my duty was plain. I cleared my throat.

  “Speak up, Puppy,” Goodwin said. She never took her eyes from the faces around us. Tunstall kept his on the windows above.

  “Um – he lied,” I said. “Fulk did. He knew something big about that stone.”

  “You’re good at observing,” Lord Gershom had told me often enough. “Tell people what you see. A good Dog trusts what she observes.”

  I had to believe my lord knew what he was talking about. I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Fulk came all over greedy. He wanted the stone, and he didn’t want us to know it was worth sommat.” I could feel my face turn red and blessed the shadows. I finished with a mumble. “At least, that’s how I think it.”

  Goodwin and Tunstall halted, so I halted as well. Then they did an odd thing. Goodwin dug in her belt purse, and Tunstall put out his hand. Goodwin put a coin into it. Tunstall flipped it in the air, caught it, tucked it into his pocket, and turned to look at me. “I bet her a five-copper piece you’d picked that up.”

  Goodwin turned, too, her arms folded over her chest. “He’s being nice. I also bet you wouldn’t have the g
uts to tell us. So I was twice wrong. Yes, we saw.”

  I took a tiny breath of relief. It would have been very bad for me, then, if I’d kept quiet. They’d have thought me either too stupid to watch Fulk’s expression or too shy to do as I was told and report to my Dogs.

  Tunstall ran his fingers over his short-trimmed beard. “Otterkin said there was nothing to the stone.”

  “She’s the same as Fulk,” Goodwin answered. “If she could do more than charm mice from her flour, she wouldn’t be a Dog. Fulk nearly wet himself when that sparkler lit up.” She shook her head. “Curse it the stone was lost. Gods know what’s under the kennel. Snakes, maybe. Mud that slithers clean to the river. The place has been here since the first King’s reign – “

  I heard a familiar yowl, blocked by something. My cat made that sound when he was truly pleased with himself. I looked for him. Pounce trotted between my feet and dropped something on my left boot.

  Slowly Tunstall bent and picked it up. I didn’t dare move as he used his water bottle to rinse cellar slime and who knew what else from the sparkly rock. I knew the look that Goodwin and Tunstall gave first me, then my cat. It was the same look I often felt on my face when Pounce did something uncanny.

  “He’s just a cat? You’re no mage, or anything?” Goodwin asked me after she’d been quiet for too long. “Don’t look at me, just answer, Cooper.”

  “I found him in my Lord Provost’s stable loft, Guardswoman,” I said, being as polite as I could. “He was a purple-eyed kitten. And you’d have heard if I was a mage.”

  “He does strange things often, does he?” Tunstall asked.

  “Often enough, sir,” I replied. I picked my cat up.

  “Were there portents when you were born?” Tunstall sounded as if he asked a normal question. “Eclipses, eagles in the birth chamber, things like that?”

  I was so startled I looked up at him. He seemed more like an owl than ever, though I never heard of an owl whose eyes twinkled with a joke. “My papa lost a copper noble piece, betting I’d be a boy. Mama says it was the last big coin Papa ever had.”