Goodwin was in better spirits when we mustered for our watch. She listened close as Tunstall explained what Berryman had told us on our way to the Nightmarket. “So we just kissed our fortunes farewell.” She also sounded better after a night’s sleep and time for the healing to work. The bruise on her jaw was still astounding, but I could understand her well now. “That will teach us to be honest. Maybe we ought to take Berryman on rounds sometime, Mattes. He’ll probably faint before we cross into the Cesspool, though.” She looked back at me as we ambled up Jane Street. “He’s not a bad sort. He just sometimes lets being a merchant’s mage do his talking for him. When you smarten him up, he improves.”
I glanced at her. Had she gotten the temptation to hit him, too?
“At least we know what the rocks are now,” said Tunstall with a nod to a passing ragpicker.
“I’d like to see where Crookshank gets them. I hate to know that old spintry is getting any richer.” Goodwin spun her baton on its rawhide cord. “If they were clean and legal, Berryman would know. They’d have come through the guild hall. Which means they’re smuggled or local. Either way, too many big money stones could set up a robbers’ ball down here.”
I cleared my throat. Without looking back at me, Goodwin held up her hand and twitched her first two fingers, telling me to cough up. “Why didn’t Berryman try to keep the stones?” I asked. “He’s a mage. And he said they’d make us rich.”
“Addled, poor cuddy,” Tunstall told me over his shoulder. “Doesn’t care about fattening his own purse. I think he’s spelled so he’s never tempted to pocket all those gems he handles.”
“He’s got a rich wife,” Goodwin said. “Some folk just aren’t greedy.”
“Don’t say that where the gods can hear,” Tunstall whispered. “They hate talk of things unnatural.”
“Then they should’ve stomped Berryman years ago, because it’s unnatural for a man not to want to lift a ruby here and there.”
The first half of the evening passed easily enough. Plenty of drunken loobies greeted me by trying to say “Fleet-footed Fishpuppy.” Orva’s man (Jack Ashmiller, he was called) came to apologize for his woman to Goodwin. She was gentler to him than she’d been with anyone but Pounce that I’d seen. The cuts on his face were swollen, the one over his eye holding it shut. He had no coin for a healer mage or even a hedgewitch’s stitching, poor mumper. Whilst Tunstall and me waited for them to finish talking, something rotten hit the back of my uniform. I heard a hiss from the shadows. However their papa felt, the young Ashmillers wouldn’t forgive me for my part in their mama’s hobbling.
On we walked, my muscles groaning with each step. I got to stand off and watch as my Dogs put a halt to three purse cuttings, four pocket pickings, and five thefts from shops. It was wonderful to see how quick they moved, how smoothly they broke up trouble. Tunstall asked me what they looked for on the purse cuttings and pocket pickings beforehand, until even Goodwin said I could spot cutpurses and foists better than most second-year Dogs. Whenever we had three or four Rats in hobbles, we’d take them along to the cage carts positioned around the Lower City for transport back to the kennel.
“Just a swing along the Stuvek side of the Nightmarket,” Tunstall said at last. “I’d say all three of us have earned our supper good and truly tonight.”
“I can pay for my own,” I heard my fool self say. “And I owe you a silver noble and five coppers from Rosto’s bribe. I got two silvers out of him.”
“I’ll take those coins,” Goodwin said, putting out a hand. I turned them over to her.
As I did, Tunstall said, “Crown pays for half of our meals wherever we feed. And me and Goodwin say who pays the rest.”
“You’re a good Puppy, you do your work, we feed you,” Goodwin told me. I blinked. Tunstall was supposed to be nice to me. Goodwin was supposed to be gruff. “After last night, you’ve earned your meals for a while, so be quiet about it and – Goddess!”
We were half a block from Crookshank’s house by then. What startled Goodwin was the crack of breaking glass – and aren’t glass windows stupid and gaudy for a man living right on the edge of Nightmarket?
A moment later flames shot out of the front of Crookshank’s house from a hole where a window had been. The front door slammed open. Folk threw themselves out onto the steps. We saw orange glare over the wall around the house’s side. The fire starters had struck there, too.
We took out our batons. “Now we know the Rogue’s revenge,” Goodwin said as we started to run. “Cooper, wet your handkerchief in the fountain, keep it over your mouth and nose. Fountain.” She pointed with two handkerchiefs in that hand, hers and Tunstall’s. I grabbed them, yanked mine out, dashed over, dunked them, and fetched them back, soaked. Tunstall grabbed his and ran. Goodwin waved me to the front door. “Upstairs, Cooper, the garret. Get whoever you can, get them out. Send them through the side doors. I’ll be on the second floor. Don’t be stupid.”
I clapped my handkerchief over my mouth and nose. In we went, under the plume of smoke that came from a burning room off to the side. I smelled cooking oil before I followed Goodwin up one set of stairs and ran up two more on my own. A couple of maids darted past me. I ran on up the tiny steps to check the rooms under the steep roof – empty.
Back down one flight I went. Tansy was dumping her jewelry case into a pillow slip. I boxed her ears for wasting time, shoved the case into the slip, and knotted it. Then I poured her water pitcher on the sheet, threw the sheet over her, and shoved her out the door. Her maid was huddled, forgotten, in the corner, stiff with terror. I couldn’t get her to stand. I finally dragged her from the room and down the steps until she scrambled to her feet and ran out.
Back to Tansy’s floor I went. I checked room after room. Looking out a window, I saw folk down below had formed bucket brigades to douse the fires on the ground floor. Once I was certain everyone on the third floor was gone, I went to the second floor to look for Goodwin. I’d had a notion she wasn’t clearing the household out. My notion was right.
“Cat, this is a bad time and place. Do your business outside, you idiot creature!”
Her voice led me to rooms that had to be the ones shared by Crookshank and his wife. It looked as if she’d been searching his papers and cupboards. She stood in the middle of his workroom with a ledger in her hands, taken from a table stacked with them. Pounce stood on the big desk, digging fiercely in a pile of letters.
Goodwin shut the ledger with a snap and put it with the others. “Crone’s teeth, if he ruins anything useful, Cooper – “
“Pounce, stop that,” I said, though I could tell he was looking for something. He knew I wasn’t serious. I helped Goodwin pick up some papers that had fallen to the floor. “It looks as if they’ve got the fires controlled. Though the smoke’s still nasty.”
Pounce mrted. With a snap a wooden panel in the desk’s surface popped open, almost smacking him. He jumped back, tail switching, and yowled in triumph.
Goodwin straightened, papers in her hand. “You pesky little beast, how did you even know that compartment was there? Cooper, you saw him, same as me. He deliberately went after it.”
Goodwin went to the desk and checked the compartment for booby traps before she removed what it held – a small sheaf of notes.
“He does things like that,” I told her with a shrug.
Goodwin set aside the other papers she’d gathered. She looked over the notes from the compartment, swore, then closed the lid and stuffed the notes down the front of her tunic. “Let’s get out of here before they come looking for us.” She picked up the things that Pounce had scattered and tossed them on the desktop so it looked like it had never been disturbed.
I followed Goodwin. The fires were almost out. Smoke had ruined Crookshank’s fancy things downstairs, but he could well afford to replace them. Hardly a person in the crowd that had gathered didn’t wish the house had burned to the ground.
I found Tansy on her own, shivering in her wet she
et. The spring night had gotten chilly. I peeled the sheet off. “You’d think they’d pity him, losing a great-grandbaby,” I said. I looked around to see if anyone had fetched blankets. Tansy’s belly was a mound against her thin housedress. At least she wasn’t in bedclothes at this early hour.
“Why should they?” she asked, hugging the pillow slip with her jewels. “Enough of them have lost a child lately, and no one’s raised a fuss about theirs.”
I guided her to a fountain bench, but it wasn’t all from the goodness of my heart. On our way I grabbed a blanket from a maid’s hand. She yelped and yanked, then let go when I glared at her. She wasn’t wet and pregnant. I got Tansy wrapped around before I made her sit, whispering as I did, “What do you mean?”
She rolled her big blue eyes at me. “Everyone says it’s just slave catchers calling themselves by a nightmare name. They say little ones always go missing down here. But some are different. See that thin mot over there? With the round scar on her cheek? Her ma left her a spell book, onliest bit of value the poor thing ever had. Middle of the night a cove’s voice beside her bed tells her where and when to leave it for the Shadow Snake, elsewise she’ll weep for it. Gave her a week. She didn’t do it, not the only thing she had from her ma. After the week, her little girl, only four years old, vanished. Just like that.” Tansy’s lips trembled. “The Dogs say little ones vanish all the time in the Lower City, did she try the slave traders? Of course she tried the slave traders, for all the good it did. She searched for months. She still looks at girls that age with white blond hair, just in case. It was fifteen months ago.”
“But it could’ve been anybody,” I said. “Just ‘cause someone says she’ll be sorry – “
“They drew a snake in ash on the little girl’s apron and left it hung on the clothesline for the mother to take down,” Tansy whispered. “They left it on her pillow inside the house, too. When the whisper in the night came again, that poor creature thought of her two younger children and left the spell book where she was told.”
I clenched my hands. Preying on folk who had so little was more than bad, it was vicious. “But it’s only one time this cove says he’s the Shadow Snake, Tansy.”
“Watch my finger, Beka. I’m not going to name them for you.” She pointed again and again and again. Twelve times she pointed at different people in the crowd. “It’s been going on almost three whole year. All of them have a piece of their child’s clothing with that Shadow Snake on it. They had something the Shadow Snake wanted. Them that didn’t give it up right off, well, some of ‘em got their little one back, all right – as a corpse. Some never saw their little one again. Grandpa Ammon got a bit of paper asking for something. He said no Snake would ever wring him like a three-month-old hen. Only they didn’t wring him, Beka.” Tears rolled down Tansy’s plump cheeks. “They wrung my little Rolond.”
“I pay for protection!” I recognized Crookshank’s ragged screech. He was yelling at my Dogs. “I pay more into that Happy Bag than anyone on this street. For that I expect protection!” He swayed on his steps, shaking a bony finger at Tunstall and Goodwin. Three of his rushers stood at his back, hands on their weapons. Smoke still rolled out of the broken window behind them.
I belonged up there with my Dogs, but I didn’t want to leave Tansy. I looked around until I spotted Annis. She came over. “Come on, girl,” she said, gathering Tansy up, blanket and all. “Let’s stop Father from making even more of a fool of himself.”
Tansy yanked free. “Why? I don’t owe him. He got Rolond killed.”
Annis grabbed her arm. “We’re stuck with him.” She spoke in Tansy’s ear. The words were not meant for me, but I have very good hearing. “And we have more to lose. Don’t think we’re free just because Rolond’s gone. You need to think of the babe that’s coming. Now be an obedient granddaughter-in-law.”
As she tugged Tansy over to the steps, I cut around them to stand behind my Dogs. Tunstall was saying, “You’d have to pay ten times what you do to get enough Dogs to guard against the Rogue’s wrath, my friend. These lads know it as well as we do.” He nodded to Crookshank’s rushers. “Did you think Kayfer Deerborn would let your speech last night go unspanked?”
Crookshank stared at him, trembling in fury.
“Why do you think he had a hand in killing your great-grandson?” Goodwin asked, her arms folded over her chest. “Last night you accused him of it. What have you got that he might want that bad?”
Crookshank went dead white under the soot on his face. He spun and rammed through the wall of guards behind him to dash into his house, smoke and all. The rushers looked at each other, then followed, covering their noses and mouths with their arms.
“Well, that shut the old vulture up,” Tunstall said cheerfully. “Where’s Cooper and the cat?”
“Right in back of us,” Goodwin said. “Let’s go. I’m past hungry. We’ll be lucky if there’s any ham left at the Mantel and Pullet.”
I moved so they could pass us and muttered, “They could’ve waited to burn the place till we had supper.”
Both of them turned to face me. Pounce looked up at me and meowed.
“She spoke,” Tunstall said. “Goodwin, did you hear? She actually made a joke. It was practically conversation.”
Goodwin elbowed him. “Don’t let it go to your head. Look, she’s going shy again.”
It was true. I could feel the ground draw my eyes toward it. Pounce jumped onto my shoulder and settled across my back, just behind my neck. To console me for making idiotic remarks where my Dogs could hear, he began to purr.
We weren’t lucky. There was no more ham at the Mantel and Pullet. The chicken had been on the spit so long it was dry. The bread, warming by the hearth since before the supper rush, was also dry. At least the fried greens were passable. The cook was so heartbroken at putting such a poor meal before longtime customers like Tunstall and Goodwin that she quickly fried some almond cakes and served them drizzled in honey. The ale was free. The cook brewed rose hip tea for me.
Once they had done hovering, Goodwin fetched the papers out of her tunic. All four of us, including Pounce, leaned in to look. Goodwin placed each piece side by side, the back of the note face up. Each was signed with a long double-curved snake writ in ash.
“‘When you grub in the Snake’s earth, you owe a payment to the Snake,’” Tunstall read softly. He pulled a second note over to read it. “‘Fifteen stones to the Snake, left in a leather purse behind the Lonely Journey altar, Death’s temple on Glassman Square, a week from today, or you will pay with your own kin.’” He whistled. “Not very nice.”
Goodwin leaned her head on her hand. “I thought maybe I’d mistook it when I glanced at it in the house. We were wrong, my buck. There is a Shadow Snake, a real one. We’ve the evidence right here.” She smiled crookedly. “The bogey is real.”
“I’d druther he wasn’t,” I said. “Are the other notes the same?”
“‘You think yourself safe,’” Goodwin read from the second one. “‘A Snake finds gaps in every wall. The child is now in the Snake’s coils. One week from today, thirty stones in a leather bag, behind the Lonely Journey altar, Death’s temple on Glassman Square, or there will be blood.’”
“He didn’t pay up the first time, so the Snake doubles the tally, takes Rolond, and gives him a new week to pay,” Tunstall said. “I’m surprised Crookshank didn’t have an apoplexy. He gets half mad when folk give him orders. Arranged for his rushers to beat a Captain of the Guard who turned him back from the palace gate. The cove was crippled when they’d done.”
Goodwin read the third note. “‘You have more to lose. Forty stones, you know where to leave them, the night of the full moon.’” She made a face. This Snake isn’t done with Crookshank, and the old man knows it.”
I was cold. I gave Rolond horsey rides in the Daymarket once. I let him chew my braid when he was teething, the times Tansy escaped Crookshank’s watchers. Might I have put a stop to this, had I known? But I had
n’t. While Crookshank was getting those notes, when Rolond was taken, I was moving into my new home. After, when I heard, the old man had the house under such tight guard that Tansy couldn’t get out, nor I get in. My first real talk with her in three months was on Monday. Why didn’t she tell me then about the Shadow Snake? I wondered. But I knew the answer already. Tansy was so much happier, and sillier, before Rolond was killed. After, she had learned to keep secrets.
“But I think Crookshank did know the Snake meant business,” I said, clenching my hands.
“What?” Goodwin asked.
Pounce crawled into my lap and began to purr. I stroked him as I told Tunstall and Goodwin what Tansy had told me about the missing children and the sign of the Snake left behind. Of the things the Snake had wanted from those parents. I even said, “She told me some of them went to the kennel and reported it, but nothing was done. Did you know?”
I mustered my courage to look at them. Surely they didn’t turn their backs on the poor of the Lower City, not Tunstall and Goodwin. But Tunstall was carving a piece from the table as a toothpick.
Goodwin frowned. “What do you want from us, Cooper?” she asked. “Do you know how many robberies there are in a day in the Lower City, how many burglaries, how many purse cuttings, rapes, brawls…. Folk disappear or die all the time, children in particular. We don’t have a third of the Dogs we need to cover the Lower City alone. We do what we can.”
I wanted to ask, You didn’t seek on any of them? but the words stuck in my throat. I know the numbers. We were made to memorize them our first day of training and to repeat them when asked. We learned them by district. Each district, from Palace to Highfields, had a particular place in every Puppy’s memory, with its numbers for disorder and crime, its numbers for Dogs and for mages who might be problems, and its chiefs under the Court of the Rogue. I could say them in my sleep.
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