Terrier

by Tamora Pierce

  “Why ask?” she whined. “What difference does it make? The family is gone. The Shadow Snake chews on Crookshank now, gods’ blight to them both.”

  “You might have seen the Snake or the Snake’s rushers,” I said. Ahuda had taught us that cityfolk always squirmed like fishes on hooks. Patience got us farther than a box on the ear with them that weren’t lifetime Rats. “Because this is how Dogs do it, mistress. We ask who was here. Who was strange? Who asked about the little one or her family? The Snake didn’t just walk into that house. The Snake knew where the child slept. He knew when that household went to bed. He had to, if he was to take her with the family sleeping. He had to know if there was someone like this fine Brute in the house, or even my Pounce. Cats have inconvenient tails for the stepping. Who did you see?”

  She gave me three names at the last. I set them in my memory. When we said our farewells, the sky was darker, Brute had gone to sleep across the doorstep, and the mot was trembling. I fear we ruined her spinning, but I had three names for it.

  We’d gone halfway down the block before Kora got my attention. “What now?”

  I stopped and took a deep breath. I was trembling. I looked at her. “I think I need a map.”

  She went on to run her errands, and I ran mine before the rain began. My lord had shown me a trick he used when some complicated Rat hunt took place in any part of the realm. I would follow his lead and use a map. I had some already. My lord had noticed my love of his and given me a packet of them for my fifteenth birthday. They were a costly gift, showing different parts of the realm, various cities, and, best of all, the different sections of Corus. I had one map alone of the Lower City, as complete as any in the palace.

  I went to the Daymarket and haggled mightily for pins and sealing wax. Then I trotted home and took out my map of the Lower City. Carefully I nailed it to the wall. I marked the head of one pin with a ball of blue sealing wax and thrust it into the spot where Crookshank’s house would be, on Stuvek Street. That was Rolond’s marker – blue would be the color for the dead children. Next I marked another pin in red for the gixie who’d been returned to her family. I set it on the alley that Kora and I had just visited.

  When I have more pins, more real news, I will bring it to my Dogs. If I find anything new on Rolond, I will take it to Jewel, since he and his partner, Yoav, are supposed to be searching for Rolond’s killer. But this is for me, to help me to remember.

  Very well. And to paint a better picture of the Snake. I have heard of no one doing such a picture, and I believe one is needed. Mayhap I am only a Puppy, but I have seen how well this works for my lord. If I can show my Dogs a picture of what the Shadow Snake has done, mayhap they will not mind that the picture has come from a Puppy.

  Please, Goddess and Mithros.

  Please.

  At night’s end.

  Tonight was the night of the Happy Bag. After muster we went up to the Court of the Rogue again. I could not relax and look about me there as I did last time. I could not amuse myself thinking of the mots who sighed over how handsome Kayfer was in his younger days. All I could think on was the mothers and fathers who came here, hoping that he would find their little ones or give them justice for the Shadow Snake. How he and his chiefs had seen how poor they were and sent them away.

  Rosto should have let Crookshank stab the Rogue. Except then Rosto would not be standing with Ulsa now, coming to power here. Aniki would not have her place among the rushers who waited at Dawull’s back.

  After we handed the Happy Bags over to the horsemen for transport back to the kennel, Tunstall, Goodwin, and I headed on up into the Cesspool.

  “Findlay Close?” Tunstall asked Goodwin. To me he said, “Crookshank owns every house there.”

  Goodwin nodded. “Worth a look,” she said.

  On the street that lay between Stormwing and Mulberry, Tunstall took out the small, magical pearl light he’d used on the fire opals. Keeping it mostly covered from the view of the families that lived thereabouts, we looked around the outsides of the rough houses. In spots the pink city rock broke through the surface, gray in the lamp glow. Folk used it here as foundation stone, doorsteps, and parts of the walls. It gave no hint of the treasures to be found in it somewhere below, not here on the street.

  We saw no heaps of dirt or rock dumped outside those houses to show digging went on inside. Some of them were collapsing. Their doors and shutters were nailed shut to keep the little ones or mumpers from getting in. Folk could be digging inside those and we’d have no way of telling. We didn’t get to talk to the handful of folk we saw. They fled the sight of us.

  On we moved to Mulberry Street and straight into a bare-knuckles fight. We even got to watch some of it. The first match was between two coves I knew from my runner days. I would have bet on Drew if I hadn’t been watching my coppers. I would have won money, too. Then I saw the pickpocket. I grabbed him by the collar before he saw me. I heard curses. Goodwin and Tunstall each had their own little quick fingers.

  That’s when the fight turned into a brawl. The moment a mot saw we had pickpockets in hand, she spotted a fourth. Seemingly a gang of them has been working on Mulberry Street of late. They’ve been finding dice games, cockfights, and fistfights. They strike all four at once and escape before anyone guesses they’ve been picked.

  The crowd turned on the pickpockets, which left us with no choice. We were forced to let the light fingers go whilst we held off near thirty vexed mots and coves. I closed up with Goodwin and Tunstall, blowing my whistle as ordered. Two more pairs of Dogs got there to help us break up the crowd. We never even got to see the last two fights.

  I’m impressed by that pickpocket gang, though. Someone there has wits.

  We had some robberies, some tavern fights, a cove smacking his wife. Then a lucky chance. Stout Robin, wanted by the Magistrates for three killings in Port Legann, was drinking in the Gray Goose. A cattle drover who was drinking there recognized him and went for the first Dogs he could find – us. That’s a ten-silver-noble reward to the cattle drover, paid when we brought Stout Robin in. Tunstall showed the drover another way out of the kennel, so with luck he’ll reach his lodging with the coin still in his pockets. Ahuda says it’s another ten silver nobles to us when we’re paid, and Goodwin says two of those are mine, because Stout Robin was a handful in the hobbling.

  Not a bad night for the Cesspool, not at all.

  Friday, April 10, 246

  At day’s end.

  After so good a night in the Cesspool, I opened my shutters to a spring storm. I woke also to the sneezes and a cough. All I wanted was for the pigeons to talk to me before I crawled back into my bed. Surely they would tell me where their ghosts’ bodies were buried. Or give me their living names, at least.

  They came to tell me again only what they’d said before. Each time I sneezed or coughed, the loobies would flap off all at once. Then they would return until the next time.

  I hate pigeons.

  All nine of the diggers came for a time. For all they said, I told Pounce they could have just sent one. And they left feathers on my floor.

  Rosto wouldn’t even come in my rooms, not that I opened the door wide enough. Aniki wrote down names and the locations of two visits by the Shadow Snake and returned later with a crock of hot soup. She is a good friend.

  Kora brought potions for me, which have made me feel better, or at least they make me spit disgusting slime. Ersken fetched tea. Verene sang songs to me whilst they, Aniki, and Kora had breakfast on the landing outside the door.

  How did I do without friends?

  Pounce curled up with me as I slept the morning away and part of the afternoon. I cannot tell if it was the soup, the tea, or the potions, but I was well enough for duty.

  Nightmarket work was exhausting.

  Kora was home when I came home. She had more potions.

  I am going to bed. Curse all colds. Curse spring. Curse rain. No, no curses on rain or spring, only colds.

 
; Good night.

  Saturday, April 11, 246

  I hate pigeons with nothing new.

  I hate the Cesspool.

  I hate festering, ranky, puling, gob-clogging, sarden colds.

  I hate dragging my sorry sniffling hacking bum through duty.

  I love my warm soft cat.

  I have good friends who bring me things.

  I love my bed.

  Sunday, April 12, 246

  In the morning.

  Kora:

  one gixie – Dragon Mews – December 5, 245 – price 8 silver nobles inheritance

  not paid – found dead in mother’s garden

  one lad – Festivity Lane – August 31, 244 – price sandalwood box with mother-of-pearl inlay

  not paid – found dead in own bed

  brother taken two nights later

  price paid – brother found alive on doorstep morning after payment

  one gixie – Mulberry Street – February 13, 246 – price 20 silver nobles in savings

  paid – child found in shrine where payment was left two days before

  Aniki:

  one lad – Rovers Street – May 8, 245 – price 3 Yamani silver coins

  not paid – found dead on doorstep

  sister taken one week later

  not paid – sister never found

  Pox and murrain on the Shadow Snake. Mithros burn his eyes in his sockets, Goddess wither his eggs and the eggs of all his children, or her children.

  At night’s end.

  As healers go, it is a good thing Kora has other talents. I still blow fearsome amounts of slime from my nose and throat. Goodwin tells me it is also a good thing we are not required to watch a Rat in silence, for she fears my breathing can be heard at the palace. She has given me a potion from a mage friend of her own, which she says will help. I pray it will, for we are in the Magistrate’s Court tomorrow. If I must snuffle and whuffle through the day’s worth of cases, I fear I shall put my head through the floor.

  At least I know I will not be called upon to speak before Sir Tullus. There was no Rat we hobbled this week who was in my sight alone for so much as a sneeze. I can hide behind my Dogs.

  We have had no word on the diggers, not even a whisper. Or that is, we have whispers of all manner of folk who are missing. Tunstall and Goodwin have a list of names other Dogs brought to them after they checked to see if the missing folk are truly missing. It is a long list. The time to check each name is scarce. Dogs are rarely allowed to do anything that is not part of regular patrols, because there are so few of us to keep the peace. Chasing missing coves and mots just because they are missing isn’t a good enough reason to take time from stopping folk from breaking each other’s heads or robbing each other blind.

  Worse, the spring storms continue. It means no fleets are coming to port, which means no work. If Crookshank has hired anyone to dig his fire opals in secret, they won’t speak of it. They know them as are desperate for any kind of work at all could well beat them up to take their place on the digging crew.

  Crookshank, or whoever hires the diggers for Crookshank, will count on that. They’ll hire a new crew of diggers and make them swear to hold their tongues.

  And then they’ll kill them to keep them quiet, like the last nine.

  Being sick makes me gloomsome. I’m taking Goodwin’s potion and going to bed.

  Tuesday, April 14, 246

  At nine in the morning.

  I can’t bring myself to go back to Provost’s House this week, for all that I bear no bruises. I even feel better, after Goodwin’s potion. But I can’t face my sisters and brothers again after that farewell last week. They seemed shamed. I will let the memory fade for them.

  Besides, Granny Fern says we never spend enough time at her place. I can have a nice visit with her. At breakfast Kora said she would be finished with her washing by noon, if I cared to talk to some of the Shadow Snake folk she had met.

  So Granny’s it is.

  At day’s end.

  Granny was glad to see me this morning, and glad, too, for the coppers I gave her to help with housekeeping expenses. “The birds follow you as much as ever,” she said as we hung out her wash. “Do they help in your work?”

  Mayhap it was because Granny taught me how to hear the pigeons and the dust spinners. I told her about the diggers and Rolond. I had the sense to keep my voice low, and to have her swear by the Crone never to tell a soul what I had said. It was Dog business. But I can trust Granny. I told her all I’d heard before I was a trainee, all the bits and pieces I would pass on to my lord or the kennels.

  I just feel I must be extra careful to act like a real Dog now that I am almost one.

  Granny was bad troubled about the Snake and the diggers. “What have you done about this?” she asked.

  I told her. She was pleased to hear that Goodwin and Tunstall are seeking the diggers. She liked the tale of my map and told me three Snake cases she knew of herself.

  She did not like it that I had not told my Dogs about the map. “You say they know better. Either they know better about everything you do, or they do not,” she told me. And she cuffed me on the side of my head for my trouble.

  She’s right, you know, Pounce said. He lay in the sun, glaring at Granny’s tomcat.

  Sometimes I wish my granny Fern was not so tough a mot. But I knew she was right. Just because I feared they would mock my idea for the map – and that when I’d only done as my lord did – was no excuse not to tell them. So I will tell them tomorrow.

  Kora returned an hour after I got home from Granny’s. She roused Aniki, who had gone back to bed for a nap. The three of us went out into the city, to the house of someone Granny had named.

  The lad’s da had woke one autumn night last year to find him gone, a snake drawn in ashes in his crib. His ma worked all night in a tavern down by North Gate. A customer had gifted her just two weeks before with a pair of garnet earrings.

  “We had to get a priest to read us the note,” she said as her man watched us. By rights he should have been on the docks, loading and unloading barges from Port Caynn. The only trouble was, with the storms, he had no work just now. He could only whittle and pray and stay away from drinking and gambling dens. “It said I was to leave the earrings in a pouch at the shrine of the Carthaki Graveyard Hag, at the burying ground on Stormwing, a week from the day,” she told us. “If we did as we was bid, we’d have our lad back with no harm done.”

  Her lad did not come out from behind his da the whole time we were there. When I smiled at him, he began to suck his thumb. I felt like I’d turned into one of them giant spiders with human heads Mama always said would eat us if we wasn’t good.

  Next we went to a woman who told Aniki the Shadow Snake had taken her little girl. She was shifty-eyed. Two nights ago I’d seen Goodwin talk with a cove who’d acted much like this. I looked at Kora and Aniki. Something in the way they stood told me they smelled bad meat in the pot, too.

  I tried to think what Goodwin might say. “So it was nighttime?” I asked the mot.

  She nodded.

  “Before the midnight bell, would you say, or after?” I stood as Goodwin did, arms crossed, weight on one hip. I kept my eyes steady on the mot’s face.

  “A-after, I think.”

  “And she was a pretty gixie, was she? Like you?”

  “Oh, well enough. Folk gave me compliments. I was a pretty little thing at her age.”

  “Before the midnight bell, you said?” I looked around the little room. “Did you go out, at all?”

  “I might have done.” The mot was looking down now. “You know, to talk with friends.”

  “So they were outside, your friends. With their little ones?”

  “The older ones were up.”

  “There was some light in the sky, then.” I could see a little sweat on her face now. There was no sign anywhere of a child’s toys or bed, though the gixie was gone just recent. A near-new coverlet lay on the bed, and the mot wore a
necklace with earrings that matched. “Around twilight, not later. She might have wandered off.”

  “No, I took her – “

  The mot covered her mouth with her hands.

  I finished what she’d been about to say, because now I was certain. “You took her and you sold her. The Snake didn’t make the profit, mistress. You did.”

  She slapped me.

  I slapped her back.

  Aniki said, “Don’t hit her again, Beka. Let me do it next time.”

  “Get out of my house!” the mot screamed. “Get out, you dirty trulls!”

  Kora leaned toward her. “We didn’t sell our child, mistress. And if I hear you have another, my eye will be on you.”

  Aniki smiled at her. “So will mine.”

  I just spat at her feet.

  We talked with five other folk who’d said they’d been bit by the Snake. One cove threw us out of his house when Kora mentioned the slave market. He was red with shame. The rest did see that snake figure writ in ashes on a sheet, on a pillow, on their floors. Three whose children were taken in the last fifteen months had all paid up. They knew the Snake meant what he said. They’d heard about the others.

  We had supper together at a cheap eating house. For once I had a tankard of ale to wash the taste of the work from my mouth.

  “You’ll catch ‘im, Beka,” Aniki told me. “We’ll help you.”

  “That was a pleasure, watching you break that mot down,” Kora said.

  I shook my head. “I was just being Goodwin.”

  “If you’re going to be someone else, you should be the best,” Aniki said. “I’m going to be Lady Sabine.”

  “Is any of you goin’ t’ be generous?” Mother Cantwell had found us. She shook her begging bowl under our noses. “I have somethin’ for the Puppy here if she’d like to share her crumbs.”