Beka Cooper 1 - Terrier Read online

  From somewhere I sucked the words out of my gut to tell him, "The only ones who fitly punished a cove who treated all my family like garbage was the Dogs, Rosto the Piper. Did you know folk have gone to the Rogue for justice when their children were kidnapped, and he's done nothing?"

  "Nor did the Dogs," Phelan said. "I'd've heard if we sought kidnappers in the Lower City."

  I looked at Phelan. We're going to," I promised him. "That's what makes us different. We're outnumbered, and not all of us care. But eventually some of us will do what's right."

  Aniki smirked. "That's sweet, Beka."

  Rosto nodded. "I'll believe it when I see it."

  Verene yawned. "Too serious. Let's feed the nasty birds afore they come in and swipe our food." She pointed to the windowsill. Pigeons were lined up there, waiting.

  I looked at Ersken and Kora. There was no reading Kora's eyes as she studied me, and Ersken was tearing up a roll to feed the pigeons. I shrugged and stood. The others would learn or not. I already know the Dogs will take care of the Shadow Snake, sooner or later. It was the same way with the Bold Brass gang eight years ago. The Dogs just need a bit of help sometimes.

  Pounce trotted over to my side. They'll see, he told me. They don't know how mule-headed you are.

  It's not just me, I replied silently, sprinkling corn. There are Dogs who only need an extra bit of help to get started. A little more information in their hands, and they'll be after the Shadow Snake like lice on hens. And the one who killed those diggers. If I can get that information, so much the better.

  I faced them. "I've heard sommat – mentioned it to Ersken, but you all need to know. It's important." I said it fast. They were friends, but they might decide I was cracked when I finished talking about this. "Rolond Lofts, Crookshank's great-grandson, that was kidnapped and killed? He was taken by someone calling himself the Shadow Snake."

  Phelan snorted.

  I glared at him. "I've seen proof, all right? And there's more. Folk in the Lower City have lost children to the Snake for years – and sometimes got them back. Near three dozen families, mayhap more. The Snake takes the little one and leaves orders to pay up sommat of value or the child dies. They get a week. Them as pays gets their little one back. Them as don't...Either they see the body, or they never see the little one again. Ever. Up till now it was the poor folk, them who couldn't bribe the Dogs or the Rogue. But Crookshank – the Snake found out Crookshank has something that would make the Snake really, really rich." The fire opals, I thought. It can only be the fire opals. If the Snake gets fistfuls of fire opals now, before they're common on the market, he'll never have to kidnap poor children again. But Crookshank refused to pay, and Rolond's dead. The Snake is still about. What if he goes for Tansy?

  "Will you ask about? Find out who fell victim to this piece of pig scummer? Mayhap someone knows sommat, or saw someone. Even if we only know who lost a child, or what the Snake wanted – any knowledge is better than none. I can pass it on to my Dogs." I swallowed and said something I'd hoped I'd never have to say. "Or to my Lord Provost. Either way, if we hobble the Shadow Snake, whether we're Dogs or crooked, folk will think well of us for it."

  There was a very bad moment when I thought they might laugh. When they'd call me troublemaker. When they'd say who did I think I was, me being just a Puppy.

  Kora looked fierce as she turned to Rosto. "I'll do it. I'll do whatever it takes."

  Rosto leaned over and stroked her cheek. "You know we'd help just for your sake, love."

  Aniki nodded. "We have our reasons. Beyond ambition, that is. We'll keep our ears open."

  Phelan rubbed his temples. "Pox, Beka, I just thought it was wild stories. You have proof?"

  I nodded. "My Dogs have proof."

  Phelan looked down, grim-faced. "I'll remember where I heard those tales. I'm sorry. I thought...Never mind."

  Ersken nodded to me. "You already told me about the Snake. Of course I'll listen and ask."

  Verene's eyes blazed. "When we catch this Snake, I'll make me a belt of his hide. Child killers – it's sad the Black God shows mercy. They deserve none."

  My chest felt warm, warm like those times that Pounce comforted me.

  I like having friends.

  After my watch.

  When we mustered for watch this evening, I presented my new gear to my Dogs for inspection. "Very nice," Tunstall said as he eyed the arm guards I had found in the Provost's House gear room. They fit from my wrist to my shoulder and had tongues that sat over my palm. Some of the metal ribs that fit in sleeves in the padded leather were thin knives. They might come in handy. Better still, a slash like I'd taken in the fight with the river drovers would glance off those guards, cutting only the leather, not my flesh. I'd found a leather sap, too. The pack was my third piece from Provost's House.

  "There's another piece of gear you need, particularly for the Cesspool," Tunstall said as Goodwin checked my sap. He reached in his pack and fished out a metal gorget like him and Goodwin wore. "There's a cloth pad on the inside, see, to keep it from chafing. You'll need to wash that now and then. Try it on."

  Goodwin and the Dogs watched as I tied the curved metal piece around my neck. It was meant to stop a throat cut. I looked from Tunstall to Goodwin. "I can't – "

  "I said I'd get one," Tunstall said. "You need it."

  I opened my mouth to argue again.

  "Shut it," Goodwin ordered. I did. "You're our Puppy. That means your neck is our responsibility. Besides, it's used. Don't go getting sentimental."

  "Are you going to admire the jewelry, or are you ready to catch some Rats?" Ahuda yelled. We lined up for muster, even Pounce. He had decided he was part of the Evening Watch.

  We were on our way to the Nightmarket when Goodwin said, "Rosto the Piper killed a cove last night in Prettybone. It was a stupid thing. Looby said Rosto had no right, taking work from Ulsa when there were blades right here in Corus who could do it. Rosto tried to get out of it, my Birdie told me. He asked Ulsa to rule on it, but Ulsa said it had nothing to do with her."

  "Woman's responsible for more bloodletting than all Scanra," grumbled Tunstall. "She could have put a stop to it."

  "So Ulsa dodged it. Then the cracknob drew his blade. My Birdie says he never even saw Rosto draw his." Goodwin looked up at Tunstall as our partner began to sniff the air. "Why do you even bother to pretend you don't want to go straight for the raisin patties? Let's just visit her booth."

  I thought of Rosto, flirting over breakfast after killing a man. Even for a rusher, he was a cold one. I am used to thinking of my Cesspool years as hard. Now I begin to wonder what his were like, that even a fresh murder would leave no clear mark on him.

  On the way to Mistress Noll's, I asked Goodwin, "But he was storying, wasn't he? Your Birdie? Or someone blocked his view. Saying he never saw Rosto draw his blade is just storying. No one's so fast for real."

  Goodwin glanced back at me. "You live in the same house as Rosto, Cooper. You let us know."

  "Or we'll find out ourselves," Tunstall said. "He's not going to stay in the shadows long, not that one."

  Mistress Noll was at her stall, kneading bread. She has strong arms. I could see the muscles stand out as she mauled it. "There's my three favorite Dogs," she said as Tunstall laid down his handkerchief. "And a lively week you had of it, by what I hear. That Ashmiller mot, the one as struck you, Mistress Clary. What a dreadful thing, to attack your own man and children!"

  "Yet it happens all the time, Mistress Deirdry," Goodwin said. She leaned on one elbow at the counter, turned so she might watch the passersby. "You know it far better than I. There are all manner of sad tales hereabouts."

  Tunstall laid down some coppers. "I'm paying this time, Mistress Deirdry. I won't hear 'no' if it comes from your mouth."

  Mistress Noll smiled at him. "Then I mustn't say it, must I?" She was just frying the patties, as if she knew we were on our way. "I owe young Beka an apology, or rather, my son Yates does."

&nb
sp; Tunstall raised his brows at me. "Cooper?"

  I glanced at him, then returned to my own watch of Spicers' Row. "I saw him and Mistress Gemma when I stopped by Mistress Noll's Daymarket shop yesterday, Guardsman," I replied, being formal before the outsider. "We had a talk." It was a Dog's way of saying I'd had to get stern, but not rough. "My lady Sabine can vouch for me."

  Both Tunstall and Goodwin looked at Mistress Noll. "Yates should apologize to Cooper?" Tunstall asked, his voice gentle.

  "I need strong men to haul the flour and suchlike about. Their manners, his manners, are not what a mother could like," Mistress Noll said, meeting his eyes. "There's not many places as will hire him and his friends."

  "With reason," Goodwin said. Her eyes were cold.

  "But coves must work or they're idle, and they're back doing the things that bring them before the Magistrates." Mistress Noll's soft face turned hard, as hard as the face of any Cesspool mot who lived to be her age. "I'd as soon not die with my son in the quarries." She gave me the eye. "I apologize for him, Beka. He was rude to you."

  "Cooper?" Tunstall asked me again.

  Pounce meowed, as if he ordered me to say sommat. "Better if he gave his sorries to Mistress Gemma. It was her he knocked down." I wanted the subject to change away from me, so I told Mistress Noll, "Lady Sabine enjoyed your patties very much."

  "It's the spices," Mistress Noll said. "Most think the fruits is enough, but they lose taste so close to summer. I thank you for your care for Gemma, Beka. I'll have a word with my son." She set out a thin cloth and put turnovers on it, then bundled them up and gave them to me. "For breakfast. No charge."

  I hesitated all the same, until Goodwin muttered in my ear, "You're so rich you can pass up free food?" Pounce hooked my boot and made a loud noise that sounded like agreement. I mumbled my thanks and settled the turnovers in my pack.

  Goodwin waited for Mistress Noll to serve a gaggle of merchant lads and their sweethearts. Then she leaned on the counter and said, "Who's been calling themselves the Shadow Snake, mistress? Who's been stealing children and giving them back, some dead, some alive?"

  Mistress Noll snorted. "Mistress Clary, the Snake's a tale! I told my little ones the Snake would get them if they didn't eat their kidney stew and do their chores!"

  "But someone's been dressing in the tale. You know it and we know it," Goodwin said. "Preying on the Lower City like a taxman wearing bearskin. He steals their children and gives them back when they've surrendered what's valuable. And if they don't, he leaves the children dead."

  Mistress Noll fluttered around the stall, poking up the fire, checking dough she'd set over a small oven to rise. She sold buns to an off-duty armsman and his doxie and a loaf of bread to a weary-looking cove with ink stains on his fingers. At last she said, "Nobody cares about missing children hereabouts. Their parents can always make more." She said it with an angry twist to her mouth, as if she quoted somebody.

  "We're asking," Goodwin said. "Do you know aught? Who's been seen where the children vanish, or where they've been found? Mistress, you're in the Nightmarket and the Daymarket."

  "What I know is that no one knows," Mistress Noll replied, her voice very soft. "No one knows, no one sees, no one hears. Maybe a monster from tales does do this, Mistress Clary."

  Goodwin straightened and gave the counter a rap with her fingers. "I don't believe in monsters, not in the Lower City. If there is one, Mistress Deirdry, someone made him. But I'm more likely to believe it's a man, or a gang. I want whoever it is. I want him to dance on Execution Hill for the folk he's terrorized."

  Tunstall tied up his handkerchief after setting a patty aside. "We've let him run wild in the Lower City. It's a disgrace to our name. We mean to clean it up."

  "Welladay," a man said nearby, "lookit who's come out of Crookshank's burrow. I'd thought mayhap she was dead along with her son."

  I'd almost forgot the Nightmarket, so hard was I listening to my Dogs and Mistress Noll. Now I looked around. Here came Tansy all in black, with a black cap covered with a veil for her gold curls. She had a basket over her arm.

  A maid walked beside her, one I hadn't seen before. She was odd-looking, forty or so, hair combed back in a sleek black and gray braid, black eyes, short nose, mouth wide with frown lines that drew the corners down. She'd plucked her brows clean off and drawn perfect black arches in their place. She had a black teardrop tattooed on her chin and two more at the corners of her eyes. She looked like she could tangle with Goodwin and fight for every inch she was forced to give up.

  Her underdress was a finer cotton than I'd look to see on a maid, though her overdress was plain enough. She wore jet earrings and a necklace with a tiger-eye pendant. The metal of the necklace could have been brass, but it looked gold to me.

  "Beka!" Tansy cried. "Look at us, out and about!" She smiled at me, the corners of her mouth trembling. She looked at Goodwin and far up at Tunstall.

  "Cooper?" Goodwin asked. "You need to do a mannerly thing here."

  "Oh." I opened my mouth, but Tansy interrupted.

  "If we wait for Beka to introduce us, it will be dawn. She's shyer than moonflowers. You must be Guardswoman Goodwin and Guardsman Tunstall. I'm Tansy Lofts – Beka's been my friend since we were..." Her smile failed, then she forced it back onto her mouth. "Since we were small. My husband is Herun Lofts." She extended her hand. They must have taught her that in Crookshank's house, because she never knew about it in Mutt Piddle Lane.

  Tunstall took her hand and kissed it. "Our sympathies, Mistress Lofts," he said, his voice kind. "We are doing all we can to find and hobble the Rat who took your child from you."

  Tansy gave his hand a squeeze. "I've heard you two are the best in all Corus," she said. "I know you will do all you can." Not realizing that she'd just set up the hackles on both my Dogs, implying they might fail, Tansy cried, "Pounce, you wicked creature! No greeting for me?"

  Pounce said several things to her, all sounding happy, then leaped into her basket. Tansy laughed and braced herself against his weight.

  "Mistress, we don't want this dirty animal's hair in the food we buy," the maid said. Her voice was smooth and cold. "He's been on the streets – "

  "Nonsense," Tansy informed her. "If you're going to fuss, go back to the house. I said I didn't want my own maid, let alone you." Her eyes were too bright; her lips trembled a little. She was on the edge of her temper. Did this mot see that and hear the grief talking? Tansy rubbed Pounce's head. "I can take Pounce as my companion, can't I, boy? You must be bored if Beka is working." She turned to the counter and saw Mistress Noll looking at her. "Grannylady, why is it every time I see you, you're frowning at me?"

  Mistress Noll smiled. "You're mistaken, Mistress Lofts. My heart goes out to you in your loss. I too have babes who died, mine when they were newborn. I know what you feel, losing your Rolond."

  Tansy looked away, her eyes overfull. Goodwin wandered across the row to talk with a vendor. Tunstall sniffed a citron bun as he looked down the way. Where Spicers' Row crossed with the fruit sellers', Ulsa of Prettybone District walked. She was flashy in a red shirt and black breeches, both Carthaki silk. She even carried a curved Carthaki-style sword. Rumor said she could use it. Three of her handsome guards walked behind her. One of her women guards was on her far side, but the guard on her left, closest to us, was Rosto. He was all in black and more graceful even than Pounce. Tunstall watched them.

  "I am sorry that you lost any children, Grannylady," Tansy whispered. "Whatever their age. I – I said something bad to you about that once. I think the Goddess punished me for it, taking my son."

  "Child, that's water sunk in the ground," Mistress Noll said. My memory is bothering me about that now. What did Tansy say to Mistress Noll that has Tansy thinking the Goddess has punished her?

  "You must give over your sorrow now for the child on the way," Mistress Noll said to Tansy. "And you must eat. I have some fine rastons here, fresh from the oven." She offered a big loaf for Tansy's
inspection.

  I heard the familiar creaking of pigeon wings overhead. Splendid, I thought. They find me, and now they think Mistress Noll is offering a meal.

  "I think we'd best go about our watch," Goodwin said, returning. "Cooper, say good night to Mistress Lofts and Mistress Noll – "

  The dead clamored in my ears as the pigeons descended into the torchlit row. Customers and vendors moved away as the birds flapped between the torches. The ghosts cried out, dozens of them telling me their complaints.

  "Maiden's mercy, what are they doing?" Tansy whispered.

  Mistress Noll picked up a frying spoon. She poked the awning of her booth, cursing the birds that had landed there. "Send them away, Beka!" she ordered.

  "I didn't call them!" I said. Tunstall set a copper on the counter, breaking up a bun. He held out his hand, crumbs falling from his palm.

  "Oh, you would," Goodwin complained as five pigeons descended to sit on his arm and fingers.

  "Mama?" The young white bird with black-dripped feathers flew in circles around Tansy's head, then tried to land. She shrieked and threw up her arms, knocking it away. The ghost cried, "Mama, take me home! Mama, I'm frightened!"

  I froze. In four years I had never seen a ghost seize its messenger bird before.

  "Mama, Mama, I'm lost! Someone took me. He said Grandpapa doesn't love me!" The pigeon who carried Rolond's spirit tangled his claws in Tansy's curls. Her maid unsheathed her belt knife.

  "No, you looby!" I shoved the mot out of the way. "Tansy, hold still!"

  "Beka, get it off, get it off!" Tansy shrieked.

  I couldn't blame her. The bird was in a panic now, whirling as it tried to escape, smacking Tansy with its wings. Pigeon slaps hurt. And this one was mad not just with panic, but with the ghost that rode it, who was so certain Tansy could hear him.

  "Mama, take me home, please! I'll be good!" Rolond screamed as the pigeon dodged my hands.