Beka Cooper 1 - Terrier Read online

  Tunstall came back with more ale for both of them. He was followed by a cookmaid with a tray of supper. My Dogs hadn't stinted. There was eel tart, roast hare, split-pea soup, and cheese fritters, along with a loaf of country bread and butter to spread on it.

  "Eat up," Tunstall ordered as he cut into the hare. "It gets busier as the evening gets older." He and Goodwin served out the food. "So what do you think of our pale cove?"

  Goodwin was ladling soup. "All the city knows that Kayfer Deerborn is a joke as a Rogue. The carrion crows and the hopefuls are coming to town. It's to be expected."

  I knew what she meant. Our thief king rules because he lets his district chiefs keep the biggest part of their profits. In return they guard his life. Now word is out. The chiefs aren't as vigilant, or they're lazy. More and more young folk are restless under a Rogue who lets no one move up in the way of things. It's time for a new ruler, they're saying.

  Goodwin reached across the table and tugged my hair. "Puppy! Tell us how you came to be talking all friendly-like with the dead baby's mother while me and Tunstall traded lies with Crookshank. Don't look at us or we'll be here all night. Just report."

  I drew on my plate with my dagger and told them how Mama was friends with Crookshank's daughter-in-law. How Annis was a customer when Mama sold perfumes, soaps, and herbs. When my lord Gershom took us in, Annis stayed friends with us. She and Mama often shopped the Daymarket on Mama's good days. How one time, I went to see my friends and Tansy got the notion that we should go to the Daymarket. There we found Mama, and Annis, and Annis's son. Herun looked at Tansy's curls and dimples and bright eyes....

  "Young love," Tunstall said with a wistful sigh. "It's so simple. Remember when it was simple?" he asked Goodwin.

  "Simple for you. You're a simple creature," Goodwin told him. She made a beckoning gesture to me. I have a feeling I will get very familiar with this gesture, a come-on twitch of just two of her fingers. "What did Annis and Tansy say tonight at Crookshank's?"

  I repeated all of it, as exactly as I could remember. Then I handed over Tansy's rock. Tunstall pushed aside the plates and set it between them. He reached into a pocket and fetched out a small thing like a white pearl. He blew on it and set it on the table next to the stone.

  Light spread from the globe. While the room's lamps flickered, this light was steady. As it touched the stone, it brought glints of fire from its surface in colors like cherry red, sapphire blue, grass green. The shiny step-like bit changed, now red, now green, now mixes of both colors with flecks of blue.

  "Pretty toy." Some of the other Dogs had come over. It was Jewel's partner who spoke. "Where'd y' get it?"

  "Tansy Lofts, Crookshank's granddaughter-in-law that married young Herun Lofts, she gave it to our Puppy," Goodwin told him. "Ever seen anything like it?" I was trying not to slide under the table. I did make myself as small as I could. I have to get better at being around folk.

  More Dogs and a few off-duty soldiers came to see. Seemingly the customers not on the side of the law knew to mind their own business in this place. Of them Goodwin asked, all either shook their heads or said no.

  Otterkin, one of the Dogs with the magic Gift, touched the stone. It sparked, throwing off lights in the colors of its glassy bits, then turned back to normal.

  "It's no spellstone," Otterkin said. "I suppose it could be used for one, but it's like none I was ever schooled with." She shrugged. "You could always take it to Master Fulk."

  Everyone groaned or rolled their eyes. I clenched my fists and watched my Dogs. I'll take the stone to Master Fulk if they order me to, but he'd best play nice.

  "We should, though I trust your expertise over Fulk's," Goodwin told Otterkin. "I saw him turn a boil into a case of them once, all over the poor Dog who went to him for help." The other Dogs muttered agreement.

  Tunstall's globe faded. He picked it up, then the sparkly stone. "It'll make a nice toy for your cat," he told me, handing the stone to me. "Young Herun Lofts isn't the sharpest arrow in the quiver. No doubt he thought he'd discovered rubies, or some such. Anything else to report, Puppy?"

  "Nothing more to report, Guardsman," I mumbled, wishing the others would go away.

  And they did wander back to their tables to finish their suppers. Goodwin ordered me to do the same.

  One more big thing happened after supper, but I am too weary to write of it now. And too miserable. On the morrow, mayhap, I will hurt less in my pride. I will write of it then.

  I will not be the Puppy who is made a Dog in the shortest space of time.

  Thursday, April 2, 246

  Written before baton practice.

  Some details of my work I do not want to write out. It is bad enough that they happened. I will record them in a general way, but it is more than I can bear to write each word of it.

  Last night, after supper, we went back to the Nightmarket. There was a cutpurse. Tunstall lunged for him and saved the purse, but missed the thief.

  Goodwin pointed at the runaway Rat and said, "Puppy, fetch."

  I was gleeful. I could prove how good I was. I was after the cutpurse in a leap. I chased him down Stuvek Street. My training forgot, I never saw his lookout. The cove stuck out a foot and I went flying.

  There'd been a seller of fried food. On one side of his frying cart was the crate of fresh fish he cooked up for passersby. On the other side was the pile of heads, guts, and tails left as he cut those fish up for the cooking. I made my acquaintance with the pile, full out. The cutpurse escaped.

  Now it is day and my pride still hurts. I do not want the world to see me again. I do not want any Dogs to see me again. My sisters, my brothers, Lord Gershom, all will have the tale by now. My lord will be wondering how he could have been so mistaken in me. Diona, Lorine, Willes, and Nilo will do as brothers and sisters always do. They will never, ever let me forget this.

  Can a mot die of shame? If I report back to the kennel tonight (if I don't just pack my things and head for the nearest ship away from Tortall) I will find out.

  Everyone who saw me clapped. Vendors, shoppers, street Players, and Rats whistled, stomped, and cheered. Except my Dogs. Tunstall was busy hobbling the lout who had tossed me into that mound of fish garbage. Goodwin just stood there, arms crossed over her chest, one eyebrow raised.

  It was near the end of our watch. Goodwin sent me to the docks to rinse off under the big barrels they kept for the fishermen. She ordered me just to go on home and care for my uniform. I fetched a change of clothes, then took myself to the bathhouse around the corner from my lodgings. There I scrubbed me and my uniform. The attendants were more used to waiting on street women and Players than Puppies. They swore by the Goddess they couldn't smell fish by the time I was done, but they smirked as they swore. I couldn't tell. I think the stench was burned into my poor nose. I passed over a five-copper piece for a special jasmine and lavender bath and soaked until I couldn't smell a thing. Then I went home and threw myself into my bed.

  I will be known forever as the Puppy who chased a cutpurse and caught fish garbage instead. My descendants will pretend I'm not in their bloodline. No – no one will want to make descendants with me.

  I might have hid until I'd worked up the courage to run off to sea, but Pounce is determined. He washed my nose. He meowed and clawed at my bedclothes. He dug all around me until he found a way in. His yowls were deafening inside the covers.

  "Pesky beast," I growled, winding him up in sheets and throwing them off the bed. "You don't have to face the world."

  Will you waste all your free time sulking? he asked. Get up!

  When I stood, there he was, on top of the blankets. I wish I knew how he did that. "I told you to stay home last night, and not go a-playing off your tricks on me." I checked the bolts on my shutters. They were still fastened. "What do you do, magic them open?"

  He just sat on the bed, looking at me, head cocked sideways, his whiskers shoved forward in his small cat smile. "I hate it when you charm me," I told him.
I draped him over my shoulder. He purred and climbed around the back of my head, then washed my temple. He stayed there, balanced, while I poured water in the basin and cleaned my teeth and face. Combing my hair was more activity than he wanted, though, so he sat on my lone table for that. I was probably smiling like a looby the whole time. I don't know why I am so fortunate as to have this magical creature for my friend, but he makes things better, the little and the big. When Mama died, Pounce comforted all of us, not just me. Today he eased my sore heart.

  I pulled on breeches, shirt, and boots and gathered a string bag and my belt purse. I had time to shop, feed my pigeons, eat, and still run away to sea if I didn't laze about anymore. I was putting what I'd need for the day in my pockets when I saw the stone that Tansy had given me among my bits of things. I carried it to the window and opened the shutters. The mid-morning sun poured in as a couple of pigeons landed on the sill. While they made simple pigeon noises, I found the bag of cracked corn I kept inside the window and spread some on the sill to quiet them.

  Then I held up the stone. The sparkling pieces were even brighter in the daylight. I turned it here and there, fascinated by the colors. The little red bits were the best. The only time I'd ever seen red so bright was in the paintings in the great temple of the Mother Goddess the day Mama took me for blessings on my first monthlies. I kept turning it, finding new spots that cast off light, until Pounce leaped to my shoulder and yowled Wake up! in my ear.

  "Pounce!" I yelped. He'd shattered some glass bubble around me. I looked down. The pigeons were gone, their corn all eaten. The sun had moved enough that a shadow lay on the edge of the sill. "How long was I standing here, gawping at the rock?" I asked my cat.

  Pounce said, Long enough, and jumped to the floor.

  "Someday I'm selling you to a dumpling maker," I told him. I shoved the rock into my breeches pocket. Then I closed and locked my shutters once more.

  Pounce and I rattled downstairs. As we passed through the door to the street, my landlady leaned out her window and called, "Would ye bring me some fish, then, Beka, there's a good gixie."

  I heard folk laughing as we went down the lane. It's going to be a long time before I stop hearing that little joke. I heard three different types of it before I got to Bis's bakery. The one I liked despite myself was how Pounce had done well for himself, making his home with a Fishpuppy.

  Old man Bis grinned when he saw me and took my three coppers. The four-day-old bread bin had more than enough to fill my bag. It feels good to know that I no longer get bread there for my family and that I can afford more than a lone copper's worth.

  I was about to go when Bis offered me a small loaf of bread in the shape of a fish. He'd glazed its scales with egg to bake up shiny. He cackled when I bit the thing's head off and gave Pounce the tail.

  "You'll show 'em, Beka Cooper!" Bis told me. "I seen it when you was naught but a peck o' rawhide an' eyes like ice. I see it now! Fish guts and all!"

  I shook my head at him and fled. I don't know where the old man came by such belief in me. How did he even tell me apart from the mumper children that waited around the shop in hope of a stale roll? But he'd known me right off when I moved back to the Lower City. He'd offered me a fruit bun in welcome. It was why I'd chosen his shop for getting my precious stale bread.

  Pounce and I wandered on down through the Lower City. I do love it there during the day. Mothers sit on their doorsteps, gossiping with friends as they sew, feed their babes, and buy from passing vendors. The pigs are everywhere, snuffling in garbage when the dogs and cats aren't vexing them. The pigeons are everywhere, too, hunting out food. Children run around the muddy streets and in the dooryards of places big enough to have them, playing games and chasing animals. Mostly folk here walk or ride horses or mules. No one comes down here in a carriage. The streets are too narrow. The mud tracks twist and take quick turns. Now and then a wagoner might get lost hereabouts. He'll be stuck, and before he knows it, his cargo is gone. So, too, are his clothes, purse, and whatever poor beast pulled the wagon.

  There is always something going on: a deal, a birth, a wedding, a fight, lessons in sommat or other. Folk are alive in the Lower City, not bottled up like the merchants and the nobles. They laugh at what they find funny, and they weep if they are sad. If they have a little, they help their kin and friends. And they want better lives, however they can manage to get them. I am just the same. I knew plenty of mots and children who'd been like Mama, at the mercy of a Rat, who'd thought no one would help them. I'd made sure that Rat paid for his thieving. Who would do that for other families like mine had been?

  Most of the folk who lived here knew me by sight and to nod to, though I'd learned being a Dog, even a Puppy, made a difference. The little ones would run up to me, laughing and holding out their hands, yelling, "Put the cords on me! I been bad!" And their parents would chuckle, but the laugh never reached their eyes. Everyone in the Lower City knew of goings-on that cracked the law, even if they never took part. Any Dog wanting to curry favor or make a mark could drag someone in for questioning and come away with a tidbit of tasty information.

  I'll not be doing that. I suppose it's easy enough to bully strangers, but the folk of the Lower City are my neighbors. Besides, I have sources most Dogs don't. My Birdies aren't human, but real, winged birds and creatures of the air.

  I walked down Messinger Lane to the corner of Holderman Street. There was Glassman Square. Mots sat on the rim of the big pool at the center, visiting and filling their buckets. Other mots and gixies did laundry in stone tubs fed by pipes from the pool. I bought two Scanran pasties with mutton, onion, and currants, sharing the gristly meat with Pounce. Then I wiped my fingers on my handkerchief and sat on one of the raised stone blocks around the square.

  As soon as I began to rip the first stale loaf of bread into small pieces, the pigeons came in hordes. They are the most common birds in all Corus. Folk kick at them, dogs chase them, cats and children kill them, hawks eat them, and still they thrive, the silly things. They go everywhere, see everything, and serve the Black God of Death, carrying those who are not ready to enter his Peaceful Realms. Their colors are mixed. I have seen ones who are wondrous shades of copper and pink and others who are almost as black as Pounce, with a blue-green tinge to them.

  My old friend Slapper, who landed on my knee, is one of the blue-black ones. He'd come to me first in my Lord Provost's stable yard, yet somehow he had tracked me here. I'd named him Slapper for his bad habit of hitting me with his wings. He was also dirty and had a clubbed foot, a hunched back, and wide yellow eyes with the tiniest of pupils. He looked as if he'd accuse you of plotting to murder him in his sleep.

  I offered him bread. He grabbed for it (I've been feeding him for three years and he still doesn't trust me) and in the grab, he fell off my knee. I put down my hand and let a heap of bread crumbs fall next to my leg. Slapper balanced himself on his bad foot and went to work on them.

  In came Pinky, a bird I'd met just a week ago, a silver and dark pink pigeon whose wings are tipped in snowy white. She is a bold wench, shoving her way right up to me. Fog is more of a pale blue-gray, with a blue-green collar and dark wing tips. White Spice is clean and white, perhaps someone's pet, with copper-colored spots from the back of his neck down to the middle of his wings. He is a handsome fellow and knows it, always strutting before the ladies.

  I have not named them all, of course. Like the pigeons who live around the Lord Provost's house, they are quick to learn a source of food. It took these fifty-odd birds but three days of my coming here at this time, with my basket, to know me and to gather when I began to rip up my bread. I wished I could say I did it for my love of birds.

  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 c
ome 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.