Bloodhound (27 page)

"My lord says Nestor's true to the bone," I told her. "Whatever's going on, it's not under Nestor's nose."

Goodwin nodded. We were headed toward Deep Water, down the long strip of Tradesmen's District. "So Nestor keeps an eye on South Hills and much of the docks, possibly. But a sergeant's reach only goes so far."

"Where do we go now?" I asked.

"The main gaming district. It's called Flowerbed. We might as well get to know it, particularly the alleyways. It's off toward the Deep Harbor District." Goodwin pointed to the part of town opposite, that climbed up toward the city wall at the base of Queen's Heights.

I figured now was the time to tell her. "Goodwin, we've had company."

She nodded. "He picked us up near our lodgings. I haven't gotten a good look at his face yet, have you?"

I shook my head. "A lad, twelve or so, dark brown hair, quick on his feet."

Goodwin shrugged. "Whoever he watches us for, what can he say? We visited the bank, met with old friends, and now we're walking through the parts of town with shops. In a bit we'll take our noon meal and go back to our lodgings on a different path. I hope he gets blisters."

"I'd
like to know who paid him to watch us," I muttered, stopping to look at a shopkeeper's tray of brooches. A glance to the side showed me no watcher.

"Whoever it is will be dead bored by the time his day's report is done. Sometimes you
want
to be followed, Cooper," Goodwin told me. At the next stall she picked up a length of bright yellow cloth and held it up to her cheek. "What do you think?"

I winced and kept walking.

We were four blocks past Gerjuoy again when two coves and a mot stepped out in front of us. They wore leather jerkins and were armed with long knives and a trove of hidden daggers. I knew the blades were there by the print the hilts showed against their clothes. Stupid tarses. I sew stones in the hems of my tunics so they hang away from my hidden weapons, and I use flat hilts.

Goodwin and I both stopped, hands on our batons.

"Here's a sight to make me eyes go all watery. Two Dogs, as fair as the May, out o' their patch and bein' all careless-like." The talker was the shorter cove, a rusher built like a barrel. "Like they was thinkin' we'd let 'em go any old place."

"But they're
Dogs."
The mot had a voice as rough as a corbie's and the black eyes to match. She wore her black hair cropped so short it showed the scars on her head. She might be a former soldier, since many wore their hair cut so. I hope she was ashamed, going from the King's service to being a Rat. "They allus go wherever they want." She sneered as she said it.

"Stow yer wind, you two," ordered the third of them, a bony cove like a skeleton. He had cold, dead gray eyes that gave me the shudders. If my eyes are like that, no wonder folk don't like them. "You Dogs. Come along wiv us."

Goodwin eased her feet apart, balancing herself. Behind me I heard the low rumble of Achoo's growl. I was already balanced, my baton gripped in both hands. If these Rats were here to harm us, doing it in Tradesmen's District as the day drew on to noon seemed like idiot work.

"I don't like the tone of your invitation," Goodwin replied. "And my old mother told me never to go along with strangers."

Achoo turned. Her growl got louder. I risked a look around. Three more rushers, all coves, came up from behind. I swung to face them, setting my back to Goodwin's. Achoo stood just off my left hand, head down and hackles up. For a dog of middling size, she looked dangerous.

"Guardswomen, please, let's not have this fuss and bother." A doxie past her prime came forward. Her face was painted white. Her eyes were lined with black paint and shaded with blue. Her dress was a shrieking shade of green, her hair a dyed red that nearabout blazed. "I beg pardon for my rough friends. I got a rock in my shoe and they came ahead of me. They never thought I might be wanting to use my silken gloves, and not the leather ones." She patted the arm of the rusher who stood in front of me. "Never you mind their rudeness. The truth is, I come from Her Majesty Pearl Skinner." She looked at us and cocked her head to one side in a way that was mayhap winning, ten or twenty years ago. "Pearl Skinner? The Rogue of Port Caynn?"

Goodwin shifted slightly so she might keep an eye on the mot's face. "And why should this make us any more eager to go along with you?" she asked.

The doxie smiled. "Because you want to know what our Rogue might have to say to a pair of visiting Dogs. She gives you her word, in the name of the Great Mother Goddess, that you will be safe."

Goodwin looked at me. I looked at her. We shrugged at the same time and put our batons away. We could have fought. Sooner or later the local Dogs would have come and put a stop to it. These rushers might have gone to the cages for a short while before the Rogue got them out again. We'd go about our business, until we got trapped in an alley or picked off one by one, to get beaten or killed quietly someplace with no witnesses.

"Achoo,
tumit,"
I said.

"Lovely creature," the doxie said. She meant it not at all. "Follow me."

I glanced back as they led us down an alley off the main street. I saw the flick of a brown tunic as our watcher twitched out of sight. He was still on our track, then, and he didn't belong to the Rogue of Port Caynn.

We turned down a smaller street, then into another alley. Halfway along, once the rushers made sure no one was close enough to see, we took a set of steps down into the cellar of what looked like an abandoned house. Achoo whimpered.

"Hush," I told her. Achoo looked at me with sorrow, as if to say, "You
like
entering strange, dark places?"

"Here's the tricky part for you, but you've still got Her Majesty's word," the doxie told Goodwin and me. Two of the rushers were taking torches from a pile inside the cellar door. "You have to take the blindfold."

I clenched my fists.

"Do it. How often do you get to meet the Rogue of Port Caynn?" Goodwin asked. She let them slip a dark scarf over her eyes. "Don't touch the hound, you lot. She'll have your throat out."

"Achoo,
gampang"
I said, bending to grip Achoo's collar. I kept my eyes down, not wanting to see Rats hood Goodwin like the nobles do their hawks. That's how I saw the movement of her hand as she gripped her belt. I'd forgotten the blade she kept there, disguised as part of the buckle.

I ground my teeth as they blindfolded me. In my trunk at Serenity's are my arm guards, which are reinforced on the outside with thin strips of metal. Those strips are in truth knives. I'd not worn my arm guards today, thinking we were out on easy errands. The problem with forgetting my training lessons is that one of these days the penalty will be fatal. As it was, all I had now were my back of neck and back of belt knives and my boot knives, all tricky to reach without drawing attention.

A rusher led me by one arm. I heard Achoo trotting at my other side. From the sounds, I could tell we'd entered a tunnel. Then we passed into a second tunnel, and into a huge, echoing chamber filled with the sound of rushing water. It stank like a sewer, though not as bad as some. This one must have gotten flushed out regular by the sea. I could smell salt water as well as scummer.

Then we climbed a set of stairs, crossed a small room, and climbed yet more stairs. At the top of that second stair, our blindfolds were stripped from us. As we blinked in the torchlight, the doxie put her hand on the door latch. "I'll announce you," she said. "Mind that hound. Her Majesty likes well-behaved creatures." She went into the next room.

"And I like Rats to leave me be," Goodwin said, pulling away from the cove and the mot who gripped her wrists.

The skinny cove, the shivery one, raised his hand. "Shut yer gob and mind yer manners, hedgecreeper," he told her.

In a flash she had her knife at his eyes. She had her other hand dug firm into his gems. His knees buckled. His face turned red in the dim light. I swung in behind her, my baton out. I thrust it into the gullet of the mot who was about to seize Goodwin. Pressing down on her windpipe, I backed the mot up to the wall and held her there.

"Achoo,
lindengi
," I said. My hound was already on Goodwin's other side, hackles up, lips skinned back. The other four rushers looked at us and held their hands up, palms out. It's amazing how scared folk are of a hound when she shows her teeth.

"I'll mind what manners I choose to mind, toad scummer, and you'll tell me 'please' and 'thank you' for them," Goodwin said to the bony cove. "What kind of Dogs do you kennel here, that you pieces of nose sweet think you can drag me and my partner all over the streets?"

"Rogue's orders, Guardswoman," the barrel-built rusher said, his voice very soft. "You know how life is. Bring 'em fast, she told us."

One of the others added, "'A course, some of us allus got to add a bit o' sauce t' the job." He nodded to the skinny rusher who was still in Goodwin's grip.

The doxie opened the door again. She went still when she saw how things had changed since she'd left. At last she said, "Getting to know each other? It's lovely, but I'm sure Her Majesty don't mean to keep you here that long. If you'll come with me, she will see you."

Goodwin lingered, still looking at the bony cove. She sheathed her knife first, then released his gems. She wiped her fingers on her hip. "Come at me again, laddybuck, and I'll leave a hole big enough you can wear a bangle in them, understand me?"

I holstered my baton. "Achoo, good girl.
Tumit."
Following the doxie, Goodwin and I left the room. The rushers who were close to the door stood aside.

The room inside might have been part of a countinghouse or a warehouse once. It had been made nice, with benches, chairs, and tables. There was a bar against the far wall. Folk there waited in line for the tapster to fill their tankards. The place was lamp lit. I saw no windows. The door to what might be a kitchen was beside the bar. A second door, likely to lead to the privies, was in the same wall. Folk kept walking in through it adjusting their belts. A third door to my left was guarded by a couple of good-sized rushers. Next was the door we'd come through, and then a door was next to the hearth in that same wall. Two staircases led upward. There were plenty of holes these Rats could use to escape.

The folk that stood or sat closest to the hearth, about ten feet from Goodwin and me, were them that had the power here. There was a large open space around them, for one. For another, two guards with crossbows stood on either side of the hearth. Another stood at the back of the woman who sat in a rich, heavily cushioned chair placed beside the small fire.

I deliberately looked past her, because I knew the moment I saw her she was Pearl Skinner and she was going to be granite to the marrow. I'll say she is forty-five or forty-six, lean and fit. She would have to be, to still be alive and Rogue in Port Caynn. Her hair is like straw, yellow and brittle. I'd wager she killed whoever sold her the dye for it. Her eyes are large, dark, and quick, her nose long and straight. Her upper lip is near invisible, the lower lip full. She's got strong cheekbones. She dresses like a hillwoman, with a sleeveless overrobe covered with embroideries. Her dress was a rich blue silk, slit high up both sides. I could see black leggings through one slit, and black boots with dagger hilts all about the rims. Two hilts thrust from her sash, and I saw the prints of three dagger hilts along one of her sleeves. She wore dangling earrings but no necklaces, nothing an enemy could use to choke her. She did have a lot of rings for a knife fighter.

Beside her sat an older, white-skinned cove armed with a longsword. He wore his brown hair cropped two inches short. There were silver strands in his neat beard. On the mot's other side a younger Bazhir warrior sat. His long black hair was combed straight back and tied in a horsetail. At his waist he wore a slightly curved longsword.

The doxie walked up to the dais and stood next to Pearl, like a lady-in-waiting. "The two Dogs you wanted," she said, like we were a load of wheat she was delivering. The room went quiet.

Pearl tapped her fingers on the arm of her fancy chair. "Speak up," she said in a voice that brought Achoo's hackles up again. "Who by plague are you two? Ye're not Caynn Dogs. You come swaggerin' into
my
city, pokin' yer fambles in my banks, interferin' with
my
people a-doin' their jobs – "

Movement to my right caught my attention. Over by the bar the gixie pickpocket I'd caught earlier was ducking out of sight.

"Ye'll look at
me
, young mistress!" Pearl barked. I looked at her, keeping my temper gripped tight. Pearl leaned forward. "Yes, you interfered in
that
bit o' my interest, and ye'll tell me why! How do I even know ye're Dogs? Any cracknob can stitch up a uniform." She grinned at us, showing teeth. The fool trull had paid to have some of them mage-changed to pearls. Even though they'd doubtless break sooner or later, she had teeth in her head made of real pearls next to others that were gray and dying. I've never seen such a waste in all my days!

"They be true Dogs, Majesty, right enough," a man called from the back of the room. He got up and came toward us with the kind of solid gait that told a knowing eye he could walk all day at need. I remembered him – it was Steen, the cove who'd known so much about riot fountains and freezing spells. He looked just as I remembered him, dark-haired and dark-eyed, built like a badger with a wide head, wide shoulders, and thick arms. He's got a very thin beard that forms a circle around his mouth and chin, and he wears his hair close-cropped like the mot who'd helped to bring us here. His nose was broad and slumped, as if someone had hit it. "From the Lower City in Corus. Guardswoman Cooper, might you be rememberin' me – ah, I see that you do. Corporal Guardswoman Goodwin, good day. Steen Bolter. We met in th' riot."

Goodwin pointed to his beard. "I thought that thing was a mustache."

He chuckled and smoothed his thumb and forefinger over his beard. "Eh, some days it is, some it's longer. Hanse says I can't decide whether t' grow it nor give it a decent funeral." He looked at Pearl again. "They was hip deep in the Bread Riot I told yez about, Majesty. Hanse says it's a pleasure t' see these mots work."