Authors: Tamora Pierce
Bloodhound (14 page)
I ran my hand over the cover of my journal. "How was it done?" I forced my voice to be calm. I needed to know. Rosto is a knife cove.
"It wasn't blades. They were got the way they got you, but it was made a killing matter for them," Goodwin replied. Half a smile curled the side of her mouth. "No one would be looby enough to try to pin it on Rosto, even if they'd been diced like an onion, Cooper. We're going to need the Rogue, come winter." She hoisted a small cloth bag onto my lap. "Lady Sabine wants you to have these. They're Vivianos."
I stared at the beautiful apples. "My lady must have paid high to get Vivianos so early in the season!" They are my favorite kind of apple, and the most costly.
"No, she didn't. Her family has orchards." Goodwin put her hand on my shoulder. "As far as we're concerned, Cooper, the matter of the Pell brothers is settled. We can't prove Rosto had a hand in it. I'll wager he made certain plenty of folk will say he was with them all the time the Pells were getting beat to death. So you work on healing. I'll stop by tomorrow night after watch, let you know what's going on."
I nodded and walked her to my door to see her out. Once I'd bolted my door, Pounce cocked his head.
I must go, too
.
"Where?" I asked, maddened by so many sudden absences.
But he vanished.
Feeling lonely, I took Achoo outside through the cellar door that opened onto the alley. When she finished, we climbed back to my rooms and I wrote up this day.
I wish I'd thought to ask Goodwin what they had learned about the colemongers.
Three in the afternoon.
I wish that Achoo was a constellation like Pounce, so she could appear and disappear in the street to do the necessary early in the morning and late at night. She is so gentle about rousing me, though, that I cannot be vexed with her. She paws me lightly, and there is a look of true regret in her brown eyes. How can I be cross? So I pull my breeches on over my nightdress and take her down, as I did this morning, using the kitchen door instead of the front. I neglected to write in last night's entry that I carry my baton with me as well. Also, I use Rosto's spy holes, which have a light spell sunk into them that makes it possible to see what is beyond the door as if it were brightest noon.
It wasn't until I was at the top of the steps on our return this morning that I noticed the pain was not so bad as even last night. My ribs hurt only a little, my gut not at all. My head aches much less.
"I hope Sir Tullus pays Master Sholto a good wage," I told Achoo as I went back to bed. "He is worth it." I will make offerings in thanks to the Goddess for Master Sholto, and to Great Mithros for Sir Tullus.
The city clocks were chiming ten when I woke next. I cleaned up and dressed for the day in breeches and a tunic. Mayhap I could not visit all of my pigeons and dust spinners, but a few wouldn't tire me too much.
"Achoo,
tumit,"
I said. She followed me down the stair and out through the kitchen cheerfully, head and tail high. It was plain to me, as we stepped outside, that this was Achoo's kind of day, cool and sunny, a few clouds in the sky, a light breeze that carried off any bad smells. It bore instead the scent of woodsmoke and cut hay from the east, harvest scents.
We walked east ourselves, down Nipcopper Close, then left on Westberk. The Nightmarket rose before us, all shabby and tattered in the bright September light. The soldiers posted at intervals along Stuvek Street were allowing folk to pass through, rather than forcing them to walk around the closed market to go where they wished. At twilight, doubtless, they'd be turning folk away, unless they were bribed proper. I doubt that the rushers who fetched the Pells' corpses here were all that clever about sneaking them in.
I passed the soldier that was guarding the join of Stuvek Street and Peachfuzz Lane, looking around me. Every shop and stall that stood yet was locked and barred. All showed damage. Many had lost awnings, shutters, even entire walls. Two for One was a blackened ruin on my left. I stopped and waited, stretching my back out, while Achoo gave Two for One a good sniffing.
When my spine bones stopped popping, I called, "Achoo,
kemari"
and she trotted over as if she'd been doing it to my command all her days. "Good girl," I told her, and gave her a bit of dried meat I'd warmed in my hand on our way from our lodgings. She bolted it and whuffed softly, a polite way of asking for more.
"No," I said. "Oh, pox, what's the word?
Tak
. I shouldn't spoil you." Achoo sighed and looked down. My heart went all soft and I gave her the other piece I'd been holding. "But that's
it,"
I told her, trying to sound masterful. "Now we're going to do some work."
I'd been saving the little stir of air beside King Gareth's Fountain for a day when I was alone and had a bit of time. Not only was this such a day, but now I had a need of it. We stepped up to the north side of the fountain. Folk were avoiding the area, having heard already of the dead men left here yesterday and not wanting the Pell brothers' ghosts to follow them home. I have no reason to fear ghosts, knowing they will come to me or no. I also knew that, unless they were hungry, they would not visit me here.
My interest was in the small whirling round of dust at the fountain's base. It spun right before the spot where the word
Gareth
was carved into the stone. The swirl was the tiniest of dust spinners, no more than three inches high and six inches wide. It had been there since midsummer, born on the breezes that had blown while the city was sick with the red flux. Unless a windstorm came to feed it stronger currents of air, or unless I did something, it would die in the winter cold. I hated it when they died so young, before they'd had a chance to really taste life in the open air.
I pulled a bag of dust from my pocket. I'd made it up a while back, when first I noticed other such young spinners. Sometimes I am able to make them stronger, sometimes not. In bags like this I put samples of street grit from every part of Corus I visited, in the hope that the new spinner could draw on the strength of the city to live, not just on that of the place where it whirled.
I do confess, I work all this out as I go. Having never met anyone like me, and knowing that my lord never found a mage who had heard of any like me, I craft what I may and pray that it works.
"Achoo,
dukduk,"
I said after she finished slurping from the lowest dish in the fountain. I still feel silly when I give her that word to get her to sit.
"Diamlah."
She sat, cocking her head as she watched me. I barely noticed that Pounce had appeared beside her.
I opened the bag. Closing my eyes, I prayed to the Black God. It seems to me that he is the one I should speak to in these matters. If he claims the pigeons, and the ghosts, mayhap he governs the things of the air, like dust spinners. No one has ever told me he does not, in any event. This is the first time I asked him about it, though.
"Great One, if you wish it, allow this spinner to grow high and strong like its brothers and sisters in the city," I whispered. "Allow it to feed on and carry the air that blows here. And – whatever else seems fitting to you. Forgive me. I've never tried to talk like a priestess before. So mote it be."
Mayhap this is why priestesses and priests train for years, to talk so elegantly.
I stepped into the heart of the spinner. It spread to fit around both of my feet, losing most of its height. Holding my bag at a slight angle, I narrowed my eyes against blowing dust and began to pour a thin stream of dust straight down into the spinner's edge. I continued to pour until my bag was empty. All of the dust in it had gone into the spinner. None lay on the ground. Now I closed my eyes and, like a looby, lowered my hands to my hips and raised them slowly above my head.
"Come up," I whispered, hoping that no one could see me. I lowered and raised my hands twice more, because everyone knows these things work best in the Goddess's threes. Twice more I whispered, "Come up," hoping the spinner understood either my words or my thoughts.
I waited. Then I heard the scratch of grit blowing over cloth. Slowly the hems of my tunic began to flutter and flap. I felt windblown dust on my hands. It moved no higher. At last I opened my eyes. The spinner had grown and widened. It spun now as high as my ribs, and it had picked up bits of twigs, cloth, and leaves from the riot. It was wider, too, wide enough to leave an inch of air around me.
I closed my eyes once more and invited it to release whatever talk might have become trapped in its breezes. A roar exploded in my ears. I shrank, covering them, but the roar was in my head in truth. No amount of ear covering could stop it. The noise came from the riot. It sounded like a screaming monster made of human voices. I wondered if a spinner could go mad, but this one spun on, not even burdened by the roar.
" – here. Right... here." It was a mot's voice, breathy, as if she carried sommat heavy. She was much closer than the roaring mob, and she was familiar.
"Easy, Clary. Gods curse those two – what were they, oxen? Ahh!" It was Tunstall! It was Goodwin and Tunstall, when Tunstall got hurt.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Goodwin whispered. "Get your back against the fountain. Now easy. Easy – "
And then silence. He must have sat on the spinner. I pulled my nails from my palms, where I was digging them, and wiped my eyes on my sleeve. I asked my little spinner if there was aught else she had for me. There was more roaring from the riot, and scraps after that.
I was about to step from Raaashell's hold – she had named herself while I took the word scraps from her – when I heard something new. I nearabout missed it, the voices were so soft.
" – got to be
here?
What purpose does it serve – " It was a cove. I heard strain in his voice, like he bore a load.
"Cork it! No names, are you
cracked?
She might catch them with her magic and then it's the cages for us! You think you'd last against the Drink, or the hot irons? The rack?" This cove too sounded strained, and frightened.
Neither of them said anything more. Raaashell had a few more scraps for me, but they were not like the last bit for importance. Either word was getting out among the Lower City Rats that someone had ears where they did not expect them, or someone who knew what I could do had given these Rats their orders. It was impossible to tell by what little I'd heard.
I thanked Raaashell and stepped clear of her. Free of the burden of human words, she grew until she spun as high as my chest.
Very fine work
, Pounce said.
You've thought about this a bit
.
"Some," I told him, brushing myself off. "Achoo,
bangkit
." She came over to me, frisking and wagging her tail. I looked at Pounce. "Any chance you'll say where you've been?"
Pounce met my eyes with his purple ones.
It is the business of stars, Beka. Even if I spoke of it, you would not understand a word in five
.
We walked on out of the Nightmarket. I felt weak all over again, the result of helping a spinner to grow. We returned to our rooms for yet another poxy nap.
I finished my nap, and did all of the offerings to the gods that I promised in return for their help in the last few days. That brought me to Holderman Square and a good-sized flock of pigeons.
It was the rust-colored pigeon, the one that liked to sit between my feet and peck at corn, that carried the whining ghost.
"How did I come here? Stupid mumpers, clingin' to their coin. Time was, you beat a Dog well, folk bought your drink all sarden night. So I went out to take a piss, an' it went dark, an'... an' they hit me. They kicked me, they beat me."
Another pigeon in black and gray fluttered down beside me. "Shut up," its rider said. "Shut yer whinin'. Always 'Poor me,' always runnin' t' Ma."
I gently put more corn before me. "You were Geraint and Madon Pell in your life," I said, keeping my voice down.
"In my life?" cried the whiner. "In my
life?"
"You thought you were riding pigeon-back for a wager?" the surly one asked. "You thought this mot here were a giantess?"
They both looked up at me, their birds' eyes sharp and not quite pigeonly.
"Do you know me?" I asked them, curious.
"There's a shinin' about you," the surly one told me. "Yer hands and face, they shine."
"Ah," I said, and wondered if I should tell them who I was. It didn't seem like it would do much good, and they still had information I wanted. "Who killed you?"
"And how would we know that?" the surly one asked. "We was comin' out of the alehouse, and I saw two coves I didn't know pop a cloth over Geraint's head. I'd not had even time t' squeak afore someone put a pigsticker to my throat and told me t' stand quiet whilst they did the same t' me. The beat-in' started once the cloth was tied around my head."
"I saw no more after they wrapped my head in cloth," Geraint complained. "Did they beat
me
to death? We are poor folk! Who will get revenge for us?"
"Well, the Dogs might," I said. "Oh, wait! You half killed a Dog, didn't you?"
"Would've killed her all the way but for that curst hound of hers," Madon Pell grumbled. "Rippin' and tearin', and makin' enough noise to rouse the neighborhood. I shoulda hit Cooper harder, and
then
took care of that hound."
"You can do it now," I told him sweetly. "Achoo,
kemari"
Achoo had been playing with some of the laundress's children over by the fountain in the square. At my command she came galloping over, scattering the pigeons.
"That's the hound!" cried Geraint. "Gods save us, it's going to kill us!"
The brothers and the pigeons who carried them fled. I hugged Achoo about the neck and whispered to her, "You are so fierce. Yes, you are. You're fierce enough to be a hunter."
We came home to rest again as I wrote in this journal. I felt guilty about the Pell brothers, but not guilty enough. I should want to tear up the earth to find their killers. I have done so for others, time and time again. It is very wrong of me that I have no wish to do so for them that bashed me about.
