Mastiff (10 page)

They came with a jingle of chain mail and torches to light their way. Lord Gershom was in the lead, an armsman of the King’s Own riding on his left, Master Farmer on his right. Five of the King’s Own were behind them. They led two riderless horses.

“My lord!” I shouted, taking the stone lamp from my tunic as Achoo and I walked out of the brush. The men of the King’s Own had bows pointed at me before we got our feet on the road.

“Stand down!” my lord barked, dismounting. The archers lowered their bows. “Cooper, Mithros spear us all, what are you doing out here?”

I stood up straight. “Begging Your Lordship’s pardon, but Tunstall and I went for a walk,” I explained. “You know us. There was naught left for us to do on the beach.”

Lord Gershom walked over to me and offered me his water bottle.

“I thank you, but no,” I said. “My own is half full yet.” And I was very glad I’d filled it at the stream inside the royal walls, not at the river downstream from the melted dead folk. “But we did find some things that my lord will wish to hear of and see.”

My lord looked at me. Something in my face must have told him. “He’s
alive
?” he whispered. “But the ships …”

“Achoo picked up his scent north along the coast,” I replied, just as quiet. “We lost it again, but not because he was killed. Though we’ve got another of those melted people messes, like the one back at the Summer Palace. Tunstall’s keeping watch over this one. How do you come to be here, my lord?”

Lord Gershom nodded to Master Farmer, who dismounted and led his horse over to us. “Farmer said you three had gone off hunting something. He tracked you with traces from the evidence you and Tunstall had found on the beach.”

“Always glad to be of use,” the mage said. “It was the prints of your and your partner’s hands, Guardswoman Cooper. I picked them up as I examined the things you and Tunstall found. Good thing I got the traces before they went stale.”

“Stale?” I asked. How could a magical trace go stale?

“We all leave oil from our skin when we handle things,” Master Farmer explained. “You see it best on bright metal, glass, and glossy stone. A mage with the training can draw it off when it’s fresh and use it to find the one who left it behind.”

“You
are
going to teach it to the other Provost’s mages.” Lord Gershom’s words lined up like a question, but it was actually a command.

Master Farmer shrugged. “If they can, or will, learn it from me, I am glad to teach it,” he replied. “Not all of us have the ability.”

“And you’re all contrary as cats,” Lord Gershom retorted. He glanced back at the guards. “Bring a spare horse,” he commanded. A man of the Own trotted over on his horse, towing another that was already saddled. I should not have been surprised that Pounce was riding on its saddle.

“Nice of you to join me,” I told the cat as I accepted the reins from the soldier.

There is only so much squabbling between two arrogant mages that I am ready to watch before the boredom grows intolerable
, Pounce replied, jumping to the ground.
Besides, the beach is cold
.

It was plain everyone heard Pounce. Lord Gershom and Master Farmer were grinning, as were those who did not flinch at the sound of Pounce’s voice. “I am sorry your life is such a trial,” I grumbled to the cat. Then I attempted to mount the horse. My legs, which had done so well over the miles of walking, trotting, and running, chose to cramp for that. To my shame, Lord Gershom boosted me into the saddle.

Achoo whined. She was worn out, too. “If someone can hand her up to me?” I asked. “I’m sorry she’s dirty—”

“I’ll take her, if she doesn’t mind,” Master Farmer said as he mounted his own horse. “Forgive me, Guardswoman, but you look as weary as she does. Carrying her while you ride won’t rest you any.”

Lord Gershom cocked an eyebrow at me. I argued with myself about telling Achoo a near stranger was that close a friend, but the mage was right. I was weary. Lord Gershom picked Achoo up gently. She licked his face. He was the only one there she would have permitted to handle her. Then he offered her to Master Farmer.

“Achoo,
santai, kawan,
” I told her. As the mage took Achoo in his arms and settled her over his lap, I told myself that I could always rename him as her enemy if I had to.

Lord Gershom brushed off his tunic and accepted the reins of his own mount. When he was on his horse, he even took the reins of mine. He let Pounce jump onto the saddle in front of him, stroking the cat as Pounce settled. “Now tell me what happened,” he ordered me, gesturing for the soldier who had ridden on his left before to fall back. “Softly.” We rode a little way ahead of the men, my lord beckoning Master Farmer to join us. I told both of them all that Achoo, Tunstall, and I had done since reaching the beach below the Summer Palace.

“Alive,” my lord whispered when I was done. “The prince is alive.”

“Mithros grace us,” Master Farmer added.

“As best as Achoo and I can tell he’s alive,” I said. “We only went two miles up and two down the river. We should have scent hounds five miles up and down on
both
sides of the river, and mayhap a ship to take us up or down, to see if Achoo can get another whiff of him.”

Lord Gershom reached over and patted me on the shoulder. “Cooper, you, Tunstall, and Achoo have done far more than I could have hoped for. We might have lost him entirely, were it not for you three.”

Achoo knew when she was getting compliments. She wagged her tail, beating Master Farmer with it. He grinned and scratched her ears.

“So tell me, did he really make torches from rocks?” Lord Gershom asked me.

I passed my lamp to him. “He lit up an outcropping. Forgive me. He lit up the
quartz crystals
in the outcropping. And there were a couple of smaller stones fallen from the main rock, the same kind of stone, so we helped ourselves. His charms stick.”

“When it’s a charm I can work,” Master Farmer said. “Don’t confuse me with Orielle and Ironwood.”

“Who taught you this one?” my lord asked him.

“Cassine, naturally,” Master Farmer replied. “See, Cooper, we hadn’t much coin, so I did chores and so on for any mage I found who would teach me something. Then I met Master Cassine, and she took me for her student. She taught me where the spells I knew had things in common or could be put to fresh uses, as well as whatever else I could learn. She’s a great mage.”

Lord Gershom turned the glowing rock over in one gloved hand. “Who keeps to herself for the most part, the Goddess be thanked. I’d be pleased to know when this lamp fades, just for curiosity, Cooper.” He returned the lamp to me.

We all fell silent for a time. I dozed. My lord woke me by asking, “Cooper, how close are we to Tunstall?”

Pounce looked up at him.
Close
, he said.

“And I can find him, with my lord’s permission,” I replied. I halted my horse and dismounted. I didn’t have to ask Master Farmer for Achoo’s return. As soon as she saw me touch down, she wriggled out of the mage’s hold and leaped to the ground. We trotted ahead of Lord Gershom and his guards, with me holding the stone lamp up. I’d gone about a quarter mile and my arm was sore when I heard a pigeon’s call. I halted and waited for Tunstall to come out of the brush. He stood with Achoo and me, watching as the others rode up to us.

“I said to get some help, but did you have to bring the whole nursery?” he asked me quietly as the jingling men of the King’s Own came close.

“You know how it is with boys,” I replied. Any Rats that might have been nearby were long gone, alerted by the sounds of a good-sized party of folk on horses. “My lord went for a ride, and he just
couldn’t
say no, not when they begged all pathetic like.”

Lord Gershom drew up and dismounted. “Mattes,” he said, clasping Tunstall on the shoulder. “Let’s see what you have.”

One of the men from the Own came to take charge of my lord’s horse, Master Farmer’s, and mine. Rather than follow the others, I tucked my lamp in my tunic and ordered Achoo to
dukduk
. Once I found some thick bushes away from the men, she was quite willing to sit in the cool grass behind them and wait for me.

I was tidying my clothes after relieving myself when I heard several folk walking not too far from my refuge. Cursing silently, I beckoned Achoo to come with me. We hid in another clump of brush a couple of feet away. I meant to work my way around them to rejoin my lord when I heard sommat that kept me still.

“—a disgrace, to see these matters handled by Dirty Gershom and those disgusting commoners of his.” With my stone lamp hidden in my tunic, I couldn’t tell who it was that spoke, though I dearly wished I could. “I pity his lady and his children.
They
never fail to uphold their name.”

“Gershom of Haryse is an original, for certain,” one of the others said. “And I wouldn’t let that mage hear you. Even hedgewitches can bite.”

“But why bring Gershom and his
Dogs
?” a third demanded. “Why not get the Ferrets? At least they know how to treat royalty, and nobility. They keep a proper distance.”

“Haven’t you noticed he doesn’t get along with the master of Ferrets any longer?” replied the one who’d called my lord an original, whatever that meant. “Not to mention the Lord of the Exchequer and the Lord High Magistrate. With what happened here, the murder of the Lord Chancellor and perhaps even His Highness, I wouldn’t trust anyone at court.”

“He’s also made the lords and the mages furious with the new taxes,” said the one who wanted our job turned over to the Ferrets. “I wouldn’t pay a copper cole for His Majesty’s life these days.”

“You talk treason,” the first speaker said harshly.

“I didn’t say I
wanted
it,” the Ferret-lover replied. “But do you think half of us would be greeting the Black God right now if His Majesty was still his old, lazy self?”

The voices moved out of my hearing, headed back toward the river. I crouched for a moment longer, clenching my fists over and over. Mayhap the split-tongued canker bums would stop for a drink from the water, below the pile that was melted corpses.

I stood finally and snapped my fingers for Achoo. Everyone knew His Majesty was at odds with his nobles as well as his mages. I found it very hard to feel sorry for the nobles or the wealthy great mages. The king had nearabout beggared the treasury to feed the poor over the winter of 247. What was unreasonable about asking those that had the coin to build the kingdom up again? They made enough riches off of us.

Today wasn’t the first treasonous bit of speaking I’d heard, either. Every time someone had a complaint about the realm, they whined about the “good old days,” when King Roger sported high and low and his younger brother Baird ruled the Privy Council and the Council of Nobles. Prince Baird was happy to oblige the nobility and tax the merchant class and the poor folk. I know what
I
think of their precious “good old days.” The number of them living in the Lower City had doubled as farmers lost their land to taxes and came to the cities for work that wasn’t there.

Talk of treason made my belly roll. The hungry winter of 247 and the food and wood riots of those days had given me all the taste of rebellion I could want. The only good thing that had come from it was the night I met Holborn at the Mantel and Pullet.

I stopped near the picketed horses. There. Mourning. For the first time in hours I had remembered Holborn. I wished passionately that I’d get to remain on this Hunt even when my lord Gershom did send the Ferrets out to hunt down the prince. Worrying about trails and tripping over bodies, meeting Their Majesties, I hadn’t once thought of my loss.

I went over to a tree and leaned there until I could breathe proper again. Only when I was sure of myself did I go on down to the water. I’d thought for a moment that hurt like a dagger’s stab that Holborn would have wanted to know what I had seen, what I had heard, and what Lord Gershom had said.

I spotted Master Farmer, Tunstall, and Lord Gershom. Tunstall nodded, and my lord turned so he could see me. “Cooper, why don’t you, Tunstall, and Achoo catch some rest? The lads will wrap what you and Tunstall salvaged from the remains while Farmer takes care of that pile of rot. They can get their hands dirty. You two have done enough.”

I wasn’t about to argue. No more was Tunstall. Still, I had questions I didn’t want “the lads” to overhear. I beckoned the three coves aside, away from the remains. “My lord, might this be some plot by the king’s own nobles?” I asked. I’d made sure we stood in the open by the river, with the water’s sound to cover what we said, and no nearby brush to hide any eavesdroppers like I had been. “Is that why you’re keeping this close to your chest?”

Tunstall groaned. “Not politics, Cooper,” he said quietly. “We’re Dogs, not useless natterers.”

Lord Gershom looked at me for so long that I began to fear I had angered him. Finally he said, “That is the problem with encouraging a promising young one to learn all she can of Dog work. There will come a time when she learns the things you would prefer stayed hidden. Cooper, His Majesty has enemies, some of whom think they are more fit to govern than he is. It may be that they have chosen this way to attack him.”

“Wouldn’t it be simpler to do away with Their Majesties?” I asked.

“Not if you want to make certain His Majesty does as he is told,” Master Farmer said, his voice soft. “Think how much easier it would be, Cooper, to have a pet king.”

“But His Majesty doesn’t do whatever he likes,” I pointed out. “The Council of Nobles and the Council of Mages make it curst hard for him.”

“Us worrying over such matters won’t get our evidence packed up or the prince found,” my lord said. “The political problems are mine, Cooper. Don’t forget, this kidnapping could be the work of someone else entirely, using a rough time at court to set us on another trail. Keep your mind open.”

“Yes, my lord,” I whispered.

“Of course, my lord,” Tunstall said, giving me a gentle elbow in the ribs.

“Now rest,” my lord ordered. “I’ll rouse you when you’re needed. Nond!” he called to one of the men. “Let’s have two of the blankets for Tunstall and Cooper here!”