Mastiff (33 page)

“Does my cousin require so many slaves?” Lady Sabine asked the maid.

The young mot ushered the slaves toward the door and curtsied to my lady. “Oh, no. There was a slave train passing through as Prince Baird and the men from Aspen Vale came, if it please you, my lady. They had a lot of green folk. The dealers thought it would be a good thing if they stayed and loaned us some of their stock. To give the slaves a bit of training in a noble house, you see, get them used to the stairs and all. They’ve been that helpful, with all the men-at-arms and lords that came with His Highness. My lord’s going to buy some. Is my lady interested?”

I held very still as Lady Sabine raised her brows.
Our
prince, Prince Gareth, was still here, as a slave. Right here. Farmer’s eyes blazed. Tunstall clenched his fists. Yet we dared not utter a word. If Count Dewin’s court mage placed listening spells anywhere, it would be in the rooms where he placed his guests.

“I shall consider it,” my lady told the maid. “My thanks. You may go.” She flipped a copper noble to the maid, who caught it and left with plenty of
thank yous
and
my ladys
.

Tunstall frowned at Lady Sabine. “Is that how you like to be treated?” It was just talk for the benefit of the listening spells, or so I figured. I had my own plans. Even if we were spied upon, Tunstall and I had found a way I could look about.

I took the leash from Achoo’s collar, working under the table. Having never done this with my lady or Farmer, I had no notion of how they felt about idling with the chance of being refused the Hunt. I did know how Tunstall and I had managed being tucked away like this in the past. I gave Achoo the hand signal we had worked out, also under the table. When I straightened, Farmer was giving me the fish eye. When I glared back at him, he offered me a cheese waffle with butter.

Achoo went to the open door and pawed at it as I had signaled her to do.

My lady had picked up a turkey leg and was answering Tunstall’s question about the treatment she’d received. “Don’t be a dolt, Mattes,” she told him. “I can’t tell them not to. They get in trouble if their lords catch them speaking to me improperly.”

I stuffed half of the waffle into my mouth and pointed to Achoo. “She has to go,” I mumbled. None of them were paying any heed to me, Farmer’s attention having been caught by my lady’s words. That was how I liked it.

“Never mind that,” Farmer said to her and to Tunstall. “Those slavers are still here.
He
may still be here. They may well give us the slip while we wait.”

Achoo and I walked out of the room into the great hall. There were no guards set to watch us. Maids, menservants, and slaves hurried here and there with loads in their arms. They were too busy preparing for the nobles’ return to attend to Achoo and me. Pounce came out with us. It amazes me how he can move so as to seem near invisible. He had jumped down from one of the packhorses and trotted along close to Lady Sabine, but the castle’s folk had been too busy watching her to take note of the black cat at her heels. Now he went out the main door to the courtyard.

Despite my excuse for her if she needed one, Achoo was not interested in going outside. She had her nose up in the air. I waited for her, trying not to tap my foot or otherwise distract her. Something had caught her attention and we could not move until she decided what it was. I only feared someone would notice that neither of us belonged there.

She trotted away, bound for the great hearth on the far wall. Easily, hands hooked in my belt as if we took a lazy walk, I strolled after her. She was sniffing around the hearthstones. The scent took her into the opening, where she snuffled around the kindling that had been laid there for the night’s fire. Back out she came, to a basket full of shavings and another of twigs for more kindling, then a third for small logs. That last she smelled only once. Then she went back to the shavings and twigs. She gave them a last going-over, and followed her scent away from them, down the corridor that led from hearth and hall. I followed, my back braced for a shout ordering me to halt. No one said a word.

Achoo took us outside, around the back of the keep. There, between the keep and the inner wall, wood for the castle fires was stacked under waxed cloths. Her scent led her to the kindling stacks, then out again, around the side of the keep.

We crossed a short distance. I thought we were bound straight for the kitchen, an old-fashioned one set apart from the keep, but Achoo changed her mind. She halted suddenly, her head turning to and fro, then took us to the closest building, the chicken coop. A manservant rushed up to the hen yard waving his arms as she sniffed among screaming hens at the nest. I whistled her back to me and flipped a copper to the cove. He went silent and pointed for us to go. We left, Achoo hanging her head. If ever a dog looked mortified, it was she.

I gave her a strip of dried beef. When we were out of the man’s sight, I said, “It’s well enough, girl.” We dodged a flock of outdoor hens. “I know plenty of human Dogs that would just have gone clean through the place and back to the keep, not thinking that boys who go into henhouses are either stealing or fetching eggs for a cook. At least you follow what is truly there.”

Achoo found the main scent and took it to the kitchen. My thought by then was that they’d put the lad to work as a kitchen slave. That explained his being in the great hall. He’d been ordered to help clean out the hearth at some point, mayhap more than once. It explained as well his presence in the chicken coop. Now, in a large and busy kitchen, I waited to the inside of the door while Achoo did her finest work, her nose to the ground as she sorted through all manner of scents to find the one she wanted. Even with herbs and cheeses hung everywhere, four kinds of meat on the spit, and fresh herbs and young onions being chopped, Achoo could not be fooled. My belly might growl as my nose filled with the smell coming from that whole roasting pig, but Achoo cared nothing for that when she was Hunting. She worked around the feet of cooks and helpers and skirted two pups as they wrestled with a thick rope.

One cook swore at her, but she was too busy to do anything. Another cried, “Get that beast away from me!” but she and the others had too much to do other than aim a kick at the nearest animal. Five other dogs sat before the fire, hoping some meat would fall.

I could see that Achoo had our lad’s scent all the time. She finally halted by a small keg that was placed beside the spits of meat.

Of course, I thought, squeezing past two mots who were heaving a good-sized bag of almonds onto a table. Turning the spit is a good task to give a child of four. Everyone can watch him to be sure he doesn’t let the meat burn. I’d done such work at Provost’s House, but there my aunt Mya had wrapped the turnspits in leather so they wouldn’t burn my palms. These turnspits had no such wrappings. Had they given the lad cloths, or had they forced him to turn them with no protection for that soft, noble skin?

The gixie who turned the spit now shrank away from Achoo. She was mayhap six or so and armed with handfuls of rags. If she loosened her grip, they dropped to the floor. As she gathered them, she risked smacking her head on the lower turnspits.

I went to her and helped her pick up the rags. “May I have these for a moment?” I asked her. I found my right glove. “Here. This is big, but it will keep the turnspit from burning you.”

She giggled once it was on, since she could barely fit two fingers where they belonged, let alone the others and the thumb. Still, she could use the palm to hold the spits as she rotated the meat. In addition to the pig and chickens, there were five ducks and two haunches of venison to brown. There were also the watching dogs to run off. She had a little broom for that purpose. They were hunting dogs, high tempered and not at all patient with slaves who would not feed them. I saw bite marks on her legs as well as whip weals on the backs of her arms. The bite marks were not bad, but they must have hurt all the same. “
Jaga
, Achoo,” I said, and pointed to the spits.

Achoo looked at me with reproach, an owl asked to guard a mouse’s nest. She had been walking the circuit of the kitchen, following our lad’s steps around the tables as she dodged the cooks’ swats and curses. She had also looked down the hall behind the gixie’s turnspit. I had to do something first, so I put Achoo to guard work, gave the gixie my last chunk of cheese, and fetched my small sewing kit. I quickly threaded the needle, thanking the gods once again for giving me the wit to put forth the coin for this small collection of needles, pins, and thread tucked into a leather wallet. In simple repairs to my own kit it had paid for itself within a year of its purchase, and it also allowed me to do small favors that were often repaid in information. I began to stitch the rags together, one on top of the other.

The gixie looked over her shoulder at me as she turned the spitted chickens. “What are ye doin’? Ye should not be here, like as no.” She was from the Lower City.

“Act the same as you always do, and no one will say a thing,” I told her. “This corner is dark, and so’s my uniform. Do your work, and we’ll be fine.” There was a fast exchange of snarls and a whirl of fur. Then the hound who’d tried to steal some of the meat ran yelping from Achoo. The others backed up enough that a cook and a maid noticed they were there, and beat the hounds out of the kitchen with their dishcloths.

The gixie took a quick mouthful of cheese. She ate with it clutched tight to her chest, her head bowed over it, as if she expected someone to steal it. Someone probably might if they weren’t all so busy here. “Is he yours?”

Another young slave lurched by us with a load of sticks for the oven where bread was baking. He didn’t even glance our way.

“Achoo is a
she
, and yes, she’s mine.” Sitting there only barely hidden from view, I had no time to explain about the Dogs and their scent hounds. Besides, she might well lock up tight if she knew I was an official. “Do you always turn the spits?”

“Only since this mornin’,” she told me. “No-Skin did it afore me, but he’s gone now.”

“No-Skin?” I asked, wondering if she joked with me. I’d never known a slave who joked, at least not with someone who wasn’t a slave.

“That’s what they called him, so everyone ’ud remember not t’ beat him so it showed on his skin. They was to use only straps over his clothes, or open hands or fists, and not so nothin’ gets broke,” the girl explained. “One o’ th’ gixies punched his face so’s she cut his cheek, and there! The Viper, the mage, she did the gixie just like that! And her ma started screamin’ ’cos her babe’d just died and now they’d killed her little one, and snap! Dead ma into the dirt with the babe and the gixie. The captain that ran things told the Viper she’d wasted a bearing slave, and the Viper said she had her orders and he had his.”

“Viper, you say?” I asked, stitching quickly.

“One of the two mots that rode along with the slave train,” the gixie said. Looking around to be certain no one had an eye on us, she whispered, “They’s both mages, them two.”

I was in the middle of biting off my thread when she said that, making me freeze for a moment. Farmer had worked it out right. “What happened to No-Skin?” I asked when I knew I could speak calmly. It’s important, with folk who frighten as quick as slaves, to keep steady. The minute you get shaky, they will bolt. I put the first padded grip across my knee and started to sew a second one.

“We come here, and the captain offered us for work. He told the high-ups here that the trainin’ would be good for us,” the gixie said. “Me and No-Skin was teamed up on cleanin’ the hearth and fetchin’ eggs and turnin’ the spits, ’cos I done all them things before my last master went toes up and we was sold.”

“Was he any use to you, No-Skin?” I asked, glancing around the kitchen. A few maids had looked our way, but I was tucked well into the shadows, and the gixie kept her eyes on her work, turning first one spit, then another. She struggled with the pig. I longed to help her, but that would bring me into view of the rest of the staff. I would be sent away when we were discovered, and no doubt she would be beaten for chattering, if she did not get worse for talking with a Dog.

The gixie snorted at my question. “His hands was as soft as a babe’s!” she told me with scorn. “He got splinters in every finger, and he was scared gormless by the hens. They gave
me
a beating for not doin’ that work meself, and five strokes to the cook that sent us to the hens, and her a freewoman! They wrapped his hands in linen to turn spits till they took him away from that.” She shook her head. “But he was plucky enough. He tried to do his share, even when it hurt him.” Her shoulders slumped. “I don’t know what he’ll do without me to look after him. I’ve not seen him since they took him from here.”

“Who took him?” I asked as I finished stitching longer cloth strips to the second pad.

“One of the drovers came for him and told the cooks to give me his work,” she replied. “Then he just scooped No-Skin up under his arm and carried him off.” She looked at me. “What if they done for him like they done for the one that punched him?”

I shook my head. “He’s too valuable,” I said. “They’ll not so much as take him over Breakbone Falls, believe me.”

She looked at me as if I’d started to pop golden eggs from my mouth. “
He’s
valuable.” The way she said it, as if she were years older than six, told me she believed me not a whit.

I smiled a little. “Let’s just say them that sold him to your master stole him from the wrong folk. Now see here.” I showed her how to place the thick rag pad I’d sewn together against her palm, how to wrap the straps twice to hold it in place, and how to tie the cloth on her wrist one-handed so the knot wouldn’t interfere with her grip. I handed the other pad to her, its straps wrapped neatly around it. “For when the other wears out.”

She returned my glove to me, unable to speak. I didn’t think folk gave her things very often. I was getting to my feet when she looked up at me. “Travel safe, travel well,” she whispered.

The blessing is an old, honored one. Not many use it anymore. I gave the traditional answer, “May those who have gone before be always with you.” And then, because something urged me to it, I asked, “What’s your name?”