Mastiff (34 page)

She scratched her head. “Linnet Beck, at least till the next master gets a big tarse boil and decides he don’t like my name.”

“Keep yourself alive, Linnet Beck,” I told her quietly. “Don’t ever talk about No-Skin again. If you need help and you can manage it, get word to the nearest Provost’s Guard that you want Beka Cooper, from Corus Lower City. You have that?”

Linnet didn’t seem too convinced of the message’s worth, but she repeated, “Beka Cooper, Corus Lower City. The Dogs.”

I gave her a smile. “That’s it. I can’t promise, but if you send for me, I’ll do my best to come, or one of my friends will. Achoo,
mencari
.”

Achoo, who’d been crouched in the shadows behind me, got to her feet and followed her scent, down the dark hall at Linnet’s back. That took us to the servants’ privy yard, the place behind it where huge barrels of garbage awaited the carters who would dispose of them, and back into the kitchen. Achoo’s nose led us into the pantry and out as the maid who’d been working there screeched at both of us. Down another back hallway we went and then up a servants’ stair. The climb was steep and dark, beyond the tall level that houses the great hall and into a newer portion of the keep. I could tell it was so by the lighter-colored stone and the lighter-colored mortar that held it in place. Achoo halted on the third story of this newer structure and scratched at the door on the landing, dancing with impatience. I opened the door onto a long hallway.

Achoo sniffed her way down the hall to one locked door. When she looked at me and whimpered, I glanced around. The place was dead quiet. I drew the Sign on my chest and removed my shoulder pack so I could get my lock picks out. All the time I worked on that lock, I was sweating. The moment I had the door open, Achoo and I slipped inside.

I was thinking a string of prayers to every god I could remember as I closed the door behind us. I called to my favorite ones twice. As soon as I looked around that large chamber I knew I was in dreadful trouble. A tall rack supported a suit of armor. A shield leaned against it, showing the bright silver sword-in-crown with the upended crescent. Our lad, Prince Gareth, had been in his uncle’s room.

Achoo showed me he’d been all over those rooms, the main chamber, the bedchamber, and the small chamber for the prince’s personal attendants. We were triply lucky that afternoon. No one was inside.

My hound traced the scent to the chairs by the hearth, to the tub that stood in the bedchamber, and back into the main room. As she did, I stood by the door, keeping it open a crack, listening for approaching steps and thinking. They had brought Gareth here, almost certainly to Prince Baird. This was bad news, the worst, and it lay on me like a weight. On feast days we had all seen the young prince with his big uncle. King Roger was wiry and lean, his younger brother of the same height, but heavier with muscle and good living. Prince Baird would raise his laughing nephew high in the air and the crowds would cheer them both.

Achoo gave a small yip from the bedchamber. I quickly glanced outside. Still no one had shown himself. I shut the door, locked it from the inside with my picks, and went to see what Achoo had found.

A red string bracelet, the kind a nursemaid would make for her charge, lay on a bedside table among a heap of jewels worn for dress occasions. Achoo nudged the bracelet with her nose and sneezed.

I unsheathed my dagger and turned the bracelet over with the point of it. The string was done up in nine knots for the Goddess, guardian of children, and the ends were braided for Mithros, whose laws bind the realm. Somewhere the maker had found tiny beads to thread onto it, one each of brown agate for protection, pink quartz for love, and onyx also for protection.

If only it had worked.

Achoo had gone on sniffing, her work taking her back to the front door of the rooms. I left the bracelet as I’d found it and followed her. When I opened the door a crack, I flinched. Pounce was waiting for us.

The count and Prince Baird just rode into the outer courtyard
, he told us.
They’re back from hunting. Get out of here at once!

“Achoo,
kemari cepat
!” I ordered. Once she dashed through the open door I hurried to lock it, struggling to control my shaky fingers. As the three of us ran for the stair I muttered, “Bum-swived yattering misborn tarses.” I tried to think of a lie for when they caught us, and failed. Instead I whistled for Achoo and Pounce to follow me up the steps rather than down.

No need to go up
, Pounce told us.
The servants use this stair. The nobles have a wider one paved in green marble for their use. What were you doing, anyway?

I signaled Achoo to follow us down. She did, sniffing, still on the track. Walking as if we belonged on that staircase, I explained to Pounce (silently) what we’d done in our time away from our companions.

I have been idling around the slave train
, he told me.
The slaves are kept near the goat pens while they supply the extra labor during the prince’s visit. They are guarded, so it will be difficult to talk with them unseen
.

“Is it them who are in a trap, or us?” I muttered. Pounce didn’t answer. Instead he led us along another turn past the servants’ privies and along the large addition to the great hall. It was then that Achoo protested. The scent took her in another direction. I ordered her to heel. We needed to get clear of the newly arrived nobles. I did not want to face them without Tunstall at my side. For now, the Hunt must wait. I got Achoo to follow Pounce and me at last, but I could see she was going to complain of me to the other scent hounds at home.

Behind the new addition, where the original wall had been widened to include it, we found Tunstall, joking with men-at-arms who had pitched camp there. These coves wore royal blue tunics and gray trousers, with the crescent-on-its-back design, meaning the second son, on their chests.

“Well, look at this—my partner, Cooper,” Tunstall greeted me, beckoning for me to join them. “Taking the hound for a walk?”

He wished me to be casual. I knew that from his greeting and the wave of his hand. I didn’t know how relaxed I could be after those tense moments in the prince’s bedroom. Worse, any of these coves in blue and gray could put me in chains for the impertinence of having been there without leave. I stuck my hands in my pockets and whispered to Achoo,
“Gampang.”

She whined at me. She didn’t want to meet anyone. She wanted to go back to the Hunt.

“Gampang.”
I repeated as we drew close to the men. “Don’t argue!” I walked up to Tunstall and gave a nod to the coves who sat around him, on kegs, camp stools, or upended buckets, tending equipment and weapons as they relaxed. “Good evenin’, sirs,” I said in my Lower City accent. I looked up at Tunstall, who was lounging against one of their wagons. “Any word on where we sleep tonight, Tunstall? Here, or are we off on the road?” I would have loved to know what news he’d gathered, if anything, but there was no way to ask him here. I couldn’t even inquire if Farmer had gone nosing about. We all had parts to play, and we wanted to give these strangers no idea whatever that we were Hunting when we’d been ordered not to.

“You don’t want to be sleeping in that great hall,” one of the men-at-arms, a thin, muscled redhead, told me. “There’s fleas in the pallets. The count’s too cheap to pay a mage to get them out.”

“
He’s
not sleeping on them, is he?” asked another cove with the look of a Scanran. “Nor that mage from Aspen Vale. You won’t catch him doin’ flea-bane spells.”

Yet Farmer took care of the swamp bugs without a mutter, I thought. He
insisted
on it.

“We didn’t even stay the first night,” the redhead went on. “Came out and pitched our tents here, after a dunk in the river to rid us of the cursed fleas.”

“Farmer and me have been invited to pitch a tent with these good fellows,” Tunstall explained. “If you see Farmer, tell him?” He bent his head, scratching his neck and refusing to meet my eyes. “You and … the lady …,” he mumbled.

I propped my hands on my hips, put one leg forward, and began to tap my toe, as Kora so often did. It worked better in skirts, but it was still a good way to tell a cove, any cove, that you lose patience. It also makes coves think you’re a certain kind of mot, the kind they feel comfortable with.

“Best tell her before she sharpens you up with a broom about your shoulders!” one of the coves shouted.

“I bet she sets the Corus Rats to kissing the mules’ arses,” another called. “Stricter than their old mams!”

Tunstall pointed to the entry to the castle that was nearby. “You’ll find her up one set of stairs, in the ladies’ rooms,” he said, giving me the guiltiest of looks. “You’re to sleep in whatever room they grant her. And you’ll have to get a dress there, for supper.”

Dress?
I mouthed at him. My back was to the men-at-arms so they could not see.

Tunstall shrugged helplessly. “It’s how they do things here, Cooper,” he said. The other coves laughed at that.

“Our women refused even to enter castle grounds,” the Scanran told me, a looking of understanding in his eyes. A few of the other men-at-arms were nodding. “Mithros be thanked, our captain and His Highness are upright men who won’t let good soldiers be humiliated.”

I wouldn’t speak up for myself, but they couldn’t go on thinking bad of my partner. “There’s naught Tunstall can say about it,” I told them. “Everyone thinks they rank Dogs, unless they’re dealing with my lord Gershom.”

“Everyone
does
rank a Dog,” said the redhead with a grin.

Tunstall laid a big, friendly hand on the redhead’s shoulder. “Not for long, though, eh, laddybuck?” he asked.

The redhead leaned to that side, doing his best not to grimace or complain about the strength of Tunstall’s hold.

I shook my head and walked to the castle door, Achoo and Pounce beside me. The coves didn’t need me to play their games.

The wing where the ladies were housed was much different from that of the men. I had to pass two armed guards to enter. One of them told me that if the ladies complained of my hound or my cat, out they would go, but they let me pass.

Once upstairs, I wasn’t sure which of the open doors I was to enter. I was looking from one to another when a tiny creature made of flying silk burst through one that was slightly open and raced down the hall. Achoo forgot herself and went tearing after, covering in three bounds what the little thing had done in twenty. Achoo trapped the small animal in the corner and was sniffing it in the crudest way when I heard a mot call, “Snowflake! Snowflake! You stole my ivory ribbons!”

A mot came out of the room where Snowflake, if that was the silky creature’s name, had been. She was nearly as pretty as the animal, dressed in an ankle-length tunic of cream-colored linen and a round cap of the same color. Her blond hair hung in two braids to her knees. When she saw her pet’s situation, she ran down the hall, crying, “You brute! Get away from Snowflake!”

“Achoo,” I said, but then the young mot halted. The bit of fluff was dancing under Achoo, running through her legs, and making it very clear that Achoo was her new best friend. Achoo was doing her best to lick the little thing, wagging her tail to show the affection was given back in full. Instead of screaming for the guards, the lady halted where she was and offered her hands, palms up, for Achoo to smell.

“
Pengantar
, Achoo,” I said. Achoo needed permission to greet human beings.

Achoo liked the lady’s scent. The mot liked the way Achoo held up her head and closed her eyes to have her ears scratched. “What a splendid hound you are,” the lady told Achoo as the hound danced. “You’re not like our hunting hounds at all, though of course they are very fine animals in their way.” With a glance at me she asked, “What manner of breed is she? I have never seen her like before.”

I would not shame Achoo by saying she was a breed only by grace of training. Without her great skill she would have been known only as a common street cur. “She is a scent hound, my lady,” I replied. I could feel Pounce leaning against my left boot to give me courage. Pounce knew I did not like to speak with the nobility, but this pretty mot could not be so bad if she liked proper four-legged dogs. “Not for hunting game, if it please you. Achoo and I are both in the service of the Lord Provost of the realm.”

She gifted me with a bright smile. “Achoo! What a delightful name!” She had discovered Achoo’s favorite behind-the-ear scratch. “I’m Lewyth, and
this
dreadful bit of disobedience”—she scooped up the fluffy creature as it tried to go around her—“is Snowball, the wickedest Butterfly Puppy ever bred.” She held the mite up to her face, where it proceeded to lick her cheek while wagging a plume of a tail. “Yes, you’re very wicked. Still, between you and me, I wouldn’t want a ribbon on top of my head, either. You were wise to run away.” She offered the tiny dog to me and I took it without thinking. It had a small, pointed nose, a black mask around two button eyes, and two upright black ears that were far larger than a head that size would normally sport. Except for the black fur on her skull and a saddle of black fur on her back, she was white, with tiny paws and a cheerful puppy smile. She seemed inclined to like everyone, because she started to lick my hands once she got used to being away from the lady.

“Why do you call your hound Achoo?” Lewyth asked.

“She sneezes when she gets a scent,” I explained. “My partner thinks she sneezes it out and breathes it back in so her nose is clearer the second time.”

“She’s a wise hunter, aren’t you, then?” Lewyth asked Achoo, giving her one more good scratch with both hands. “Our family breeds hunting hounds and Butterfly Pups, now they’re popular. We’ve never tried scent hounds. Were you and Achoo looking for someone?”

“I was ordered to find my lady Sabine of Macayhill. The men-at-arms told me she was up here,” I said. Mistress Snowball, being the trusting sort, had turned herself over in the crook of my arm, inviting me to give her a belly rub. The moment I did so, she began to wriggle gleefully. “This is a very happy-natured creature.”