Mastiff (39 page)

She slid forward, opening the packets herself. I hadn’t expected it. No spinner had done so before. It was painful as the dust and twigs that made up her base scratched my hands, but I held steady. Somehow she undid the tight knots I used to secure the small bags. Stretching out two thin, spinning fingers, she dipped one into each, sucking up it and its contents.

Fess, her name given to me in that moment, exploded outward, surrounding me and picking me up, lifting me high in the air. I held very still and prayed. I’d never had this reaction from a dust spinner before, but then, I’d never fed a very old, isolated spinner my entire supplies of grit from richly lived-in city districts, either. Not that I’d
chosen
to do so, but it made little difference in the end.

What do you seek?
she asked me.
You came in search, what is it you search for?

Her voice was as much in my skull as my ears. I showed her what I hunted in my mind: the image of the prince on the queen’s locket, the four-leafed bronze emblem I had found on the beach, and magefire of muddled colors.

The spinner swayed deep, moving up onto the terrace. Terrified, I began my prayers. If she dropped me now, I would smash like an egg.

Closer to the house she went, with me motionless at her center, until I stared at the open windows on the floor where the important folk stayed. I recognized Prince Baird’s rooms through one set of open shutters and murmured, “I was here today. He knows they have stolen his nephew. He’s part of it.”

The dust spinner leaned to the side. She stretched so far to carry me along the row of windows that I feared I might fall straight through the arm in which she bore me. We passed a large room for meetings, or so I guessed. Tunstall leaned against a table while the count, Master Elyot, the count’s mage, and the Mithran priest talked. The spinner did not bring me close enough to hear, but from the way Tunstall was smiling and shaking his head, they were offering him a bribe. They were in for a surprise if they thought he would take it. I was surprised he wasn’t striking someone, but he was using his company manners. He’d had to learn them, living with Sabine.

The spinner thrust me along, past an empty set of rooms, until we came to the last of them before the corner. Inside a richly embroidered tunic in the Aspen Vale colors was laid across the bed. A small handful of jewelry was on the stand there. Fess bore me closer so I could examine the things. I could tell these were Master Elyot’s rooms. Packs in the corner gave off a red glow, warning the servants not to touch them. On a table near the corner was a bowl filled with water for scrying. Various bottles and jars, also glowing red, were placed on the top shelf of the wardrobe. More clothes than he would surely need here were on the wardrobe shelves.

None of this would help me. I thanked Fess for her efforts. She was drawing me back when I glimpsed something through the red fire that warned folk away from the packs. I didn’t even have to ask my friend to stop. Seeing my mind, she moved forward to place me at the open window. I squinted at the packs.

There it was, stamped into the flap cover of each bag I could see. The four-leafed emblem we had searched for so long. Looking at the jewels again, I saw a token like the one I’d found on the beach half hidden in the pile, a bronze round with the bases of lance-shaped leaves on the edge. The rest was under the jewelry, but since I’d seen nothing else like it in all our searching, I was willing to wager that this was what I’d sought.

The spinner’s ancient strength was failing. She’d done quite a lot for me, and I will be forever grateful. I asked if she would mind taking me down.

She bent over. I was horizontal to the ground, that was plain. She began to twirl me in a great circle through the air. My supper churned. Between my belly and my fear that Fess was going to throw me into the upper branches of the trees, I was certain I was going to be sick. I tried to drag my hands to my mouth. The winds twisted about me so fiercely, gripping me so tight, that it took a great deal of my strength to clamp my palms over my lips and swallow back my own supper over and over.

Slowly, very slowly, Fess began to ease off her speed. I felt myself being lowered gently to the ground even as Fess poured any number of pieces of talk into my head. I would never be able to sort it all out. She’d held on to some of it as children hold on to special shells or rocks, because she liked the pretty sound. Whatever words had made them up were worn smooth over ages of her use.

In all of it was her thanks for the most incredible meal of her life. She wished me well as she set me gently on my feet.

“Splendid,” I said, feeling it to the bottom of my heart. “That was the most amazing thing.” I remembered to bow to her. Then I found a patch in the bushes where I could vomit up every scrap I’d eaten that evening.

Poor Achoo was at my side, whimpering, as we climbed the steps. She hates it when I get sick, even though her own vomits never distress her as they do me. I was reassuring her that I would be fine when Master Niccols and two men-at-arms halted us on the terrace. Master Niccols folded his arms.

“It was believed you understood you were to remain at supper and not go prying,” he said. “Where have you been? You look the very slut.”

Achoo growled. She knew an insult when she heard one.

I glanced at my clothes. I’d been shaking my tunic and breeches as we walked away from my leavings in the bushes, but odd bits of leaf and grit still clung to them and to the long silk sleeves of my undershirt. I touched my hair and could feel dirt and mussed strands.

Then I grinned at Niccols, showing teeth of my own. “I’ve been savoring your breezes and riding your dust spinner,” I told him. “The little tornado that always blows in the garden? They’re alive, you know. Yours is named Fess. She’s been here since before the stones were laid for the original keep.”

“Nonsense,” blustered Niccols, while the two coves at his back made the Sign on their chests. “I’ve never heard such a thing.”

“Being a Dog,
countryman
, I’m more in the way of hearing things than you are.” I leaned closer to him so he got a whiff of my pukey breath. He backed up a step, making his coves back up. Now all three of them were off balance, retreating from a little mot Dog and her hound, showing I had them fearful. “Since I’m ill, I’m turning in for the night. And I’ll need food and water for my hound. If you have no objection?”

He’d regained his sack. “My men will take you there, wench,” he snapped. “They’ll get the food and see to it you do not stray.”

My hand went to the spot where my baton usually hung. In Corus I seriously would have considered giving this pompous mumper a nap tap and sending him to the cage Dogs for an afternoon of conversation. He knew more about the business of the slaves, I was certain of it. But I was not in Corus, and there was the Hunt to think on. I said nothing, gave him no polite farewell, but walked off toward the hall with his bully boys at my sides. Achoo led the way back to the ladies’ solar and the countess’s office.

As soon as we entered the solar, the coves shut the door behind me. I waited until a maid came with Achoo’s supper. Then, in the dark, Achoo and I skirted the pallets laid on the floor. I’d had a glimpse in the hall light before the maid closed the door again, enough to show me the path to the office. As we entered the room Sabine and I would share, a light flared in a lamp set on the desk. Pounce sat blinking next to the lamp, letting me know who had done that bit of magic.

“I didn’t know you could light things,” I said as I put down Achoo’s bowl and began to pull off my clothes. I stood in a clear spot where the dirt and twigs would fall on bare floor, not bedding or packs.

It’s very bad for your character if I do things for you too often
, he replied in that training master way of his.
But I do not see how you will be improved if you fall over a chair in here and break an arm
.

“I’m surprised,” I said as I removed the silk shirt that had been so lovely in the baths. Now it had grease stains on the arms, as well as spinner dirt. “Usually you spare my character so little.”

You’re bitter
, Pounce replied smugly.
One day you will thank me. I am very proud of you. I thought you might well give in and crack Niccols’s skull for him
.

“I have work to do,” I said. I stood there, feeling gritty and tired. “And he’s not bad enough for me to return and invite him to the back of the barn.”

There is a basin and a pitcher of water in that corner
, Pounce told me.
They brought it in a little while ago. You can dump what’s dirty in the privy behind the door in the opposite corner
.

It didn’t matter to me that the water was cool. I was able to clean the grime from my face, neck, arms, and hands, and pour the dirty leavings down the small privy, leaving a clean basin for Sabine. Then I unpinned my hair, and combed out the bits and pieces that were caught in it. The strands were still wet, which meant that the grit had clung. I resolved to wash it in the morning if I woke before my companions. I put on the nightdress that someone had set out on my pack, then got my journal, ink, pen, and stone lamp. Setting myself up at the desk, beside my two lamps, I looked around for Pounce and Achoo. They had gone to sleep, curled around each other beside the pallet that had been left for me. I smiled at them and got to work. I had to catch up on as much of today as I could manage while I had quiet time.

I was asleep on the open journal when Sabine came in. “It’s after midnight, but not by much,” she told me when I asked the time. “I’ll take Achoo out. Go to bed.”

I blinked at her. “Did he try to get under your skirts? The prince?”

Sabine grinned at me. “No. He was with us six years ago when I told the king that if he did not take his hand off me, I would break every bone in it. He even reminded me of that tonight.” More quietly she said, “There’s something on his mind. Prince Baird will usually flirt with anything in skirts, and he didn’t even try. By the way …” She reached down the front of her dress and pulled something out. It was a metal stamp. When she showed it to me, I saw it was made in the shape of the four leaves.

“Where?” I whispered.

She pointed to a drawer in the desk and then very quietly replaced it there. She went to a little trouble to place it exactly as it must have been when she’d taken it, and closed the door. I clasped her shoulder, so she knew I approved. She gave me a cheerful wink.

Then she took my ink and put the stopper in the bottle. “Go to bed, my dear. You’ve had a hard day.”

I obeyed Sabine and sought the comfort of the pallet.

Queensgrace

For all that I’ve risen at dawn nearly every day of my life, if only to visit the privy or take Achoo to do the same, it is always a source of unhappiness to me. I am used to true wakefulness around eight of the clock, being an Evening Watch Dog who comes off duty at the first stroke after midnight. That brief waking at dawn is the world’s and the gods’ way of saying they still own me. My body wants relief, my hound wants relief, and one day a week I must report on my hobblings in the magistrate’s court beginning at seven in the morning. On this Hunt, of course, we rise at dawn to make use of the daylight. I would be far unhappier about it, I suppose, did I not want to find that poor lad and those Rats that have done this to him and his parents.

When Achoo nudged me awake, I groped for my clothes and belt. I did not bother with stockings, but thrust my bare feet into my boots. I tiptoed around Sabine’s cot and opened the door to the solar. “Quietly,” I whispered to Achoo.

I heard a rustle and turned. Sabine stared at me, one hand clutching a knife that had not been in view a moment ago. I pointed to Achoo. She blinked, then nodded.

“Take weapons,” she mumbled. “Nowhere’s safe.”

“Boots and belt,” I said, wondering if, in her half-sleeping state, she’d remember the nasty things in my belt pouches and the blades in my boots.

Seemingly she did. She slid her blade under her pillow, and was instantly asleep. Pounce moved onto the warm spot I’d left to continue his own slumbers. Even constellation cats like their naps.

Achoo and I slid into the darkened solar. Two lamps, one by our door, one by the main door, offered a bit of light, enough that I could see a path between the ladies on their pallets. Some offered snores to the Dream King Gainel. Others murmured. Their dreams were more peaceable than mine, where Holborn and I had been fighting again. That made dawn rising easier. It put a halt to the sight of his face, red with the fire spirits he’d been drinking, eyes narrow and cruel as he cried that I wrung all the joy out of life.

Carefully I opened the door, fearing to wake a lady and start an outcry, praying the guards outside were asleep. In fact, the guards were no longer there. Mayhap Niccols thought all those ladies were enough to keep me inside. In any case, the broad hall was empty.

We left the castle near the area where Tunstall and Farmer camped with the prince’s men. Certainly I couldn’t let Achoo ease herself where they walked, but the servants’ privy and the chicken coops were close by, and the barrels in which castle garbage was put. Surely no one could object if I took Achoo there.

We hurried past the men’s camp. Some of their hounds came to attention, watching us, but they were well trained. They would not make a noise or come for us unless we tried to enter the camp. Even at this little distance I heard men’s snores. Shivering a little in the cool morning air, I didn’t envy Tunstall and Farmer their night in the open. The warmth of the lady’s office had been a welcome change.

The servants were stirring already, but they said naught to me, nor I to them. They looked as sleepy-eyed as I felt as they visited the privy and ran in and out of the guest quarters. The slaves were about, too, carrying heavy loads of wood for the castle fires. They acted strangely, lifting a shoulder and running from me as if I’d hit them. Had I been more awake, I might have stopped one to ask what in the god’s great gut ailed them, but I was too busy waiting for Achoo to find a spot.