Bloodhound (31 page)

That little bit of kindness between maid and juggler pulled at my heart. Sometimes I forget there's kindness in the world. I remained for a moment to savor it, like a bit of honey on my tongue.

Then I hurried to the Waterlily, in case anyone had noticed I was missing. I suspected not, given how eagerly they'd been talking about that card game.

Inside the Waterlily all was light and noise. I dropped my cape around my elbows and sought my companions. The rooms here were larger than at the Merman's Cave, with comfortable chairs set for the gamblers and stools for their companions. The folk were well dressed and there were lamps hung over each table for light. Servants wound through the crowd with practiced speed, balancing trays of food and drink. In one large room I saw folk sit down to a meal, unhampered by dice or backgammon or chess boards. Two Players with lutes were singing a song back and forth as a talk between mot and cove, each of them doing a verse.

Dale appeared from the crowd and hooked an arm around my waist. "Come
on
," he told me. "You have to bring me luck!"

"And if I don't, you'll leave off pawing me?" I asked, trying to tug free of his hold. I confess, I tried very little. His arm was strong and warm, his hand flat against my belly. I could feel
that
as if I had no dress nor shift between me and his palm.

Dale swung me around and drew me up against him until our faces were less than a hand span apart. In his boots he was three inches taller than me, and his heels were small ones. I guessed him to be five foot ten in his bare feet, a nice height for a man. Close like this, it was as if we'd made a space alone in the crowd. Part of me cried to be let go, that everyone was staring at us. Part of me was noticing I fit against him, and he smelled a little like cloves.

I had thought only Rosto could make my head spin like this.

"Tell me to stop, if you don't like it. Tell me I'm unwelcome, and I'll go." He said it in all seriousness, his gray eyes sharp on my face. "I've yet to push myself on a woman who doesn't like me. Tell me piss off, Beka."

"No," I snapped instead.

I felt him chuckle, more than I heard it. "Then we still have a game!" he said, releasing me. He took my hand and tugged me through the crowd, bound for one of the rooms in the back.

When we got there, Dale paused as he drew the lone empty chair out from the table where Hanse, Flory, Steen, Goodwin, four of our other fellow diners, and two strangers sat. "Is Pearl in the house?" he asked. "I told you I won't play if Pearl's up to her tricks again."

"Sit down," Hanse told him. He'd already placed thirty silver nobles in front of his place and was arranging them in five-coin towers. Each coin was scored deep across the center, showing silver all the way through. "One of the guards told me she hasn't been here in a week. No more has Jupp, Zolaika, or Jurji. Play with an easy heart, Dale."

"Your Rogue gambles?" asked Goodwin. "Must be wondrous to win against her."

"What was wondrous was that a month ago, she paid when she lost," Flory replied. She shuffled two fat stacks of what looked to be fortuneteller's cards with quick-fingered ease. "All sudden-like, she had silver a-plenty, although I'da sworn the takin's for the Court of the Rogue weren't so special, even for a summer. Her and Jupp, all of them that's tight to her armpits, they were rollin' in coin."

Steen grunted, his chin on his palm. "They'd play till they lost, then keep playin' till they was winnin', an' winnin' large. Most of the rest of us would be emptied out for a week after playin' wiv them. That's why Dale's so jumpy, like."

"Well, she stopped playin' like that after ten days of it," Hanse said gruffly. "Our pockets are plump enough, and so are Dale's. Let's have some ale in here! Flory, deal them cards!"

"Aye, she stopped, after she made enough off us t' buy them cursed pearl teeth," Flory grumbled. "I wonder how much she spent on supplies for the winter?"

"Sour talk sours the play," Dale murmured. He took his chair as a maidservant placed a smaller seat for me just at his elbow. "Now, Goodwin," Dale said, "lean close so I can whisper what you do in Gambler's Chance."

There were four different sets of cards for the game – Moon, Sun, Coins, and Swords. Each set had its nobles – King, Queen, Lady, and Knight. There was but one Trickster card for the entire deck, who could be any card his holder claimed he was. Then each set had cards numbered one to ten. I grew bored after that, so I lost track of the combinations that made for more points.

I turned to watch the people as cardplayers arrived and left. While many came that had been with us at the Merman's Cave, there were even more who just knew Dale's game and liked to play. As the evening wore on, and I mean
wore
, other tables in the room filled with folk who played Gambler's Chance. No one let Goodwin bet tonight, since she was just learning. Neither could she collect when she won. At our table silver was bet, lost, and won. At one other table I saw gold being laid down. At a third table the coin was mixed silver and copper. If folk checked the silver to see if they had coles, they did it carefully. Did they know of the danger, or did they think they could get any coles back into play and lose them to someone else?

I had no way to check. As Dale's "luck," I blew on the painted backs of his cards before he turned them to see what meaning they held. Other mots and coves did the same for other players, but they didn't seem to be bored. They sat in their players' laps, fixed food and drink for them, gave them kisses when they won – or lost – and joked along with the players. I was curst if I would fetch and carry like a maidservant.

At last I quietly rose as if I meant to go briefly to the privy. Once outside the room of cardplayers, I looked around. Doubtless I should gamble a
little
bit, mayhap at the dice tables. I headed toward a table where I saw space for a new player. I confess, I was grinding my teeth at the thought of risking, and like as not losing, good coin, even though it was not my own. Then I heard folk go quiet as a singer's voice glided along the heated air. It was a lovely voice, deep for a woman's and throaty, raised in a wailing Carthaki song.

The singer performed in a larger room than most, another of those where folk came to sit but not to play. On a small raised platform stood a singer and a flute player. The singer wore a lovely gold-brown tunic with a wrapped crimson sash. Her sleeves were wide, almost like wings. When she raised her hands, she revealed gold cuffs on her arms. Her hair was glossy black, pinned in a knot at the back of her head, with golden chains twined through it. Her eyes were shaded in gold and lined with kohl. Her lips were painted a vivid red. She wore gold sandals on her feet. It was those feet, and her hands, with their gold-painted nails, that gave her away. They were much too big. I gave her face a second look. It was Okha.

"I'n't she splendid?" a cove leaning against the pillar beside me asked. "She's called the Amber Orchid. I seen orchids, down on th' docks. They're flowers, y'know. Brung in from th' Copper Isles. She's more beautiful. You sittin' down, dearie?"

I shook my head. The cove pushed off his pillar, walked in past me, and found a seat.

Okha sang three more songs, all of them wonderful. Then he kissed his flute player on the cheek and stepped down from the platform, while the listeners clapped and pounded the floor and threw coins. The flute player collected them. Okha nodded to me, then wandered through the crowd, stopping at tables to say hello to folk he seemed to know.

He then came to me at last and tucked my hand under his arm. "Now they'll think I'm a honeylove," he murmured in a voice that sounded like a mot's, though a deep-voiced mot's. "Shall I get you a glass of wine, Beka?"

"Cider twilsey, if you please," I replied. "I'm over my limit for wine tonight."

"I suppose they'll have to go out to buy it, but of course, dear." Okha beckoned for a serving man to come over. "Sweetheart, my usual, and a chilled cider twilsey for my friend, in my dressing room? I'd be ever so grateful."

The cove blinked at me, but smiled at Okha. "For you, the stars, Amber," he said. He trotted off.

Okha steered me down a hall and up a narrow set of stairs. There, off a hallway, he had a room to dress in and to relax in when he didn't sing.

"Where's Goodwin?" he asked, draping himself on a couch with a sigh. I watched him, wishing I had such grace. He arranged himself naturally, as liquid as water. In a woman's clothes, he was different than he was as a man, yet even more comfortable in his skin. It was the strangest thing.

I remembered my manners and his question. "She's card-playing with Hanse Remy, Dale Rowan, and some others."

Okha raised his penciled brows. "Dale Rowan! Now, there's rich company for a girl on her first night in the port! However did she meet Dale?"

I smiled at him. "We met him in Corus. During a riot, actually. And then on the boat here."

Okha laughed. It was a warm, rippling chuckle, the kind that made coves trip over their feet. "Met during a riot! Well, that's
one
way, I suppose. And Hanse?"

"The same way," I replied. "And Hanse's man Steen. They invited us to supper tonight, and we've been with them ever since."

"I can see you won't require Nestor and me to show you the sights, not if you're with
that
crowd. Come in," Okha called to the knock on the door. It was the young servant with his drink and my twilsey. Okha gave the lad a coin and a bit more flirtation, then let him go. As he sat gracefully again, he told me, "They're big gamblers, and they know everyone who plays."

"Good people to know when you're Dogging money," I said, thinking of all the coin that had gone through Dale's fingers already this night. I sipped my twilsey. It was very good, the best I'd ever had. "I hear even Pearl Skinner gambles. Is that her only habit? Or are there others?"

Okha grimaced, as if his drink was sour. "If you're planning revenge for this morning, Beka, forget it now. People who try to hurt Pearl have been known to end their lives flayed, gutted, and hung on the gates at Guards House."

He had a sad, distant look to his eyes. The person who'd met that fate was someone he'd known – now there was something I would bet on.

"So she takes that ridiculous street name serious," I commented, when the silence got uncomfortable.

Okha's eyebrows went up. His thoughts plainly returned to this room and this conversation. "Skinner, a street name? Oh, no. It's her family's name and her father's old trade. Not that he plies it anymore. He was a vicious old sot who mysteriously fell into the sewers and drowned ten years ago. As did the trull who called herself his wife, and Pearl's two older brothers. All at different times, all in the sewers. Shocking luck, wouldn't you say?"

"Pearl seems to have a mean streak," I admitted.

"And an affection for coming at you from behind, though she hardly bothers anymore," Okha told me. "Not when she has Torcall, Jurji, and Zolaika to do her vengeances for her."

I thought that over for a moment. "Jurji. Is that the Bazhir who sits beside her at the Eagle Street court, the one with the curved sword?" Okha nodded. I guessed again. "The older cove, Eastern Lands stock, that's Torcall."

"Torcall Jupp," Okha said, and took a sip of his drink. "He's no hothead, unlike Jurji. He and Jurji are Pearl's main bodyguards. She changes the other around, but those two are constant."

"You mentioned a Zolaika?" I asked.

"Did you see an older woman in attendance?" Okha asked. "Heavy makeup, dreadful wig?"

It was my turn to make a face. "She led the gang that grabbed me and Goodwin."

Okha nodded. "She is Pearl's killer."

I stared at him.

He smiled. "She is not as stiff as she acts, nor as slow. The makeup comes off – it is painted onto a light piece of muslin she can pull off her face. A quick scrub with a wet cloth and you would not recognize her. The red hair is a wig." Okha leaned forward and tapped my wrist with two fingers. "Remember her, Beka, and tell Goodwin. If Pearl wants folk dead in silence, never knowing who murdered them, she sends Zolaika."

I remembered that lofty, mannered doxie, and I just couldn't fit my mind around it. But surely Okha would know. "How can you tell? How can anyone tell, if she is unseen? Pearl could just take a coincidental death and say she set it up."

Okha sighed. "If the death is an important one, or a threat, Pearl leaves pearls by the victim, or on the victim. It's what she did to Sir Lionel's children, when she thought he grew too nosy. She had pearls laid on their pillows, three years ago. Everyone knows. It's why he sent his wife and children to their home fief, and only visits them. I'd worry for Nestor's safety if it weren't for Haden and Truda and their friends. They're splendid guards." He rose and sat before a table laden with pots of paints and powders. Taking up a small, silver hand mirror, he began to examine his face. "Forgive me. They'll be calling me back soon."

"But Haden and Truda are just children," I said.

"Street children, for all Nestor's had them in his house for two years," Okha told me, wetting a tiny brush in a dish of water. He set about renewing the black lines around his eyes. "They run with their gang when there's no work to be done, and their gang sleeps in the basement during the winter. The things they do with knives and ropes! They're fine pickpockets, too, though they're careful not to interfere in the Rogue's trade. Nestor uses them for spies, or loans them out to Dogs he trusts." Okha smiled at me. "They're not cheap, of course. But as you learned with Haden, they are
very
good."

I was surprised Haden and Truda's friends had not robbed Nestor into poverty. Mayhap he had his own ways to discourage that. "I saw Haden," I told Okha. "Goodwin did, too."

Okha smiled. "And much put out about it Haden is, too. He says the two of you must have little ghost eyes flying behind you, because not even Nestor sees him, and Nestor knows he is there."

For a moment I watched Okha fix his makeup and check his hair. It was a wig, I knew, but unlike Zolaika's, it was a
beautiful
wig. With every move, every adjustment, he became more a woman. Lady Teodorie, with all her manners and elegance, could not match him for beauty and grace.