Bloodhound (32 page)

"How do you do it?" I asked him. "Become all wonderful and lovely like you are out there?"

He turned and looked at me with shock, something dark and sad in his eyes. It slowly vanished.

"You are an odd one, aren't you?" he asked from somewhere between his mot's world and his cove's. "You say little, but you make me want to talk about things that I don't usually babble about, you know. Maybe it's those eyes of yours. You don't judge..."

I looked down. "Most folk find my eyes frightening."

"My experiences with 'most folk' are not so good that I am inclined to follow their standard," Okha said. His voice was very bitter. He turned back to his mirror. "I had very good teachers, people who took me in when my family cast me out. I worked and I studied, everywhere I went. But that isn't what you're asking."

I shook my head. Since he wasn't looking at me now, I added, "Not really. Your beauty comes from the inside. You don't put that on with a brush and powder."

"Inside I
am
a beautiful woman," Okha said, fiddling with a perfect curl. "The Trickster tapped me in my mother's womb and placed me in this man's shell."

I'd heard of many tricks done by the gods, but surely this was nearabout the cruelest. "I'm sorry," I whispered.

"At least I understand what happened," Okha said, getting to his feet and smoothing his dress. "How many like me live our lives without ever knowing? How many of us never feel right in the world where we live, and never realize that a god turned our lives all on end? Some of us even claim the Trickster is one of us, and makes us so She/He has company."

"Have you asked the god?" I wanted to know.

Okha gave me a tiny, bitter smile. "The god touched me once, Beka. I'd as soon not get his attention again."

Someone pounded on the door. "Amber, Amber, sorry, but Dale Rowan's looking for his girl. He says he's lost two hands of cards, and she's his luck!"

"I'm not his girl!" I said.

"But you're sitting with him at his table?" Okha asked me. He was already running his hands over my hair, smoothing it, using touches of his comb to tease locks out of my coil and forward over my cheeks. "The one who sits with a gambler is his luck, or her luck. Dale's a true gambler, especially if he starts to lose." He called to the cove outside the door, who'd begun to knock again, "Just wait, silly!" Okha snatched up a clean brush and dipped it in a tiny pot of paint. Before I could dodge, he'd set it to my lips. Next he dotted scent just under my ears, and tucked the bottle in my purse. It was a beautiful perfume. "Lily of the valley," he told me. "More suited to you than rose or violet. Now, let's go see Master Dale!"

I breathed it in. I felt strange. More beautiful. More like a grand mot like Okha. But that felt so strange, too, because I am no beautiful mot. I looked at my palms, to assure myself that I was still Beka. There were my baton calluses. I might smell like a flower in a noble's garden, but in the morning I would still be a Dog. I sighed my relief.

Okha led me downstairs to the room where my companions were playing. Dale was on his feet, arms crossed as he glared at the table, the other players, and the cards. "I won't touch a hand again until I see Beka," he told them. "How's a cove to know if a mot's his luck if she's not even here?"

"Because she stands right behind him while he roars like a bull, precious," Okha – no, he was all Amber Orchid now, graceful and grand – said with a laugh. "Good evening, guests. Welcome. For those of you who are strangers, I am Amber Orchid, a singer who is sometimes welcomed to these rooms, though
not
, of course, when there is a
game
." Just the way he made his voice dip and flow turned his speech into a gentle joke on the players. They laughed.

Dale turned to look at me and bent down to speak in my ear. Amber swept forward, still talking to the folk in the room. Dale whispered, "Where did you go? I missed you! And I lost two hands!"

I stared up at him. "A mot has places to go where she isn't likely to want company! And I was bored. Don't go thinking I'm your property, Master Rowan!"

Plenty of coves I knew would have bristled right up. Dale only scratched his head, then grabbed both my hands and kissed each one. "I'm a bad escort, and that's the truth," he told me, a smile of regret on his face. "I get caught up in the play and I forget all my manners. I'm sorry. Do you
really
not care for the game?"

I was trying to get my hands back, but not very hard. He'd laced his fingers through mine. "I don't gamble," I mumbled. "I don't even know the rules, and I can't see, on a little chair right behind you. Let me go, folk are watching!"

"But your hands are warm," he said in my ear. "And what's this lovely new scent? I like it."

"Dale, are you playing or not?" growled a cove seated at the table. "Your bet's not laid down!"

"A few more hands of cards, and we'll find someplace to dance," Dale wheedled me. "You
do
like to dance?"

Of course I love it. It's one of the few sociable things I can do without talking.

Dale grinned. "Oh, you like that idea? I finally found something that pleases her!" He glanced at the ceiling. "Thank you, Goddess!" He looked at me once more. "As for seeing the game – "

He turned to sit, and in turning, he spun me until I sat on one of his knees. I made a noise, I know it, and then I said nothing else. I only hung my head so my face wouldn't be so visible to everyone else. I knew I was blushing fierce. I peeked once to see where the strangled noises came from. Goodwin, curse her, was trying not to laugh, and doing poorly at it. Since I'd gone for Dog training, no cove save Rosto the Piper had been this careless with his hands around me, and even Rosto had never had the gall to sit me on his knee! Mayhap he knew he'd have got an elbow in the eye for his trouble. And yet I thought of doing no such thing to Dale. I don't know if it was the warm clasp of his arm about my waist, or the teasing jiggle of his leg under my rump, or the way his beard tickled my neck as he leaned in to explain what his cards meant. I only know that my dress, decent enough before, now seemed scandalously low-cut. Moreover, from the way his arm drew its fabric and the fabric of my shift tight over my peaches, he knew I was
not
thinking of the cards.

"What did I say?" he murmured to me. "My luck is back. Three Ladies and two Queens – the Goddess favors a humble courier tonight!" He slid two silver nobles out into the middle of the table. "See, that's a hand I'm betting on, five cards." He spoke loud enough that the others could hear, as if he taught me.

Goodwin tossed her cards facedown on the table. "I have naught to work with," she complained.

"Cold fingers, Dale?" Hanse asked with a broad grin. He threw five silver nobles onto the table. "Match me or kill your cards, man!"

"Kill?" I asked Dale, speaking as loudly as he did, taking my cues from him.

"Put them down. Leave this hand of the game," he explained. He inspected his small heap of silver coins, sliding one or two around as if he considered matching Hanse's bet.

I wondered how many of them were coles. Only one or two of them were scored to show they were all silver, unlike Hanse's nobles. "What if you do that?" I asked. "Do you get your two coins back?"

Everyone at the table laughed. "Once money's in the middle, it stays in the middle, same as a dice game or any other bet," Steen told me. "The winner takes it all."

Dale sighed and shoved in three coins. "I'm demented, mayhap, but my luck has to return sometime."

Flory thrust in four silver nobles and ten copper ones. Steen also bet.

"See, Goodwin figures her cards are no good," Dale told me. "She kills them and she wagers nothing more. She does not lose, but she does not win."

I glanced at Goodwin's eyes. They were sharp as they rested on Dale. She knows, I thought. He has fooled Hanse, his friend, and Steen, who knows him, too, but he hasn't fooled Goodwin.

She caught me watching her. One of her eyelids twitched a hair in the smallest of winks.

There was a lot of groaning and shouting, all good-natured, when everyone showed their cards and Dale proved to have the best hand. The pack of cards went to Steen. Dale explained how they were shuffled, or mixed up, so folk wouldn't get the same cards again, then the manner in which the shuffler gave out five cards each to the players.

Three games later, though Dale was still winning, he stopped the play. "I promised my luck a change, and I don't want her to desert me because I didn't keep my word!" he told the others as I got off his knee. "We're going to find some dancing."

"Now that's somethin' like!" Flory said, jumping up. "I'll get the girls. They'll have found some coves by now!"

Dale was scooping his last heap of silver coins off the table and into a bowl brought by one of the serving maids. She nodded and took it away, which seemed to me to be very trusting of Dale. Did they check the coins to see if they were pure silver?

He had kept two silver nobles back. Now he offered them to me. I scowled at them and then at him.

"Mithros's spear. What is that for?" I demanded.

He looked startled. "It's the custom. When someone brings you luck, it offends the Trickster if you don't give that person something in thanks. It's as if you say you don't value the luck."

"I'm sure he knows you value him, and I'll not be tipped like a backstreet trull," I snapped. "You brung your own luck, knowin' the game and the way of playin' the cards." I put a hand over my mouth, hearing myself slide into Cesspool cant. I hardly ever do it. Here I'd been thinking he
liked
me, but I might as well have been a serving maid or a doxie he asked to perch on his leg!

"No, no – curse it, Beka, you're the prickliest woman I've ever met!" cried Dale.

"No, I am," Goodwin said. She stood nearby, smiling, our capes over one arm. "But she comes very close, I have to say."

"It's not just about the luck. Yes, I had a feeling you'd be lucky for me, but I like you!" Dale stuffed the coins in his purse. "There! The vile money's all gone!"

I had to fight not to smile. He looked comical, his brows arching into his hair, his eyes alight with outrage and dismay, his cheeks flushed. Goodwin handed my cape to him. Carefully, as if I might bite, he came at me, holding it out. I let him drape it about my shoulders, my eyes on him the whole time. I supposed, if he'd thought of me like any wench he'd pay to blow on his dice or cards, he'd not be so upset.

As I pinned the cape with my brooch, I heard him mutter, "I'll just have to buy you something pretty."

I glared at him.

"Peace!" he said. "Peace! Otherwise how will we dance together?" With temptation in his voice he added, "I know where they sell the best spiced fried dough in all Port Caynn – better than Corus, too. Black God strike me if I lie."

I put my hand on his mouth. "Don't talk lightly of the Black God," I told him. "He's always about." I should know.

Impudent mumper that he is, he kissed my palm.

"Sir, yer winnin's," said the maid who had taken his silver. Now I saw why. She had exchanged it for gold. He'd have fewer coins to weigh down his purse. He tucked them away and gave her a copper noble for her trouble. I shook my head and followed Goodwin outside, thinking that they treat coin like sweets in this place. Do they know about the problem with silver coles? Not if the way I'd seen silver change hands that night was any guide. Was the trouble something known largely by the guild banks, that were keeping silent? Surely an educated cove like Dale would have heard something. Hanse at least was checking all of his silver, from what I'd seen.

We didn't have far to go to find the dancing that Dale had promised. There were pipers, drummers, and tambourine players in Seafoam Square, performing for all manner of folk. I noted sailors, tradesmen and tradeswomen, craftsfolk, even a handful of nobles, and a pair of Dogs in uniform. I saw one purse-switching, an exchange of a coney's purse of coin for a red purse of coles. I kept my gob shut while I marked the filcher's face. I danced with Hanse, Steen, Dale, and two coves I didn't know before Pearl's longsword guard, the one Okha had named Torcall, caught me up.

"Let go," I warned him. "Now."

"Calm down," he said. "It's just a reel. Soon over."

"I didn't say I'd dance with you, Pearl's man." I was deciding which knife was the closest. I'd have to be fast. Odds were he'd give me but the one chance to go for a blade.

"Afraid, King's Dog? Afraid of a little dance?" he asked me.

All right. I'd dance with him and see what he wanted. My friends were close enough, and my knives were closer.

If he had a point, he never said what it was, pox and murrain on him! When the reel was done, he bowed and went off into the dark. Had I not been among strangers, I would have shouted for him to come back and fight like a Dog. Instead I stood there, clutching my fire opal and cursing to myself in silence.

Dale found me. He grumbled how everyone was dancing with me but him. Not seeming to notice my foul humor, he swung me into the dance square that was forming. After that he didn't give me up until my feet ached and my mood was much better. He is a
very
good dancer and lifts me as if I weigh no more than a kitten.

When I mentioned my tired feet, Dale took me to a vendor who sold fried dough spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg, then drizzled in honey. I held on to these while he bought cider, which he carried to me in a leather jack he keeps hooked to his belt. I fed him knots of the dough as he gave me drinks of the cider, when I wasn't laughing at the jokes he made about the dancers around the bench he'd found for us. There were plenty of the crisp, sweet dough knots as I dished out one knot for me, one for him. Each time I put one in Dale's mouth, the tricksy fellow tried to nip my finger. Twice I let him. Twice more I smeared honey on his nose for a lesson and grinned at him. I could not have been giddier if the cider had been mead.

Wanting to slow things down and not wanting him to think he'd bowled me over, I was glad to find something to talk about when we reached the end of the knots. The vendor had heaped them inside of a large, curved shell. Since we sat near a cluster of torches, I had a well-lit view of the shell's inside. It was a beautiful, pearly, purple blue.