Bloodhound (57 page)

I muscled my way between two Goddess warriors, crouching down, the buckler over my head to shield me from the blows of those fighting there. I didn't have much room to swing my sap, but a little swing is all I need. Then someone screeched. The Dog in front of her yanked her out of the wall of Rats defending that dais. I slammed my sap into the knee of the cove fighting next to her and rammed him sideways. He toppled into the Rat on his left. The Dogs yanked those two down to the floor.

We had an opening through the wall of Rats. I slid the edge of my buckler up under the raised arm of the Rat in front of me, then stood and shoved it into his armpit. He couldn't get that arm down to strike me. As he grabbed for me with the other arm, Achoo seized his wrist in her teeth and dragged him down to the floor to be trampled.

I bashed the next Rat in the face with the buckler. There was more room to maneuver now. Rat after Rat was yanked away by the three Dogs who swarmed the dais along with me. And what we saw at the center of the dais, among the overturned chairs and tables and braziers, made me numb with rage.

"What're you fighting for, you clanking stupid bumwipes!" I yelled at the Rats. No one heard. Of course not, it was too loud and their backs were to us. Then someone – Birch, Ersken's partner – hoisted me up. I stood on his knee, his arms around my legs, and tried again. "You Rats! You blind and mammering loobies, what do you fight for?!" I yelled.

Something happened in the room. The air felt tight. It was mage work. Birch's arms were trembling. I looked down for a better height where I could stand. On the dais someone had righted a table. No wonder it hadn't gotten destroyed in the fight – it was made of stone.

"Birch, you do it, please?" I asked. "You've got the bigger voice." As he got up on the table, the great chamber slowly went quiet.

"She's gone!" he bellowed. Now they all heard. The air felt looser again. I didn't want to know the name of the mage that had done the magic to make them hear the first time. The spell wasn't aimed at me, it was supposed to help. It would be poor thanks for me to punch the mage that cast it, but I hate being magicked, even as part of a crowd. "Your Rogue is gone!" Birch looked down at me. "Anyone else with her, y'think?"

"Jurji, Torcall Jupp, mayhap Zolaika," I said. "Her closest guards."

Birch called out the names and added, "You'll give 'em up now if you're wise!" No one answered him, so he got down from the table. "All this up here, 'twas a fakement," he said with disgust. "They was trained long ago, belike, to circle round the dais and make it look like they was protectin' her, whilst she scampered off some other way." He spat on the floor.

I nodded, full of my own share of disgust.

My lord Gershom came across the room, bodyguards and mages around him. In the shadows behind him, I could see where Flory and her mots had been cornered. They were gone.

My lord took the dais as the Dogs around it hauled unconscious Rats away. "Scent hounds, to me," he ordered. To everyone he said, "I will give a purse of ten gold nobles to the one who tells me where Pearl Skinner is. For every day that passes, it will be one gold noble the less. I am not a patient man."

"Who're you, t' be raidin' our court wiv your tarse-sniffin' Dogs?" a cove demanded.

Yoav backfisted him so hard that the Rat flipped bum over nob. "He's the Lord Provost of this realm, you slubbering piece of sheep scummer," she told him. "You'll talk respectful or I'll pull your tongue out."

"Yer Provost best sleep wiv one eye open, when Pearl comes after 'im," someone remarked. We didn't see who that one was.

"You must think I'm some lily-livered scut," my lord said. "Who stands on this dais now with a blade in his hand, and who's on the run? It's your Pearl Skinner with the price on her head. She won't come back, not to these courts. Why do you protect her? Do you
know
why we've come for her?"

Not one of them spoke. They only glared. I fidgeted, looking to see how Pearl could have gotten out. Did her guards only form a ring on the dais to distract us, as it seemed at first? She might have escaped with those who went out the back. Folk would have noticed her then, or if she fled through the kitchen. I drew closer to the dais – I had stepped off of it when my lord had taken over – and nudged a board with the tip of my boot. It was solid.

"Your Rogue is a colemonger," my lord said. "It's she who's been turning out those false silver coins. We have evidence.
Real
evidence, not whatever can be tortured out of some poor looby."

"Lies!" someone yelled. Soon all of them were shouting sommat of the sort. The Port Caynn Dogs walked among them, cuffing them to silence, but they started again as soon as the Dogs passed.

I inspected the dais, remembering the magicked doors and secret stairs in the Eagle Street court. I even stepped up on it, shifting around the overturned chairs and tables. There was a rug, too, a nice thick one, wadded up.

"Shut yer gobs!" a mot yelled from the back of the room, near the entrance I'd come through with Goodwin and our Dogs. I glanced up. Fair Flory had returned, a cutlass in one hand, a maul in the other. I blinked. I'd never seen her outfitted for war. Seemingly flower-selling asked for more strength than I thought. "If you weren't such a herd of dozy scuts, you'd know the old cod cutter's tellin' the truth!"

Rats and Dogs alike gave way before her. Only my lord's bodyguards refused to move from her path when she reached the dais. My lord looked at Goodwin, who signed that Flory was all right. Only then did he give the nod to his guards.

Flory stepped up on the dais. "You know Pearl Skinner," she told the Rats in the room. "The greediest, cheapest trull in the world. Do ye
doubt
she's movin' false coin about this city? About this realm? Do ye
doubt
she's spent the coin that should've bought yez food for the winter? There's not a drop of oil in our storage rooms, nor a seed of grain. She left us t' starve!"

"Flory," I said. She turned to look at me. "Hanse and his people were bringing silver to her from the north for a new minting. I let the Deputy Provost know they were coming – but Pearl sent Zolaika to murder them all before they could talk under torture. Hanse, Steen, Amda, everyone who went north with him was killed last night."

"How do you know that?" she demanded.

"Cooper talks to the dead," Goodwin called.

Flory – almost all of them watching – made the Sign on their chests.

Nestor pushed forward. "I've seen where Pearl had the coins made. Mages will confirm it's all her property and that of those in her service." He looked around. "She's the one who shoved up the prices of bread and meat with her false silver. It'll be proved in Magistrate's Court for all to see."

"I saw 'er run out through the kitchens!" someone called. "Jupp an' that Jurji was with her!"

"No, she went up th' hidden stair, in th' wall behind the throne," someone else yelled. "There's a panel in th' wall back there. She went when we heard th' crashin' at the doors!"

I shifted the rug with my baton. A twisted wire loop stuck out of a crack between the boards. "My lord, excuse me," I said.

He moved aside. I gripped the loop and pulled. The trapdoor set in the floor of the dais rose. It brought with it a wave of cold air and sewer stink.

"Looks like we have three ways she could have gone," my lord said. "Scent hounds!"

There were four of us handlers and hounds in all. I knew the three brought in from Corus by sight. They nodded to me, and I nodded back. I was supposed to have gotten more scent hound training with them, before all this had begun. Did they know that I'd had to learn as I went from Phelan and on my own, or did they think I believed I was too good to learn from them?

My lord frowned. "Sergeant Haryse, have we only Corus scent hounds?"

Nestor grimaced. "My lord, at present we have but four in the city, and the lords of the district requested them this week for hunting. It is the governor's policy to always grant such requests."

I heard my lord curse softly. "Pray four's enough. Have we got something for the hounds we
do
have to use for scent?"

"I do," I said. I unslung my pack and removed the underclothes that I'd stolen yesterday. "I got these while I was at the Eagle Street court."

Elmwood, the oldest of the Corus handlers, picked them up, looking them over. "A good thought, Cooper. Though doubtless some of the scent from your pack clings to them now."

"She has bedrooms at the Eagle Street and Darcy Walk courts," I said. "We can find more there."

"We
can?" Elmwood asked. There was no meanness in his face or voice. "You haven't got the training for a hunt like this, Cooper. Not after tricky prey that's got all manner of ways to go."

"You'll need fighting teams to back each of you up," my lord said. "Port Caynn and Corus Dogs mixed, and a mage for each." They moved closer to talk it out, choosing who would go and who might stay. Other Dogs began to move the hobbled Rats together and bind them that were still unconscious. I backed toward the wall, feeling as useful as teats on an ox.

Achoo danced and whined at my feet. Of course she did. She'd seen me take the pieces of Pearl's clothes out for other hounds to sniff. She'd heard the words
scent, hunt
, and
hounds
. She could see the other handlers kneeling to talk to their hounds. Achoo would know what all of that meant. She was ready for action, but I was not allowed to give her any.

Worse, I knew Elmwood was right. Achoo and I had successfully tracked a child, but we were not an experienced pair. She is a fine scent hound. I am the inexperienced one. It's the same as putting a lone Senior Dog with a Puppy. In looking out for the Pup, the Senior Dog can't be expected to work as well as she normally does.

"Sorry, Achoo," I whispered. Achoo whined, looking at the other handlers, who were giving their hounds Pearl's clothes to sniff. One already towed her handler to the exit by the kitchen. One dragged his handler to the door hidden in the wall by the dais. Someone had opened it for us. Elmwood's low-slung hound was halfway down the steps in the center of the dais already. I could hear his deep-chested bark exploding from the stone walls below as Elmwood and the Dogs who would back them followed.

Then I heard a cove yell, "You sarden loobies! Wake up!"

That was Hanse's voice, which only I could hear. I looked toward it, to the side entrance. A black pigeon attacked two Dogs who were going outside, striking at their heads with his wings. When they flung up their arms to protect their faces, I saw that their tunics fit badly, as if they were twisted, or pulled on over other clothes. Then Jurji stepped into my view just for a moment, his sword raised. He cut the attacking bird in two, then moved out of sight.

Achoo and I began to run, dodging tables, chairs, and bodies. The two Dogs dashed outside. I fell once as a rusher on the floor grabbed my foot. I kicked him in the face, struggled to my knees, and caught up with Achoo. She had beaten me to the dead bird. She nosed it, whimpering.

Slapper lay over the court's threshold. The blade that had cut him was dreadful sharp, slicing him crossways. Doubtless he never felt a thing, I told myself.

I pushed his pieces together with hands that shook, not thinking of his blood on me. Wouldn't the Black God mend such a good servant? He must be able to.

Mayhap the god wants to give him a rest, Slapper working so hard for him while he was alive.

And Hanse – he would be gone. I'd never known a spirit to return if sommat happened to his bird. I did look, both times it had happened before. My guess is that the Black God takes them, whether their business is finished or no.

Time was passing.

Achoo whined. Her head was up, her nostrils were wide. She had a scent. She wanted to follow it.

I wiped my hands on my breeches and took two of Slapper's feathers, being as he won't need them anymore. I slid them over my shoulder, into my pack. And I remembered that picture, the two people walking through the open doors in stolen uniform tunics, the bird on the attack, and Jurji.

"Achoo,
ban
," I told her, pointing to the ground beside the door where Jurji had stood. His footprints were clear in the soft dirt there. Achoo sniffed it and the frame of the door, where a bit of cloth was caught in the splintered frame. She sneezed once, then went back into the court, tracking Jurji and, most like, the two in the stolen uniforms, back to where they'd hid themselves in the crowd.

I gathered up Slapper's poor body and carried it over to a small patch of grass. It bore a spindly tree. I placed him there, so what was left of him might return to the Goddess's good earth. He deserved better, but I had no time. I wiped my hands as clean of the rest of his blood as I could on the grass.

Inside, Achoo had circled back to the door. She was about to go outside, still on her scent, when I told her,
"Berhenti."
She looked at me, whining, and sneezed again. She didn't want to hear "stop" from me. I knew how she felt.

I looked around. My lord, Nestor, and Goodwin were nowhere in view. They must have gone off to look at something else in the court. I was scared that Achoo might lose the scent. Then I remembered that Goodwin still had her Dog tag for me.

I grabbed Ersken, who was standing guard over a clutch of hobbled, seated Rats. "I'm off with Achoo – we're tracking Jurji, one of Pearl's bodyguards," I said. "Tell Goodwin I need her to find me. She knows how. I don't dare let the trail get cold." I didn't mention the two in disguise, in case they were only minor Rats.

Ersken scratched his chin. "Beka, maybe you should wait," he said, worried.

"He killed Slapper," I said, swallowing a lump in my throat.

Ersken's kind face went hard. "I'll find Goodwin and tell her. But how will she find you? She's no mage!"

"But she has a magic thing. She'll explain, maybe," I said.

Ersken clapped me on the shoulder and went looking for Goodwin. I returned to Achoo.

"Menean
, Achoo," I said. I should have told my seniors myself, but the trail
was
getting cold. And I confess, my heart was filled with rage. I wanted Jurji and whoever ran with him.