Tortall (41 page)

When we went to breakfast, the coil of cord was in the middle of the dining room table, like a centerpiece.

She said goodbye when Ro came to take us to school, waving as we pulled out of the parking lot. Ana settled back in her seat. “She won’t come back,” she announced. “She’s worn out.”

“So am I,” Janice muttered.

“Yeah,” added Keisha.

A week later, on the drive home from school, I got an attack. I tried to stifle it, doubling over my books. Keisha, sitting beside me, poked my arm. “You’re having one of those things, aincha?”

“Shut up,” I wheezed.

“You better tell Dr. M,” advised Maria from the seat in front of us. “You been doin’ it a lot lately.”

I gave her the finger. Maria didn’t take it personally, lucky for me.

Ro pulled up in front of the home and we got out. Everybody else ran in ahead of me. They wanted to make sure that they had won and X-ray was gone. I walked in slowly, trying to calm down, thinking that if this was winning, I sure didn’t want to lose.

They all stood by the dining room table, silent. A new scrapbook lay there. We heard banging noises and peeked into the kitchen. There was X-ray, cleaning out the garbage disposal we had jammed at breakfast.

We all pulled back into the dining room, looking at each other, wondering what everyone else would say. Finally Maria sighed. “Aw, hell,” she told us. “Let’s keep her.”

Not that we made it
easy
for X-ray to stay on.

Coming from Random House in 2011,
the third title in the
Beka Cooper trilogy:
Mastiff

For a sneak peek
at the next adventure in Tortall,
turn the page!

Excerpt from Saturday, June 9, 249

Now the Summer Palace appeared through the trees on my left, a long building with another open corridor on this side. There were balconies and turrets, and it had originally been very pretty white stone. Now soot streaks marred nearly every window frame. Part of this wing had collapsed into the cellars. Some of the windows stood open to the air. Others sported a single shutter, or half-burned ones. Tatters of burned draperies and furniture had been thrust from the windows to lie haphazard below. A chill ran clean down my spine and up into my skull. This was fearful business.

Achoo whimpered and scrabbled against the ties that held her to the packhorse. Something was frightening her.

“Would you release her?” I called to the men of the King’s Own. “She needs to get down.” The younger one rode to Achoo’s horse to do as I asked while I looked around.

Between the palace and our road were gardens. Mayhap they’d been pretty, too, but now that I eyed them, and smelled them, I did not think they could ever be pretty again. Bodies lay among the flowers. Here were the missing Palace Guards, men of the King’s Own, and the Black God knew how many servants, all sword-hacked or stabbed.

Lord Gershom swore. “Tunstall?”

Tunstall rode up to the older of our companions. “How many people have ridden this track before us?” he asked.

Achoo jumped to the ground. She ran over to my horse, her tail between her legs. She was nearabout spooked out of her fur.

I’d begun to slip from my horse when the man’s voice stopped me. “A large group rode over this place last night in
the dark. All of us were in it. And it is not this for which you are called. Come.”

“Not this?” Lord Gershom demanded, but he set his horse in motion. The mage and I followed. Tunstall fell in with me as we passed. We heard my lord mutter, “What in Mithros’s name can be worse?”

That same question worried Tunstall and me, for certain. I could not read Master Farmer’s face yet.

“Is this what you meant?” I asked Pounce in a whisper.

It’s the beginning
, he replied.

Master Farmer looked at me. “So your cat talks,” he remarked, as easy as if he rode by dead folk every day. “Doesn’t it unsettle you?”

Easy, Beka
, Pounce said in my mind, when I would have given the mage a tart answer.
He’s frightened, too, for all he doesn’t act it
.

“He’s talked to me for years,” I replied. “I’m used to it.”

“Oh, good,” Farmer replied. “I wouldn’t want you to put a good face on it for me.”

We rode past the flower gardens, but the landscape of the dead continued. They had fought in the trees here. Tunstall pointed to the far side of our road. There were footprints on a wide path that led down toward the sea. I nodded. Had the enemy come from there, or had people tried to escape taking that path? If Tunstall, Achoo, and I were supposed to make sense of this raid, we were sadly overmatched. I’d put at least five pairs on sommat as big as this, and more than one mage.

Thinking of mages, wouldn’t that seaward path be magicked to the hilt? Wouldn’t that wall down below be
magicked just the same? Royalty came here for the summer. Surely those in charge of keeping them safe wouldn’t leave their protection to a couple of walls and some guards.

Now we reached the pretty open circle where Their Majesties’ guests might leave their chairs, horses, or wagons. This had been cleared of the dead. That there
had
been dead I was near certain from the splashes of blood on the ground. Men of the King’s Own, all as grim as the others we had seen, took our horses. I called Achoo to heel—she was sniffing the bloody spots now that I was on the ground with her—and followed Tunstall, Master Farmer, and my lord inside.

Our guides did not come with us. Mayhap they did not want to face the soot-streaked, blood-splashed entry hall. We were turned over to a fleshy, white-haired cove who had mayhap been very well satisfied with his life a few days ago. Now I had to wonder if he would live out the month, for all that he wore a rich silk tunic and hose and a great gray pearl in one earlobe.

“Your people may wait in there, Gershom” was the first thing he said. He pointed to a side room well fitted with chairs and small tables. “You will come with me.”

My lord gave us the nod and we did as we were told. The room had escaped both fire and murder. There were pretty mosaics bordering the walls at top and bottom, as well as inlaid at the window ledges. The shutters were well-carved cedar, open to the air outside. The chairs were beautifully carved, too, and made of cedarwood as well. I made note of it, because my friends would surely want to know what the inside of a palace, even a summer one, was like. There were silk cushions with silk tassels everywhere, even on the floor.
Pounce went over to one and idly batted a tassel. Achoo showed no interest in the furnishings. She went to the open door and whined.

“
Kemari
, Achoo,” I told her.
“Dukduk.”
She looked at me and hesitated. I pointed to a spot next to the chair I meant to take and repeated my commands.

“What language is that?” Master Farmer asked. “It sounds like Kyprish, but it’s pretty mangled. Doesn’t she respond to commands in Common?”

I’d placed his accent by the time he was done. He’d come from the roughest part of Whitethorn City, off east on the River Olorun.

Tunstall had listened to him with both eyebrows raised almost to his short hair. “Now, would you go about giving away all your mage secrets to some stranger who asked?” he wanted to know. “Cooper has secrets for the handling of a hound. It’s the same thing.”

I ducked my head to hide a grin and pretended to be tucking my breech leg more properly into my boot. Tunstall wanted to test the mage a little.

“What kind of mage are you?” he asked Master Farmer. “The scummer-don’t-stink kind, or the pisses-wine kind?”

Master Farmer scratched his head. “The I-just-like-to-be-friendly kind, I think. Ma always told me I was the friendliest lad, just a help to everybody.”

Tunstall advanced until he was but three inches from the mage. He was half a head taller than Master Farmer and heavier in the shoulders, chest, and legs. In his Dog uniform he was overpowering. “Don’t expect that lovable-lout game
to play with us. We’re Lower City Dogs from Corus. We’ve seen it all, we’ve heard it all, and we’ve hobbled it all. What kind of name is Farmer, anyway?”

Farmer grinned. He looked like a fool. “It’s my mage name.”

Tunstall was about to spit on the beautiful rug when I cleared my throat and glared. I don’t care where he spits normally, but not in the palace. He coughed instead. “Mithros’s spear, what kind of cracknob picks a mage name like Farmer?”

The mage shrugged. “All the others kept saying how I walked and talked like I had my feet in the furrows and my head in the hayloft. I thought maybe there was something powerful, them all thinking the same thing, so I took Farmer as a mage name.” He looked at me. “I’ve been wondering lately, though, do you think mayhap they were making fun of me?”

I scratched Achoo’s ears. I was thinking that he couldn’t possibly be as crackbrained as he talked, or else why would Lord Gershom have summoned him?

Tunstall shrugged as if he were settling his tunic more comfortably on his shoulders and stepped back. “Don’t ask us,” he said. “We’re city Dogs.”

“I was a city lad, once,” Farmer said cheerfully. “I never had pets. At home we ate them. In the City of the Gods we sacrificed them for our magic.” He crouched next to Achoo and me. This close, he smelled a little of spices and fresh air. “Is that why you bring your pets along? So no one will eat them?”

Try to eat me and you will regret it for what remains of your short life
, Pounce said. I couldn’t tell if Farmer heard. I didn’t think so, not when he didn’t even blink.

Achoo was thumping her tail just a bit, telling me she wanted to make friends with the dozy jabbernob. Pounce sauntered over to him and looked up into his face. Master Farmer stared at him for a moment. Then he said, “Now there’s a pretty set of eyes. You don’t often see a purple-eyed cat wandering about loose.” He held out a hand. Pounce sniffed it for a moment, then bit one of his fingers. “And that’s a lesson to me,” said the mage, grinning. “Have you a name, Ebon Cat of the Amethyst Eyes?”

“I don’t know what that means, but his name is Pounce,” I said, frowning at the cat. “And he’s not normally so rude.” To make up for Pounce’s bad manners, I said, “Achoo is no pet. She’s a scent hound, as much a member of the Provost’s Guard as Tunstall or me. And she’s got more years on the street than me, too.
Bau
, Achoo.” Since Achoo kept wagging her tail as she smelled Master Farmer’s fingers, I said reluctantly,
“Kawan.”
He seemed harmless enough. Lord Gershom trusted him. That had to be enough for me.

Achoo had rolled over so Master Farmer could scratch her belly when the door opened. The most beautiful lady I’d ever seen came in. She had masses of brown curls that hung down to her waist. A few jeweled pins hung from them. Her maids were lax, letting her go about with her hair undone like that. She had large golden brown eyes, a delicate nose, a soft mouth, and perfect skin. Her undertunic was white linen so fine it was almost sheer, her overtunic a light shade of amber with gold threads shot through it. Strips of gold
embroidery were sewed to the front and the left side of the tunic, vines twining around signs for peace and fertility. Golden pearls hung from her ears, around her neck and wrists, and in a belt with a picture locket at the hanging end. Pearls were sewed to her gold slippers. Gold rings with emeralds and pearls were on her fingers, save for the heavy plain gold band on the ring finger of her left hand.

I write all this, remembering her beauty purely, though she was smutched with soot from top to toe. Even her face and hands were marked.

Tunstall had seen her before this at a closer distance than I, but we all knew her identity. We were kneeling before she had closed the door after her. “Your Majesty,” the coves said. My throat would not work.

“Oh, please, please, get up,” she said, her voice as soft as the rest of her. “I can’t stand—not now. Please. Look, I’m sitting down.” It was true, she’d settled in one of the chairs. A smile flitted on and off her mouth, which trembled whatever she did. In fact, she trembled from top to toe, the poor thing.

Pounce walked over and jumped into her lap without so much as a by-your-leave. The queen flinched a little, then stroked him. I’d been about to call him back, but I waited, watching those soot-marked hands move on Pounce’s fur. He turned around and coiled himself there, not letting her see his strange eyes. As she petted him, her shoulders and back straightened. Her trembling eased. “I’d thought all the animals had fled, or been …” She looked down for a moment, then turned her gaze to Achoo. “A scent hound? Is he yours?”

I looked at the men, but they, great loobies that they were, stood there dumbstruck. Tunstall flapped his hand at me. He wanted
me
to talk to Her Majesty! But one of us had to, and Achoo was staring at me with pleading eyes, her tail wagging.
She
knew the pretty lady wanted to admire her.

“
Pengantar
, Achoo,” I said. I turned to Her Majesty, without rising from my knees. From talking to folk who’d been broken by something terrible, I knew I would be more of a comfort to her if I sat below her eye level. Having Achoo come over made it reasonable for me to stay where I was. As the queen offered her hand for Achoo to smell, I explained quietly, “Achoo’s a female, Your Majesty. We’ve been partners three years now.”

The queen looked at me, and at the men. “Partners?”

I pointed to Tunstall, then at my uniform. “Achoo, Tunstall, and me, we belong to the Provost’s Guards. Senior Guardsman Matthias Tunstall, I should say. I’m Guards-woman Rebakah Cooper. And this is Master—”

The mage bowed. “Farmer Cape.”

The queen smiled at the men, but returned her attention to Achoo. She’d not stopped stroking Pounce, either. “How does a scent hound partner a Provost’s Guard?” she asked.

I hoped she knew the answer when she was normal. Seemingly she wasn’t just now. There was a shaken look in her eyes, as if she’d seen things too terrible to remember. Thinking of the bodies in the garden, I knew the chances were good that our pretty queen had never encountered anything of the like before. “When someone is missing, or
something’s been stolen, we give Achoo a scent of it,” I explained. “Then she goes off and finds it. I go with her to keep her on the scent and to summon help, should she need it.”