Bloodhound (2 page)

"Stop that," I said. "It won't do any good." But of course it did. It always does. As he kneaded my shoulder muscles, I sighed and sat upon my bed. Pounce's black fur was like the softest velvet under my fingers. The knots in my temples and jaw loosened. By the time he jumped to my pillow, I was able to change into my nightdress, make myself a soothing tea, eat some bread and cheese, and open this journal. I thought that writing what took place with Silsbee would ease me further, but I have finished, and I am still too angry to sleep. I may as well put down a bit of what has taken place since I finished my last journal, while I was still in training.

I am seventeen years old now, a full member of the Provost's Guard. I have been so for five months. In that time I have had four partners, including Silsbee. My luck in this area has not been good. Between partners I go back to my training Dogs, Goodwin and Tunstall. I remain with the Jane Street kennel of the Lower City watch district, which is yet under the command of Acton of Fenrigh. Kebibi Ahuda is my Watch Sergeant and trainer in baton work.

I live in Mistress Trout's lodgings on Nipcopper Close. My fellow lodgers are Aniki Forfrysning, Koramin Ingensra, and Rosto the Piper, as well as Mistress Trout. Rosto, the Rogue and king of the city's thieves, tried to buy the house and turn it into an inn where his court might gather, but Mistress Trout refused to sell. Instead she persuaded him to buy houses across the street that are also hers. He's had the builders there ever since, turning them into a spacious inn. The work is near enough to done that we've been taking our regular breakfasts on the second floor. Rosto is naming the place after his dead mother. He tells us she was once a beautiful Player called the Dancing Dove.

Rosto still makes it plain he wants me. I yet say no, though nights like this one come when I wonder why I refuse him. Still, a cove as makes a living by violence will live all his life by it, that's my fear. It's no help that Rosto's the Rogue and I'm a Dog.

Curse him for being all tight muscle, with ivory skin and a mouth as soft as rose petals. Curse him for having hair as fair as the sun, and eyes as black as night. Curse him for having the grace of a cat and deft, cool hands.

And now I am having the same argument on paper that I have in my own head, or with Pounce, on too many nights. I know my choice is sensible, but it isn't my common sense I think with, those times Rosto's stolen a kiss from me.

Pounce says I am to stop feeling sorry for myself and get to bed, or he will ruin another good page with his inky paws. I must sleep sometime. But when I do, tomorrow comes, and I deal again with being partnerless.

Curse that cat! I'm off to bed, now that my new journal is started. No thanks to Pounce!

Friday, September 7, 247

Noon.

I knew I had to tell my friends straight off. Ersken Westover would hear of my dismissal when we went on watch, if our thief friends hadn't already caught wind of it, so Pounce and I went across the street to breakfast at the Dancing Dove, Pounce more eagerly than me. Most of our regular group was there – Rosto, Aniki, Kora, Ersken, and Phelan. All but Tansy, and I chose not to wait for her. With a baby, a husband, and a business, she doesn't always come. I wanted to get the telling over with.

"Silsbee tossed me back last night," I said as Kora passed the turnovers.

For a moment they all did naught but stare.

Then Ersken snorted, pox rot him. Dogs ought to show a united front! Kora put up her hands to cover her mouth. Mages are always discreet. Aniki cackled. Soon they all made merry at my expense, save Rosto.

He
didn't laugh. He only raised an eyebrow and said, "That's four partners, then."

I glared at him. I can do that, seeing as how he's got a sweet spot for me. "So?" I asked. "It's not always a good fit, right off. I've said it afore. Even Ersken had two partners."

"I got lucky the second go-round." Finally Ersken remembered whose side he was on. "It was pure chance that Vinehall was transferred and I got Birch. And it wasn't Beka's fault that her first partner didn't work. He died of the red flux. Half the Lower City got it this summer, even you, Rosto. It's not like she
gave
it to him."

"She arrested the second cove herself," Aniki said. "She arrested her own
partner
!"

"He took a bribe to ignore
murder,"
I said, still angry. "That's just wrong."

"You told the third one you'd lop his hands off if he put them on you again." Kora could barely say it for giggling. "He thought you'd really do it, too!"

"She would!" Rosto, Aniki, and Ersken said at the same time.

"So what was it with this one?" asked Phelan. He was offering ham to my cat. Pounce, the traitor, tended to that, not to helping me.

"Silsbee." I was tired to death of the subject already and the day scarce begun. "He says I give him the twitches. And he's a lazy, jabbernob, pudding-livered scut." I'd said little to them before. I had been trying to make the best of things, but there was no reason to now. "He eats, he gossips, and he wouldn't chase a Rat if it was a feeble filcher under his own poxy nose!"

They only laughed all the more. I wondered where Tansy was. My oldest friend would surely stand up for me. Why, today of all days, was she not here?

"I'd say you have curst bad luck," Aniki told me, "but the god's truth is, Beka, you want to bag every Rat in the Lower City, and Silsbee is a known slug. The odds were down to fifty to one that it would last another week."

"I'd've stuck it out!" I cried.

"You won plenty of folk some coin when he didn't resign after one night of you," Rosto said idly. "Even more coin when you didn't quit the Dogs by the third day. But no one would wager a copper on it going a whole month."

I
had wagered on me making it to a month. That only means I'm a looby. I
tried
not to argue with Silsbee when he'd refused to let me give chase. I hadn't questioned his orders, though my tongue was sore from biting it. I hadn't wanted to lose yet another partner.

"Doubtless he thought you were surly, as shy as you are with them that don't know you." Rosto said it like he was my wise old grandfather. "I'd've thought Goodwin and Tunstall would have made you more sociable with the other Dogs."

"I talked to him," I snapped. "For all the good it did me."

"Goodwin and Tunstall didn't make her
that
sociable," Ersken said. He was trying to feed Kora's cat, Fuzzball, without bleeding for it. Fuzzball could be greedy at times, and his claws were sharp. "Why should they? They're happy when Beka gets kicked back to them, even though my Lord Provost told Ahuda the other day that he wants
two
good pairs, not one great team of three."

I hid my face in my hands. I don't want my lord to be unhappy with me. It's not just that he's my sponsor, or the head of the Provost's Guards. I want to repay him for taking my family out of the Lower City and giving us a decent life. "When did you hear this?" I asked.

"Three days back," Ersken said. I heard wickedness in his voice as he added, "When he noticed that Silsbee rolled his eyes as you came within his view."

Pounce jumped onto my shoulder as I moaned.

Why are you groaning?
he asked me.
My lord would see you commit murder before he'd stop liking you
.

My friends looked curious. This time they heard Pounce only speaking in cat, not in human speech as I did, or they would have laughed. Half the time he lets them know what he is saying, and half the time he does not. He likes to tease, does Pounce.

Feet clattered up the stair. Tansy had forgotten to take off the wooden pattens she wore to lift her feet clear of the street muck. She flung the breakfast room door wide. Her rain hat was askew, her gold curls tumbling from their pins. She threw her rain cape on the floor and banged a basket of rolls on the table before us. Her cheeks were red, her eyes sparkling with anger.

"I have never been so humiliated!" she said, panting from her run up from the common room floor.

"You tracked mud in here. The wood's not stained yet," Rosto told her. He is as picky as a cat about this inn he's building.

Tansy glared at him. "Mud scrubs off," she said tartly. "It's not dignified for the Rogue to worrit himself about housekeeping." She was vexed, sure enough. Her Upmarket speech was slipping into the Lower City cant of our childhood. Bending, she slipped off her pattens, setting them outside the room's door.

Aniki poured Tansy a cup of hot tea. "Your day off to a bad start?" she asked as Tansy put on a pair of the slippers kept by the door for us.

"Baker Garnett tested the coin I gave him – and it was false! A silver cole, a thin coating over brass!" Tansy sat next to me and ripped a roll in two. "He had guards in the shop. One of them grabbed me. I gave him the knee in the cod, the scut.
Then
my dozy footman got into it. A flea I put in my cove's ear, not stopping the plaguey bastard before handling a citywoman like me!" She took a gulp of the tea and winced. It was too hot.

"Most citywomen don't jam knees into a cove's cod." Rosto spoke seriously, but his black eyes were laughing.

Tansy shook her head, blushing fiercely. "You don't
understand
," she said. "I've worked so hard to give our business an honest name! Dealing in
coles
– it would be the ruin of me and my whole family, if word got about. No one would buy from us! We'd lose everything!"

"And there's being boiled in oil, if they think you guilty of colesmithing," Kora murmured while she played with Aniki's cat. "Or getting your hand lopped off if they just think you're passing fakes along. Why
aren't
you in the cages?"

"I bribed the baker, of course," Tansy said, and sniffed. I took out one of the handkerchiefs she tucked in her clothes and put it in her hand. "He called off his guard when I wouldn't stop crying...
And
he said he's had two other good customers come in with false coins. Silver, all of them." She blew her nose. "He let me go, but folk were
laughing
, and that rusher who worked for him said
such
a thing to me!"

"I'll send a cove around to have a word," Rosto said. "Don't you worry about that, love."

"Try not to make it a matter for the Dogs," Ersken told him. "Friendly is always best."

Rosto gave Ersken a grin that was all teeth. "I'm the friendliest cove around, Westover," he said. "Ask anyone."

"Living," Aniki murmured.

Rosto glanced at her. "Well, it's Beka you ask if you want to talk to the dead ones, isn't it?" he inquired, all innocent-like.

Fuzzball attacked my fingers. I let him do it, as I was thinking. This baker, Garnett, had seen three customers lately with false silver coins? Respectable folk at that. Tansy's grandfather-in-law had been the Lower City's worst scale and landlord, but since his death Tansy, her husband, and her mother-in-law had gotten rid of the old man's crooked businesses. They'd lost a great deal of money to get straight with the law.

I'd bet a copper of my own that these three false silver cases Tansy mentioned aren't the only ones, not if a
baker
is hiring guards. How many silver coins does a baker see in a day? Most folk buy with coppers, unless they shop for a group, or a big household.

"It's not
you
that's behind this, is it?" Tansy asked Rosto. "Because it would be wrong, very wrong! I don't care if you are the Rogue, I'll speak my mind! You can't meddle with people's livelihood, Rosto! Silver coles hurt us all. If a silver noble won't buy what it's supposed to – "

"Will you
hush
?" Rosto asked, slapping the table. "Mithros's sack, woman!"

Tansy went silent, but she was breathing hard.

"You should learn from Beka," Rosto said. "She says her bit and then waits for a cove to answer. No, I've no hand in these fakes. If you'd a whit of sense, you'd know it. Coles hit the Court of the Rogue even harder than they hit the merchants. You make a bit of coin at first, but if the price of silver goes down, it goes down for all. We'd be cutting our own throats to deal in coles."