Bloodhound (35 page)

Now Goodwin came in. "My lord, let's be on our way. These foreigners don't know a nobleman such as yourself, and they don't respect our ways." I got in behind him, a little too close. Like most nobles, he stepped away from me. That took him nearer to the door.

"I want you to report these people to your sergeant!" he told Goodwin. "I want them arrested and their goods seized!"

"My sarge will hear of it the moment I see her, m'lord, don't you worrit yerself none," Goodwin assured him, following him out. I went after her, closing the door behind me. I heard bolts clack into their slots before I'd taken a step away. The shutters slammed shut beside my ear. I waited there as Goodwin tried to smooth my lord's feathers down. Finally he strode off in a mighty pet.

Goodwin turned back to me. "Goddess be thanked that was fairly quiet."

I could hear the Sirajit woman speaking, her voice sharp. I motioned for Goodwin to wait and stepped around the corner into the small alley. There I could put my ear against the thin wood of the shop's wall.

"Pack up everything, Usan," I heard the mot say. "Everything, down to the last crystal. We're leaving for Siraj – or Barzun, or even Carthak – on the next boat. Anywhere but here."

"But you haven't made the profit you want." That had to be the guard.

"Nor will I with the silver gone bad. I'm going to send word to the others, advising them to get out, too." She sounded shaky.
"Half
of what I took in yesterday was false. We're leaving!"

I thought, So the tale of her masters' orders was only a tale. It sounds like
she's
the master.

I heard the bolts snap. She was coming out. Goodwin peeked around the corner and watched, then said, "She's gone. Achoo is still sitting where you left her."

"Oh, pox," I said. "Achoo,
kemari!"
She came trotting around the corner. "Good girl," I told her, giving her some dried meat and an ear rub. "You did just as I said!"

"I wonder how many gem dealers will leave on that woman's say-so," Goodwin murmured as the three of us walked on down the street. "I'm no expert on these things, but it seems to me that if enough foreign merchants pull out, a country's in trouble."

"It may just be her and her kinfolk," I suggested. "She only said 'the others.' "

"True," Goodwin replied. She clapped me on the shoulder. "I'll put it in my report. Let it be Lord Gershom's headache."

At last we turned eastward again, into the area where mots shopped for ribbons, beads, jewelry, and such-like. Goodwin was much amused when I asked her to halt at a shop that sold face paint. I dithered only a little, then bought a small pot of eyelash blackener, a tiny comb to apply it with, a pot of red for my lips, and a little brush to use with that. Next we halted at a perfumer's shop. Goodwin was a great help to me there. I came away with a pot of carnation scent fixed in a balm, which she said would last longer than an oil. I can switch it with the lily of the valley scent that Okha gave me, so I won't tire of always smelling the same.

We ate our lunch in Tradesmen's District, sampling the goods from several vendors' carts and sharing them with Achoo. Then we bought two loaves. We found a fountain square with its own bounty of pigeons and set about feeding them as we let our food settle. Goodwin watched the folk around us as I listened to ghosts.

"I said I'd teach 'im t'steal another cove's woman – " A cove's voice, rough and bullying.

"It was right after the stew. I didn't feel right." A mot, this.

"Mam, they's rats down there!" A terrified lad.

"But look, we send out too much, don't yez see? We bring in plenty o' good coin, but folk are noticin' the bad!" A man with a Corus accent. I sat up, paying attention.

"Eight children I've had. I'm that afeered o' this 'un's comin'. I feel all, weak-like. He keeps throwin' the charm away, whenever he finds it." A mot who sounded weary to the bone.

"I said I'd leave everything to him. Why would he kill me if he knew he was my heir?" A cove, old and bewildered.

"I begged them, stop the coins for a time." It was the cove from Corus, the one who said folk are noticing. I sat up, looking for the pigeon who carried him. Which one was it?

"The stew didn't taste right. I saw her put sommat in it, but she said 'twas on'y spice – "

"Help! Someone help me, please! Who's seen a child, so tall, gold curls, a red luck string about her wrist? Please, have you seen her?" That was the voice of a living mot, coming from somewhere nearby.

The pigeons took off all at once, an explosion of wings. When they cleared, there was a mot in a wet apron running about the square, grabbing at folk. "Please, have you seen her?"

A tradesman shook her off with no patience or kindness for her tear-blotched face. "Get a Dog, that's what they're for!"

She scrabbled at his arm. "I tried, good sir, but – "

The cove gave her a hard shove then, sending her tumbling into the dirt. Then he checked his purse. To his companion he said, "Greedy beggars get worse all the time!" They strode off.

The mot put her face in her hands and wept.

Goodwin rose and went over to her.

"I thought I had something," I told Achoo, gathering the remains of our lunch and stuffing them in my pack. "I should come back tomorrow. That one bird... I wonder, if I ask Slap-per, would he bring the bird to me?" Achoo made a tiny sound in her throat. I took it to be a question and explained, "I never did so before. Back home, all the pigeons knew where to find me. Here they don't even know me."

Goodwin came over with the mot. "Cooper, on your feet," she said, her eyes glittering. "This is Vorna. She was doing her wash. Her little girl wandered off."

"Shouldn't she get the local Dogs?" I asked.

"They told her that if she didn't have a silver noble, she oughtn't to bother them, Cooper," Goodwin said almost cheerfully.

I thought, Well, there's two coves in this city who don't question the silver.

Goodwin was still talking to me. "Now, is that poxy hound of yours for show, or can she earn all the food she's been gulping down?"

I put on my pack and looked at Vorna. Gods all be thanked Phelan had taught me how to do this. Gods all be thanked I do my memory exercises. "You were doing your wash. Have you something of the child's? Something dirty, that she's worn?"

Vorna hiked up her dress and raced off across the square, her wooden shoes rattling on the stones. Goodwin, Achoo, and I followed. Achoo's tail slapped my legs hard. Seemingly she knew she was about to do the thing for which she was made.

Vorna led us three blocks away into another, less popular square. This was a fountain square sheltered among poorer houses. The women who washed their clothes here looked at Vorna and shook their heads.

"No one's seen her?" Vorna cried. "I went all the way to Persimmon Square for help! Surely by now – "

An assortment of lads and gixies, some of them sweating and panting, shook their heads, too. "We went to your place, and her auntie's, and your cousin's," a gixie told Vorna. "None of 'em seen her."

I got down on my knees with my hound. "Achoo!" She was wriggling, her tail a blur in the air. "Achoo,
mudah
, all right?"

Like magic, Achoo sat and went still, her eyes watching me. I stayed beside her, one arm around her. I knew, just as she did, we were about to be put to the test.

A large, blowsy mot shouldered through the group of women and children. She came to Vorna, who had seized a basket of soiled clothes and was searching through it, tossing the items that didn't satisfy her on the ground.

"No luck, lass, and no word." The big mot looked at Goodwin and me. "Who are you two? You're not with the Tradesmen's kennel. I know every Dog there, and you don't belong."

"Falda, please," Vorna pleaded. "Don't start trouble."

Goodwin squared off to Falda. Once again Goodwin wore that strange new face, the one she'd had on last night. "You can waste time arguing our wheres and whyfores, while the babe stays missing," she told Falda, looking up into the bigger mot's face to do it. "But what
I
heard was that two Tradesmen's Dogs wouldn't do it without a silver noble, while Goddess knows what happens to that child. All
you
need know, mistress, is that Cooper and I are truly Dogs, and Cooper here has a scent hound." And she clapped her hand on the grip of her baton.

Falda reconsidered as Vorna handed me a filthy child's nightgown. It had been pissed in and dried. It smelled to the rooftops. "Will this do?" she asked me.

I stood, nodding, and took the gown. Phelan had said things with piss or scummer on them were the best. I don't know how poor Achoo can stand it. Mayhap the smells that made me like to puke were perfumes to her. Gods all know four-legged dogs will put their noses in places a human will run screeching from.

I looked at Goodwin. I wasn't sure how this worked with my human partner. "Do we go together, or – ?"

Goodwin shook her head. "I'll stay here, in case someone else brings in the little one. If that happens, I'll find you and the hound."

I frowned, confused and worried. "How will you find me? Whistle? I lost mine in the riot, I think, and if we're too far off, I'll never hear."

Goodwin patted me on the shoulder. "Cooper, here I was thinking you were healed from that clout to your head. Where's your Dog tag?"

"I have it right here, like I was told to," I said, tugging it from my belt purse. The glowing dot that was Goodwin was at the center of the compass drawn on the obsidian. "Why would I – ?" Then I realized how she would find me if she had to. I was so embarrassed that I began to blush. "I'll just talk to Achoo from here on."

Achoo pawed my knee and whuffed softly. She wanted to move out. I thrust my Dog tag into my pouch hurriedly and looked at Goodwin. "Would you move them back?" I whispered. "They might respect it a bit more at the moment, coming from you."

Goodwin gave Falda a second look, just in case, then faced the cityfolk around us, her hands on her hips. "All of you, move back. If the hound comes at you, move from her path! And do what Cooper tells you, else we'll both know why!"

She gave me the nod and that tiniest of winks.

I knelt beside Achoo and offered the stinking nightgown to her. "Achoo,
bau,"
I told her.

"Use only her name and a command word when you work," Phelan had told me. "That's all she needs to hear from you."

Achoo's nostrils flared. Then she leaned her head closer and sniffed. She sniffed again, then began to snuffle the nightgown, up and down, inside its folds, on front and back. She even stuck her head inside. When she pulled her head out, she began to sneeze.

My attention was fixed on her now. I stuffed the nightgown into my belt and got to my feet. Already she was casting forward, her nose in the air. She found her way to Vorna's things, wet and dry alike, stirring them with her nose. She sneezed again, twice, then set forth. For a few moments all was frustration as she went around the fountain and back, over to the edge of the square and back, up to the nearest corner and back.

I could hear Vorna tell Goodwin, "She's so restless, my little Aldis. She goes to play with the other children, to see a knight ride by – "

To get
stolen
, I thought, but I had no more leisure for thinking. Achoo found a scent that took her off the square and down a narrow alley. I ran to keep her in sight as she went at a steady trot, not too slow and not too fast. She had to go at a regular pace, both to keep me with her and to keep a steady flow of the scent in her nose, so Phelan had told me. Behind us I heard Goodwin yell to the folk in the square, "Don't you
dare
follow! You'll only get in the way!"

Achoo's narrow alley took us down two blocks. We turned into another small alley, then ran through a maze built of small outbuildings and sheds. Gods all above, how had the child known this was here? Then I saw where Achoo was bound and yelped. I covered my mouth with my free hand before I could do it again and distract her. Achoo had found a tunnel between two tumbledown buildings. Somehow the litter of years, including trellises of some kind, had fallen over the pathway between them. They'd left but a crawl space, a hideaway of adventure for children and a hound, and of misery for a full-grown mot. I dropped to my hands and knees in the muck, silently cursing. For this, I could just as well have stayed in the Cesspool in Corus, and raised my own muck-crawling toddlers to chase.

We came into the light again, where the path met with a small street. Achoo stood, casting. I waited until I was certain she was confused, then drew the nightgown out with two fingers and offered it to her again. She sniffed. I stuck it in my belt once more, trying to get as little muck from my hands on it as I could.

Achoo raised her head, sniffing the air. I waited, quietly, ignoring the few passersby who stared at us. Achoo had not started to look bewildered, as Phelan said she would if she'd lost a scent. She seemed purposeful, alert. I wondered if she was like me, at her best doing what she was meant to do, hunting rather than flirting and telling lies to strangers. Then she took up her hunting trot, still following Aldis's smell on the currents of air.

Three blocks and two alleys later Achoo halted at the back of a small cart tucked into a narrow passageway between houses. The cart was a wooden box with a lock at the door. She stood up at the door, nudged the lock, and glanced at me. She'd been trained not to bark if her handler was in view. Her silence could mean her life and mine if there were Rats about.

I listened first. I heard only traffic from the street in front of the houses. No one was in the alley where I stood. I ventured first a glance under the cart, to see if anyone stood near it. No sign of feet. I took my baton firmly in hand and gave Achoo the hand signal to guard. Then I went to check, carefully, if anyone sat on the driver's seat of the cart. No one. Back to the locked door I went, sliding my pack off my shoulders. From the side pocket I took the pouch of lock picks Rosto had given me this last summer.

Aniki had taught me their use, though I barely needed training to open this lock. Once it was open, I put the picks away and stowed the lock in my pack. Only when the pack was on my shoulders again did I grip my baton and fling the door open, standing away in case there was a guard inside.