Bloodhound (60 page)

The others all waited, their eyes on me. Finally Nestor smiled. "Cooper, you've got the scent hound. We're your squad. You have to issue the orders."

Mithros's spear. Three Senior Dogs and one of my year mates, yet they waited for my order. I took that pearl tooth from my pocket and held it for Achoo. She sniffed it all over and sneezed heartily thrice. We'd moved away from the tunnel door so we wouldn't stir up the footprints cast by Pearl and her companions needlessly. Now Achoo cast briefly over them, barked softly, and trotted toward the door to the outer world.

"Yes, Your Majesty," I said, running up to open the door. "A pity you need me for this."

We set off down the street outside the door. The air was thick with fog, muffling our footsteps. Achoo led us toward the harbor, her legs picking up speed. We trotted with her.

The city was as quiet as I've ever seen it, save for the fog bells singing from the harbor. The fog wrapped all of us around, making us draw closer so we might see each other clear. Those folk who were on the street rushed by on their errands, shrinking away from so many Dogs in a clump. When the clocks struck the fifth hour, I started at the sudden loud noise.

We were three blocks from the waterfront when Achoo halted at the kitchen entrance of a drinking den. She looked at me, but she made no sound. Her quarry was inside.

I needed to make sure. Birch hand-signaled that he and Ersken would stay on the kitchen door. Goodwin, Nestor, and I went around to the front of the place to see if Achoo picked up the scent again. She circled in front of the door, snuffling, then ran back to the rear. Goodwin and Nestor stayed in front as I followed her.

When I got to the kitchen door, Birch and Ersken settled their weapons and gear as I did. Then they looked to me for the signal.

"Achoo,
tumit
," I said. I opened the kitchen door and we walked in, my two fellow Dogs behind us.

The smells of supper met our noses, and my belly growled. A hard-worked cook turned from her hearth to glare at me. "Here, you, this ain't no walkway! Just you back on out – " Then she saw my companions and my hound, and the finger I'd put on my lips. The maids were shrinking from us, eyes wide. Their mistress was made of sterner stuff. She slapped Birch's hand when he reached for a pasty and pointed the way to the front room.

Birch bowed. He signaled that the maids and the cook were to stand with their faces to the rear wall. He and Ersken bound their hands and mouths with strips of the muslin they used to steam puddings, then tied all three of them together by binding each pair of hands to the other. They could escape, but it would be difficult. They'd know soon enough it was easier to wait for someone to come and untie them. It was safer for us and them. We didn't know if they were Pearl's allies, and this way Pearl's friends would know they had not helped us.

Then we entered the front room. It was a tidy place, with tables and benches for common drinkers, a tap just to my right, and curtained booths along the wall past the tap. The stairs to the upper story were on my left. Only two booths had the curtains drawn. Did they hide folk having private suppers, or a captain doing business with a runaway Rogue?

I saw all this in the blink of an eye as I darted at the bar-keep and put my baton up close to his throat. He knew I would crush his windpipe if he made any sound. Two sailor coves and a doxie were eating and dicing at a table near the stairs. They started to rise, but Birch shook his head at them. Ersken tied their wrists with their sashes or belts as Birch opened the front door to Nestor and Goodwin.

We heard a slight creak of wood. Achoo barked. Jurji leaped down the stairs and hacked at Ersken. He might have cut him in two had Achoo's warning not caused Ersken to whirl around as Jurji hit the bottom of the stairs. That turn saved Ersken from the sweep of Jurji's sword, though it did not save the cove whose mouth Ersken had been gagging. Jurji's sword cut deep into his shoulder, slashing a great vein. He screamed through the gag.

Ersken grabbed Jurji's sword arm and hooked one of his legs from under him, throwing Jurji onto his back. That was all I could see. I was binding the barkeep's hands while Birch, Nestor, and Goodwin went for the curtained booths. I made the barkeep lie down behind his bar as I roughly bound his ankles with his own cleaning cloths. I heard fighting on the other side of the bar and I was terrified my friends were getting hurt. At last I stepped out of that small space and looked into the room.

Jurji was trying to get to his feet, but Ersken had his sword arm up behind his back and would not let go. Jurji's longsword was still in the man he'd killed. Ersken had yanked him away from that poor cove before Jurji could free it. Then Ersken knelt on Jurji's legs, making sure Jurji couldn't move.

The curtains in both of the closed booths had been dragged from their rings. In one booth, two sailors had their hands in the air. Birch was tying the mot's hands. In the other booth, a cove in better clothes also had his hands in the air. "I'm an honest man!" he cried. He had a thick Barzun accent. "I am here to accept a passenger with a pass that will get me out of the harbor!"

Nestor and Goodwin stood off of the booth on either side of a tall, gray-haired woman of Goodwin's age, dressed in a man's dark tunic and leggings. It was Pearl's doxie, Zolaika, without the mask of makeup, the wigs, and the fancy clothes she always wore. She was armed with knives in both hands. Her eyes, dark brown, were locked on Nestor, who was moving in on her with his baton. She'd already cut the left side of Goodwin's face from cheekbone to chin. The blood ran, but Goodwin didn't look as if she had noticed. She swung her baton sidelong, straight at Zolaika's shoulder.

Zolaika ducked the blow, but Nestor was waiting for it. He clubbed her arm with his baton. Bone cracked.

I did not see Pearl. I turned and glared at the barkeep. "Where is she? Where's Pearl Skinner?" He glared at me. I leaned down, grabbed his tunic in my fist, and pulled him up. "She's the reason half your silver is bad, you scut. Tell me, or I'll name you as her conspirator in colemongering."

He stared at me, then said, "She went to the privy."

Of all the idiot things to happen! "Where!" I demanded. It certainly wasn't by the kitchen entrance.

"Go right between here and the booths. There's a little hall, then the door t' the courtyard. Please don't give me the curse eye no more!" he babbled.

My eyes. It's always my eyes with folk.

I dropped him.

"Achoo,
kemari
!" I cried over the noise. She came to me as I clambered out from behind the bar. I put the tooth under her nose. She sneezed only lightly this time. Then she took off down the little hall I hadn't even seen yet, being that it was tucked back near the last of the curtained booths and the wall of the bar. She pawed at the narrow door, whining. I settled my baton in my hand, said,
"Tumit,"
and kicked the door open. The fog lay outside.

The privy doors in the stinking courtyard outside were open. No sign of Pearl. The gate on the opposite side of the yard swung wide, too.

"Achoo,
mencari
!" I whispered. Achoo went for the open gate. I followed.

The drink was ebbing from my veins, but something else was helping me along. I was close. The gate had still been swinging when I passed through it. Where could she go? Her last two loyal people were doing battle with my fellow Dogs. No one would shelter her. And I had Achoo.

Achoo knew our quarry was close, too. She led me down the block. I followed her into a stable, dodging the bites of sleepy horses. There was a door in the rear of the stable. We passed through that into an old courtyard.

At its center a grate lay beside an opening in the ground. Achoo stopped at it and whined. Her prey was in that hole.

"Pox," I whispered as I peered inside. Iron rungs led down into the dark. I ran back to the stable and stole a lantern. I left a gold coin in its place. It was all I had left, and Pearl had probably stolen a lantern, too. I waited to light the lantern with my flint and steel until I was outside again. Beside the hole with Achoo, I cut the tunics I'd been carrying in my pack, tying them into a rough sling.

"First the light, and then the hound," I told myself. I climbed down. It wasn't far. I set the lantern on a ledge, then went back for Achoo. When I settled her in the sling, she gave me a look that told me she had decided she would do any mad thing I asked, even though it might be
truly
mad. I scratched her ears and carefully fitted us both through that hole in the ground.

The moment she set foot on the ledge, she found the scent. She trotted quickly, all business, following each turn that Pearl made off that branch of sewers. A four-legged rat came at Achoo and squealed. Achoo snapped at it and trotted on while it dodged. It ran around me while I stood against the wall. I'm not afraid of animal rats as some folk are, but I've been bitten twice in the last year. I won't pay a healer mage for cleansing again if I can help it. Two more such rats came, and then more. What was the matter with the curst beasts? Was it Pearl that frightened them so?

It was when I heard splashing that my tired mind remembered something important. Something Pearl forgot, something I forgot, but something these smaller rats knew very well.

The tide was coming in.

I looked at the sewer. The water had risen almost to the ledge where we walked. Pearl must be closer to the harbor ahead, to be splashing.

"Achoo,
cepat!"
I whispered. Achoo picked up speed. I too moved faster, fear being a wonderful spur. Somehow the rats who were left ran through Achoo's feet and around me. There were less of them now. Most had found safety already, I guessed. For a brief, mad moment I wondered if Dale would like me now, dirty, weary, and wading in scummer. I'd need a daylong soak in a bathhouse before I'd feel fit to bed him again. I shook my head and forced myself to think of my quarry.

Pearl was not stopping. Her splashes ahead were louder, as if she floundered in deeper water. The flow was now up to my shins. Wavelets pushed at Achoo. The water was up to
her
chest. When the tiny waves shoved her off her feet twice, I knew we had to do sommat. There was an entry to my right with a stair, not a ladder.

"Achoo,
kemari!"
I whispered. I ran up to the top. The door opened up into the floor of a small shed. I looked outside that into a courtyard.

Achoo slunk behind me, whining. The scent was down below. She didn't want to leave, the silly beast. I took her leash from my pack and fastened it first to her collar, then to the latch of the door to the sewer, on the outside.
"Tunggu,"
I told her as she complained. "Dear one, you'll
drown. Tunggu!"

I was crying as I ran back down the steps, Achoo's barks growing dim behind me. She'd earned the right to be in at the last, and I had betrayed her.

At the foot of the stair, I was unnerved to see the water now lapped the first step. I was even more unnerved to see that Goodwin waited for me there. The slash on her face was still bleeding, and the top of the ear on that side of her face was cut off. Once again she had the Dog tag in her hand. I was so relieved I almost kissed her.

"Gods be thanked for those tags," I murmured instead, keeping my voice down. I didn't want Pearl to hear.

"Now
what is your excuse for running off?" she demanded in a whisper, glaring at me. "Tell me a god took you, because that's the only thing I'll accept!"

"All of you were fighting," I told her quietly. "I thought Pearl had just run out to the privy and I could snag her! But she kept going – "

Goodwin put a hand on my shoulder. "So should we. Later we'll talk about you leaving partners, girl. Now, look at the wall, at shoulder height."

I looked where she pointed. Some thoughtful soul had fixed a series of metal handholds there. If the water got too deep, me and Goodwin could hold on to one and not be swept away. I can swim, but I don't know if I'm strong enough to fight the tide.

"Gods all bless whoever did that," I told her. She grinned and motioned for me to take the lead. I nodded and plowed back into the vile water, which now came as high as my knees. It felt stronger, with more power behind the wavelets. Soon we could hear Pearl splashing along.

We pushed ahead as hard and fast as we could manage. Even when the most dreadful kind of trash brushed past us we said naught, straining to hear Pearl ahead. The water was up to my ribs when I saw her at the edge of my lantern's light, clinging to a handhold. She had lost her own lantern. With her free hand she fought to push away a mess of kelp, pieces of wood, dead animals, and whatever else had flowed in.

Unlike me, Pearl didn't have that drink to keep her strength up. She looked half dead.

I tried to draw closer to her. The waves were stronger. Twice my feet went out from under me. Goodwin hung on to a grip and caught me with her free hand, while I thanked the maker of those handgrips a dozen times for my own near misses.

A swell of water yanked Pearl from a grip and pulled her under. She surfaced with a scream and scrabbled at the wall until she seized a handhold by pure accident.

"Pearl Skinner, we arrest you in the King's name!" I cried.

"Not so
very
ambitious," I heard Goodwin mutter at my back.

I saw a niche higher up in the wall. I bounced down low and let the water help me to leap high, so I might set the lantern there. I sank down into the water again, wincing as some manner of trash tangled around my feet.

"Give up, Pearl! You can't fight us
and
the sea!"

"Pox rot you and all gutter-bred
bitches
!" she screamed. "I should have
gutted
you!"

"Wait a moment," I heard Goodwin say. She wrapped her arms around me from behind, then let go. I felt something tug at my waist and reached to feel as she fumbled at my back. Goodwin always carried a hank of thin, strong rope in her pack. She had tied a loop of it around me.

"Go," she said.

Pearl was but ten feet away. She had turned to face us. I pushed myself forward off the wall, diving across the water's surface for the length of several grips. I grabbed on to one. Then I launched myself forward a second time. I had my free hand, the one that didn't grip the wall, under the water, where Pearl couldn't see I held a knife.