Mastiff (66 page)

I escorted her to Lady Sabine and Lady Nomalla. Farmer was busily talking with the woman who had told the queen of us. Finally the captain in charge of the queen’s party asked us if we could retreat to a nearby hilltop to talk, a place where he and his soldiers could see anyone who approached. While Her Majesty sat on the grass with the lady knights and the prince, Farmer came to collect me. I went, but my knees were unsteady. What if Cassine did not like me? What if she thought the partner of a traitor must surely be a traitor herself? From the way Farmer spoke of her, the great mage was a second mother to him. Her opinion meant a great deal to me.

She watched as we approached. She had removed her veil. The sun shone on silver-gold hair cut ear-length like a man’s. She was as tall as me but slender as a willow, with bright blue eyes and a very pretty smile. When she took my hand, her smile broadened until she was chuckling.

Farmer scowled.
“Cassine,”
he said with reproof.

She covered her mouth with a fine-boned hand and turned her chuckle into a cough. When she caught her breath, she squeezed my hand, which she still held. “He’s told me for years that girls aren’t as interesting as magic. I always said that one day he would find a woman who would be just as interesting. Now he has, and I don’t believe either of us conceived of that woman being anyone like you!”

I scowled, unable to help it. “That don’t sound good.”

“Oh, no,” Cassine protested as she hugged me. “It is! If he’s going to
insist
on being a Dogs’ mage, what better wife than another Dog?” She smelled of lily of the valley, and though I hugged her with care because I thought her fragile, I learned there was steel under her soft skin and her soft voice.

I could feel myself blush. “That was our plan,” I mumbled.

Cassine placed a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Very good, my dear,” she told me softly. “I couldn’t arrange better myself.”

Mistress Trout’s Lodgings

Nipcopper Close, Corus

With the queen and her prince reunited, I feel no need to write further of our return home. We did indeed have to take a longer route, on down the Great Road to its meeting with the Great Road East, then east to the palace in Corus. His Majesty and Lord Gershom met us there.

I don’t know what I would have done without Farmer. He and Cassine were good friends to Sabine and me alike. The lad—Prince Gareth—was a comfort, too. His mother graciously let him ride with me for a bit in the afternoons.

Sabine and I didn’t speak to anyone but Farmer about Tunstall. If Gareth spoke to the queen of him, she said naught. That was a great kindness in itself.

The worst on our arrival was having to tell Lord Gershom and Goodwin what Tunstall had done. Even knowing his motive, that he’d wished to be worthy of Lady Sabine, did not make the news easier for my lord and Goodwin.

Sabine’s and my friends in Corus held a farewell to Tunstall once we told them he’d died during our Hunt. If anyone had questions, the grief on Sabine’s face, the chill in Goodwin’s voice, and the shadow over me kept them from asking. The farewell was a lively thing, with many of the city’s Rats and Dogs each relating their own story of Tunstall. I laughed and cried, remembering the partner who had taught me so much while I tried to forget his last acts.

Next to be endured were the trials. It was then that we learned two of the Dog teams assembled after we left Corus had found evidence that Aspen Vale, Queensgrace, Halleburn, and several other great families had taken part in the plot. Individual nobles who had supported the conspiracy were named, as were mages, slave traffickers, and shipping companies. All the realm was ever told was that a plot for treason had been unraveled, and that those involved would be revealed in the lists of those to be executed. The Chambers of Law at the palace were closed to visitors.

Witnesses came from all over Tortall to testify. Listening to them, we learned that all information, weapons, and money that had not gone by mage or messenger bird had gone by slave caravan. We heard that over a hundred palace slaves were part of the plot, bribed with freedom or bound with magic. As I had seen, no one cared about slaves, so they could go everywhere.

A mage disguised as Lazamon’s own apprentice murdered the Mage Chancellor. It was not done with magic, but with a strangler’s cord. Only when Lazamon’s real apprentice went to wake him in the morning was the murder discovered.

Slaves and slave traders gave testimony before and after lords and mages. Dogs and soldiers answered the nine judges’ questions as mages chosen by the head of the Mithran temple and the temple of the Great Goddess weighed the truth of the witnesses’ words. Time and time again Farmer, Sabine, Nomalla, and I were called to tell what we knew.

Even Gareth was called. The poor lad was frightened when his day came. Rather than let him sit in the hold of one of his parents and have a judge claim they told him what to say, they allowed me to stand at his left at his request, so he might hold my hand if he wished it. Achoo stood on his right, while Pounce sat on his lap, his purple eyes veiled to save us all from an accusation of more magecraft. With us to reassure him, Gareth told his tale. It made a number of the great ones who were in attendance blanch as he described the attack on the Summer Palace, his life as a slave, and the murders of the Viper, her slaves, and her guards. His tale took three days, with the judges’ questions.

At the end of Gareth’s testimony, Farmer, Sabine, Pounce, Achoo, and I were granted the honor of escorting His Highness and the queen back to the palace. We were not needed, of course. A tight guard of the King’s Own encircled us all the way to the steps, where we were allowed to kiss the prince’s hand in farewell. Looking sad, he hugged Achoo and Pounce. Then he and his mother walked into the palace.

The trials ended. When they did, the executions began. I attended those of the traitors I had helped to capture. Sabine, Nomalla, and Farmer went with me. When the day was done and the dead were left swinging or smoking, depending upon the magistrates’ judgment, Rosto, Aniki, Kora, and our other friends of the Court of the Rogue would collect us, take us back to the Dancing Dove, and do all in their power to make us feel less like murderers.

I think most of Corus and half of Port Caynn came to the execution of Prince Baird before the palace gates on the fourteenth. It’s not often a king’s son is beheaded for treason to the Crown. It had been decided by the king and the Lord High Magistrate that, since Prince Baird had not led the conspiracy based on the evidence, he would not be forced to endure being hanged, drawn, and quartered, as the other nobles had. Once it was done, his head was placed over the main palace gate as a warning to others with ambition.

I did not attend. I was tired of death.

Today we were summoned to the palace at one hour after noon and warned beforetime to dress in our best. Since our arrival in Corus, I had discovered that Farmer liked expensive clothes. He had money with bankers in Corus, Port Caynn, and Frasrlund, and he liked to spend it. When I returned from an early-morning visit to the bathhouse, I found my man dressed in a pale blue silk tunic and breeches, wearing new sandals.

“I’ll look like a crow next to you,” I said as I took off the clothes I’d worn from the bathhouse.

“I’ve always noticed how glossy crows are,” he said, pointing to the bed. There lay a proper Dog’s uniform, but it was all silk, a dress uniform like the richer Dogs and district commanders had. “Don’t look at
me
this time,” he said when I glared at him. “That came from Lord Gershom. He said to tell you that your sisters made it with pride.”

I gazed at it, swallowing a lump in my throat. While my sisters had found a way to live with my choice of work, Diona at least never said she was proud of me before. Yet I knew Lord Gershom. He would not have sent that message unless it was true.

I set about doing my hair up in its usual braid, but Farmer would have none of it. He loved to comb my hair almost as much as he loved taking it out of its braid at night. I thought mayhap it was weak of me to enjoy being waited on in such a way, but it was so soothing. Pounce watched, as he always did, and said,
You would make a good cat, Beka
.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Folk are forever naming me for dogs, remember?” I smiled at Achoo, who dozed under the window. “At least they haven’t found a name for me this time!”

Farmer set down his comb, done with my hair. “Smooth like silk,” he told me, kissing the top of my head. “I added a little, if you don’t mind.” He swung the braid over my shoulder so I could look. He’d replaced my usual spiked strap of leather. I now had a thin silver chain wound in my braid. It was dotted with crystal ovals that flashed a deep blue. “Rainbow moonstones,” he said. “Not incredibly expensive, so don’t scowl at me.”

I loved them. Turn them one way and they were plain white crystal. Turn them another and the blue shot across them. “They’ll clash with my fire opal earrings,” I told him.

Farmer handed me two earrings, also rainbow moonstones. I struggled to lecture him on spending, and gave up. I couldn’t refuse them. They were too lovely. “You’re spoiling me,” I scolded as I hooked them in my ears.

“Good,” he said, taking one of my hands and kissing my palm. I melt when he does that. “I want to spoil you for a very, very long time. And speaking of spending and spoiling, I found a bigger place. It’s just on the edge of Upmarket, so you won’t have far to walk to Jane Street. Will you look at it with me tomorrow?”

“But why don’t you buy it for yourself?” I asked, facing him. “You don’t need me to do that.”

He sat on the bed next to my chair and took my hands. “But, dear one, I don’t want to buy it for myself. I want to marry you and bring you there as my wife.” He kissed my palms. “If you’re worried that I have no work, Gershom has assigned me to the Waterfront District kennel. I’ll bring in a purse of my own.”

I realized the important part of what he had said to me. “Y-you want to g-get m-m-married
soon
.” My old enemy, my stutter, had come back in force.

“I thought Midwinter would be nice. Or we could do it at All Hallow, and you could invite the god.” He looked like Achoo at her most hopeful, his eyes wide and shining. His hands were warm and firm around mine. This was not like Holborn’s proposal, when he was giddy with victory after a hard hobbling that we’d shared, and we’d swived together like two wild things in a dark alley. This was so different. I’d thought Farmer had reconsidered after that mad time in the dungeon, since he hadn’t spoken of it since. This wasn’t the kind of thing that would burn hot and be gone. “I’m no mage,” I reminded him.

“But you’re calm around mage things, sweetheart,” he said, tugging gently on one of my earrings. “And
you
have
your
little oddities. Yesterday you stood in the middle of a dust spinner for half an hour and talked to it. I had to tell folk you were taking a dust bath.”

“A dust bath!” I cried. “Like I was a pigeon, by all the gods!”

Farmer grinned. “I was reading a whilst I waited. It was the quickest explanation that would make them go away.”

Will you just agree to your wedding?
Pounce demanded from his napping place on our pillows.
The gods have summoned me for my punishment by Midwinter, and I want to be there
.

“Your
punishment
?” we both cried at the same time.

I told you they would get to it, sooner or later
, Pounce replied, as if the gods were inviting him to a small supper.
It would be far worse had you not saved Gareth’s life and—well, other great things will come of it
.

“What other things?” I demanded.

It is forbidden for me to tell
, Pounce replied at his smuggest.

I made a rude gesture at him. I would not worry about one of his mysterious hints, not now. “And Sabine or Farmer would have saved Gareth.”

“I don’t think so,” Farmer murmured. “Tunstall would have had him, and killed him, by the time we got there.”

With the good to the realm, my punishment has been
reduced to a century away from humans
, Pounce said.
And I
am
being allowed to remain for the wedding. So pick a day for it
.

“All Hallow?” Farmer asked. “In case your god wants to come? So what if he scares all the guests?”

“All Hallow,” I said.

He kissed me, then drew a breath. “There is one thing,” he said. I waited. With some men it might be a babe born out of wedlock, or debts, or madness in the family. With him I knew better even than to guess. “I don’t want you to take my name,” he said. “I want to take your name.”

“You want to take
my
name,” I repeated, to be sure. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“I hate Cape for a last name,” he explained. “I took it for a mage name, but it confuses folk and it means nothing, really. Cooper is a good name, even if you aren’t a barrel maker.”

“If Cape wasn’t your last name, what was your real one?” I asked, deathly curious now.

“Ahhhh,” he complained. “Pincas Huckleburr.”

After waiting and picking me up and throwing a cup of water on me didn’t stop my laughter—I could see my big, sleepy-eyed man as one of those burs with the hooks on the end that had to be worked out of clothes—Farmer resorted to wanton kissing. That worked. I am much in favor of wanton kissing and other things.

Eventually, with Pounce to remind us, we finished getting ready for whatever it was we had to do at the palace. When we left Mistress Trout’s, we discovered that horsemen had come for us, with spares for us to ride. Lord Gershom led them.

“You two look very fine,” he said with approval as we mounted up. Then he eyed Farmer’s beaming face and then me, whereupon I blushed and looked down. “Mithros’s spear, what happened?”

Farmer looked at me. Plainly he was leaving me to say what I did, “We’re to be married, my lord, on All Hallow.”

Handshakes would not do for my lord then. We had to dismount, me to be hugged, Farmer to be slapped on the back, then me to be spun around in the air. At last my lord said with alarm, “You’re not quitting me, either of you? You’re too good to go now!”