Saturday, September 15, 247

 

One of the afternoon.

 

Though our bodies knew Evening Watch hours best, Goodwin and I were up around dawn, not being used to such an early bedtime. First things came first. I took Achoo outside, then brought her back in and fed her and Slapper. While I cleaned up and dressed in uniform for the day, Slapper flew out to inspect our new territory.

Goodwin rapped on my door. "Cooper. Breakfast."

There was a room just for dining on the ground floor. Three mots were seated there in Dog uniform also, eating with their heads down. They nodded or grunted when Goodwin and I came in, but seemingly none were in a mood for talk. We took our seats and let a maid serve us pease porridge and fresh-baked rolls. The tea was a strong mix of herbs, a true eye-opener loaded with mints and some ginger. By the time we were ready to leave, I was eager to face the strange city.

Goodwin and I set off down Coates Lane, Achoo beside me. The city was stirring. Folk were opening their shops. Coates Lane was too narrow for all but the smallest carts, so we had only horses and mules to avoid, in addition to folk with loads on their shoulders.

Overhead on our left shutters swung open and a mot leaned out. "'Ware scummer!" she cried, and emptied a chamber pot into the street. We dodged it and two more before Coates Lane emptied into Dockside Road.

Happily there were no houses on Dockside, and thus no chamber pots. Here the risks came from wagons, carts, horses, mules, and ships' cranes. The waterfront was wide awake, ships having come in on the tide to offload cargoes. Goodwin soon decided it was a little too busy for us and took an alley away from the bay. She had to tug me, since I was gawping, but I went quick enough when a sailor asked my name and when I came off duty. Up to Kings Way we went. Goodwin knew her way along the cross streets. I followed our path on the map I'd memorized, making certain that my information was true. We were bound for the Goldsmith's Bank at the southeast corner of Gerjuoy Road and Moneychangers' Street.

Once we'd reached the bank, Goodwin handed me a fat purse. "The moneychangers' booths are on the Gerjuoy side," she told me. "Get those changed for copper and for gold bits."

I bowed my head. "Um – Goodwin," I whispered.

I could see one of her fists go to her hip, over the grip of her baton. Her weight shifted so she rested on that hip. She was thinking.

"I shall guess. You've never been inside a guild bank before," she said quietly.

I nodded.

"Well, Cooper, it's easy enough that I taught Tunstall how to do it, and him barely able to speak Common Eastern," she informed me.

I swallowed a chuckle.

She went on. "There are tables with flags over them and clerks that sit behind them. The flags show where they change that realm's money. Whose money do you want to change?"

"Ours," I replied. "So I go to the tables with our flag over them."

Goodwin nodded. "And you ask the clerk behind the table – ?"

"To change our coin for coppers and gold bits," I answered. "And I get a receipt."

"I knew I forgot to tell you something," Goodwin said. "Exactly. Get a receipt. Trust me, the greatest danger is dying of boredom in the line. I'll be in the offices on the far side of the building. I'll take care of the rest of our coin and the letter of credit. You meet me in the waiting room there when you're done."

With that she strode off to the far side of the bank. For a moment I wanted to beg her to let me stay with her. I'll say it here, though nowhere else. I was terrified. These folk jostled me as if I was nobody. I could hear at least five different languages being spoke, when at home it's Common Eastern, with maybe some Bazhir and some Hurdik unless you're down by the docks. The clothes were just as mixed, and there were more brown- and yellow-skinned people than I am used to.

I looked at Achoo. She stood beside me, her paws set firm in the road, her nose up, scenting the air. I suddenly noticed that the bowed shoulders and the drooping tail of the hound I'd first met were gone. Achoo was happy. She was healthy, well fed, and ready to do her work in this place that held all kinds of information for her to find.

"You're right," I told her softly. "This is what we are made to do. We should take pleasure in it."

I stood up straight and took a deep breath. I am a Dog on my first hunt, with the best partner and the best hound in Tortall. I will not disappoint them.

I entered my assigned door and found myself in a great hall well lit by tall windows. Banners hung overhead showing the gold scale insignia of the guild. There were stalls at intervals along the far walls, some with the flags of foreign lands so folk would know those coins were changed there. A member of the guild, wearing the guild's badge, sat at a desk in each stall, ready to do service. A well-armed guard in leather armor, also sporting the guild insignia, stood before the stall, to guard the privacy of those that entered, and to take care of any Rats who thought to help themselves to the coin.

I took my place in a line before one of the stalls that changed Tortallan coin and tried to wait with patience. At last I stepped up to the moneychanger's desk. I took gold nobles from my purse and stacked them before the mot, twenty coins in all. When she began to remove silver nobles from one of the boxes at her side, I shook my head.

"Half copper nobles, half gold bits, if you please, mistress," I said, keeping my voice down. "No silver."

The moneychanger's hand jerked. She stared at me with shock and a little fright. "No silver?" she asked quietly, and coughed.

"None, mistress," I replied. Her reaction was interesting. She knew. She knew the silver coins weren't to be trusted, and she was afraid.

"But – but – that's a fearful lot of coin for you to be carrying, Guardswoman... ?" She let it dangle.

"How I carry is my affair. I'll take no silver. You know why, don't you?" Now I was no longer a stranger in a new town, but a Dog on a scent. I took a closer look at that box of silver coin beside her. She closed it, but not before I saw that every coin in it had a greasy shine. They looked as if a mage had touched them with some oil that would show if they were coles. It was more costly than the stroke of a knife, but it didn't give the test away to most folk.

"The guild knows?" I asked her. "They know there's a problem with silver?"

The moneychanger didn't even look up at my question. She just hurried to count out ten gold nobles' worth of gold bits. Then she pulled leather pouches, each holding one hundred copper nobles, from a large box at her feet. She put them on the table and shoved them all at me. As I stowed all that coin in my pack and tunic, she wrote out a receipt.

"You've not answered my question," I reminded her. Her hands were shaking.

"It's forbidden to discuss guild policy, Guardswoman," she said. Her voice and her mouth were tight now. She did not look at me. "You may be assured this has been reported to your superiors, and they are taking care of the matter. This is hardly a concern for street Dogs." She thrust the receipt at me. "Good day to you."

She had given me a gold bit more than she should have done. "Is this a mistake?" I asked. "Did you forget the guild's fee for changing my gold?"

She did not look at me. "I forgot nothing. Surely even a young Dog knows what that coin is for."

I pocketed the gold bit separate from my other coins. The gold equal of two silver and ten copper nobles was a heavy bribe. I scooped up my receipt and left the hall, thinking hard. If the moneychanger had thought our talk was worth a gold bit, then I'd wager the Goldsmith's Bank had not reported the coles they had received to the Deputy Provost. Surely Sir Lionel would have told us if they had, instead of bragging about his peaceful city. Moreover, the bankers must have known for at least a few days, to pull together the mages and potions they'd needed to test their silver coin.

I could point to all manner of reasons the bank would not want word to get out that they suspected the silver. A panic was the most obvious. The Silversmith's Guild would lose, but so too would the gold- and coppersmiths as folk scrambled to get other coin and prices went mad. I don't know exactly what will happen, but riots and high prices in other years have taught me what I will have to face. I don't want a panic. But the bank is breaking the law, not to notify the Provost's office. And if things are unsteady here, Sir Lionel must be told.

I was out in the street, off to meet Goodwin, when movement at the corner of my eye grabbed my attention. A merchantish-looking cove was talking with a friend, two arms' lengths away from me. A young pickpocket brushed his side.

"Achoo, tinggal" I ordered. I lunged for the gixie. She swerved away from me, deeper into the crowd in the street. I lunged again and seized her by the sleeve.

"Hand it over," I ordered. "And come along with me." Then I realized, what would I do – take her to the Tradesmen's District kennel? I'm not sure if I'm allowed to nab anyone here. At home I'd not even bother to nab her. She was too small a Rat to worry about. Do the Port Caynn Dogs care about mice? I needed to think.

She was crying already. They all cried the minute a Dog had them in hand, the little ones, to make us pity them. "Please, Guardswoman, we was hungered at home," she told me. She fumbled in the side slit of her tunic where she'd stuffed her prize.

Behind me I could hear the witless coney had finally noticed his coin had been lifted. He started to shout, "Thief! Thief!"

The gixie handed me a fat red purse. I took it in my free hand, not loosening my grip on her. Now would be the time she'd try to kick me or hit me to make me let go. I was surprised she'd not done so before now.

Instead she wiped her eyes. "I give it back," she said. "Why don't ya let me go? I'm no golden filch, baggin' twenny purses a day."

Achoo barked a warning, but I never saw whoever rammed me from behind, knocking me facedown in the muck of the street. Achoo snarled. There was a thump, and she yelped.

"Achoo!" I cried. I jumped to my feet and went to my hound, who'd been knocked flying, no doubt by the same mammering canker blossom that had bowled me over. I looked around quickly, but the gixie and her rescuer were gone. Then I went over Achoo with my hands to make certain naught was broken, while Achoo whimpered and licked my face. "Don't go grabbin' folk like that, you silly creature," I whispered to her, hugging her for a moment. "You're a scent hound, not a pit bull nor a man hunter. You might've gotten your fool nob cracked." Achoo wagged her whole self and made a kind of happy groaning noise, as if I wasn't insulting her.

Sure that Achoo wasn't hurt, I took stock. All I had for my trouble was a bad scare for my hound, the coney's red purse, and a lot of laughing cityfolk who enjoyed a Dog's humiliation.

"See if I save your purses for you," I grumbled. I wiped my face on my sleeve. "Achoo, tumit." She fell in step at my heel as if that tarse had never hit her. We went back to the coney, who was still bellowing.

I thrust the purse in his face. "Here," I told him. "Keep your hand on it from now on."

"But that's not my – " he said as he took it and looked inside. He closed his mouth, then opened it. "My – my thanks, Guardswoman." He bit his lip, then gave me a silver noble. "My thanks to the gods that you were here!"

I took the coin. It was a generous bribe, but now I was suspicious about that purse. "You were saying this isn't yours," I told him.

"No, no, I was wrong. The excitement, and... I thought I took the brown purse today, but I just remembered it was the red-stained, to go with my tunic." He waved a hand at his tunic, which was red.

I looked at the coney-cove again. "You lie," I told him. "The gods will punish you if you've claimed coin to which you have no right."

"'Tis his purse, you impudent Dog!" said the coney's friend, who'd been silent until now. "He paid for our morning meal with it!"

I could do nothing when they both swore to it. They turned and walked off in a huff, the picture of two righteous coves whose honor had been insulted.

I drew my dagger and scraped it across the front of the silver noble the coney had given me, before we'd got so unfriendly. The metal curled away. At the bottom of the cut was the gleam of brass.

Achoo and I made for the banker's door. My mind was busy with what I'd just witnessed. What if that whole purse was full of coles? Had I gotten in the middle of a trickster's game? The gixie nudged the coney a-purpose while she lifted his purse, for all he didn't notice right off. She wanted him to cry, "Thief!" She'd let someone catch her so she could hand over a purse bulging with silver coles. The rusher that knocked me down was in the crowd in case she couldn't escape anyone who caught her. Then either the coney got the false purse in return and said not a word, thinking himself richer, or the one who caught her kept the purse. So would more coles get into the moneystream. The gixie would keep the good money, having exchanged it for false.

What was the purpose of that? Who gained?

Something made me glance back. A small body, sized about the height of a ten- or twelve-year-old, shifted from my sight behind larger folk.

"Did you see that, Achoo?" I asked her softly. "Our spy got careless. I don't suppose you could fetch him."

Achoo looked up at me and gave her soft whuff.

"No, I suppose you can't." Without her able to answer as Pounce did, I had to make up her replies. For a moment I missed Pounce so fiercely that my heart felt squeezed. "You'd need sommat of his to sniff, same as if you were seeking him. That's my part of the job, and I haven't done it."

I looked forward at the bank, sifting my memory of the morning. Had that been the watcher in drab brown clothes, on the way to the docks, or to Moneychangers' Street earlier? My memory caught on glimpses, but they could have been glimpses of anyone of that size, dressed so plainly. Wasn't that the whole point of a tracker?

If we had one on our trail, we'd seen him again soon, or her. I was reaching for the door to the bank's offices when Goodwin opened it. "Cooper, you're a mess. Did a wagon roll over you? No, explain later. Come inside and give me my half of the coin. It'll be safer."

I followed her. There was a waiting room for the bank officers, with a clerk to take names and a guard to keep order. Several coves and mots in merchants' dress sat on the benches, giving us the fish eye. Goodwin moved so none of them could see what we did.

As I handed over her half of the gold bits and copper nobles, I told her what I had seen in the moneychanger's stall. Then I waited to see if she would say I was full of chicken dung.

"Hunh," she said as she stowed her coin in her pockets and tunic. She gave me a round brass token with a hole punched through the top. It had the Goldsmith's Guild scales on one side and a number on the other. "Keep that close," she ordered. "If you need funds or the letter of credit, show that to these people and they'll provide. I have one of my own. Now, let's see about the silver."

Back we went to the moneychanger's side of the building. Achoo and I stayed outside, so as not to give the moneychanger a whiff that sommat was off. Goodwin went in, a gold coin in her fist.

I kept watch for the pickpocket gixie, in case she returned. This was a good place to try her trick again. The crowds were thick enough, and plenty of folk had purses at hand, coming and going from the banks at opposite corners of the crossing. I did not spot her, though I did see a pair of Dogs take up position across the street from me. They eyed me, memorizing me, and I gave them the Dogs' two-fingered salute in greeting. I figured Nestor would have told the Day Watch throughout the harbor area what me and Goodwin looked like. I looked around anew for our tracker lad, but saw naught. He'd vanished again.

"Dale told me, and here's the proof," I heard a man say. I turned and faced Hanse, the big, slope-shouldered cove who had carried Tunstall out of the riot. He gave me a huge, well-pleased grin. By the light of day I could see his hair, cropped very close, was brown, his eyes bright blue in his tan face. He looked just as cheerful, and as ready for trouble, as he'd done the night of the riot. His brown wool tunic had a simple green braid trim at hems and collar. He wore green leggings and shoes that laced up his calves, sturdy for trudging through the street muck. A short sword and a dagger hung from his belt, both well used and well kept.

"I run into him last night, and he told me you and Goodwin were in town. I thought he was pullin' my leg, but here you are," Hanse said. He reached out his hand. We clasped forearms, like soldiers might do. I wouldn't be surprised if he'd been in the army once. "Me and the crew just got in two days ago. We had a short jog upriver and back, guarding some goods. What brings you so far off your turf, Cooper? And how's Tunstall?"

"Grumpy," I replied. "Healing, but grumpy. He's down for the month. They sent Goodwin and me to study Port Caynn Dog work. Tunstall gets paperwork when he's out of the splints."

"Oh, that's hard," Hanse said, making a face. "I had paperwork once. Got myself thrown in jail to get out of it. Had to punch an officer to do it, too. It was worth a flogging to get clear of the pens and the ink. Now who's this?" He crouched and offered his hand to Achoo.

She looked up at me.

"Achoo, pengantar," I told her.

Hanse chuckled. "What's that foreign gobble? Can't the poor thing speak like a proper Tortall hound?"

"It's the way she was trained," I told him as Achoo wagged her tail and sniffed Hanse's fingers. I felt more comfortable talking with Hanse than most chance-met strangers. After all, we'd been in a riot together.

He gave my hound's ears a scratch and glanced at me. "Achoo?" he asked.

"When she's got the scent, she's been known to sneeze," I explained.

Hanse straightened. "And here's the lovely Goodwin," he said. "Would you be rememberin' me, Guardswoman? Hanse Remy."

Goodwin came to us, tucking sommat into her pocket. She offered her hand to Hanse and returned his clasp. "From the Nightmarket. It's good to see you – Master Remy, is it?"

"Only Hanse," he said. "Caravan guards aren't masters of much, for certain."

They talked about Tunstall and our visit here, but I wasn't listening. Hearing both of his names together, I realized they were familiar as a pair. "Hanse" is a common enough name, but where had I heard "Hanse Remy"? Had Dale said it?

"Cooper, are you daydreaming?" Goodwin asked. "Hanse would like to take us to supper tonight at the Merman's Cave. Steen will be there, and maybe Dale."

I blushed and mumbled my thanks. I'd have to wait till later to pry that name from my memory. Goodwin and Hanse settled it, and Hanse was on his way.

"That's a lucky break," Goodwin said when we could no longer see him. "The Merman's Cave isn't a place two mots ought to go alone, but if there is anyplace that will have gambling and loose talk, that will be it. Let's walk this way." We turned up Moneychangers' Street. We put two silent blocks between us and the Goldsmith's Bank before Goodwin took a silver noble from her pocket and handed it to me. "I changed a gold noble in there for silver," she told me. "I wanted to check your findings, and you're right."

I glanced back for our tracker. This time I caught a glimpse as he turned to look in a window. I smiled to myself. He'd be cursing for letting me get that much of a look at him. Facing forward, I inspected the coin as Goodwin and I walked on. The metal had been well wiped, but there were traces of oil in the lines of the stamp.

"They're either very dirty in the bank vaults, or they're testing these coins," Goodwin told me. "We need to alert Sir Lionel. 'Peaceful,' he says. Peaceful doesn't mean good, not at this guild bank. It's rotten with coles, if your visit and mine are proper measures. Otherwise, why would they test all of their silver? This gives me the crawls, I don't mind telling you."

"There's more," I told her. "Mayhap not so big a thing, but neither is it good." As Goodwin steered us northeast, away from the bay and toward Guards House, I explained my encounter with the gixie pickpocket and her return of the false purse.

"What a curst odd game," said Goodwin, frowning. "Return false coin for good, and let your coney spread them about the town. Who benefits? We heard no report of such a thing in Corus. Could they be moving the coles this way? The colesmith sends them out with filchers, who trade with coneys, only the coneys are carriers. The carriers take the coles somewhere else... ? Or spend or gamble them away?"

"It seems too complicated to work," I said. "It leaves too many folk to turn into Birdies the minute the cage Dogs heat up the irons or show them the rack."

Goodwin sighed. "It does. Two games, then, but surely only one colemonger gang. There are still far too many good coles, good copies, for it to be even a whole fistful of small cole-mongers. Ratpox, I wish we knew more!"

"Coneys wouldn't be willing to tell us anything no matter what," I said. "Either they've got a windfall, or they know they've got a purse full of coles and they're liable to be nabbed. They'd spend the coles or get rid of them any way they can." I looked around us. We were on Mouse Lane, a street for small shops and homes. "Where do we go now?"

"Remember I'd mentioned silversmith friends?" Goodwin asked. "Isanz Finer, the old man, isn't in the business anymore, but at one time he could make silver talk as clear as Pounce."

"But what can he say that we need to know?" I asked, confused. And why would someone want to flood the money-stream with silver coles? I wondered. Wasn't the whole idea of making false coin the fact that you spent them like real ones? You don't give them away.

"Isanz can find out where the silver comes from, Cooper," Goodwin said. "He could tell you if he worked Copper Isles silver, Yamani silver, hill silver, Barzunni silver. I'll bet a week's wages he can point us to where this stuff began."

"Surely my lord has royal mages tracking the silver by now. They'll tell us where it's coming from," I said.

"Everyone knows mages can track royal coin. That's because they've spelled Crown silver," Goodwin told me. "I'll wager you buttons for badgers these colemongers are getting silver from someplace else. Silver that's not carrying a Crown spell."

That shocked me. "But the mages could work out where the silver's coming from. Can't they?"

Goodwin was shaking her head. "Cooper, I've been on cole hunts before. Mages like you to think they can do near everything, but that's not always so. Throw dirt from someplace far away into a melt, and even though it sinks to the bottom, it sets a mage to chasing his tail. And you needn't even do that with silver. You know how they use silver charms to purify wounds and curses and bad thoughts?"

"It never purified my bad thoughts," I told her without thinking, like she was Kora or Aniki.

Goodwin thumped my head lightly, but she was smiling. "Silver purifies, is the thing. That's its power by nature. And once it's been melted down, there isn't a mage who can tell where it came from. It throws off all the magic that was in it, even the magic of the place where it was born. That's where my friend Isanz comes in." She pointed. "Turn here. I was working Port Caynn once for a few months, when Tom and I were in difficulties. Isanz's son took me dancing. I learned a great deal from the old man." She halted. "Here we are."

We'd come up before a small cluster of silver businesses. There were three forges, two on one side of the street and one on the other, and a good-sized shop next to the lone forge. A big house stood beside the shop.

"All these belong to Finers," Goodwin told me. She pointed to the forge beside the shop. "Isanz's oldest son's." She pointed to one of the shops across the street. "His oldest daughter's. And his youngest son-in-law's. Two of his other sons and one of his other daughters work in the forge, and one of his sons and one daughter-in-law run the shop. The grandchildren and great-grandchildren are apprenticed out to silversmiths all over the city."

"Then why does he live up here?" I asked. "Shouldn't he live with the other master smiths, in one of the better parts of town?"

Goodwin shrugged. "He likes being close to Tradesmen's District."

Turning to look about as we did had given me another chance to check for our watcher. He was nowhere in view, but there were plenty of doors and alleys he could have popped into. What I wouldn't give for a scrap of his clothes to give to Achoo! She'd find him for me in the flirt of a goat's tail!

"Cooper, this is no time to daydream!" Goodwin stood beside the path that led around the side of the big house. Achoo and I trotted to catch up as she led the way back to the kitchen. There she knocked on the open door.

"I think you'd best stay," I told Achoo. Seeing her eye the geese and chickens in the yard, I pointed to a spot by the fence around the vegetable garden and ordered, "I mean it. Tinggal."

Achoo sniffed the air and leaned toward the fowl.

"Achoo," I said, glaring at her. "Shall I get the leash?"

Achoo leaped at a butterfly passing overhead.

I unslung my pack. "I'm getting the leash."

Achoo flattened her ears and went to the spot by the fence. She stood there, looking back at me.

"Tinggal," I ordered. "And no more mucking about!"

With a sigh and a look that told me I was a brute to happy-natured hounds, she lay down.

"Cooper!" Goodwin bellowed. I ran into the house.

The kitchen was large and well lit, more than enough to serve a house of this size. It should have been easy to move about, but the women of the house had to work around a tiny old man at a table next to the largest hearth fire. Here he shaped silver wire as fine as thread, winding and curling the wire on tiny pegs. The finished creations were designs like lace, made all of silver wire. I couldn't help but stare. The old cove's knuckles were knobby with age, but his fingers were as precise as a fly's feet in handling his tools.

"Cooper, you gawp like a countrywoman who just saw the King," I heard Goodwin say. She stood next to a mot of her own age who just plain grinned at me. "For your information, that is Master Isanz Finer. This is his daughter, Wenna."

"Daughter and busybody!" snapped Master Finer without looking up. "Pestilence and scold!"

"And how would this house run, Da, if I were none of those things?" Wenna asked, seemingly unbothered by his insults. She turned to talk with Goodwin. I stepped out of the way of a manservant carrying a joint of mutton, which brought me closer to the snapping turtle by the hearth.

"Never seen a real craftsman work in that city of yours, eh, wench?" he asked, still not looking up from his work. He never fumbled or hesitated. Delicate twists and curls formed under his fingers. "A crew of layabouts, charging too much for shoddy work, those Corus smiths! Forget true craft! Make it glitter with some mage potion. They don't care that the work looks drab when the magic wears off. Then they undersell honest craftsmen!"

I hardly knew what to say. I didn't dare try to defend Corus silversmiths to him. He might bite my nose off.

"Luckily, Isanz, we aren't here to invite you to Corus," Goodwin said over my shoulder. "Just as well. You'd put our smiths out of business. My partner Cooper and I are on more serious business. May we speak privately?"

Now he looked at us with eyes that were an amazing shade of green. "Craft is deadly serious to me, you fribbety female! Look at you, back again after you toyed with my poor lad's heart – "

"Your poor lad is married these ten years and has five children to show for it," Goodwin told him coolly. "He hasn't stopped thanking the Goddess I chose to stay with my husband and keep bashing folk for fun."

"Da just misses you. None of us argue with him the way you did," Wenna told us. "I've had cakes and drink sent to the little sitting room. Da, I even set out a tankard of Goldenlake ale."

Isanz put his tools aside and got to his feet. "Why didn't you say so?" He grabbed a knotted walking stick and led the way. Goodwin and I followed him down a short hall to a small room set up with cushioned chairs. There was a table laid with tankards and plates of cakes, and a small brazier to keep the chill off. Isanz and Goodwin had ale, while there was barley water for me. Goodwin must have told Wenna my preference.

Once the door was closed and Goodwin had taken the first sip from her tankard, Isanz put his down. "You're too senior to have a temporary place here," he told Goodwin, his eyes sharp. "They know of the coles in the capital, don't they? Did the report come from here?"

Goodwin looked into the tankard as if her answer was a casual one. "The other way around. The Lower City Dogs brought word to the Deputy Provost from Corus. What do you know of coles, Isanz?"

He cursed. "I sent two of my boys and two of my students to talk to the Watch Commander here in Tradesmen's District. They went representing the lesser silversmiths of Tradesmen's. About a month ago we reported a sharp rise in the coles coming over our counters, and the Watch Commander said he'd take care of it. Then we reported it to the Silversmith's Guild. We've not heard a word from Dogs nor guild since."

"Which watch?" Goodwin asked.

"Day, of course. Evening Watch is as crooked as the coastline." Isanz took a swallow of his ale.

"How long ago?" Goodwin put her tankard down.

"Ten days. Ten days, and we've taken in more coles. Kept 'em, too, waiting for guild orders to hand them over." Isanz looked at Goodwin, then at me. "If you didn't come about our report, why are you here?"

Goodwin nodded to me. I placed the cole Goodwin had taken in change from the bank on the table between us and Isanz. "Isanz," Goodwin said, "you know more about the whys and the wherefores of silver than any cove I've ever met. We need to know where the colemongers get their silver."

The old man's eyes brightened. He picked up the cole.

"I think it's coming from somewhere that isn't under Crown supervision," Goodwin said. "But where? Are foreigners behind this, destroying our coin to soften us up for invasion? Normal colemongers would keep stores of coin and dole out their coles little by little. They want to get rich, not flood us with false silver and drive the value down. Or do they get silver from inside the country somehow? Either way, we must plug up that end of the operation. You're the cove that can tell us where to look."

Isanz leaned back in his chair. "Well," he remarked, his voice quiet. He looked from Goodwin to me. "The two of you are on the hunt."

"We're one part of it," Goodwin said. "But few know Cooper and I are involved, and we want to keep it that way. I doubt they'd think to come to you. But I know you. I think you'll get farther, using your powders and glasses on whatever silver you can melt off this coin, and the ones you've kept, than all the King's mages."

"Mages! Fah!" Isanz spat on the floor. His daughter would not be happy about that. "You leave it to me. Mages look for influences, and stirrings in power. I look for what is always there."

"Alone?" I wanted to keep the word to myself, but decided to speak it anyway. This venture was too risky for me to keep quiet. "Will you do this alone, Master Finer?"

He hesitated. I think he wanted to lie, mayhap from vanity. At last he shook his head. "No. I have a granddaughter and a great-granddaughter I have been training in just this work."

Now Goodwin looked troubled. "Isanz, I doubt that it's a good idea to bring in more folk than we must. There are too many lives at stake already."

The old cove sighed. "My eyes are not what they were, Clary." How he could say that, doing the fine silver work I had seen in the kitchen, I do not know. "I am not as sharp with the colors and the fine distinctions."

"The what?" I asked.

He glared at me. "Never you mind, mistress! This is my family's secret, mine! I will not be surrendering my craft to one who is not my own blood!"

Oh, forgive me, Master Snapping Turtle, I thought angrily. I did glare back, even if I was polite and held my tongue.

"I'll swear my girls to silence, Clary, a second time, since I already swore them to keep my secrets. We will be careful," Isanz told Goodwin after a final glare in my direction. "You ought to get her teaching in curses." He pointed his bony finger at me. "She's got the eyes for it. Now, begone. If I'm to do this, there's preparations I need to make."

"How long?" Goodwin asked, not moving from her chair. "How long will the work take?"

"Some days, I think. It's not magic, to be done with a whisk of hands and a poof of smoke!" Now he stood, and we did, too. "I'll send for you – where?"

Goodwin gave him our direction and kissed his cheek. Then we said our goodbyes to the lady of the house and went into the rear yard to retrieve Achoo. She was actually where I'd left her. I gave her a strip of dried meat for a reward. "Good girl," I whispered to her as she wagged up a small breeze. "Very good girl!"

Wenna followed us out. "You've done him some good, Clary, I have to say! He's got color in his cheeks, and he's stepping along as if he was sixty again," she told Goodwin as she walked us to the gate. "You'll come back?"

"Of course," Goodwin said. "But thank Cooper for his improved spirits. Once he'd insulted her a few times, he was in the pink."

Wenna laughed heartily at this and waved goodbye to us as we passed down the path to the street. Only I could see the worried look on Goodwin's face.

"Do you think he can keep it quiet?" I asked her softly.

"I believe so. He used to be as silent as the Black God. The secrets of what he does have come down in his family through generations." She shook her head. "I flinch at gnats, Cooper, that's all. He's surrounded by family, and they are watchful." She rubbed the back of her neck. "To tell the truth, I don't like what I'm seeing here. This town seems like there's rotten money in its veins. I can tell you're thinking the same. How could Sir Lionel keep telling Lord Gershom all is well here?"

"My lord says Nestor's true to the bone," I told her. "Whatever's going on, it's not under Nestor's nose."

Goodwin nodded. We were headed toward Deep Water, down the long strip of Tradesmen's District. "So Nestor keeps an eye on South Hills and much of the docks, possibly. But a sergeant's reach only goes so far."

"Where do we go now?" I asked.

"The main gaming district. It's called Flowerbed. We might as well get to know it, particularly the alleyways. It's off toward the Deep Harbor District." Goodwin pointed to the part of town opposite, that climbed up toward the city wall at the base of Queen's Heights.

I figured now was the time to tell her. "Goodwin, we've had company."

She nodded. "He picked us up near our lodgings. I haven't gotten a good look at his face yet, have you?"

I shook my head. "A lad, twelve or so, dark brown hair, quick on his feet."

Goodwin shrugged. "Whoever he watches us for, what can he say? We visited the bank, met with old friends, and now we're walking through the parts of town with shops. In a bit we'll take our noon meal and go back to our lodgings on a different path. I hope he gets blisters."

"I'd like to know who paid him to watch us," I muttered, stopping to look at a shopkeeper's tray of brooches. A glance to the side showed me no watcher.

"Whoever it is will be dead bored by the time his day's report is done. Sometimes you want to be followed, Cooper," Goodwin told me. At the next stall she picked up a length of bright yellow cloth and held it up to her cheek. "What do you think?"

I winced and kept walking.

We were four blocks past Gerjuoy again when two coves and a mot stepped out in front of us. They wore leather jerkins and were armed with long knives and a trove of hidden daggers. I knew the blades were there by the print the hilts showed against their clothes. Stupid tarses. I sew stones in the hems of my tunics so they hang away from my hidden weapons, and I use flat hilts.

Goodwin and I both stopped, hands on our batons.

"Here's a sight to make me eyes go all watery. Two Dogs, as fair as the May, out o' their patch and bein' all careless-like." The talker was the shorter cove, a rusher built like a barrel. "Like they was thinkin' we'd let 'em go any old place."

"But they're Dogs." The mot had a voice as rough as a corbie's and the black eyes to match. She wore her black hair cropped so short it showed the scars on her head. She might be a former soldier, since many wore their hair cut so. I hope she was ashamed, going from the King's service to being a Rat. "They allus go wherever they want." She sneered as she said it.

"Stow yer wind, you two," ordered the third of them, a bony cove like a skeleton. He had cold, dead gray eyes that gave me the shudders. If my eyes are like that, no wonder folk don't like them. "You Dogs. Come along wiv us."

Goodwin eased her feet apart, balancing herself. Behind me I heard the low rumble of Achoo's growl. I was already balanced, my baton gripped in both hands. If these Rats were here to harm us, doing it in Tradesmen's District as the day drew on to noon seemed like idiot work.

"I don't like the tone of your invitation," Goodwin replied. "And my old mother told me never to go along with strangers."

Achoo turned. Her growl got louder. I risked a look around. Three more rushers, all coves, came up from behind. I swung to face them, setting my back to Goodwin's. Achoo stood just off my left hand, head down and hackles up. For a dog of middling size, she looked dangerous.

"Guardswomen, please, let's not have this fuss and bother." A doxie past her prime came forward. Her face was painted white. Her eyes were lined with black paint and shaded with blue. Her dress was a shrieking shade of green, her hair a dyed red that nearabout blazed. "I beg pardon for my rough friends. I got a rock in my shoe and they came ahead of me. They never thought I might be wanting to use my silken gloves, and not the leather ones." She patted the arm of the rusher who stood in front of me. "Never you mind their rudeness. The truth is, I come from Her Majesty Pearl Skinner." She looked at us and cocked her head to one side in a way that was mayhap winning, ten or twenty years ago. "Pearl Skinner? The Rogue of Port Caynn?"

Goodwin shifted slightly so she might keep an eye on the mot's face. "And why should this make us any more eager to go along with you?" she asked.

The doxie smiled. "Because you want to know what our Rogue might have to say to a pair of visiting Dogs. She gives you her word, in the name of the Great Mother Goddess, that you will be safe."

Goodwin looked at me. I looked at her. We shrugged at the same time and put our batons away. We could have fought. Sooner or later the local Dogs would have come and put a stop to it. These rushers might have gone to the cages for a short while before the Rogue got them out again. We'd go about our business, until we got trapped in an alley or picked off one by one, to get beaten or killed quietly someplace with no witnesses.

"Achoo, tumit," I said.

"Lovely creature," the doxie said. She meant it not at all. "Follow me."

I glanced back as they led us down an alley off the main street. I saw the flick of a brown tunic as our watcher twitched out of sight. He was still on our track, then, and he didn't belong to the Rogue of Port Caynn.

We turned down a smaller street, then into another alley. Halfway along, once the rushers made sure no one was close enough to see, we took a set of steps down into the cellar of what looked like an abandoned house. Achoo whimpered.

"Hush," I told her. Achoo looked at me with sorrow, as if to say, "You like entering strange, dark places?"

"Here's the tricky part for you, but you've still got Her Majesty's word," the doxie told Goodwin and me. Two of the rushers were taking torches from a pile inside the cellar door. "You have to take the blindfold."

I clenched my fists.

"Do it. How often do you get to meet the Rogue of Port Caynn?" Goodwin asked. She let them slip a dark scarf over her eyes. "Don't touch the hound, you lot. She'll have your throat out."

"Achoo, gampang" I said, bending to grip Achoo's collar. I kept my eyes down, not wanting to see Rats hood Goodwin like the nobles do their hawks. That's how I saw the movement of her hand as she gripped her belt. I'd forgotten the blade she kept there, disguised as part of the buckle.

I ground my teeth as they blindfolded me. In my trunk at Serenity's are my arm guards, which are reinforced on the outside with thin strips of metal. Those strips are in truth knives. I'd not worn my arm guards today, thinking we were out on easy errands. The problem with forgetting my training lessons is that one of these days the penalty will be fatal. As it was, all I had now were my back of neck and back of belt knives and my boot knives, all tricky to reach without drawing attention.

A rusher led me by one arm. I heard Achoo trotting at my other side. From the sounds, I could tell we'd entered a tunnel. Then we passed into a second tunnel, and into a huge, echoing chamber filled with the sound of rushing water. It stank like a sewer, though not as bad as some. This one must have gotten flushed out regular by the sea. I could smell salt water as well as scummer.

Then we climbed a set of stairs, crossed a small room, and climbed yet more stairs. At the top of that second stair, our blindfolds were stripped from us. As we blinked in the torchlight, the doxie put her hand on the door latch. "I'll announce you," she said. "Mind that hound. Her Majesty likes well-behaved creatures." She went into the next room.

"And I like Rats to leave me be," Goodwin said, pulling away from the cove and the mot who gripped her wrists.

The skinny cove, the shivery one, raised his hand. "Shut yer gob and mind yer manners, hedgecreeper," he told her.

In a flash she had her knife at his eyes. She had her other hand dug firm into his gems. His knees buckled. His face turned red in the dim light. I swung in behind her, my baton out. I thrust it into the gullet of the mot who was about to seize Goodwin. Pressing down on her windpipe, I backed the mot up to the wall and held her there.

"Achoo, lindengi," I said. My hound was already on Goodwin's other side, hackles up, lips skinned back. The other four rushers looked at us and held their hands up, palms out. It's amazing how scared folk are of a hound when she shows her teeth.

"I'll mind what manners I choose to mind, toad scummer, and you'll tell me 'please' and 'thank you' for them," Goodwin said to the bony cove. "What kind of Dogs do you kennel here, that you pieces of nose sweet think you can drag me and my partner all over the streets?"

"Rogue's orders, Guardswoman," the barrel-built rusher said, his voice very soft. "You know how life is. Bring 'em fast, she told us."

One of the others added, "'A course, some of us allus got to add a bit o' sauce t' the job." He nodded to the skinny rusher who was still in Goodwin's grip.

The doxie opened the door again. She went still when she saw how things had changed since she'd left. At last she said, "Getting to know each other? It's lovely, but I'm sure Her Majesty don't mean to keep you here that long. If you'll come with me, she will see you."

Goodwin lingered, still looking at the bony cove. She sheathed her knife first, then released his gems. She wiped her fingers on her hip. "Come at me again, laddybuck, and I'll leave a hole big enough you can wear a bangle in them, understand me?"

I holstered my baton. "Achoo, good girl. Tumit." Following the doxie, Goodwin and I left the room. The rushers who were close to the door stood aside.

The room inside might have been part of a countinghouse or a warehouse once. It had been made nice, with benches, chairs, and tables. There was a bar against the far wall. Folk there waited in line for the tapster to fill their tankards. The place was lamp lit. I saw no windows. The door to what might be a kitchen was beside the bar. A second door, likely to lead to the privies, was in the same wall. Folk kept walking in through it adjusting their belts. A third door to my left was guarded by a couple of good-sized rushers. Next was the door we'd come through, and then a door was next to the hearth in that same wall. Two staircases led upward. There were plenty of holes these Rats could use to escape.

The folk that stood or sat closest to the hearth, about ten feet from Goodwin and me, were them that had the power here. There was a large open space around them, for one. For another, two guards with crossbows stood on either side of the hearth. Another stood at the back of the woman who sat in a rich, heavily cushioned chair placed beside the small fire.

I deliberately looked past her, because I knew the moment I saw her she was Pearl Skinner and she was going to be granite to the marrow. I'll say she is forty-five or forty-six, lean and fit. She would have to be, to still be alive and Rogue in Port Caynn. Her hair is like straw, yellow and brittle. I'd wager she killed whoever sold her the dye for it. Her eyes are large, dark, and quick, her nose long and straight. Her upper lip is near invisible, the lower lip full. She's got strong cheekbones. She dresses like a hillwoman, with a sleeveless overrobe covered with embroideries. Her dress was a rich blue silk, slit high up both sides. I could see black leggings through one slit, and black boots with dagger hilts all about the rims. Two hilts thrust from her sash, and I saw the prints of three dagger hilts along one of her sleeves. She wore dangling earrings but no necklaces, nothing an enemy could use to choke her. She did have a lot of rings for a knife fighter.

Beside her sat an older, white-skinned cove armed with a longsword. He wore his brown hair cropped two inches short. There were silver strands in his neat beard. On the mot's other side a younger Bazhir warrior sat. His long black hair was combed straight back and tied in a horsetail. At his waist he wore a slightly curved longsword.

The doxie walked up to the dais and stood next to Pearl, like a lady-in-waiting. "The two Dogs you wanted," she said, like we were a load of wheat she was delivering. The room went quiet.

Pearl tapped her fingers on the arm of her fancy chair. "Speak up," she said in a voice that brought Achoo's hackles up again. "Who by plague are you two? Ye're not Caynn Dogs. You come swaggerin' into my city, pokin' yer fambles in my banks, interferin' with my people a-doin' their jobs – "

Movement to my right caught my attention. Over by the bar the gixie pickpocket I'd caught earlier was ducking out of sight.

"Ye'll look at me, young mistress!" Pearl barked. I looked at her, keeping my temper gripped tight. Pearl leaned forward. "Yes, you interfered in that bit o' my interest, and ye'll tell me why! How do I even know ye're Dogs? Any cracknob can stitch up a uniform." She grinned at us, showing teeth. The fool trull had paid to have some of them mage-changed to pearls. Even though they'd doubtless break sooner or later, she had teeth in her head made of real pearls next to others that were gray and dying. I've never seen such a waste in all my days!

"They be true Dogs, Majesty, right enough," a man called from the back of the room. He got up and came toward us with the kind of solid gait that told a knowing eye he could walk all day at need. I remembered him – it was Steen, the cove who'd known so much about riot fountains and freezing spells. He looked just as I remembered him, dark-haired and dark-eyed, built like a badger with a wide head, wide shoulders, and thick arms. He's got a very thin beard that forms a circle around his mouth and chin, and he wears his hair close-cropped like the mot who'd helped to bring us here. His nose was broad and slumped, as if someone had hit it. "From the Lower City in Corus. Guardswoman Cooper, might you be rememberin' me – ah, I see that you do. Corporal Guardswoman Goodwin, good day. Steen Bolter. We met in th' riot."

Goodwin pointed to his beard. "I thought that thing was a mustache."

He chuckled and smoothed his thumb and forefinger over his beard. "Eh, some days it is, some it's longer. Hanse says I can't decide whether t' grow it nor give it a decent funeral." He looked at Pearl again. "They was hip deep in the Bread Riot I told yez about, Majesty. Hanse says it's a pleasure t' see these mots work."

"Hanse knows them?" Pearl asked. She used drinking from a tankard to hide the expression on her face.

"Helped 'em get their partner out first off. He'd broke both legs, poor cove. I'll ask after him at supper," Steen told Goodwin. "Hanse said we'll meet up. If Her Majesty's done wiv ye, a' course." He nodded at Pearl.

"What makes ye think I'll be done with these two?" she snapped, slamming her tankard down on a small table at her side. "That one" – she pointed at me – "snagged one o' my gixies at her work this mornin'! I know what you two bitches are doin', sniffin' about my turf."

Both me and Goodwin stiffened at that. Every Dog has insults thrown at her head, but none of us mots like to be called a bitch. Rogue or no, Pearl was trusting her luck to a bridge made of straws.

"You don't care for that, do ye, bitches?" Pearl asked. "But ye'll take it from me. Think I don't know how cuddlesome ye are with Rosto the Piper? Ye're here diggin' for Corus's own Rogue, Rebakah Cooper, lookin' for breaks in my shields!"

Goodwin looked at her nails and sighed. "We are here on assignment to the Deputy Lord Provost," she said patiently. "Our Rogue doesn't give us orders, any more than you do. We're not looking for a fight with you, though if one is requested, we might ask our hosts what the Port rules are about such things."

A scared-looking maid bustled over with a fresh tankard. She handed it to Pearl, who took a big swallow, then wiped her mouth on the back of her wrist. When she spoke, she sounded calmer. "Ye don't spook easy, do ye? I've had grown men wet themselves when I screeched like that."

"I'm not surprised," Goodwin replied.

Pearl gave her a thin smile. "I see ye're not, nor the quiet one, there. Does she talk?"

"When it matters," Goodwin said.

Pearl set her tankard aside and leaned forward, her hands on her knees. "It matters now, and don't ye mistake me," she warned Goodwin. "Cooper here got in the way of my business this mornin', and I'll know why."

Goodwin looked at me, wanting me to speak up.

I said, "The gixie was breaking the law. She stole a purse, and I caught her. I returned it to her coney, but she had a rusher guarding her back. She escaped me." I wasn't going to say I'd noticed the purse I returned was full of coles, nor that it was not the one that got stolen. It seemed like a very bad time to bring those things up.

"We do our work, Mistress Pearl, just as you do yours," Goodwin said.

Pearl rubbed a pearl tooth with one finger. "Clear off, Steen."

Steen tipped his hand to Goodwin and me. "See you over supper, I hope." He ambled off to where he'd sat before.

Then Pearl said, quiet-like, "How much would it cost me to make you two forget your orders, where it comes to interferin' with my business?" She was a brass-bottomed trollop, thinking she could buy us where the Rogue before Rosto and Rosto himself had failed!

Achoo caught my mood and growled. I leaned forward, about to spit on the floor, when Goodwin placed her hand on my arm.

"Cooper, manners," she said quietly, and gave my arm a little squeeze. She looked at Pearl. "These young folk are hotheaded. Of course we have to say no." Goodwin sighed. "We just got here, after all. How much trouble can two lone..." Her mouth twisted. Then she went on, "How much trouble can two lone bitches, off their hunting grounds, give? Doubtless this morning was only a fluke. You'll hardly know we were here." She let go of my arm and patted it. "Of course, if we did turn out to be trouble, you might want to offer higher than you were about to."

Pearl stared Goodwin in the eye for a long moment.

I hate playing the part of a loose Dog.

"Was I you, I'd stay blind to any Rogue doin's you might trip over, both of ye," Pearl said, her voice low. "Ask Nestor Haryse what I do to them that cross me. Ask 'im – " Suddenly she stopped. The Bazhir and the longsword man got to their feet, drawing their blades. "What's that racket?" Pearl demanded.

The guards moved up to stand at Pearl's back, their own weapons ready. Everyone in the room with a weapon had it out as the door opposite the bar flew open. We could hear shouting as Nestor and five other Dogs poured into the room.

"We don't want trouble, Pearl," Nestor said, his voice booming above the noise. "But we'll trouble you to hand our friends back to us." He looked at Goodwin and me, then at the knot of guards that circled the Rogue. "Naughty, to go helping yourself to my people."

Pearl got to her feet and shoved her guards aside. "Cooper interfered in my business, and my folk had no way of knowin' who she was," she snapped. "I wasn't told two strange bitches would be crawlin' over my city, pokin' their noses where they pleased."

"No need to be harsh, Majesty," Nestor said, a touch of disappointment in his voice. "Is this how we want visitors to the city to see us, all crude and nasty-like? Doubtless you know by now that Corporal Guardswoman Goodwin and Guards-woman Cooper are here to study our methods. They'll be going freely about the city, with Sir Lionel's permission. And now that you know they're here, and I'm watching over them, there's no need to pop them off the street like this." His face went hard and dangerous in a way I'd never seen before. "In fact, if you think you've a Dog problem, in future? You'd do well to call Dogs to handle it."

Pearl's jaw clenched. "You get above yourself, Sergeant."

"I remember how things are done," he replied. "It's you who seems to have forgot."

I held my breath. Achoo was pressed against my leg, her muscles tight. I don't think anyone in that room dared to breathe until Pearl waved at Goodwin and me and snapped, "Take them out of here."

We walked to the open door and into a long hall, three of Nestor's folk in front of us, two more and Nestor behind. We passed through a second, smaller room where more Rats sat or stood, watching us. I whistled under my breath. Nestor had a sack, to walk in here with less than a full company of Dogs.

We passed through a final pair of open doors into the street. I was startled to find the sun had just reached the noon mark. Goodwin looked around, getting her bearings, same as I did.

"Eagle Street," one of the other Dogs said, guessing what she was about. "Three blocks into Lowdown below Moneychangers' Street. Pearl don't hold court here all the time, though. Some days she's up in Gauntlet, some days Riverdocks, some days here."

"Not very trustin', Pearlie," a mot with Senior Dog insignia said with a laugh.

"No more should she be," one of the coves muttered. "Were she a cat, she'd have but two lives left. Folk've been tryin' t' kill Pearl Skinner since she was born."

Looking around, I saw a lad in a brown tunic and leather sandals standing at the corner. The boy was eleven or twelve, with brown hair and dark eyes. His face was naught to remember if you only caught a glimpse of it. Seeing our tracker full on like this, I recognized Nestor's serving lad Haden easily. I nudged Goodwin.

She looked where I did. "Did you put your boy on our trail?" she asked Nestor.

Nestor waved Haden over. He trotted up to us. "Did you think I'd let you amble off with no way to call for help?" Nestor asked, raising his eyebrows. "How did you know you were tracked? No one ever spots Haden."

The boy shrugged. "They did. They knew I was about afore they got t' th' docks," he said. "It hurt me pride, but they didn't fuss, so I stayed wif 'em. Figgered you'd beat me if I didn't, sir." He actually winked at me, the scamp.

Nestor looked at the Dogs who had come with him. "I think we're good. See you at muster out."

"Nice meetin' you two," one of them said. "Watch your backs." The other Dogs murmured their goodbyes and walked down the street, scanning already for Rats.

I glanced at Nestor, and at Haden. I am beginning to wonder who runs Nestor's house, him, or Haden and his sister.

"I suggest that Haden keeps trailing you," Nestor told us. "I hope Pearl leaves you be, but hope is like spring snow around her. It melts fast. Better to have Haden watch your back."

"At the least we owe Haden a meal," Goodwin replied. "And I was going to show Cooper around Flowerbed before we went back to the lodging."

Nestor smiled. "A busy first day. Will you take supper with us again?"

"We have a supper engagement at the Merman's Cave," Goodwin told him. "We ran into an acquaintance from Corus who invited us there."

Nestor whistled. "Interesting acquaintance. See to your afternoon, then. Will you have reports for me?"

Goodwin nodded. "Send someone tricky to pick them up?" she asked. "About five of the clock?"

"Me sister Truda can do it," Haden told us cheerfully. "She's a mouse, that 'un. Ye'll never see her comin' nor goin'."

"It'll always be Haden or Truda making the daily pickup at that time," Nestor said. "They have friends I trust who watch their backs." He saw my questioning look and grinned. "I got the idea from you and Gershom. Who better to work for you in the streets than the lads and gixies who are born there?" With that settled, Nestor took out his baton and wandered off, swinging it in an elaborate pattern at his side. I watched with envy. I've mastered some of the easier twirling patterns, but not the ones like Nestor was doing now. That's old Dog work.

I noticed a swirl of wind and leaves at the corner opposite. "A moment," I told Goodwin. Achoo and I wove our way through carts and walkers to get to that corner, where a spinner rose five feet high, made strong by the wind coming off the harbor. I took off my pack and rummaged in the pocket where I kept my dust packets. Sure enough, I had a few. I took out one and closed the pack, then set that in front of Achoo. "Jaga, please?" I asked her.

Achoo gave her soft whuff and moved until she stood over the pack.

"Good girl," I told her as I cut the stitches that held the cloth on my dust packet. When it was open, I stepped into the spinner's heart and gave it my offering.

The spinner went wide, then tall and tight around me. It had never met anyone like me before. It – no, he, Hesserrr – had to run dusty finger strands over my hair, into the layers of my clothes, and over my face. When he learned what I could do for him, besides provide tasty gifts of new dust and gravel, he quickly gave up his burden of human talk. I caught five- and six-word pieces that sounded like talk over cargo or rigging, sea talk borne in on the stiff breeze from the harbor. There were other pieces, too, about burglings, foistings, hard work done on cityfolk for some reason, and this.

" – die o' fright, did Sir Lionel know she's got folk servin' him." The coarse, pleased voice belonged to a mot. She must have stood right next to Hesserrr for him to pick up so much.

"How'd she manage it?" Another mot, younger-sounding.

"All Dogs got a price, my pet. This 'un along with the rest. Let's go git us some peck and cass."

That was the end of it, and the last bit Hesserrr had for me. I thanked him silently, as I always did, and stepped out. Achoo whuffed at me, as if she asked, "Did it go well?"

I bent down for my pack. "I've got one good bit. There's luck for us, eh, Achoo?" I shouldered my pack and started to brush the dust from my hair.

I'd finished that and gone on to my tunic when Goodwin and Haden tired of waiting and came over to join us. Haden tugged my sleeve. "Some'un offered t' feed a hardworkin' lad?" he asked, all pitiful eyes and innocent face.

Goodwin grabbed his ear between thumb and finger and dragged him down the street. "Nestor's saddled us with a pitiful scamp, Cooper. Tell us where to find a decent meal without getting our pockets picked, boy, and I may feed you."

When Haden told Goodwin that he could take us to a place that served Yamani buckwheat noodles, she almost adopted him. I'd never heard of noodles, but Goodwin got a taste for the things when she'd lived in Port Caynn before. They turned out to be long strings made of buckwheat flour dough, boiled until they were the same texture as dumplings. They were served in a broth with a poached egg. There was a trick to the dish. They were eaten with a pair of thin wooden sticks. Goodwin and Haden swore the Yamanis eat their food with these two sticks, and that even the youngest Yamani children use the curst things. Goodwin fumbled hers at first, being out of practice. Haden shoveled the slippery, tricksy noodle things into his mouth as fast as his hand could move. He didn't even let any of the egg drip to the ground. Once Goodwin remembered how to use the sticks, she was almost as nimble.

Me, I shared most of the dish with Achoo, who ate what I spilled. Luckily my reflexes are good, or I'd have worn it all. What I actually got to taste of the stuff was good. Not as strong as ground buckwheat, but well flavored, and the broth had a tang to it. I got a bit more of that, because I could upend the bowl into my mouth.

Haden led us then to a stall where they boiled the seagoing insects called shrimp, or grilled them on a stick. The cove who cut their hard shells away did it so fast I couldn't follow the moves of his knife. I could only hope I'd never find him in an alley some night. I liked the grilled ones with a spicy sauce so much that I had three skewers. Then I had to buy a skewer for Achoo. I didn't feel so greedy when Goodwin bought herself and Haden each four skewers. Next came a vendor of boiled seaweed. I didn't like that at all. I didn't notice, until after I'd spat my mouthful out, that Haden hadn't bought any. He was laughing himself silly over the look on my face, whilst Goodwin wolfed her bowlful. By the time we found a sweet-roll vendor Haden liked, we were well into the Flowerbed gambling center, and anyone who had passed us for at least two blocks was certain that if we were on duty, we were the laziest Dogs they'd ever seen, interested only in filling our bellies and gawping at the sights.

After lunch we finished our tour of Flowerbed. Haden pointed out the best bordels and taverns, and which meetinghouses were favored by the gamesters who gambled high.

"They follow the good cooks and the entertainers they think are lucky," he explained as we headed back toward our lodgings. "Gods help you if they decide you're unlucky – no one will hire you! Plenty of folk gamble here. They get in from sea voyages, they get paid, and they have coin in hand. Or the land caravans come in, and it's the same thing."

I looked at him. "Do you gamble?"

Haden laughed. "Me? I'm not so bored with coin in me hand that I'll throw it after dice or a horse. My da'd haunt me to my grave, sure he would."

I looked at him. Now he made sense. "Nestor said you're a street lad?"

"Aye." Haden shrugged. "Truda, too. Then Nestor caught me stealin'. Truda came at him with a knife, and her no bigger than a scrap. He said he figgered he oughta keep hold of us afore we kilt some'un. It were a struggle."

Goodwin smiled. "So you'll train as a Dog when you're of age, like Cooper?"

"Dog trainin'!" Haden snorted. "No, I study the music and fightin'. Okha's teachin' me those. Truda's learnin' to do hair and face paint for the lady-coves, and the fightin', too, from Okha."

I couldn't help it. I started to laugh at the look on Goodwin's face. She was used to poor children coming into the Dogs. The idea of Haden preferring to work for entertainers was not what she expected.

"It seems like a waste of a good tracker, that's all," Goodwin said.

Haden shrugged. "Nestor's put me to use plenty, and he'll do it even more afore I'm good enough with pipes and drums t' please Okha. Now, see, here's a good street to know, Trinket Alley. You'd think with the name it's cheap stuff, but it's not." So he kept Goodwin from trying to convert him to Dog work, by showing her where the scales of the port did business on Trinket Alley and other streets near the docks.

The city clocks were chiming one as we reached Serenity's. I hoped for a nap, but Goodwin said that we must write our reports. Gods be thanked she wrote the one on our suspicions that the Goldsmith's Bank knows there is a problem with silver coles. She called on me only for my exact report of my talk with the clerk who changed my gold coin, writing it down as I remembered it. She had me write up the pickpockets' switch of good purses for red ones filled with coles. I wrote of my morning for my Lord Provost back in Corus, including a separate copy of our encounter with Pearl. Then Goodwin made copies of the bank report and the pickpockets' switch. Once everything was done, she sent me to my room to rest before supper, reminding me that only five days past, I'd had my head broken. Instead I began to write today's events in cipher in this journal.

Slapper came back from his ramblings with five lady pigeons. Two carried ghosts. I listened to them and took notes of their complaints, though I did not know the three names they mentioned. I will put them into the reports that went to Nestor. Mayhap he will recognize the names. Once that was done, I returned to writing in my journal. It was when I wrote of our meeting with Hanse and his introducing himself to us that his name snapped into place for me. Hanse Remy. Otho Urtiz, the Player with the crazed slave, had told me that name scarce a week ago. I banged on Goodwin's door.

She opened it, looking grumpy. "Cooper – "

"Hanse Remy. The Player Otho Urtiz told me he won a lot of coles from a cove who'd come down the river named Hanse Remy," I told her. "They bet on a horse race."

Goodwin rubbed her nose. "Pox. Pox, pox, and swive-all luck. No, we did know Hanse might be involved somehow, if only because he gambles. He could know something, he could know naught." She sighed. "I'll add it to the report. To my lord, not Sir Lionel."

I scratched my nose. I wasn't sure I trusted Sir Lionel to handle things right, not when he was the one who let Pearl snatch Dogs off the street.

"Oh, and that dust spinner?" I said. "It gave me sommat useful. Pearl's got Dogs she has bought in Sir Lionel's service, waiting on him personally."

Goodwin nodded. "That stands to reason, Cooper. Rosto's probably got his own folk in Lord Gershom's house."

I ground my teeth. This is a boil on my bum. I know who two of them are, but my lord won't hobble them. He says it's better to know who the spies are than to suspect all his household. I don't see Lionel of Trebond being so forgiving, if he even knows who Pearl has set to spy on him.

"I'm glad you're able to tap your Birdies here," Goodwin said. "We need sources that are dependent on no one else, even if they're limited. Now, get some rest. I've a feeling we have a late night ahead."