Monday, September 24, 247

 

Guards House

A little past six of the clock.

being a chronicle of the events of Thursday the 20th,

beginning around noon of that day

 

This court was a large, single room, almost a barn. It didn't boast the upstairs galleries or the side halls of Pearl's other two courts. There were plenty of Rats, though. They attacked, some armed with clubs and swords, others seizing tankards, stools, or whatever they could grab. Achoo and I joined up with Goodwin, who had helped to lead the charge inside. A pair of Rats came at us, screeching curses.

I did not wait for them, but stepped out to get the one in front of me. He carried a length of firewood gripped in both hands. It would crush my shoulder if it struck, so I darted under his swing and, one-handed, smacked both of his kneecaps with my baton. When he stiffened, his grip on his weapon going loose, I jammed the end of my baton between his thighs and yanked it up. Now he dropped the log and bent double. I smashed him on the back of the neck with my sap. Down he went, fouling the legs of the one who fought Goodwin. She knocked her cove back over my fellow with a smash to the jaw.

I turned and walked right into a blow to the belly from a club. I forced myself not to collapse, though my mind was white with pain. As I hung on, I heard Achoo snarl. Through the lights that covered my vision, I saw her clamp her jaws on the wrist of the cove who'd hit me. She had him by the club hand and she would not let go. While she hung on, I jammed myself sidelong into his belly, blocking his free arm to shield her, and grabbed myself a big fistful of him. Not of his gems – he was wearing a leather cod. Instead I grabbed a chunk of the inside of his thigh near to his cod and pinched hard with all four fingers and my thumb. He struck my back with his free hand, yelping. A glance showed me there was blood around Achoo's mouth, she was biting his club wrist so deep. The second time the cove brought his fist down, he plunged his arm onto the knife I'd yanked free. He wailed and grabbed my braid with that same hand. He screeched yet again. This time he'd jammed his palm onto the band of spikes in my braid. I stomped one of his feet with my boot heel and felt bones break.

"Achoo, biarlah," I said. She released the Rat so he could hobble away from us. I looked her over quickly. She seemed to be fine.

Forward I went, keeping to Goodwin's side. Achoo was expert at ripping a striking arm or a kicking foot. She had a good eye for my own attacks and never got in my way. She saved me from more than one knife. I promised myself, if I lived, that I would get her the meatiest bone I could find, climbing prices or no.

I'd stopped for a breath when I saw Flory and her mots trapped in a corner, knives out. A few of our folk kept the women there, but I could see by the way they held their bodies that they knew who Flory was and that they were not to hobble her. I waited until Goodwin had put down her Rat of the moment and let her know.

"Get my lord," she yelled. She began to move toward Flory, smashing any Rats that got in her way.

Lord Gershom was busy. A rusher with a longsword had decided today was his lucky day, seemingly. He was young and strong, faced with an old man with long gray hair. My lord must have ordered his guards to stay back. Now he smoothed his heavy mustache, a sign he was ready to do as he must.

"My lord, when you're finished, might I have a word?" I asked.

"Certainly, Cooper," he replied, his voice as casual as if we'd met in the market.

"Don't yez pay attention t' her!" bellowed the rusher. "Pay attention t' me!"

"If you insist," my lord replied. He came in with that hard, fast overhand swing of his. He does it one-handed, keeping a small, round buckler on his other forearm. The rusher barely parried the strike and tried an ox-handed thrust of his own. My lord knocked that aside with the buckler.

I glanced around. There was a dais, of course. Pearl's bodyguards were up there, holding off Nestor, other Port Caynn Dogs, and some of the Goddess warriors. I did not see Pearl herself. Was she at the heart of the ring of guards, hidden by them and their attackers? I took a step toward the dais, but there was a scream behind me. I turned back to Lord Gershom's fight. The rusher was dead already. My lord set his buckler aside. His guards closed in, making a safe zone around us. A mage gave him a cloth so he might wipe his sword. My lord couldn't do that on his clothes or the dead cove's. Both were well marked with blood.

"These clothes will have to be burned," he remarked. "My lady will not approve if she sees them."

If my lord was lucky, Port Caynn was far enough away that Lady Teodorie would never know he'd been fighting again.

"Cooper?" Lord Gershom asked.

I pointed to the far corner. "It's Fair Flory, my lord," I said. "The one we spoke to you about."

My lord sheathed his sword. "Very well. I'll talk with her." He and his guards crossed the room.

I looked at the overall fight. We had caught them by surprise, that was plain. The area near the tap and kitchen doors was empty of Dogs and Rats. I suspect many had escaped that way. Doubtless my lord had planned it so, given that Okha's maps showed there were exits in that part of the court as well as those we had used. It would have been a fair mess to take every Rat here before a magistrate.

Achoo scratched her ear and yawned. "Come on," I said, picking up my lord's buckler. "I don't like that mess up on the dais." Once I'd settled the buckler on my arm, I holstered my baton, keeping my sap in my free hand.

I muscled my way between two Goddess warriors, crouching down, the buckler over my head to shield me from the blows of those fighting there. I didn't have much room to swing my sap, but a little swing is all I need. Then someone screeched. The Dog in front of her yanked her out of the wall of Rats defending that dais. I slammed my sap into the knee of the cove fighting next to her and rammed him sideways. He toppled into the Rat on his left. The Dogs yanked those two down to the floor.

We had an opening through the wall of Rats. I slid the edge of my buckler up under the raised arm of the Rat in front of me, then stood and shoved it into his armpit. He couldn't get that arm down to strike me. As he grabbed for me with the other arm, Achoo seized his wrist in her teeth and dragged him down to the floor to be trampled.

I bashed the next Rat in the face with the buckler. There was more room to maneuver now. Rat after Rat was yanked away by the three Dogs who swarmed the dais along with me. And what we saw at the center of the dais, among the overturned chairs and tables and braziers, made me numb with rage.

"What're you fighting for, you clanking stupid bumwipes!" I yelled at the Rats. No one heard. Of course not, it was too loud and their backs were to us. Then someone – Birch, Ersken's partner – hoisted me up. I stood on his knee, his arms around my legs, and tried again. "You Rats! You blind and mammering loobies, what do you fight for?!" I yelled.

Something happened in the room. The air felt tight. It was mage work. Birch's arms were trembling. I looked down for a better height where I could stand. On the dais someone had righted a table. No wonder it hadn't gotten destroyed in the fight – it was made of stone.

"Birch, you do it, please?" I asked. "You've got the bigger voice." As he got up on the table, the great chamber slowly went quiet.

"She's gone!" he bellowed. Now they all heard. The air felt looser again. I didn't want to know the name of the mage that had done the magic to make them hear the first time. The spell wasn't aimed at me, it was supposed to help. It would be poor thanks for me to punch the mage that cast it, but I hate being magicked, even as part of a crowd. "Your Rogue is gone!" Birch looked down at me. "Anyone else with her, y'think?"

"Jurji, Torcall Jupp, mayhap Zolaika," I said. "Her closest guards."

Birch called out the names and added, "You'll give 'em up now if you're wise!" No one answered him, so he got down from the table. "All this up here, 'twas a fakement," he said with disgust. "They was trained long ago, belike, to circle round the dais and make it look like they was protectin' her, whilst she scampered off some other way." He spat on the floor.

I nodded, full of my own share of disgust.

My lord Gershom came across the room, bodyguards and mages around him. In the shadows behind him, I could see where Flory and her mots had been cornered. They were gone.

My lord took the dais as the Dogs around it hauled unconscious Rats away. "Scent hounds, to me," he ordered. To everyone he said, "I will give a purse of ten gold nobles to the one who tells me where Pearl Skinner is. For every day that passes, it will be one gold noble the less. I am not a patient man."

"Who're you, t' be raidin' our court wiv your tarse-sniffin' Dogs?" a cove demanded.

Yoav backfisted him so hard that the Rat flipped bum over nob. "He's the Lord Provost of this realm, you slubbering piece of sheep scummer," she told him. "You'll talk respectful or I'll pull your tongue out."

"Yer Provost best sleep wiv one eye open, when Pearl comes after 'im," someone remarked. We didn't see who that one was.

"You must think I'm some lily-livered scut," my lord said. "Who stands on this dais now with a blade in his hand, and who's on the run? It's your Pearl Skinner with the price on her head. She won't come back, not to these courts. Why do you protect her? Do you know why we've come for her?"

Not one of them spoke. They only glared. I fidgeted, looking to see how Pearl could have gotten out. Did her guards only form a ring on the dais to distract us, as it seemed at first? She might have escaped with those who went out the back. Folk would have noticed her then, or if she fled through the kitchen. I drew closer to the dais – I had stepped off of it when my lord had taken over – and nudged a board with the tip of my boot. It was solid.

"Your Rogue is a colemonger," my lord said. "It's she who's been turning out those false silver coins. We have evidence. Real evidence, not whatever can be tortured out of some poor looby."

"Lies!" someone yelled. Soon all of them were shouting sommat of the sort. The Port Caynn Dogs walked among them, cuffing them to silence, but they started again as soon as the Dogs passed.

I inspected the dais, remembering the magicked doors and secret stairs in the Eagle Street court. I even stepped up on it, shifting around the overturned chairs and tables. There was a rug, too, a nice thick one, wadded up.

"Shut yer gobs!" a mot yelled from the back of the room, near the entrance I'd come through with Goodwin and our Dogs. I glanced up. Fair Flory had returned, a cutlass in one hand, a maul in the other. I blinked. I'd never seen her outfitted for war. Seemingly flower-selling asked for more strength than I thought. "If you weren't such a herd of dozy scuts, you'd know the old cod cutter's tellin' the truth!"

Rats and Dogs alike gave way before her. Only my lord's bodyguards refused to move from her path when she reached the dais. My lord looked at Goodwin, who signed that Flory was all right. Only then did he give the nod to his guards.

Flory stepped up on the dais. "You know Pearl Skinner," she told the Rats in the room. "The greediest, cheapest trull in the world. Do ye doubt she's movin' false coin about this city? About this realm? Do ye doubt she's spent the coin that should've bought yez food for the winter? There's not a drop of oil in our storage rooms, nor a seed of grain. She left us t' starve!"

"Flory," I said. She turned to look at me. "Hanse and his people were bringing silver to her from the north for a new minting. I let the Deputy Provost know they were coming – but Pearl sent Zolaika to murder them all before they could talk under torture. Hanse, Steen, Amda, everyone who went north with him was killed last night."

"How do you know that?" she demanded.

"Cooper talks to the dead," Goodwin called.

Flory – almost all of them watching – made the Sign on their chests.

Nestor pushed forward. "I've seen where Pearl had the coins made. Mages will confirm it's all her property and that of those in her service." He looked around. "She's the one who shoved up the prices of bread and meat with her false silver. It'll be proved in Magistrate's Court for all to see."

"I saw 'er run out through the kitchens!" someone called. "Jupp an' that Jurji was with her!"

"No, she went up th' hidden stair, in th' wall behind the throne," someone else yelled. "There's a panel in th' wall back there. She went when we heard th' crashin' at the doors!"

I shifted the rug with my baton. A twisted wire loop stuck out of a crack between the boards. "My lord, excuse me," I said.

He moved aside. I gripped the loop and pulled. The trapdoor set in the floor of the dais rose. It brought with it a wave of cold air and sewer stink.

"Looks like we have three ways she could have gone," my lord said. "Scent hounds!"

There were four of us handlers and hounds in all. I knew the three brought in from Corus by sight. They nodded to me, and I nodded back. I was supposed to have gotten more scent hound training with them, before all this had begun. Did they know that I'd had to learn as I went from Phelan and on my own, or did they think I believed I was too good to learn from them?

My lord frowned. "Sergeant Haryse, have we only Corus scent hounds?"

Nestor grimaced. "My lord, at present we have but four in the city, and the lords of the district requested them this week for hunting. It is the governor's policy to always grant such requests."

I heard my lord curse softly. "Pray four's enough. Have we got something for the hounds we do have to use for scent?"

"I do," I said. I unslung my pack and removed the underclothes that I'd stolen yesterday. "I got these while I was at the Eagle Street court."

Elmwood, the oldest of the Corus handlers, picked them up, looking them over. "A good thought, Cooper. Though doubtless some of the scent from your pack clings to them now."

"She has bedrooms at the Eagle Street and Darcy Walk courts," I said. "We can find more there."

"We can?" Elmwood asked. There was no meanness in his face or voice. "You haven't got the training for a hunt like this, Cooper. Not after tricky prey that's got all manner of ways to go."

"You'll need fighting teams to back each of you up," my lord said. "Port Caynn and Corus Dogs mixed, and a mage for each." They moved closer to talk it out, choosing who would go and who might stay. Other Dogs began to move the hobbled Rats together and bind them that were still unconscious. I backed toward the wall, feeling as useful as teats on an ox.

Achoo danced and whined at my feet. Of course she did. She'd seen me take the pieces of Pearl's clothes out for other hounds to sniff. She'd heard the words scent, hunt, and hounds. She could see the other handlers kneeling to talk to their hounds. Achoo would know what all of that meant. She was ready for action, but I was not allowed to give her any.

Worse, I knew Elmwood was right. Achoo and I had successfully tracked a child, but we were not an experienced pair. She is a fine scent hound. I am the inexperienced one. It's the same as putting a lone Senior Dog with a Puppy. In looking out for the Pup, the Senior Dog can't be expected to work as well as she normally does.

"Sorry, Achoo," I whispered. Achoo whined, looking at the other handlers, who were giving their hounds Pearl's clothes to sniff. One already towed her handler to the exit by the kitchen. One dragged his handler to the door hidden in the wall by the dais. Someone had opened it for us. Elmwood's low-slung hound was halfway down the steps in the center of the dais already. I could hear his deep-chested bark exploding from the stone walls below as Elmwood and the Dogs who would back them followed.

Then I heard a cove yell, "You sarden loobies! Wake up!"

That was Hanse's voice, which only I could hear. I looked toward it, to the side entrance. A black pigeon attacked two Dogs who were going outside, striking at their heads with his wings. When they flung up their arms to protect their faces, I saw that their tunics fit badly, as if they were twisted, or pulled on over other clothes. Then Jurji stepped into my view just for a moment, his sword raised. He cut the attacking bird in two, then moved out of sight.

Achoo and I began to run, dodging tables, chairs, and bodies. The two Dogs dashed outside. I fell once as a rusher on the floor grabbed my foot. I kicked him in the face, struggled to my knees, and caught up with Achoo. She had beaten me to the dead bird. She nosed it, whimpering.

Slapper lay over the court's threshold. The blade that had cut him was dreadful sharp, slicing him crossways. Doubtless he never felt a thing, I told myself.

I pushed his pieces together with hands that shook, not thinking of his blood on me. Wouldn't the Black God mend such a good servant? He must be able to.

Mayhap the god wants to give him a rest, Slapper working so hard for him while he was alive.

And Hanse – he would be gone. I'd never known a spirit to return if sommat happened to his bird. I did look, both times it had happened before. My guess is that the Black God takes them, whether their business is finished or no.

Time was passing.

Achoo whined. Her head was up, her nostrils were wide. She had a scent. She wanted to follow it.

I wiped my hands on my breeches and took two of Slapper's feathers, being as he won't need them anymore. I slid them over my shoulder, into my pack. And I remembered that picture, the two people walking through the open doors in stolen uniform tunics, the bird on the attack, and Jurji.

"Achoo, ban," I told her, pointing to the ground beside the door where Jurji had stood. His footprints were clear in the soft dirt there. Achoo sniffed it and the frame of the door, where a bit of cloth was caught in the splintered frame. She sneezed once, then went back into the court, tracking Jurji and, most like, the two in the stolen uniforms, back to where they'd hid themselves in the crowd.

I gathered up Slapper's poor body and carried it over to a small patch of grass. It bore a spindly tree. I placed him there, so what was left of him might return to the Goddess's good earth. He deserved better, but I had no time. I wiped my hands as clean of the rest of his blood as I could on the grass.

Inside, Achoo had circled back to the door. She was about to go outside, still on her scent, when I told her, "Berhenti." She looked at me, whining, and sneezed again. She didn't want to hear "stop" from me. I knew how she felt.

I looked around. My lord, Nestor, and Goodwin were nowhere in view. They must have gone off to look at something else in the court. I was scared that Achoo might lose the scent. Then I remembered that Goodwin still had her Dog tag for me.

I grabbed Ersken, who was standing guard over a clutch of hobbled, seated Rats. "I'm off with Achoo – we're tracking Jurji, one of Pearl's bodyguards," I said. "Tell Goodwin I need her to find me. She knows how. I don't dare let the trail get cold." I didn't mention the two in disguise, in case they were only minor Rats.

Ersken scratched his chin. "Beka, maybe you should wait," he said, worried.

"He killed Slapper," I said, swallowing a lump in my throat.

Ersken's kind face went hard. "I'll find Goodwin and tell her. But how will she find you? She's no mage!"

"But she has a magic thing. She'll explain, maybe," I said.

Ersken clapped me on the shoulder and went looking for Goodwin. I returned to Achoo.

"Menean, Achoo," I said. I should have told my seniors myself, but the trail was getting cold. And I confess, my heart was filled with rage. I wanted Jurji and whoever ran with him.

Achoo took off down the street. I drew my baton and followed at a careful trot, keeping her in view.

Jurji's scent took us down to the Riverside docks. Once there, we tracked it north, along the line of the warehouses. Folk saw us and turned their backs. I did not want to risk losing Achoo by stopping to ask anyone if they had seen our prey. She kept the scent in her nose and did not halt. The dock area ended by the breakwater, near a swampy mass of inlets. It was ground that was too wet for buildings. Achoo did not act as if she'd lost the trail because our prey had taken one of the little boats here. She trotted into a small gully that took us out of view of the docks and those who worked them. She stopped at the gully's bottom. Two uniform tunics lay there in a pile. Achoo snuffled them eagerly, then sneezed several times. Now she had not only Jurji's scent, but that of his companions. I bundled the tunics up and strapped them to the top of my pack.

Footprints led from the tunics up the soft earth on the other side of the gully. Achoo scrambled to the top easily. I tried to follow, with less success. I began to slide back down again. Achoo grabbed me by the sleeve, digging in on the level ground as I clawed for purchase with my feet and hands. When I reached the top, I fished in the front of my pack for some dried meat strips. Achoo did not seem to object to the wet earth that clung to them from my hands. She gobbled them.

"When this is done, I am putting a feast before you," I promised her. Once I gave her a drink from my palm and had my own drink of water from my flask, we got moving again. I fumbled out a handkerchief and wiped my hands and knees as well as I could while trotting forward. It did little good. Sadly, it was the only handkerchief I had, and Achoo was headed straight into one of the giant sewer openings that emptied out down here.

I followed. Of course these Rats would take to the sewers.

I'd have thought the stench would kill Achoo, but she never faltered. She seemed to know I could not run as fast as she did. Some light came down through grates high above, but Achoo understood I could not see as well as she could. She always managed to stop just at the edge of my sight, or just as my legs were getting tired. I began to feel bad for her, kept so much of her life to the slow pace of human living. She was clearly happy going at a trot with her nose in the air, all of her senses alive. I also realized how stupid I was, to leave alone like this. With more of us, one could always keep pace with Achoo while the others halted to rest, then caught up. For now, to my sorrow, it was impossible to mend my folly, only to pray Goodwin found me soon. The scent was in the air, Achoo had it, and I was bound to stay with her.

I don't know how long we were down there. From time to time Achoo would turn and turn, sniffing. There were other scents to confuse her. Did she have Jurji and those who were with him now? I stood well back, letting the hound decide. What would I do if she lost the scent this time?

But Achoo always sneezed twice or thrice and started forward again, her body purposeful. Once she was certain, she didn't waiver. I had to make her stop for water or a bite to eat. She obeyed, but she was restless. As clear as if she spoke to me, she was saying, "Very well, I know you want to keep my strength up, but scent fades, you know!"

And I'd say, "I know, girl, but you're what I have, and I'm going to take care of you."

Four times we met other folk. All of them looked at my uniform, my baton, and the hound. Then I would stare at them until they scurried away.

Finally Achoo did not halt at an entry. She turned and raced up a very long stair, so long I had to stop twice to rest. I was breathless again when she halted at the top. There was a grate in the way. I came ahead and thrust it up. Slowly the iron thing moved. My shoulders groaned as I thrust it higher. Achoo passed under it into the open air. I managed to get myself out then, and let the grate down quietly.

It was late afternoon. The air was chill and clinging, filled with the sound of great, ringing bells. They were too slow to be fire alarms. Was it some religious festival? Neither of us cared.

We stood, panting, in a fountain courtyard. A maidservant, looking out a window, closed her shutters promptly. A couple of servants passing by saw us and rushed into another house. The place was deserted then. Achoo drank from the fountain while I refilled my flask. She cast around for her scent, sneezed in a way that was starting to comfort me, and trotted into the street.

Following her, I glanced around, trying to see where we might be on the maps of Port Caynn I had studied. Below us on the foot of the hillside lay the river docks where we'd begun this hunt. "No wonder those stairs were so sarden long," I muttered to Achoo. We were halfway up the southern side of the ridge, ten blocks or so below High Street and five or six blocks southwest of Guards House. Seemingly Jurji and his two friends were avoiding it. I was grateful for that. I didn't want to get caught up in whatever mess was unfolding there.

Achoo stopped in front of a town house. The torch over the front door wasn't burning. We went around to the back of the house. It too was locked tight. I cursed myself for ten kinds of fool. Mayhap the place was stuffed with Rats. Looby Beka, bringing no one else to help, and her whistle somewhere on the ground of Nightmarket!

Achoo whined and scratched at the door. That was that. I could not let her lose a good scent.

I hammered at the rear door with the end of my baton. "Open, in the King's name!" I cried. "Open!" Goddess, please let Goodwin get here soon, mayhap even now, I thought.

"Go away!" someone cried.

"Open, in the King's name!" I shouted, getting angry. It was a burning offense to invoke the King's name if I wasn't a guard. Everyone knew that. I hammered and hammered as windows opened all around us and the householder's neighbors began to yell. I moved to the side of the door, where I would not be visible when it opened.

Suddenly a cove flung the rear door wide. He thrust out with a short sword that would have skewered me, had I still been in front of it. I seized the hand on the sword hilt, slamming my baton down on the forearm just above my grip. Bone crunched. I dragged the cove forward and slammed my knee into his belly, then sent him sprawling into the kitchen yard. The manservant behind him went the same way, though instead of breaking his wrist I cracked his skull. Achoo and I darted inside. I slammed the door shut, thrust the bolts to, and glared at the three servants – a man, a maid, a thin cook – who stood there staring at me.

"Who's next?" I asked them. Achoo seized the cook by the wrist, though her teeth barely dimpled the mot's skin.

"There's no one else," the cook whispered. Achoo growled fiercely around her mouthful. "Just us and Master and his man." She pointed to the door. It seemed I'd locked those two out.

"You had visitors not too long ago," I said. I smelled ham, and fresh-baked bread. They sat on a table. I cut slices from the ham and chopped them into strips for Achoo. "Achoo, biarlah." She released the cook and came to eat what I'd cut up for her. I went to cut more for myself, but the maid had already done so, and sliced bread for me. I winced – I never should have let one of them pick up a sharp knife – and put my back to the wall as I looked at them. "Visitors," I repeated, as they all blinked at me. "Three of them, one a Bazhir. Like as not they smelled much like I do."

"Master didn't want them here," the maid said. "He said he were done workin' for them."

The manservant tried to signal her to be quiet. I pointed my baton at him. "I'm after colemongers. Unless you want to end up on the list of them that's involved, you'll stay out of this," I warned him. The manservant shrank back.

"He said she'd ruin him. The Bazhir wanted to cut the master, but the mot said they didn't want to leave no blood trail," the maid told me. "She ordered the master to empty his coin box of gold and she'd go."

"She?" I asked. "They had a mot with them?"

The cook laughed. "Ye don't know who ye're chasin', wench? Then ye'd best draw off now, afore ye're gutted. Pearl Skinner don't like Dogs as try t'bite her."

Pearl was with Jurji? But she'd escaped the dais, through one of the hidden doors, or the back way, in all the confusion! I'd gone for Jurji and his friends to avenge Slapper.

Well, now I had more than I thought. I'd best snap to.

"Did she say where she was going?" I asked.

All three shook their heads. They looked nervously at the door. The master and his servant were hammering there, demanding to be let in. "But they didn't go out on the street," the cook said. "If you go out the side, there's a passage, like, between the houses, covered over so folk can visit the High Street markets in the rain. I'll show you."

First I bundled up the food they'd given me in a cloth. Then I let the cook take me to the side door. She played me no tricks. I hoped for their sake that their master wasn't part of the colemongering. They seemed like honest enough folk.

Achoo cast around at the doorstep of the side entrance, running scents through her snuffling nose. I offered her the bundle of discarded tunics from the gully, but she ignored them. She ventured a few steps past the door and sneezed heartily, her tail a-wag. Then she was off into the passage. For some reason it was getting dark early. What light we had came through arches that looked into other houses on this part of the ridge. Some houses were lit up for company, while others at least had torches in the kitchen yards.

I could see the end of the passage on High Street and was thanking the gods, the climb from the house being a steep one, when I tripped and went tumbling. I'd fallen over a length of wood. I was getting up when a boot caught me in the ribs and knocked me onto my back. When it came down, heel first, to smash my chest in, I rolled to the side and scrambled upright.

Two rushers and Torcall Jupp stood there. Jupp held Achoo by her collar, forcing her back on her heels so she could not lunge. He twisted her collar so she could not bite. It was the blond rusher who had kicked me. "Hardly a challenge, this," he said, showing me a gape-toothed grin. "She's all winded and tired after a day of runnin' about."

He moved to my right, a cudgel in his hand. The other rusher slid to my left. He was armed with a long knife.

"She don't look worth our trouble or pay," that one said. "Certainly not worth Master Jupp's time."

I drew a boot knife with my left hand, my baton with my right, as I tried to decide which of them would lunge first. It was hard to guess in such bad light. The one I feared most was Jupp, standing in the shadows, my hound's life in his grip. He was the one with a longsword and dagger.

The one on my right swung his cudgel, going for my baton hand. The one on my left lunged in. I darted away from the cudgel and back from the knife, slamming my baton down on the knife cove's shoulder. Behind him Jupp had moved two steps to my left.

The knife man cried out suddenly, gaping at the ceiling. He shuddered, dropping his blade. He shouldn't have done that, him being left-handed and me striking his left shoulder. He began to fold at the knees, clutching the air as Jupp stepped away from him.

Achoo, suddenly free, darted at the blond cove, snarling. She ripped at his tunic and jumped away before he struck her. As the cove turned, forgetting me to watch Achoo, I leaped forward and smashed my baton on his skull. He staggered, but he was still on his feet. I smashed him backhanded, across the temple, and he went down. I turned to face Jupp. He was calmly wiping his sword blade on the knife cove's tunic.

"I would have killed that one for you, too, had you given me a moment," he said, not looking at me. "I was trying to spare you the added exertion."

"What?" I asked him, panting. I felt plain addled. "What?"

"I was entirely prepared to kill both of them for you," he repeated. "I have had enough of Pearl's disasters."

I leaned on my knees, still panting. "Very convenient your timing is, Master Jupp."

"I wished to live beyond my departure from Pearl's service," he told me. "Now that she has other things to keep her busy, I believe I may escape with my life. That wasn't possible before."

I straightened up. "What's say I hobble you and take you before my Lord Provost? Mayhap he'll give you your life, too, once you've coughed up all you know."

He smiled at me. He actually smiled. "My dear, do you truly think you could hobble me all on your own? There are no other Dogs within earshot."

"Pox," I muttered.

He nodded. "Pox indeed. Besides, I have something you will want very much."

I snorted. "Not likely."

Jupp dipped two fingers in his purse and came up with sommat small between them. He moved into a patch of light so I could see better. It looked like a tooth, but it had more of a shimmer to it. Then I realized what it was that he held. I stared up at him, startled.

He smiled. "Just so. She will not give up sticky sweets, though the mage warns her and warns her. She lost this only two days ago, and though we searched for it, we could not find it." He turned it over in his fingers. "I am told that magicked things like this are best of all for scent hounds. It is as if the magic that went to fix it in place takes on the owner's scent, and keeps it."

I sighed. "How long have you been planning this?"

"Since you and your partner came." He smiled sidelong. "Perhaps others believed your tale. I could not help but wonder why two such clever girls had been sent here for such silly reasons. It was only a matter of time until the counterfeiting scheme was revealed. I thought that you might be the advance guard of the law. And I was right." Jupp dropped the tooth into my hand.

"Since you're being so helpful," I said, "where's Pearl got to?" I held the tooth down for Achoo to sniff, which started a storm of sneezes.

He shook his head. "My dear, do you think she told me? I believe she suspected that, unlike Jurji, my loyalties were not what they could be. That is why she left me with these two dolts and orders to kill you. After that, she said, I am on my own. Were I Pearl, I would try to take ship away from Tortall, but were I the Lord Provost, I would have the ships watched."

I nodded. Achoo was squirming and wagging her tail, running up the passage. As plain as if she spoke Common, she was telling me it was time to move.

I looked at Jupp. "I see you again, I hobble you," I warned.

"That is fair," he replied, and bowed.

"Thanks for the help," I said awkwardly. "And the tooth."

He grinned. It made him look ten years younger. "The pleasure was mine. Pearl has backhanded me on a number of occasions. Lately she has paid me with purses full of coles. This is how I express gratitude. Good hunting, young bloodhound."

He stepped into the shadows and left. I checked the other two rushers, not wanting them to rise and come after me. They were dead.

I took a breath. "Goddess, but I'm weary," I muttered. Achoo said, "Wuff!" softly, as if she knew we must be careful of other enemies, but she had to make me move along.

I let Achoo sniff the tooth again, which gave her another sneezing fit. I was beginning to worry when she stopped. With a sigh of relief I tucked the thing in the pocket where I kept my fire opal. "Very well. Achoo, maji" I said.

The skies were darker, the air colder as we went on. The bells were still ringing in a steady, one-two pace. They sounded as if they were down by the harbors, river and sea, filling the air with ill omens.

On this steep curve in the ridge, the passage was no longer smooth. Steps were built into it to help servants and their masters to reach High Street without sliding downhill in wintertime. And there, on High Street, the passage ended.

Achoo's trail did not. She turned left, away from Guards House, and wove through the carts and horses on the street. Traffic was thin for late afternoon. Checking the faces of the passersby, the way they looked at me and cleared out of the way, I understood. If Port Caynn was anything like Corus, the law-fearing folk were behind locked doors and shutters, awaiting the outcome of the day's strange events. Word traveled through the city with every mumper and peddler. No cityman or mot would be out tonight, not with Dogs in pursuit of the Rogue herself, and Rats and Dogs fighting in the alleys and squares. I glanced back at Guards House. There was a force of Dogs armed for trouble at the gate. If only I could leave word with them, I thought, but I knew it would be no simple matter. I would waste time convincing them of the importance of a junior Dog's message, and I did not have that time.

Achoo whuffed quietly from the mouth of a narrow alley to my right. "Coming, my lady," I muttered, but I had to smile as I trotted to keep up with her. She was a very polite hound. "You must have gotten those manners from Phelan," I told her as she led the way. "Never from that last brute that had you."

Now I saw the cause of the early nightfall as Achoo led me sideways and down from the top of the ridge, toward the deep harbor part of the city. Half of the land basin on that side and all of the sea were under fog. Soon all of Port Caynn would be covered in it.

I asked Achoo quietly, "How far ahead of us is she, do you think? She was mayhap a quarter of an hour ahead down in the gully. Jupp slowed us, what, another half hour? We lost time at that house, but so too did she. Mayhap she has half an hour's lead on us. Mayhap we can eat up some of that if I pick up my pace." I did, too, ignoring my weary legs. I could rest for days if I nabbed Pearl.

Achoo led the way over a small bridge. I caught up to her as she went to the water's edge for a quick drink. Then she moved along the stream, following it downhill. "Aren't Pearl and Jurji getting tired?" I asked her. She huffed in reply.

We were twelve blocks deep into the moneyed district behind Guards House when Achoo came to a halt at a gated courtyard. She whined, looked at me and wagged her tail, and whined again.

Pearl had come this way. Danger might stand behind the closed gate, yet... Achoo said this was the path to follow. I switched my baton to my left hand and slid my back-of-the-neck knife from its sheath. With it in my hand, I used two fingers to raise the latch and pushed the gate open with my foot. Achoo darted inside and whuffed that all was safe for me beyond. I followed, listening and trying to see in the gray light. Then I took a breath. There was plenty to smell for us both. It would have been worse for Achoo, but it was no treat for me, that copper stink of blood, scummer, and piss. The dead were here. I closed the gate behind me.

Inside a shelter where guards could stay out of the rain, Achoo stood at the edge of the pooled blood around two dead coves in livery. One had bought passage to the Peaceful Realms with a neck slash from a very sharp blade, the kind of slash that would hack a pigeon in two. I almost missed the death sign on the other cove, until I saw the blood that ran from his ear. I crouched to inspect the wound. At a guess, I'd say that someone very knowing in the ways of murder shoved a thin blade into the cove's ear all the way to his brain. He looked startled.

"Pox and murrain," I whispered. "Boiling oil's too fast for any of them." I holstered my baton, stuck my knife in my belt, and rubbed Achoo's ears. "Mencari," I whispered.

She led me through the open front door and we walked past the first body inside the house, a manservant. Two mots in the kitchen had died, like the manservant, of slashes from Jurji's curst sharp sword. The mot upstairs in a bedroom had a broken neck.

We found the answer to why Pearl had come here, or enough to guess with, in a room that must have been the study upstairs. We also found a dead young mot and a dead little gixie as well as the master, slumped on his desk with his throat cut.

There was a great brass stamp on the desk, and sealing wax, and a slotted wooden case with written forms. Those in one slot were mussed, as if they'd been put back wrong. They were Special Orders for Passage from the Harbor The brass stamp was the Harbormaster's Seal.

So Pearl had come for that, and Jurji and Zolaika made sure that no witnesses survived their visit.

I hovered over the desk. I couldn't make up my mind. My lord should know Pearl was bound for the harbor with a pass. But getting word to him would mean finding a messenger and losing time. Going to Guards House or searching out the nearest Dog would also cost me time. Shouting in the street might bring folk to deal with me that I didn't want, or them that would fetch no help at all. Pearl's scent would get cold. She might yet escape.

Finally I wrote a note, telling him all I knew that he could use. I sealed it, wrote his name large on it, and used one of my knives to stick it to the front gate, where folk would see it.

Achoo had picked up the trail in the garden. She'd found a tunnel that opened in the floor of some sort of open shrine. It led down into the ground, again. I made her wait, though she wriggled and whined with impatience, then set a gardening shed on fire with a lantern I found in the stable. That would bring folk. They would find my note, and get it to Lord Gershom. The shed was a small one, nowhere near the neighboring houses. I made sure of that. It was the only thing I could think of to get attention.

I was not thinking at my best, but there was no one I could ask. With the shed starting to burn, I returned to Achoo. Down into the tunnel we went.

I can barely see my page. I must sleep.