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Rosto gave me what he thought was a sober look. “Not without Cooper, I don’t.”
“Cooper will never go with anyone crooked,” Ersken said. “A rusher was mean to her mother. She’s never forgiven them.”
I could pretend not to hear what he said, because Slapper was making way for a new pigeon, one I’d never seen. This one was a sad case. He was a caked-feather fellow I instantly named Mumper. Mayhap he was gray under the dirt and grease on his wings and belly. His ghost, like those of the other murdered diggers, complained about being buried whilst his people believed he’d run off.
Once I’d gathered aught new he had to say, I heard Verene call my name. “You remember that Dog who taught us to tell dice that have been meddled with? He was on Night Watch?”
I knew him well. I remembered the sight of his fingers, handling the sets of dice he’d used to teach us. He could hold five in one hand and throw them so they’d all land in one circle drawn in the dirt.
Verene drew her finger over her throat.
My chest went tight. “Dead?” I whispered.
Ersken nodded, his face grim. “And we’re not to go to the burying. There’s a notice up on the kennel gate. We saw it on the way here. They found him with his dice in his mouth – all rigged. All crooked. My lord’s order, under his seal: “Bury him with the Dogs, but not as a Dog.”
We all made the sign against evil on our chests. Pounce came over and sat on my crossed legs to purr at me. Of course there are crooked Dogs. I can name two handfuls myself. But this is the first Dog to die since I entered the ranks. That is a sad thing.
I will buy prayers for him. I do not like that he was crooked. But he’d still been a Dog.
We sat and talked of other things as the sun rose higher and the room got warm. I wanted to get out and feed more pigeons. There might be others who’d been killed along with the ghosts who rode poor Mumper and Slapper. Mayhap once I had all of the murdered ones together, they could lead me to where they were buried. But healing had left me dozy, as it often does the day after, especially when I lose blood.
“You need a nap,” Kora said when she saw my eyes start to flutter. “And I’m taking your clothes to wash. You can pay me three coppers for each wash I do.”
“Wash?” I asked.
Kora had picked up my basket. “The herb women aren’t hiring as yet. I have my charms to get clothes clean faster than most.”
“You’ll charge three coppers?” Verene asked.
Kora looked at her. “Five for those who don’t live in my house.”
“How about mine?” Ersken asked. “I’ll pay five and pay it more than gladly.”
Kora smiled at them. “Hurry and get your things.”
Ersken and Verene ran to fetch their wash.
“It doesn’t seem right,” I said. I didn’t have the strength to argue much, I was so tired.
“I do a bit of magic with the soap and they’re clean, a bit more and they’re dry. I could make a fortune as a washerwoman,” Kora said. “The worst part is carrying wet things.”
Aniki and Rosto were clearing up the remains of breakfast.
“Get some street children to help,” Aniki said. “A copper each and they’d wash the things themselves.”
“I can imagine,” Kora said. She looked at me. “Tell me you could do better yourself.”
I yawned. “I can’t.”
“Then hush. Sleep till it’s time for your watch.”
I wrote this morning up during the afternoon, now I’ve woke up. When I opened my door, my clean wash was there in a basket, neatly folded. On my way to training, I will put three coppers under Kora’s door.
After my watch.
Tonight Tunstall, Goodwin, and me were back in the streets around the Nightmarket. And I will write details now, truly. There were tavern fights, robberies. We broke up a fight among gamblers as a man claimed a mot had cheated him. I stopped five cutpurses and three foists on my own, but they were not stealing anything worth the trouble to hobble them.
We caught a cove trying to sell children who were not his to sell and fetched him and the slaver who was about to pay him back to the kennel. We took the three nearly sold children home. One mot didn’t even know yet her little boy was missing. She had been sewing on a fancy gown for a fine lady that had to be finished in the morning. She thought her neighbor still had charge of her son.
I think that is all the work we did. I obeyed my orders and came home as soon as we mustered out, to write this little bit. I am bone weary with the work of this week, and there is Magistrate’s Court yet tomorrow. So much for good intentions and keeping a record of everything from my first week on duty.
Monday, April 6, 246
Court Day!!
This last day before our day off, I had no time for breakfast. I gobbled stale rolls and cheese, then reported at seven in the morning to the Magistrate’s Court for the Lower City. On Monday the Dogs of the Evening Watch account for those Rats they’ve bagged that week. They say what the Rats have done to warrant bagging and defend their actions in the bagging if need be. Tunstall and Goodwin will give the reports at the bidding of the Provost’s Advocate and answer the questions of the King’s Magistrate. The way it should work, the Puppies have little to do but pay attention against the day when they have to do the same. It’s up to the Dogs who write the reports and who are there as each case unfolds to present the whole thing before the court.
I had most of the long day to see that all I’d heard was true. Magistrate’s Court is simple enough. Some Rats with a little coin or patrons have advocates to speak for them. These lawyers sometimes persuade the Magistrate (Sir Tullus of King’s Reach covers Evening Watch’s arrests) to order fines, lashes, time in the stocks or Outwalls Prison, or work inside Corus or on a farm instead of something worse. Hard sentences go from labor on the realm’s roads, mines, docks, or quarries to death for the murderers and arsonists.
I was familiar enough with the Jane Street court, having run messages there before I started my training. Still, it was odd, sitting in the Dogs’ benches with Tunstall and Goodwin, my fellow Puppies, and their Dogs. Ersken had managed to slip into the seat next to me. Together we read what bored Dogs had carved into the low backs of the benches in front of us.
Not that we spent all of our time hearing reports and admiring the history. Behind the Dogs’ seats was the wall of bars that separated the business side of the court from the visitors’ side. Plenty was going on back there. Some of the folk on that side were family, friends, and sweethearts of the Rats who took their sentences that day. They had all matter of things to say, whether we were the Dogs who had vexed them or no. Then there were those who’d come for amusement’s sake. Along the wall behind the bars stood the Dogs whose work it was to keep order.
When I got bored with the crowd, I watched the court officials. They were set up in front of the Dogs’ benches. There was a table for the Provost’s Advocate, where he kept his many lists and notes, and another for any advocate hired by the Rats. We saw few advocates that day. The mages who served to keep order against any other mages sat on benches at the front of the room. The Magistrate’s Herald sat next to just such a mage, his list in one hand and his staff in the other, when he was not reading out the name of the Rat, the names of the Dogs involved, and the charges. And at the great desk, higher than the rest of us, flanked by two uniformed soldiers to represent the King’s authority, was the Magistrate himself. Sir Tullus had ruled on Evening Watch cases for six years. My lord said he was fair and knew more law than most. The Dogs said he was a bit impatient with dithering.
Around three in the afternoon they brought Orva Ashmiller up. She was a sorry-looking mess in the light of day, with cage muck on her. And she was chained, which was a puzzler. She was so skinny the shackles seemed like to drop from her wrists. If not for the memory of that big knife, I almost pitied her. Then she caught sight of me.
“You bitch!” She threw herself at me. She’d caught the cage D
ogs napping. Before the lackwits collected themselves, Orva fell headlong, her ankle chains tripping her. She scrabbled to her hands and knees to shriek, “You took my children from me! You turned my man agin’ me, you puttock, you trollop, you trull – ” She lunged and fell again. Now I knew why they’d chained her. “I’ll cut your liver out, you poxied leech! Why wouldn’t you let me go! You ruined my life!”
The crowd who had come for entertainment hooted and whistled. I wanted to vanish. I didn’t feel even a little sorry for Orva anymore.
“Steady,” whispered Tunstall.
I looked into the air over Sir Tullus’s shoulder. What a splendid omen for my very first day in the court. A drunkard who blamed me for the mess she’d gotten herself into was making a spectacle of me.
The dozy Dogs who’d let her escape ambled up to her, grabbing her arms to haul her to her feet. I just kept telling myself that with no coin and no advocate, the best she could hope for was a couple of years on a farm for striking a Dog. She’d be gone a long time, and maybe she’d get the hotblood wine out of her veins.
“Mama!”
I closed my eyes then, wishing I could trickle through the cracks in the floor. Why had the children come? I glanced back, where the crowd was. Of course her man had brought them, all three. Master Ashmiller wouldn’t look at me as he carried the little lad up to the bars. What had he been thinking? Why would he want them to see their mama like this? She was still screaming, spittle flying from her lips, calling me every vile name there was, not once looking at the little ones calling for her.
The herald banged his staff on the floor without it doing any good. At last Sir Tullus ordered the cage Dogs to gag Orva and the court Dogs to take the screaming children out of the room. I finally drew a breath. Folk were yelling at the court and cage Dogs, their attention taken away from me at last. The two loobies who’d lost control of Orva in the first place silenced her.
I began to relax.
