AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I don’t care if she’s a knight in armor. We’re workin’ folk here, and my sister’s a respectable mot, not some Rovers Street trull.” Yates smirked at his friends. He thought he’d become a wit. “Buy or shake your wares someplace else, wench.”
I set my loaves on the counter and my coins beside them. “Gemma, have I got the right change?” I asked. I began to tuck the loaves into a pack I’d got at the house, settling them careful so they wouldn’t be crushed.
She counted and gave back a copper. Her hand was shaking. “Don’t mind Yates, he’s got a rough manner,” she whispered. “He don’t – “
He knocked her sideways, sending her sprawling on the floor. Now I knew where her bruises came from. “Shut yer gob,” he ordered her. He turned to me and raised his hand.
I blocked his swing with my forearm, though it jarred my teeth. While he gaped, I grabbed that wrist with my free left hand and yanked him toward me over the counter, jamming my right hip into it to steady myself. When he grabbed at me with his free hand, I seized it and twisted so he’d stop thrashing. Then I rested my weight on my left hand, using it like a lever. The problem for him was, it was his elbow on the edge of the counter at the end of my lever. If he moved, I could throw all of my weight on his wrist and see what happened to that elbow, or keep turning his other hand. If he behaved, all that he got was cramps in his wrists and his right elbow, and some shame before those looking on. If he misbehaved, he would suffer the consequences.
His friends seemed to think he ought to do something. “I’ve not hurt Yates yet,” I said to them. I felt that same clear-headed bravery that had come on me as I’d chased Orva and fought the river dodgers. “I will if you hurry me. I’m surprised this place gets any custom whatever, with Yates and you being so friendly with customers.”
Just then I heard a familiar woman’s voice say, “I have to say, I’m not impressed.” Sabine of Macayhill walked to the counter, putting herself between Yates’s friends and me. “I was told I might buy Corus’s best apple-raisin patties at Mistress Noll’s. Nobody warned me about the service.” She looked at me. “Maybe you should kill him. I would.”
“It’s against the law,” I said, keeping the pressure on Yates. I wasn’t at all sure if she was joking.
“Oh, I forgot – I’m in Corus again. People care about things like that here. You being a Dog, I suppose you care more than most.” Lady Sabine smiled crookedly at me and looked down at Yates. “She’s a Provost’s Dog, you know.”
I let him go as I said, “Trainee. I’m only a trainee, excuse me, my lady. But he’s a full-blooded Rat, and no mistake.”
Yates scrambled away from the counter and us, so fast that he fetched up against the ovens. He yelped and jerked away, rubbing first one arm, then the other. He threw himself toward his friends. They left through the side door, glaring back at Sabine.
“Please, you don’t know what you’ve done.” Gemma was still on the floor. “They’ll pay you back one night, Beka. Yates, his friends – they be hard coves.”
Sabine leaned on her elbows. “I told you we should have killed him.” I saw that her brown eyes were just – interested, as if she talked about cropping her hair. “Have you got apple-raisin patties, mistress?”
“Still warm, my lady,” Gemma told her.
Sabine laid out her handkerchief. “I’ll take four, if you please.”
As Gemma opened an oven and laid four patties on the lady knight’s handkerchief, she told me, “I’ll keep tellin’ him you’re with the Dogs now, Beka, but you want to watch for him. And I’ll tell Ma. He listens to Ma.” She curtsied. “Two coppers, my lady.”
Lady Sabine gave her three. “An unusual sort of baker’s assistant they’re hiring in Corus nowadays,” she remarked. “Very tidy work on the wrist grabs, Cooper. Nice, using the counter to anchor yourself and compensate for your weight difference.”
I looked down, not knowing what to say. The feeling of doing Dog work had left me in a rush, and I was shy again.
“I was impressed in that hole on Rovers Street, too. I just think you’ll regret only holding this Yates fellow instead of breaking a joint or three,” she added. “It rarely pays to be easy on that sort.” She pointed a finger at Gemma. “You, mistress, should throw yourself on the mercy of the Goddess’s temple. No woman needs to let a man knock her about as you have done. They will protect you, hide you, even, if need be.” She waited, watching Gemma.
“You don’t understand, my lady,” Gemma said at last. “I have no choice.”
Sabine rolled her eyes. “So they all say.” She scooped up her handkerchief and its contents, then took a patty out and bit into it. “Gods, this is good!” she said, her mouth full. She handed me one, and when her mouth was empty, told me, “Mattes was right about this place. So maybe I’ll be back.” She gave me the tiniest of smiles. “And maybe I’ll follow Master Lout to his lair. Dispose of him without your disapproving eyes looking on, Cooper. In the interest of the public good, of course.”
She left before I thought to curtsy.
“Lady knights.” Gemma shook her head.
I looked at her. “What?”
“They think the river will part for them.” Gemma was rubbing her arms as she looked at the floor. I think she’d forgotten I was there. “She doesn’t know, the men always get their way in the end. That’s why I never married. I see what my sisters get every day.”
I sighed. I wanted to go home and cuddle my cat. Today suddenly felt longer than all last week. “Would you tell Mistress Noll I said hello?” I asked.
Gemma looked at me, then turned and opened the oven. “If Yates doesn’t do it first, of course. Good day to you, Beka.”
I shouldered my pack and left that odd little shop, eating the patty. It was very good. As I finished it, my mind kept circling back to Yates. Does it prosper Mistress Noll to hire the likes of Yates and take delivery from men who look like veterans of the cages?
Wednesday, April 8, 246
I was putting the cloth on the floor this morning when I thought, What if the others tire of breakfast? They keep later nights even than I do. What if the fun of eating pasties with Puppy Dogs and the odd older Dog like Phelan is not as good as an hour or two more of sleep? Then Kora, Aniki, Ersken, and Phelan came all at once, and I knew I was a fool. We had barely filled the cups when Verene and Rosto walked through the door, Verene with a basket of extras from her mother’s workplace and Rosto with pickled eggs.
“I missed breakfast these last two days,” Rosto said, once we were settled. “It’s a nice start to things. Quiet-like.”
Everyone nodded, mouths full. Even I had to agree. I felt easier here, with half of our number on the other side of the law, than I’d felt at Provost’s House.
“Did they admire your bruises?” Verene asked me. “Did they want all the details of the fight? Because you ne’er told us. You were too giddy with the healin’.”
“You had a lady knight,” Aniki said, feeding sausage to Pounce. “Lady Sabine. A bunch of the bully boys who came by Dawull’s court last night and the night before looked like they’d been mule-kicked. They said her and a bunch of her friends who just came back from the east bailed out you and your Dogs.”
I snorted and almost choked. “It was just my lady on her own, and my Dogs, and me. They wished it had taken more than the four of us,” I replied. As Aniki lifted Pounce in the air, my own curst honesty made me add, “Actually, mostly it was her and Tunstall and Goodwin. I did a bit, but they did the true damage.”
“Don’t go all modest,” Ersken said as Aniki kissed my poor cat’s head. “By rights all of you should have been killed. My Dogs say someone ought to do the city a favor and burn the Barrel’s Bottom down, there’s so many fights there. The Night Watch calls it ‘the Barrel of Blood.’”
“My Dogs say your Dogs allus do stupid things like that, to make the rest of us look bad,” Verene said. I glared at her. She held up both of her hands. “I’m just tellin’ you what th
ey said.”
Phelan slung an arm around Verene’s shoulders and kissed her temple. “Your Dogs are worthless scuts, sweeting. Don’t listen when they talk scummer like that. Study the good pairs, like Beka’s Dogs.”
Verene batted her eyes at Phelan. “That bein’ you and your partner?”
Phelan laughed. “We aren’t even nearly so good.”
“Why try, when it’s such an uphill battle?” Rosto asked, and yawned. “When you get in trouble someplace like the Barrel’s Bottom, and other Dogs take forever to come to lend a hand?”
I nudged him with my foot. “Why take the trouble to serve any of the Rogue’s chiefs when they won’t fight to move up at the Court?” I asked him. “Because you’re a rusher. Because we’re Dogs.”
“You speak of bein’ a Dog like it’s somethin’ that’s in the blood,” Verene said with a laugh. “I just didn’t want t’ fish!”
“It’s in Beka’s blood,” Ersken said. “And I have to tell you, I get to meet more interesting people this way.”
