AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The man I’d distracted with my sap saw he and his Rats were beaten. He cursed and ran.
“Puppy,” Goodwin said. She was getting to her feet to take the Rat who still clutched the lady, unless it was the lady clutching him with her teeth.
Goodwin didn’t have to say “fetch.” I grabbed my sap and took off after the fleeing Rat. I think I’d been hoping for a chance like this since I’d fetched Orva Ashmiller. For all the annoyance she’d given me, there was something clean in chasing a Rat. I’d naught else to think on, no birds or spinners to work out, no people to try to understand, no officials to talk to. It was just me, the Rat, and the alleys of the Lower City.
He tried to ditch me. He wasn’t as good at it as Orva, and he didn’t have hotblood wine to keep him going. He didn’t know the back ways so well, for all he belonged to the Court of the Rogue.
One of Kayfer’s lapdogs, I thought as I gained on him block by block. Not used to any real need to run or hide. Just serve the Rogue and be safe. Well, here’s safe for you, my buck, I told myself as I chased him straight into Whippoorwill Mews. Now you’re in a corner.
That’s when it occurred to us both that he had a sword and I a baton.
I grabbed my whistle and blew the call for help. I got it out once. Then he was on me, his sword coming down like a scythe. I gripped my baton at each end and swung it up to block. The sword bit into the wood, struck the lead core, and got stuck. The rusher cursed and kicked at me. I turned, taking his kick on my hip as I twisted my baton. I hoped to yank the sword from his grip but he pulled it free.
He cut sidelong at me. Still holding my baton at each end, I blocked him a second time. He yanked the blade back, taking a chip out of my wood. I scooped my own kick forward and up, between his legs, and slammed a metal codpiece with my foot. Had it been solid metal, not pieces, I might’ve hurt myself. Instead it gave way under my kick. The rusher groaned, his eyes rolling up in his head.
I hadn’t seen him draw a dagger with his free hand. It slid just past my right side, slicing my loose tunic and shirt.
I leaped back. We’d both made mistakes. I hadn’t minded what he was doing with his left hand. He’d not guarded himself against my feet, thinking me a green Pup. Now we’d both learned sommat. He thrust his dagger back into its sheath and kept his sword on guard before him, steadied with both hands. I went from side to side, looking for an opening.
“Don’t be a looby,” I told him, panting. “Give up now or when the other Dogs come, it’s up to you. You’re cornered here.”
You’re really cornered, I heard Pounce say.
“Lay down your sword, in the King’s name,” Tunstall ordered. He’d come up close behind me. “You are under arrest.”
The rusher spat on the ground. Then he placed his long blade gently on a dry patch of stone. “Wasn’t about to surrender to no pimple-faced puttock,” he said. He spat again, aiming for my boots.
“The dagger, too,” I said. I didn’t want to pick up the sword until I was sure he’d no more blades.
“You heard her.” Goodwin had come along with Tunstall. “Stop wasting time. Your friends will go to the cages without you. You don’t want to miss that.”
“We’ll be out before dawn,” he told us. “Th’ Rogue’ll see to ‘t.”
My tripes clenched. I knew he spoke the truth. “Dagger,” I said, my hand sweaty on my baton’s grip. “Don’t make me kick you twice.”
Tunstall and Goodwin moved to stand on either side of me, their batons in their hands. I heard other Dogs behind us. They’d been called by my whistle.
“Where’d she kick you?” Tunstall asked him, as if to pass the time.
The rusher cursed me. Then he fumbled for his dagger and lurched forward to put it by the sword.
“I’ll wager I know,” Goodwin said. The torchlight gleamed on her teeth as she grinned. “Thought our little terrier was wore out from the chase, did you? I guess she taught you. Cooper, get his weapons.”
I picked them up, handing them hilt first to Goodwin. Tunstall grabbed the rusher and shoved him against a nearby house, bringing out a thong to bind the rusher’s hands. I stepped in to search the man. I found boot knives and a knife for the back of his neck. I moved off with a nod to show I’d found the last of his arms.
“Not so fast.” Goodwin came close. She spoke quiet, so the two Dogs who watched us couldn’t hear. “These liars’ fanfares do more than protect a man’s treasure in a fight.” She reached around the rusher and grabbed his metal codpiece.
“Oh, sweet one,” the cove said with a moan, “my lovey, my – “
“Shut up.” Goodwin yanked the codpiece hard. Buttons popped as it came off. The rusher choked on a yell, his eyes rolling. “What kind of scut chafes a Dog who holds his treasures? See, Cooper?” She held it up and slid a coil of wire out of an inner pocket of the piece. Rawhide loops were secured to its ends.
I drooped. I know I drooped. I’d been thinking so well of myself till that moment.
“You missed one, Cooper,” Tunstall said, his voice soft. “But you didn’t let him kill you with that knife, eh?” He shoved the rusher to the Dogs who waited behind us. “Will you take this one along to the collectors? Don’t feel you have to be tender with him.”
“Cut-coin looby, not having a solid metal scoop like the knights wear,” Goodwin remarked, watching the cove waddle off with the Dogs. “Cheap and very stupid – though you don’t see the strangling cord in the cod trick that often. Maybe his mother taught it to him. Cooper, everyone makes mistakes. You just try not to die from them. Let’s see your baton.”
I handed it over, feeling a touch better. I reminded myself to tell Verene and Ersken about the strangling cord. Our teachers hadn’t mentioned that one. Mayhap it wasn’t that popular. They’d mentioned rushers keeping wire and rope cords in a dozen other odd places.
Pounce wound between my feet. I brought Goodwin and Tunstall, he told me. I knew you’d catch that idiot.
Goodwin returned my baton to me. “Not bad for a sword fight. Get the chunk he took out of it fixed before training tomorrow. Come on, Cooper. The night isn’t over yet.” Goodwin steered me out of the mews. Tunstall kept step with us.
“That’s low,” he said as we set off toward our assigned part of town again. “Setting on a couple at Beltane.” He must have known what I was about to ask, because he said, “The young lord’s got a dented head. There was a healer coming when we left to catch up with you. Maybe he’ll be an idiot, maybe not, but that’s up to the healers his da can afford. The lady’s shaken, but she’s not hurt. And your clever cat brought us straight to you.” He leaned down and picked up Pounce. “Otherwise some other Dogs might have been the ones to teach you about the strangling cord.”
“The lordling’s an idiot already,” Goodwin said. She still had her baton out. Now she set it to spinning, casual-like. “Coming into the Lower City with all that flash. Her too. Is it real, do you suppose?”
Tunstall scratched Pounce’s ears. “As real as it gets. You know how it is with these moneyed types, Clary. They think the Common instead of Palace Hill is exciting. Wicked, even.”
“Dangerous, even,” Goodwin replied, her voice mocking. They continued to talk like that, back and forth, gentle-like. That lasted until we ran into the brawl outside the Merry Mead.
The evening continued busy, with no time for supper. Our assigned patrol took us up to the Common. That was luck for hungry Dogs. Each Beltane, Mistress Noll set up a little tent there to sell ready-baked treats. Goodwin sent me over with our coin.
The only maggot in the pasty was Yat
es. He waited on folk alongside his mother. When I stepped up to the counter, he gave me the ugly eye but dared to say not a word about our last meeting in the Daymarket. I filled my handkerchief and thanked Mistress Noll as I handed over our coin. When I went to give our quick meal to my Dogs, I saw they had found Yates’s two friends, the ones I’d seen that afternoon at the Daymarket. Tunstall had placed one of them against a tree. Goodwin used her baton to keep the other at a respectful distance. Seemingly they’d been making deliveries to Mistress Noll’s tent here, too.
“I just don’t see you scuts helping an old lady from the goodness of your heart, Gunnar,” Tunstall was telling his Rat. Tunstall’s baton tip was pressed under Gunnar’s chin, where it made a deep dimple. “You’re rough work. You’ve always been rough work. So if I hear of you harming a hair on Deirdry Noll’s nob, I’ll break yours, understand?”
“You got it wrong, Dog.” Gunnar was the blond cove I’d seen at Yates’s counter in the Daymarket. “Yates’d kill us for it, wouldn’t he?” He looked at the other cove who’d carried flour that day.
“Cut us twelve ways from midnight,” the other Rat told us. “We’d never cross ‘im. Never.”
“Good,” Tunstall said, and lowered his baton. After a moment, so did Goodwin. The two Rats didn’t waste time in getting clear of us.
I offered my Dogs their pasties.
“Funny,” Tunstall said, taking one. “I never found Yates Noll so fearsome.”
“No more I,” replied Goodwin. “And if we’d time to dig deeper, we might, but we need to get down to the Nightmarket. Things are cooling down here.”
It was true. The priests were letting the fires go out. More and more folk were rising from the grass. They would be bound for the taverns and the market to buy trinkets and memories of the night.
