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She grabbed my hands when I came to her door in the inner hall. “A Birdie told me ye’re talkin’ with them as ran afoul of the Shadow Snake.” She pulled me into her rooms. “Ye’ve been seekin’ all over the Lower City. Kora, Aniki, even Rosto – they’ve been askin’ questions for ye.” She didn’t look angered or fearful. Curious, more like.
“Someone’s got to put a stop to it, mistress,” I said. “My Dogs, Goodwin and Tunstall, are on it.”
She gave me a sly look. “They’re fine Dogs, but the one I know that’s seekin’ is you. And the mot as asked to talk with ye learned you was doin’ it, Beka. I never even heard the Snake got her little one, never! She told us all it was slave stealers that sold ‘im to the Yamanis, swore it was. O’ course we believed her.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “Mistress, if we might get past the riddles?”
“My brother-in-law’s sister, Amaya Painter,” my landlady told me. “She’s a mage. Three years gone her little boy, done vanished. Now she heard of ye askin’ about the Shadow Snake. She asked if ye’d come see her.” The address she gave was up by Patten District. “Not that she allus lived there. She bought that place not long after the boy was took,” my landlady said. “She used to live just two blocks up this lane. Done well, she has. Mayhap the gods made it up to her for losin’ her only child.”
If her little one was took that long ago, she’d be one of the first Snake victims. She’d be worth seeing. I went up to my rooms to change into a dress. To my startlement, Ersken sat on the landing by my door.
He gave me his shyest smile. “Tell me you’re going to talk to people who’ve seen the Snake, and I can come with you,” he said. “I remembered on my way home that if I show my face, my sisters will make me run errands with them. It wouldn’t be so bad, but of late they’ve arranged it so we ‘accidentally’ run into their friends who aren’t spoken for.”
I grinned as I took out my key. “You could tell them you are spoke for,” I said.
“And I’d have to explain about Kora. Then they’ll wail and tell Mama and Papa – Beka, I’d sooner walk the Cesspool naked. In the dark. Just let me come, so I can tell them I was off seeking, will you?”
Of course I said yes. Ersken and Aniki had both gone to speak with the Snake witnesses on days when Kora couldn’t. Mots in general liked Ersken. Today he’d be more useful still. I didn’t like to have Kora along when I talked to other mages. There was no telling how mages would get on with one another. They were like cats that way.
When Ersken, Pounce, and I saw Mistress Painter’s house in Patten District, I thought my landlady had a point about the gods making it up to the mage for her child being took. The house was half stone, half timber. Magical signs were writ about the windows and set in the flagstone path.
“The Snake must’ve been mad, to go after a real mage,” Ersken said as I rapped on the door.
“You’d think so,” I said. My cat sniffed at a symbol painted on the doorstep. “Pounce, leave that be.”
The door opened as sparks and a puff of nasty smoke shot from the symbol.
Pounce looked at the woman who’d opened the door and yowled. Awful work.
The woman looked at him, her face thoughtful. Finally she inspected Ersken, then me. “Do you know who this creature is?”
“I’d prefer not to think on it much,” I said. “It complicates things. Mistress Painter? You asked for me. I’m Beka Cooper.”
Mistress Painter turned her eyes to Ersken, narrowing them.
“This is Ersken Westover. He’s been plenty of help to me in this,” I said.
She stood aside, holding the door open for us. “Come inside. Wipe your feet.”
Ersken wiped his boots eagerly. “Do you know what the cat is?”
Mistress Painter looked at me, then at Pounce. “Only that he dwells in the Divine Realms,” she told Ersken. “They glow, to them with the power to see it. But he could be anything from there. What he does here…”
She seemed to want an answer. “He eats a fair amount of fish,” I told her. “And he gives kittens to his friends. Mistress Painter, our day is short, what with training and the Rogue being in a bad mood and all. I thought you wanted speech with me for the sake of the child you lost?”
That seemed to wake her up. She remembered we had not come to buy charms from her. She dropped into a chair. She could afford a sitting room decorated with statues, herb wreaths, and hangings. There was a corner shrine to the god Apetekus, Guardian of Slaves. The braided flower garlands were dried up, the candles unlit. If she had given offerings to the god, it was some time ago.
“My friend’s grumpy,” Ersken said to Mistress Painter, his eyes kind. “Her Dogs are on another case just as frustrating as this. And the Rogue’s angry with Crookshank. You’ll have heard about the murdered guards and soldiers.” He talked to her as he would to someone official, someone who read the daily reports and knew the city news. She softened, listening to him. It’s his boy’s face and them blue eyes. He gives off respect like a pretty smell, too. “Beka lives in the Lower City, so it upsets her more than most. That’s why she couldn’t let the Shadow Snake stories alone.”
Mistress Painter looked at me. “I heard. What makes you think you can catch him?”
“Because my Dogs are Tunstall and Goodwin, and I report all I do to them.” It was my turn to build on what Ersken had started with her. “I’m doing the questioning for now. I tell them all I’ve gathered. When they know who we’re after, we’ll hobble him and his fellow Rats. And Tansy Lofts is my friend. I knew her boy, Rolond.” I held up a hand. I didn’t want to hear what she was about to say about Crookshank. “I don’t care about her grandfather-in-law,” I said. “Tansy didn’t ask to have Rolond killed no more than you asked to have your lad took.”
The mage reached into her tunic for a leather packet. She drew signs on it with her finger, releasing spells, I supposed.
Pounce sneezed. Mistress Painter glared as if he’d made a scornful remark. “They’re good enough for the Lower City, Master Immortal or whatever you are.”
“My sweetheart says he’s mayhap a constellation,” Ersken said, being helpful.
Mistress Painter started to make a magical sign on her chest, then stopped. “Interesting,” she said. Then she coughed and opened the packet. With fingers that shook, she took out a sheet of parchment and gave it over to me.
By now I know one of the Snake’s notes as well as I know my own name. There were differences in this one. There was a clumsy head on the snake. The curves were more round, not so long. The writing was shaky, as if him that did it was scared.
“When was this?” I asked Mistress Painter.
“Firefall,” she said. It was the mage name for the first of February, a powerful night for certain kinds of spells. I had a feeling Mistress Painter hadn’t the power even to draw the circles that began such spells. “Firefall, 243.”
I looked at Ersken. He blinked. It was the earliest Snake stealing we’d heard of. Could it be the first?
“You lived here?” I asked, though I knew she hadn’t.
Mistress Painter shook her head. “Westberk Street, just off Stuvek,” she said. “A smaller house.” Her lips quivered. “Happier…Calum was the most independent wee lad. He’d be out of our loft before my spells let me know, out the door before the bells could ring. He near drove my man and me crazy.” Remembering, she lost the polished talk she’d picked up here in Patten District. “Vonti, my husband, he doted on Calum. Always said we should have more little ones, when I could hardly keep an eye on the baby and sell my potions and charms. Vonti said he made enough for us. When Calum got taken, Vonti was in the streets for hours, calling and calling. He’d be in the taverns, the markets, bringing back word of this spell and that I could try.” She looked down. Tears dropped in her lap.
“But you got the note,” I said when the tears had stopped. I looked at it and read what the Snake asked for. “You had a – What’s this it says? A ruby pen-d
u-lum?” It was a word I had read before but never had to say aloud, the name for some mage tool that hung from a chain.
The mot wiped her eyes without looking up. “I thought it was a joke.” She said it like we’d accused her of something. “The Shadow Snake? I’d told Calum t’ mind hisself or the Snake would have him! Eat his beets and stay in the fence or the Snake would come! It was a joke, I was sure of it, a cruel joke. The whole neighborhood knew I’d a ruby pendulum. I’d bragged of it like a fool, bragged of its powers.”
“You didn’t pay the Snake,” Ersken said to her gently. “Any woman would think the same.”
“And your man?” I asked. I gave no sympathy. Ersken would do that for us both. I’d learn sommat in the way she acted when I broke through her gratitude to him. I saw something of importance now in the way she drew back from me. “You didn’t tell him.” I told her, I didn’t ask her.
“I said, I thought it was a cruel joke.” She looked away from me again. “That anyone might send a note like that was hard. I never even showed it to Vonti. Before, that note would have torn his heart. After – after Calum didn’t come home, it tore mine.” She glared at me. “I cursed them that took my child.”
“Did it work?” I asked, not letting her glare frighten me. For one thing, Pounce sat on my feet. It was good to have Pounce nearby when I vexed a mage. For another, she had not found her little boy, for all the spells she had tried.
“I need sommat of the one I cursed, and I had naught,” she told me. “Naught but this note, and it’s useless. I’d already tried spells on it. Spells to find Calum, to find his kidnappers, to find even where he’d been. Clever bastards took the charms I’d put on Calum to bring me to him, and pitched them in a fountain. Without them, my skills were no good.” Her head hung loose, like her neck couldn’t hold it up. “I’m fair enough with healing, desire. Things of the body. Folk think I can see a bit, but it’s all in knowing the neighborhood and the ways of them that live here. I made them think I was better than I am.”
I looked at Apetekus’s shrine. “You never got him back?”
Mistress Painter sighed. “Never. I lied. I told folk he’d been taken by slavers, and they sold him to the Yamani Islands. He was a page in the emperor’s palace, wearing silk all day. I told them – I told Vonti – I could see him, every day. I lied so well that Vonti left to go there. To buy our son back. That was two years gone, and he’s not returned. His ship went down with all hands off the coast of Scanra.”
“Our sorrow for yours,” Ersken whispered. “If only you’d gone to the Dogs, Mistress Painter. If you’d taken his sheets and blankets, the scent hounds might have picked something up.”
She stared at him. “Are you cracked? What had his bedding to do with it?”
“They took him from bed, right?” Ersken asked it slow, as if he let the words drip through her brain. “Like the others.”
“Calum was took in the Nightmarket,” Mistress Painter said. From her look, she thought we were mad. “Vonti was done with his work for the week, so we thought we’d have a sweet, wander about, see the sights. I’d a little extra from delivering a babe, so we bought cinnamon for our porridge and honey fritters for that night. We were talkin’, and…and…” She fell silent, her eyes on her lap. She’d spoken of it so many times she could no longer cry.
My ears buzzed. “You couldn’t see him. You called for him and he didn’t call back,” I said. Mistress Painter nodded. I went on, “You were in Spicers’ Row. And everyone from the neighborhood knew you worked magic with a genuine ruby pendulum.”
“I wore it for a necklace,” the woman mumbled. “I was proud and foolish, and my child paid. I know he is dead, and my husband is dead. Nowadays I do well and I have the ruby to warm my dead heart.”
“Other people didn’t show off what was precious to them,” Ersken said, his eyes on me. “The Snake preyed on them, even so.” He could tell by the way I rubbed my nose that I was thinking. “If the Snake heard of it – Beka’s found that the Snake learns about people’s treasures – it wouldn’t matter if you wore it or no. You could have buried it in your garden with no one to see, and the Snake would still have picked you. The Snake’s a greedy pot of puke, Mistress.”
The first Snake stealing was a child right out of Spicers’ Row, I thought. Ersken talked on with Mistress Painter. He promised her we’d give the note back when we were done. He told her we’d send word if we found anything out.
I was thinking, The Snake saw that pendant and wanted it. He grabbed Calum then and there. Of all the folk on Spicers’ Row then and now, the one who keeps coming under our noses is Yates Noll.
“How did he get so clever after years of small messes?” I asked Pounce as we left the house.
“Who?” Ersken asked.
I looked at him. What should I do? “I think I’m supposed to tell Goodwin and Tunstall first,” I said at last. “It’s an idea confirmed, but they may still think it’s Puppy piddle.”
Ersken halted me in the middle of the street, out in the glaring sun. “Be very careful, Beka,” he said, his eyes sober. “If the Snake, or the Snake’s gang, starts to think you might know enough to have a real name? They might try dousing you and anyone else you’ve told. Nobody wants the death that waits for a child killer on Execution Hill.”
Sweat was rolling down my back. The day had come on scorching. “We can’t go worrying about what Rats will do to us, Ersken,” I told him. “It just gets in the way of bagging them.”
He smiled at me slowly, the corners of his eyes crinkling up. “As you say, Guardswoman Terrier.”
“Stop that,” I ordered, feeling very, very odd – not over the smile, though when Ersken smiled at someone, he put all his heart into it. “Don’t go calling me ‘Terrier.’ Names like that belong to them as do big deeds. I’ve done none.” I walked off, as much to get into the shade as to get away from the idea of having a nickname before I was even a Dog.
Ersken trotted to catch up with me. The sweat was soaking his brown curls, but elsewise he didn’t seem to mind the heat. He clapped me on my shoulder as we turned onto Stormwing Street. “You’ll do big deeds, though, Beka. Everyone knows it. Even your Dogs. The only one who doubts it is you.”
“Are you forgetting ‘Fishpuppy’?” I asked him. “How ‘bout the fact I still can’t give the Magistrate a report without my tongue going in knots? Or – “
Sommat soft and wet plopped against my back. I smelled it as I turned – pure scummer. Ersken scrabbled in his pocket for a handkerchief to wipe it off before it dripped over more of the back of my dress. I passed him mine as I looked for them as threw it.
They stood at a corner, Orva and Jack Ashmiller’s three children. The middle one, a girl if my memory served, was the one whose hands were brown with muck. The older one was a girl, too. She kept the littlest close to her by a cord tied to her wrist and his. That one was plainly a boy. He wore no napkin, only a shirt.
I walked up to them, furious. I hate scummer on me, always have. I hate the stink of it and the feel that I might as well be back on Mutt Piddle Lane. I was so angry I tripped over their begging bowl. Three whole coppers fell out.
That stopped me. I bent and gathered the coins, tossing them up and down in my hand. They stared at me, not moving. They feared I would take the money.
“Does your da know you’re begging?” I asked the oldest one.
“Who cares if he does?” the middle one said. “He done left us, and the landlord kicked us out. And it’s your fault!” she yelled, her face gone crimson. “You great sarden puttock! You rutting pig! You took our ma, and then Da hunted and hunted for work and he couldn’t get none!” She would have thrown herself at me, but Ersken got behind her to grab her by the back of her tunic. She fought, trying to get to me, not even thinking to turn on him.
“Excuse me,” he said at last. “It’s too hot for this.” He gathered her up with an arm about her waist. Then he carried her on his shoulder to a horse trough across the street
as she screeched. He dumped her in with a great splash. That silenced her.
I looked at the oldest girl. “Did your da say he had work when he left?”
She’d reeled the boy tight up against her side and clutched him close. He was squirming. “What?”
I repeated my question. “Ersken won’t hurt your sister,” I added. “And at least now she don’t have scummer on her hands. Did your da say he had work? It’s important.”
“Don’t talk to her!” screamed her sister as the passersby laughed or bustled on their way. “She’s a dirty, evil, gods-curst – ” Ersken hung her upside down, using one hand to modestly keep her skirt around her knees as he held her calves to his chest with the other. She could breathe – just. She could not swear at me or at him.
The older girl just looked at me. She wouldn’t open her gob even if Ersken beat her sister’s head against the street. I fished in my belt purse for a coin and flinched when I brought it out. It was a silver noble. I started to put it back, then saw the lad’s eyes on me. He sucked on his fist. My brothers had done that when they was hungry. I put the coin in the begging bowl.
The older girl scooped all the coins from the bowl before I might change my mind. “He said they was digging, but it was secret,” she said. “They wasn’t to tell a soul, a’cos there was only a few jobs, and folk would mob ‘em, work bein’ hard to find.”
I whistled. It was a good story and partway true.
“He said he only told me a’cos I had to know he wasn’t leavin’ us for always. He’d come home soon with the rent money and more. I was t’ keep the door bolted and pretend we wasn’t there, and make the food last. But he was gone three days, and the landlord busted the door and kicked us out.” She was crying. “He give us the bowl and said if we got enough, he’d let us back in. An’ he laughed.”
