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I checked around once before we went into Goodwin’s. Slapper and the other sixteen birds were still with me. They’d followed me to Ahuda’s, to Jewel’s, and back here.
Tunstall was not there, but Lady Sabine was. She was sharpening her sword with a little stone whilst she talked with Goodwin’s man. Kora and Aniki were there, Aniki dozing in a corner.
There was food on the table – fresh-cooked bacon, eggs, cheese, fresh milk, strawberries, day-old raisin buns. Everyone else looked like they had made a good meal. Goodwin pointed Jewel and me to the plates.
“Your Cooper told me what you’ve learned,” Jewel said. “Where’s Tunstall and Ahuda?”
“Up at my lord’s, asking permission for a Rat catching,” Goodwin said. “If we get it, you and I need to work out who we want and where the crew must wait. It all depends on us Dogging Jens back to where the diggers work. Tunstall’s going to get the gem mage Berryman to help. He owes us some debts and we want to cash them in. We need to be sure we can handle Crookshank’s mage, Vrinday Kayu. We think she’s put a death mark on the guards. Those guards have to live long enough to talk, to give evidence on Crookshank and his people.” Goodwin looked at Kora. “We’re hoping you’ll be able to help Berryman.”
Kora gave her sly smile. “Will he want my help? To him I’m naught but a Scanran hedgewitch.”
“He’ll need convincing, then,” Lady Sabine murmured, inspecting the edge of her sword for nicks.
Kora nibbled a fingernail. Then she nodded. “I can do that.”
Goodwin sat on a stool. “Starting at four, we watch the Market of Sorrows for the guards to pick up their pay. We’ll know them by the death marks. Figure we’ll need Dogs to follow them to the burrow. And then we call the rest of the crew to move in.”
Jewel rubbed his unshaved chin. I could hear the scrape of his whiskers. “Sounds good. You think my lord will approve it?” he asked.
“Ahuda did when we told her,” Goodwin said.
“Then let’s send these young folk home for some rest. Are you in this, my lady?” he asked.
“Wouldn’t miss a moment,” replied Lady Sabine. She thrust her sword into its sheath. “Besides, Mattes might get his head creased if I don’t watch it for him.” She grinned at Goodwin, who actually smiled back.
“We’ll muster where?” Jewel asked Goodwin.
“There’s a stable with a loft on Spidren Way,” Goodwin said. “I’ll get the key and lock up the owner for the time being so he doesn’t blab. Three o’clock.”
I didn’t think I could rest in my crowded rooms, but I knew I was being dismissed. I decided it was time to go make some offerings to the gods. Just in case.
Sometime after dawn on Monday.
The stable loft was hot and stuffy by the time we reached it at mid-afternoon. Berryman kept sneezing. At least he no longer whined once Goodwin offered to give him a nap tap. Kora was posted with Tunstall and Lady Sabine on the other side of the market, holding a spell in her hand that would let her talk to Berryman. Jewel and the other Dogs who would follow the guards once they’d been paid took the places of Aniki’s friends from last night. We couldn’t be sure the diggers’ guards would come to the Spidren Way gate to be paid, so Goodwin arranged for all the gates to be watched. Aniki was with us. She lounged next to the window with Goodwin.
My lord Gershom had given permission for everything. He took but ten guards off Evening Watch, but Ahuda handpicked another ten from the Evening Watches in Flash and Patten districts, solid Dogs who could be trusted. Six of my lord’s personal bodyguards joined them and the Dogs who handled the cage wagons. All of them waited at the kennel, ready to move as soon as they got word from us. We just had to follow the mots and coves who took their pay with death-marked hands. Berryman would make certain we could see that. We’d have to follow a number of them, not knowing which of them were on guard duty with the diggers and which were finished with their work for the day.
When Goodwin got us into the loft that had been locked in last night’s rain, my gut cramped. I didn’t want to be kept to that hot box. I felt like the terrier they’d named me, quivering from head to toe. I was tired of waiting. I wanted to chase some Rat back to the hole where they’d hidden Jack Ashmiller and the others.
Crookshank’s folk were the worst kinds of lawbreakers. They preyed on those whose only value in coin lay in their ability to work. That was wrong. They took the best part of a mot or cove, the one thing someone from the Cesspool could be proud of, and they used it to lure that person to an unmourned death.
“Hello,” Goodwin said. “Cooper. Who’s this? Aniki, you know him?”
I came to the window. Aniki shook her head, but I recognized the cove. “He’s one of Crookshank’s rushers. I’ve seen him about the house months past, when I’ve visited Tansy,” I said. “He hasn’t been with Crookshank at the Court of the Rogue, though.” I looked harder. “Goodwin, his boots.”
There was pinkish mud on the heels of his boots, like he’d mayhap been around pink rock dust.
“Aniki, get Otterkin and her partner,” Goodwin said. “I want ‘em here to follow when this cove comes out.”
Aniki was gone in a heartbeat.
“Good catch on the mud, Cooper,” Goodwin said.
“You noticed it, too,” I replied.
From the corner of my eye I saw her thin smile. “I’d mope if you were better than me so soon. Berryman, did he have the death mark?”
“I didn’t have enough warning,” the mage said, and sniffed. “I wasn’t ready.”
“Dogs have to be ready,” Goodwin said. “I thought you were all eager for true Dog work.”
“Why can’t I be on watch with Tunstall?” Berryman asked.
“Because we tossed a coin and I lost. Are you ready to check or not?”
“I’m ready,” Berryman mumbled. Worked up as I was, I tried not to laugh. Tunstall was better than Goodwin at making the gem mage feel important.
Slapper fluttered onto the sill of the stable loft.
“Crone shield us, what’s he doing here?” Goodwin asked me.
Behind him I saw the pigeons with the other diggers’ ghosts settle on the roof of the Market of Sorrows. They stared at us, yellow, blue, gray, and dark eyes steady. Knowing, like.
“He thinks we’ve got something,” I said as I lifted Slapper off the sill. He pecked at my hands. I flinched. Berryman came closer to sneeze and stare. “All the diggers’ birds do. They’ve followed me since dawn. The others are on the roof across the alley.” I reached in our sack of food for a roll. I crumbled it in my hand so he might peck at that instead of me.
“There go Otterkin and her partner – good, they’ve turned the corner,” Goodwin said with satisfaction. “Grouse though I may about Otterkin’s mage work, she knows her street craft. And here comes our Rat. Berryman?”
Berryman stuck his head between mine and Goodwin’s. His lips moved. On the back of the Rat’s hand a sign writ in yellow fire blazed. Yet he didn’t so much as twitch.
“That’s your death mark,” Berryman said. He drew back. Sweat rolled down his cheek. “A good one. I – I think I could counter it, but…perhaps not.” He swallowed. “I will be glad for Mistress Kora’s help after all.”
“Very well, then. Just make sure you keep a couple of these guards alive. We need them to bear witness against them that hire and pay them,” Goodwin said. “But they don’t all have to live.”
Slapper fluttered up to my shoulder. He could set there, stump tucked into the hollow of my collarbone, but he wasn’t steady. If he slipped, he’d grab my skin and hold on with his beak and the claws of his good foot. Carefully I lifted the bird down and cradled him in my arm, stroking his feathers. “Soon,” I whispered. “Please, Crone and Black God. You and the others will be avenged soon.”
Pounce jumped to the sill. Leaning in toward me, he touched his nose to Slapper’s beak.
“Settle, all of you,” Goodwin said. “Too much movement up here and we’ll
be catching someone’s eye. If those slave market guards were mine, I’d kick their bums between their ears for working behind the gates instead of in front.”
“Shadier behind the gates?” Berryman suggested. He sneezed into a handkerchief.
“They’re supposed to care about folk watching the market, not their own comfort,” Goodwin told him. “But what do you expect of guards who work the slave business? Lazy scuts, or they’d get real jobs – Here we go. I know this one. She’s been on Crookshank’s payroll for years. Must’ve done something to vex him bad to get this job. If she has it. Berryman?”
He muttered. We saw the yellow flash even as the hard-looking mot passed through the market gate.
“How can they not see that?” Goodwin asked.
I missed the answer. I went to look at the foot of the loft stairs. Aniki was below. She hadn’t chosen to make the climb when she returned. I glanced back at Goodwin, who told me, “Jewel and Yoav.”
I passed their names to Aniki. She went off to let them know we had someone for them to follow.
The third death-marked Rat went to Tunstall, my lady, and Kora. The fourth was Goodwin’s, Berryman’s, Aniki’s, and mine. We went out, scattered. Berryman seemed to be a merchant looking to buy property. Aniki was herself, a rusher on an errand or looking for work. Goodwin and me were in uniform. Goodwin had taken the Puppy trim off my clothes in the loft.
“A Dog alone with a Puppy is unusual; two Dogs, even two females, isn’t,” she said when I gasped. “You can sew it back on tonight.”
As we moved on up into the Cesspool, I could see Berryman was ill at ease. He stood out, too. Finally he raised a hand. I saw a glint of yellow. Then he seemed to be gone. I say “he seemed,” because he did not think to avoid the wet edges of the deeper ruts. We could see his footprints. Aniki grinned, following the prints with her eyes. At last she moved ahead of Berryman and our Rat to buy ale from one vendor and a turnover from another. She drank and ate, ambling just ahead of the Rat, keeping him in the corner of her eye. Then she slowed enough to let him move ahead again.
Pounce had it easier than any of us. No one noticed a black cat in the street. He stopped here and there to sniff aught of interest. Wherever our Rat stopped, Pounce was there, close enough to see up the Rat’s nose. I was so proud. Now there was a proper god, making himself useful!
Since my thought might be deemed blasphemy, I said silent prayers to the Goddess and to Mithros. I begged forgiveness and asked them not to misunderstand. Since I wasn’t blasted where I stood, I guess they forgave me, or they hadn’t heard my blasphemy.
Our Rat never guessed he was followed. Without a look behind he went to Mulberry Street, where he turned southwest. He walked but a scant two blocks down before he stopped and looked about.
We did not halt nor flinch. That would have given us away. There were plenty of folk about at this hour. Dogs patrolled out here often enough. Aniki stopped by a knife grinder’s cart and gave over her dagger for sharpening. Berryman’s footprints appeared in the mud a yard from our Rat. Lucky for us the mage had stopped sneezing once we were out of the loft.
The guard walked up to a ramshackle house three stories high and banged twice on the door, then five times. It opened. He walked inside. Pounce trotted over and leaped atop a crate that sat beside the door. He curled up there in the sun.
A moment later the footprints crossed the street to us. I heard Berryman say, “There are watch spells on the place. I can handle them.”
Trees lined the other side of the street, on the edge of some empty land. “Cooper, into that tree,” Goodwin said. She meant a great old oak whose heavy branches would give me an easy climb, one that stood right across from the house. “I’ll be up behind you. Berryman, let the others know where we are. Carefully. They can find me here. And then I hope you can keep that no-seeing on you for a time.” We waited until a hay wagon passed between us and the house, then climbed into the oak.
Aniki left the knife grinder with a coin and found a comfortable spot under our tree. She pretended to sleep. Pigeons came down from the sky. Some perched along the roofs to either side of the house we watched. Slapper, White Spice, Mumper, and Ashes settled around me. None of them made a sound.
Crookshank must have chosen this house because a vein of the pink rock that carried opals in it came up in its cellar. Did he know how easy it would be for us to spy on it? No one built anything on the southwest side of Mulberry Street. Two hundred years ago, they say, metal human-bird monsters called Stormwings and giant human-headed spiders known as spidrens fought a great battle here. The land was cursed. Brave souls hunted rabbits in the tall grasses, but mostly the place was left to weeds and trees. We could hide a hundred Dogs to watch this house and Crookshank’s guards would never know.
Nevertheless, we were lucky no guards were posted outside. Of course, if they’d been, the local folk would have noticed and talked.
We’d not been there long before Tunstall, Lady Sabine, and Kora came in the wake of their Rat. The Rat entered the house. Our friends found places to watch the house and settled to wait.
Two hard coves and a mot soon went in. I knew two of them: the ones Jewel, Otterkin, and their partners had been set to follow. Berryman whispered up to Goodwin that these Dogs had come and were hidden away nearby.
Those Rats and diggers have a nasty place to work, I thought. All the windows were shuttered, despite the heat. I saw another house closed up the same way, two buildings down, and another just behind this one, on a thin alley to its right. Families had lived in these places once. Where did they go? Did Crookshank toss them out or kill them?
Carefully I moved down a few branches and whispered to Goodwin about the shuttered houses. When she nodded, I went back to my post.
Seven rushers left the place as we watched. Was that all of them? We had no idea how many were used with the diggers. The guards looked weary, coves at the end of a day’s work. Berryman worked his spell from wherever he stood, showing us the death mark on their hands.
Tunstall waited until the clocks struck six before he came over to our hiding place from his. The sun had gone behind the wall for the Lower City, making it easy for him to keep to the shadows.
Leaning against the tree, he murmured up to Goodwin, “I think the rabbits are in the burrow for the night, Clary.”
“I think you’re right,” she said. “Berryman? Tell Ahuda where we are. It’s time to move.”
The mage had a fresh spell to link him to our raiding party. He used it now. Kora seemed to appear next to Aniki. I’d have thought her part of the tall grasses. Certainly I’d never seen her footprints in mud. “It’s about time,” she murmured to Aniki. “I’ve been playing good little washerwoman for weeks. I’m ready for some fun.”
Aniki, still seated between two knotted roots, grinned up at her. “Rosto is going to cry when he finds out he missed this.”
Tunstall moved over to a screen of tall grass. That was when I saw Lady Sabine was also there, stretched out on her belly, counting over a set of worry beads in her long fingers. She had unsheathed her sword and placed it on the grass beside her, ready for use in case someone surprised her.
I’d thought to be hungry and stiff. I’d even thought to be bored, though the stream of Cesspool folk, carts, and messengers on horseback was interesting. As I sat on my thick branch, carefully brushing away ants and easing out cramps a bit at a time, more pigeons began to come. They roosted in the trees all around me. They made no sound the others could hear. But me – their ghosts had plenty to say to me.
“Ma, he offered cakes an’ threw a bag over my head.”
“Papa, I’m hungry an’ she said ye have t’ pay ‘em t’ let me come home!”
“A monster grabbt me clean outen me bed!”
It went on and on, the cries of little ones taken in the dark. The pigeons on the roofs across the street dove at the newcomers, trying to drive them off. They’d get caught in the twigs and nearly break their silly necks befo
re they got themselves right again. White Spice, Mumper, Ashes, and Slapper flapped their wings to distract me until Goodwin hissed, “Do they want folk to notice us?”
They stopped flapping. The children’s ghosts talked on.
I glared at Slapper as tears sneaked from my eyes. You sarden bastard, I thought at him. You and your flock kept them from me, didn’t you? You was so bound that I would free you first – war among ghosts! I’m caught in a war of ghosts, may the Crone witness it!
Then I saw movement down the street by torchlight. I heard rustles in the grass behind me. Tunstall returned from his hiding place beside my lady. The shadows had grown so long I could no longer see her.
“Ahuda’s here,” Tunstall said. “Berryman, Kora, get ready.” Berryman appeared right next to Tunstall. He was sweating, but he wore a big grin. Tunstall clasped his shoulder, then called softly, “Clary? Cooper? Time to go to work.”
We climbed down from the oak. I held on to the tree when I got down, my muscles stiff and sore. That was when riders came trotting up Mulberry. They drew up before the house – three nasty-looking rushers and Vrinday Kayu. I saw them clear because one had a torch. He set it in a stand by the house, then held Kayu’s horse as she slid off.
Goodwin whispered, “Berryman! Kora! It’s the mage – don’t let her go inside!”
The street echoed with a roar I’d heard once in Crookshank’s, the sound of a cat like a god. The horses reared, fighting the reins. In the torchlight I saw Pounce leap onto Kayu’s back, his claws shining in the dark.
Blue-green and yellow fire shot across the street from our mages. Both colors dropped over her like fishing nets, passing through my cat like he wasn’t there.
“I thought I’d have to fight only the woman’s spells, not the woman herself,” Berryman complained.
Kayu tried to throw Pounce off her. She was screeching. Magic rose from her in a reddish mist. It flowed across the street toward Kora and Berryman, following the lines of their own spells.
