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I stammered apologies, seemingly trying to get my baton untangled from his legs. That was a trick to manage, with him being so nimble. He almost freed himself twice before I thought we’d been at it long enough that he’d be too flustered to think to check his boot top soon. By the time we stood, Dawull of Waterfront led the guards as they dragged the screaming Crookshank from the hall. The chiefs now went to Kayfer to congratulate him on his escape. Goodwin came over to straighten my clothes and scold me for my clumsiness. As she did, I passed her the leather-wrapped lump that had been in Rosto’s boot.
“Now, Clary, the Pup can’t help it,” Tunstall said, watching us. “Her second day, after all. She’s yet to get used to things breaking out sudden-like.” He knew something was up. I saw it in his eyes. I met his gaze and raised my brows, flicking my eyes beyond his shoulder to warn him we were about to have company. Goodwin saw me do it and turned. So did Tunstall.
Kayfer nodded to them as he passed us. He offered his hand to Rosto, whose mots fussed over him, tugging at his clothes. With the Rogue standing there, they stepped back to take positions just behind Rosto. Aniki hooked her hands in her sword belt. Kora folded hers before her, lowering her long lashes.
Rosto took the hand that Kayfer offered. “The least I could do, Majesty. I saw the knife’s shape against the old cuckoo’s tunic. Sad work your guards done searching ‘im, you ask me.”
Kayfer’s smile had a lot of friendliness in it. “You’ve a good eye. Are you and your gixies here lookin’ for work? My gate crew goes for a swim tonight, unless they convince me they can make their way back into my good graces as wounded mumpers.”
I winced. A choice between death and life as a maimed beggar was a hard one.
“Majesty, you’re not talking of breaking the law in violence before three Dogs, are you?” Tunstall asked. His voice was so polite he might have been speaking of temple services. “We can’t have that on our watch. Not when we’re standing right here.”
Kayfer looked up at Tunstall and laughed. “Never a bit, Mattes Tunstall. Why don’t you and Goodwin come settle our business. Young Rosto and I can talk later. Maybe extra sweetenin’ will make it into this week’s Happy Bag, to assure you I’d never do violence with the Dogs out.” He glanced at me and then pinched my cheek. “Leave the Puppy. She doesn’t look like she’ll last.”
I clenched my jaw so tight I heard my teeth creak.
He led Goodwin and Tunstall back to his precious throne. I took the rest position, baton gripped two-handed before me, my feet braced a forearm’s width apart. Those who’d heard Kayfer enjoyed a laugh at my expense before going about their other business.
“A nice trick, lifting that pouch from me.” Rosto stood at my elbow. “If you’re a Fishpuppy like the gossip says, it’s because you’re so slippery. I don’t suppose you’d take a silver noble to tell me what it is, once your Dogs have a look? From the feel it’s gems, but it never hurts to be certain.”
I forgot myself enough to glare at him. His eyes were mocking. I looked away just as quick as I’d glared. It was one thing to trip the cove on Goodwin’s orders, and quite another to talk to him. Besides, I was on duty.
“Not taking offense over a bit of bribery, are you?” There was mockery in his voice as well as his eyes. “On the very night your Dogs are here to collect their bribes from the Rogue?”
I glared at the floor this time. I expected a cityman to talk so foolish, not an experienced rusher. “That’s different. That’s for all the work every one of us does, to keep the streets orderly. You’re asking me to sell out my Dogs.”
I saw his booted feet rock back on his heels.
“Hel-lo! It has a bark and a bite!” He sounded startled. “Here I was thinking you’re a mousy little bit. But you’re not mousy, are you?”
Seeing the start of movement, I blocked his arm before his slap touched my face. I turned my hand around to grip the inside of his wrist. When I found the gap between two of the tendons there, I dug my thumbnail deep into it.
“Ow,” he said, trying to yank free. I’d put my hand so the harder he tugged, the deeper I could thrust my thumbnail.
“Rosto, you take shy as fearful. Why would a coward become a Dog? There’s easier ways for a pretty gixie to make a living.” Aniki propped one elbow on Rosto’s collarbone and leaned on him like he was a convenient post. She smiled down at me. “Normally he’s not thick about mots, but he’s slow when they’re not in love with him. Me and Kora had to knock him around until he got us figured out. Say you’re sorry, Rosto, and don’t try to bribe the nice Puppy again.”
“I’m sorry, all right? I’m bleeding.”
I had broken his skin. I took my hand away and wiped my thumb on my breeches. That was the good thing about black. It didn’t show stains.
It was easier to look into Aniki’s smiling blue eyes than Rosto’s. I told her, “Two days as a Dog and I’ve my first bribe offer. I think it’s a record.”
She laughed and cuffed Rosto lightly. “She’s shy, cabbage head, not stupid.”
Rosto had a handkerchief pressed to the wound I’d left in his wrist. “So I’m learning. What’s your name, then, shy-not-stupid Puppy?”
I told him my name. There was no reason not to. Besides, I had a feeling that I’d see these three again. If Kayfer didn’t decide it was to his advantage to kill such talented new people, they might rise high in the Court of the Rogue.
I saw movement at my side. Kora stepped in next to me, cuddling Pounce in her arms. “I heard folk say last night that your mother was an herbalist.” She had a soft, pretty voice and demure eyes. “So then you might be able to tell me where I could get good dried and fresh herbs, the reliable sellers? We’re still learning our way around. With so many markets I hardly know where to look.”
It was odd to speak of something innocent. Odd, but nice. Rosto had an interest in the subject of herbs, more than I expected of a cove. He even argued with Kora about the benefits of dried chamomile against fresh for lightening hair. Aniki drifted away to play dice with some of the rushers.
“So, Cooper,” Rosto said after Kora had thanked me, “how quick is this Rogue to wield the whip?” When I looked at him and waited, he explained, “That Crookshank fellow. What did the Rogue call him?”
“Ammon,” I said. “That’s his birth name, Ammon Lofts. In the streets he’s Crookshank, scale and landlord.”
“Ammon Lofts,” Rosto said. “Him. Your Rogue daren’t let him go unpunished, can he? Not after Master Lofts called Crookshank spits at his feet in front of his whole court.”
I know as well as anybody Crookshank must pay for what he’s done, but it’s been three years since Kayfer pulled up and belted his own breeches. It was folly to say as much, though. “You’d have to ask the Rogue,” I said at last. “How was it done in Scanra?”
“Right then and there,” Rosto told me. “The one time I saw it done. Poor fool was drunk. Not that it stopped our Rogue.” He went on with the story, with Kora to put in the bits he left out, about the Rogue for Scanra. At last my Dogs returned, their packs with the Happy Bags heavy on their backs. Rosto and Kora nodded goodbye as Pounce and I fell in behind them.
As we walked out of that house, I felt visible. The Rogue’s Happy Bags had more than just the coin in bribes paid to the Jane Street kennel. They also held gems, fine statues, magical devices, and other items. Now we walked into the Cesspool with fortunes on the backs of my Dogs. They do this every week and live? The hair prickled on the back of my neck. Surely this was asking a great deal even from them.
Usually pairs took the Bags to collection points, where armed crews gathered the week’s earnings to be split among the Dogs. Did we have such a crew? I wanted to ask. Or did we carry the Rogue’s Bags alone, to make a point about his power in the Cesspool and ours? What if the Dogs thought that no one would dare try to rob the Rogue’s own Bags?
“Stop sweating, Puppy,” Goodwin told me as the gates closed behind us. “It’s a thing of pride,
to go in there and come out on our own. The Rogue’s always known that, if anything happens to the Dogs who call for the Happy Bags, his stronghold will be ash by dawn. Some laws a madman breaks. But we’re not stupid.”
A block away, five Dogs with horses waited for us. Three were mounted and armed with crossbows. I knew them: they were part of the guard who served my lord Gershom personally. Jakorn had taught me to use a crossbow. He grinned and nodded to me. The two guards on foot I knew from the Jane Street kennel. They took the packs from Tunstall and Goodwin with a little conversation, then looked at me.
“She manage her first visit with the Rogue and his milk-fed geldings?” asked one of them.
“She did well for us. We’ll keep her,” Tunstall told them. “Run along, children. We have work to do yet. And Ahuda doesn’t like to wait.”
They trotted off into the darkness of the Lower City. Goodwin was still watching them when she asked me, “So did he try to bribe you? Rosto?”
“Yes,” I replied. “He wanted to know what was in the thing he took from Crookshank.”
“We’ll have a look over supper,” Tunstall said. “Very nice work with the baton, Cooper.”
“I liked how you shielded it with your body, so he couldn’t see you use it to tangle him up,” Goodwin said. “You outthought him.”
I shook my head, and Tunstall saw it. “You planned for him being better than you?” I nodded. “Smart Puppy,” he said with approval. “You earned your supper again for the night.”
“Well, she has a while till she gets it,” Goodwin said, making sure her gorget was fastened. Tunstall was doing the same. “We’ve a way to go before we can think of eating.” She pulled out the gloves tucked into her belt and put them on. They had mail stitched on the backs and palms. She then strapped her wrist guards over the edges of the gloves. Tunstall’s gloves had metal straps on the back instead of mail, though he had mail over his palms.
Goodwin looked me over. “We need to get you a gorget, Cooper. And proper gloves. Leather isn’t good enough in the Cesspool. Stick close to us for tonight.”
“I’ll see to the gear,” Tunstall added. He clapped me on the shoulder. “It may take a couple of days. Should be quiet, with all their chiefs and rushers in for the Happy Bag, Cooper. They like to frolic in the Cesspool once Kayfer turns them loose, to show who’s on top and who’s low-down. Most folk will keep out of sight.”
I soon realized that Tunstall’s idea of a quiet night and mine are different. By the time we reached Mulberry Way, we’d stopped three robberies, two casual beatings, and two tavern brawls. At least, my Dogs did. I was ordered to stand off and watch. It was an honor, so neatly did they work. We hobbled no one. My Dogs found no one worth the trouble. They explained what they did as they did it, so I would learn. The robbers got a broken arm each, since they attacked only for coppers. They would pay more to healers than they had hoped to get from their victims, who fled as soon as my Dogs stepped in. In the cases of the beatings, Goodwin and Tunstall administered broken fingers to several of the rushers involved. They broke one rusher’s hand, because he worked for a slave trader who liked to force folk to sell to him. Those victims ran away, too. In the case of the tavern brawls, my Dogs simply kicked everyone out.
They did let me hold on to two of a gang of boys who thought torturing a piglet was a night’s fun. Pounce led the piglet away while Goodwin delivered businesslike paddlings with her baton. I gave her my captives when their turn for a lesson came. Those scuts would wish their mothers had taught them better, limping for some weeks after the unkind kiss of a Dog’s weighted stick.
On we wandered. Most of what we saw up this way was owned by Crookshank, Tunstall said. Thousands of families had him for a landlord. He could be rich on their coin alone and never go near stolen goods.
“His greed don’t stop.” Goodwin said it with the strictness of a Mithran priest speaking for the good of our souls. “Could I but catch one of his bookkeepers and make him sing, we might be able to roll the monster up. Speaking of monsters, what was that gabble about the Shadow Snake?”
“I’ve been wondering about that myself,” Tunstall said. “Crookshank’s so cracked with grief he’s making up babies’-tale creepies.”
“He got the idea someplace,” Goodwin said.
I’d been hearing a fight for the last moment as we walked along, a mot’s shouts and children’s shrieks. Then a cove bellowed. We heard crockery shatter in the building just to the left. Someone screamed, “Goddess save them, she’s got a blade! Come on, Jack, stop ‘er afore she does yer babes!”
A mot yelled, “She’s curst near done him!”
A shutter flew open on the ground floor. A cove leaned out. He looked around and saw us. “She says she’ll crop the littles’ nobs, an’ she’s a knife in her hand! Two stories up!”
Goodwin and Tunstall traded looks. No Dog likes to be caught in a family brawl, but if the neighbors were right, this mot was threatening to cut her babes’ heads off. They charged through the house’s doorless entry and up the rickety steps, me at their heels. We had to shove our way past clumps of neighbors at both landings. None of them wanted to get caught in this, not when knives were involved. They did point to the door where the worst of the noise came through.
It was the babble of children pleading for their mother to stop, to be nice. They told her they loved her. She screamed she would cut their throats if they didn’t shut their gobs. A cove was telling her to calm down.
“In the name of the King’s law!” Tunstall shouted as he tried the latch. The door wasn’t locked. He shoved it open, showing up a middling-sized main room. Here was their hearth and table and the children’s pallets. The little ones stood in a corner on the far side of the window, two girls and a toddling boy in a dirty napkin. Their papa stood closer to us, near the tiny hearth in the wall. Between them, at the center of the room, was the woman. She had a long knife in her hand, and she swayed where she stood. I could see her small brown eyes, flicking quick like a bird’s from Goodwin to Tunstall. My Dogs spread apart to make it look like she could dart between them to reach the door. I was in that opening, but she might think she could shove by me.
The oldest of the little ones had a black eye. Another had a scratched face. The cove had blood on his face from cuts around one eye. His lip was split and his patched shirt ripped. From the broken crockery at his feet, she had thrown a jug at him. I knew by the vinegar and mint smell that it had held hotblood wine.
Goodwin sighed and scratched her head. “Mistress, what do you think you’re doing?” she asked. “You’ve gone and upset your neighbors. We can’t have you disturbing the King’s peace. Your man will need a healer for those cuts, and you know what healers cost these days. Added to that, you’ll have the cost of the Magistrate’s fine. Don’t make it worse for yourself. Put the blade down. Come with us.”
The mot replied with a suggestion so foul I was impressed.
Goodwin didn’t even twitch. “That’s very nice. The blade, Mistress – What’s your name?”
She cursed us again.
“Orva,” the cove told us wearily. “You’ve gone too far this time. Put down the knife and do as you’re told.”
I hadn’t seen her other hand or guessed she might have something in it, like a little stone mortar they’d use for grinding herbs. I saw it now, when she threw it at her man’s head. Tunstall knew it was there, because he caught it easily. And Goodwin knew that it was there and that Tunstall would catch it, because she lunged for Orva’s arm, the one holding the knife.
The mot was quick enough to have been a good Dog. I saw her move as Goodwin lunged. Orva struck backhand, her fist turned sideways. She caught Goodwin with the butt of the hilt square on the hinge of the jaw. Goodwin dropped, her eyes rolled up in her head.
The children screamed. Then Tunstall said very quietly, “Orva. You struck a Dog with a blade.”
She turned and leaped through the unshuttered window. I went after her. I didn’t eve
n think, or it might have occurred to me that I was jumping to a pair of broken legs or a broken back. It turned out this window opened onto stairs that went down the outside of the house. I hit on the landing with a jarring of my ankles. Orva was racing down those stairs. I scrambled to my feet and followed.
She took me through the Cesspool, alley by alley, through puddles of slop and hollows of mud. The only light leaked from the open doors of drinking dens and brothels. Hotblood wine, filled with herbs, kept Orva going long after a mere drunk would have dropped. I slipped and stumbled into a tumbledown fence somewhere behind the Court of the Rogue. Orva was nowhere in view. I blinked, listening for her running steps rather than trusting my eyes. I heard the rustle of cloth behind me and jumped away just as she thrust that knife through the gap in the fence behind me. She had circled around. I found the opening she used and darted through. She was off again, plunging between two dark houses.
I was closing the gap between us when she dove into the back door of a tavern. I followed, ignoring curses and swerving to avoid a cook chopping rats for stew meat. I dodged a serving girl who tried to smack me with a wooden tankard. In the common room Orva made for the door, jumping over drunks and showing her knife to the ones who didn’t get the message.
I saw my chance and leaped onto the tables as a shortcut to the door. I ignored the yells of fury. I was a Dog in pursuit. If these tosspots couldn’t see my uniform under the muck, they could see the baton in my hand.
Orva was through the door just before I reached it. She slammed it shut. The bar on the inside thumped down the moment the slam shook it from its position. I wrestled the bar up and got the door open in time to see Orva turn a corner a half block away, where torches from a cockfight lit that part of the street.
She took me through another drinking den. The third time, I skidded around to the front door. When she came dashing through, I swung my baton around, straight into her middle. She doubled over, dropping the knife. I kicked it out of the way and wrenched one of her arms up behind her back.
