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"I am sorry, Cooper," he said.
I wanted him to go away because I was going to cry and I didn't want him to see it. "She is right. They teach us, don't develop habits, because they'll get you killed. I thought I was safe because I have powerful friends." I meant Rosto and Pounce, but I wasn't going to say so. I was too tired to explain. "I was wrong and I got a cracked head for it."
Master Sholto nodded and walked away. I covered my eyes with my arm, though it made my ribs ache, so I could be private with my tears. I hated myself for crying over a scolding I deserved.
I was done when Master Sholto returned with some herbal drink. I downed all of that.
"You will be able to return home in the morning," he said as he helped me to lay back on the pillows. "And you will feel very much better. I would give the Trickster, the Goddess, and great Mithros some offerings, if I were you."
I nodded. "Thank you, Master Sholto," I whispered as he tucked my blankets around me. This time, when he left, he took the lamp. There was yet enough light that I could see Achoo inch her way up along my side so she might stretch out. I didn't think she was allowed, but I was too weary to stop her. And it was nice to have her there, all warm at my side.
Pounce still sat by my feet. His purple eyes were fixed on me. You have gotten too dependent on me, he said. You must never believe that I protect you. Always look after yourself, just as if I were an ordinary cat. My own tasks have taken me elsewhere of late, and they may take me again. Will you be so careless again?
"No, Pounce," I whispered.
What does Ahuda say you must rely on?
"Dog eyes. Dog ears. Dog instinct." I think I spoke it out loud. My eyelids were shut. I tried to say it again – Dog eyes. Dog ears. Dog instinct. I don't know if I did.
I woke in the middle of the night. My pack was at my bedside, with my journal in it. I wrote the above until I felt sleepy, then slept until I was roused by the muster of Day Watch in the main room of the kennel nearby. Looking at my journal, I am shocked at the awkwardness of my writing during the night. I remember shaping the letters poorly, but I didn't know until now how clumsy I truly was. It is a little better today, around noon.
This morning Kora, Tansy, Ersken, and Tansy's husband, Herun, brought me home in a wagon that Herun and Tansy use for their business. I told them that I could walk, but nobody listened to me. They too were scolding me about my folly in becoming predictable. They were so busy nattering that it wasn't until we came to Mistress Trout's lodgings that I could ask if there was any word of them that jumped me.
Herun just shook his head and drove off for home. It was Kora, Ersken, and Tansy that traded looks as they helped me into my rooms, trying not to stumble over Achoo. My bed was all made up fresh, with clean sheets and a light blanket for the cooler air that came through my open window. There were gillyflowers, red and white, in pitchers and bowls all around the room, a new table with wooden chairs, and two new, brightly colored rugs on my floor. Aniki sat at the table, where a solid meal was laid out. I knew that if I questioned my friends or asked who had paid for anything like furniture, blankets, rugs, or food, they would pretend not to hear.
I let them ease me onto one of my new wooden chairs and demanded, "Who jumped me? It's plain you know. Is he in the cages?"
Ersken sighed and grabbed a hot onion tartlet. As he juggled it, waiting for it to cool, he said, "It's a 'they,' and we've yet to catch them. Jewel and Yoav had a Birdie who told them Madon and Geraint Pell were in their cups and bragging how they taught an upstart bitch the price of hobbling their brother Kevan."
I swore. I'd hobbled Kevan Pell two weeks ago for a buffer. A week ago Monday he'd been sentenced to the northern road crews. It was hard for him to cry innocent when he'd been leading a string of five cows to the city gates when I hobbled him. He'd told me I'd weep for doing it, but I ignored him. Every Rat says the same.
"If the brothers are as fog-brained as Kevan, they'll be found quick enough," I said.
We were near done eating when Rosto arrived. He looked like the cat who'd been at the cream. If he felt tender over my bumps and bruises, he hid it well. "Are you well enough to walk to the bathhouse today, or shall I help?" he asked, his eyes twinkling very wickedly. "I'm told I'm a fair hand at washing hair. And backs. And – "
"I'm not one of your doxies, Rosto," I said crossly. I hate it when he flirts with me like he does with any other mot. "I'm well able to bathe myself. Will you join us, or will you strut?"
Rosto winced. "Ouch!" he said. "Nothing wrong with your bite, I see. Actually, I came to take Master Pounce to task, for letting you walk into a trap."
"I told you, I can look after myself" I said just as Pounce replied, I am not her nursemaid, Rosto the Piper.
The others began to clear the table as Rosto and Pounce glared at each other. Achoo only shrank close to my ankles and stayed quiet.
Finally Rosto said, "I've killed men who were that good at looking after themselves." He took a pear from the table.
"Have you seen the Pells yet, Rosto?" Ersken asked. Aniki froze where she stood. Kora gave him a little shake of the head. Ersken ignored her, watching Rosto with his calm blue eyes. "Any tips on where they might be found?" He is so good about Kora's allegiances that sometimes they forget he is a Dog, and he will ask the questions they do not want him to ask.
Rosto, halfway into his bite of pear, stopped and took it from his mouth. "The Pells live on Spindle Lane, I know that much," he said, his voice chilly. "I imagine they're playing the ghost game now that they've muddled with a Dog. You might try the Sheepmire drinking dens."
I looked at him. He was being too helpful. The red gillyflowers all about my room were starting to look like splashes of blood. I got to my feet, slowly. "I'm off to the bathhouse," I said.
Of course Aniki and Kora wouldn't let me go alone. They went for their things, and Ersken went with Kora. That left me with Rosto.
He put his finger on my lips. "Before either of us says anything foolish, think of a king's position, love," he whispered, his eyes holding mine. "Say our little prince was beaten half to death outside his nursery door by a band of rushers. The King has to do something, doesn't he? His borders have been breached, his area of safety. The rushers came to his house and attacked one of his people. What would we say of a king who doesn't deal with that? Of course, this is His Majesty, King Roger, we're talking about."
"Of course," I said.
"It doesn't have anything to do with who was beaten so bad. It could have been Her Majesty, the Lord High Magistrate, any member of the King's household," Rosto said. "The important thing is, an example has to be made."
He kissed me so very gently on the forehead. He knows I might have punched him in the gut if he'd tried to kiss me on the mouth, him with blood on his hands. Even the blood of two men who'd done their best to spread my brains on the street.
After the bathhouse, I talked Kora and Aniki into letting me stay in my rooms with Achoo, Pounce, and the pigeons for company for a while. The first thing I did was take up my journal. My handwriting is not of the best, so I print slow and plain and larger than usual as the shakes work their way out of my arms and my fingers come to feel less like sausages. But it helps my mind, too, writing these things down.
And I can feel the magic working through me, mending all the soft parts that Master Sholto said would take longer to get strong. The bones he could knit right off, but they won't be quite as hardy as the unbroken ones for another day or so. But each time I wake from dozing, I am better. I do owe the Trickster something. After all, I will be back on duty soon. With the kennel healers, I might have been out of work for a month, and that would bite into my savings. I can't afford that, not with a hungry winter coming and another mouth to feed.
And this mouth! She eats ten times what Pounce does! Even with the allowance I am paid for her food, it is not enough.
I hope that once Achoo makes up for lost meals, she will slow down.
Despite the bath,
I feel dirty because deep in the heart of me, I am glad that Rosto will kill the Pell brothers, if he hasn't done so already. I would nab Rosto fast if I got evidence that he did it, though it might mean my life and the lives of all I love to nab a Rogue. They're too important to the city, though no one says as much. They keep the slums and the Rats from overwhelming the cityfolk and the Provost's Guards. Rogues have been taken in the past, but never for sommat as small as the murder of a commoner. And Rosto is far too clever to do it so he might be caught. He knows that even though we are friends, if I caught him in wrongdoing, I would hobble him.
I hope I would.
Midnight.
Goodwin came by after watch. She was out colemonger hunting with Birch and Ersken and didn't stay long. She only came to pass one piece of news to me, along with Tunstall's greetings from his sickbed, and his promise of a lecture about carelessness.
Her news made my gut sink. "Jewel and Yoav found the Pell brothers in King Gareth's Fountain," Goodwin said. "We had bets on where they would end up, but no one wagered on that. No one expected someone to have the sack to put them at the center of the Nightmarket, not with the army crawling all over the place."
I ran my hand over the cover of my journal. "How was it done?" I forced my voice to be calm. I needed to know. Rosto is a knife cove.
"It wasn't blades. They were got the way they got you, but it was made a killing matter for them," Goodwin replied. Half a smile curled the side of her mouth. "No one would be looby enough to try to pin it on Rosto, even if they'd been diced like an onion, Cooper. We're going to need the Rogue, come winter." She hoisted a small cloth bag onto my lap. "Lady Sabine wants you to have these. They're Vivianos."
I stared at the beautiful apples. "My lady must have paid high to get Vivianos so early in the season!" They are my favorite kind of apple, and the most costly.
"No, she didn't. Her family has orchards." Goodwin put her hand on my shoulder. "As far as we're concerned, Cooper, the matter of the Pell brothers is settled. We can't prove Rosto had a hand in it. I'll wager he made certain plenty of folk will say he was with them all the time the Pells were getting beat to death. So you work on healing. I'll stop by tomorrow night after watch, let you know what's going on."
I nodded and walked her to my door to see her out. Once I'd bolted my door, Pounce cocked his head. I must go, too.
"Where?" I asked, maddened by so many sudden absences.
But he vanished.
Feeling lonely, I took Achoo outside through the cellar door that opened onto the alley. When she finished, we climbed back to my rooms and I wrote up this day.
I wish I'd thought to ask Goodwin what they had learned about the colemongers.
Wednesday, September 12, 247
Three in the afternoon.
I wish that Achoo was a constellation like Pounce, so she could appear and disappear in the street to do the necessary early in the morning and late at night. She is so gentle about rousing me, though, that I cannot be vexed with her. She paws me lightly, and there is a look of true regret in her brown eyes. How can I be cross? So I pull my breeches on over my nightdress and take her down, as I did this morning, using the kitchen door instead of the front. I neglected to write in last night's entry that I carry my baton with me as well. Also, I use Rosto's spy holes, which have a light spell sunk into them that makes it possible to see what is beyond the door as if it were brightest noon.
It wasn't until I was at the top of the steps on our return this morning that I noticed the pain was not so bad as even last night. My ribs hurt only a little, my gut not at all. My head aches much less.
"I hope Sir Tullus pays Master Sholto a good wage," I told Achoo as I went back to bed. "He is worth it." I will make offerings in thanks to the Goddess for Master Sholto, and to Great Mithros for Sir Tullus.
The city clocks were chiming ten when I woke next. I cleaned up and dressed for the day in breeches and a tunic. Mayhap I could not visit all of my pigeons and dust spinners, but a few wouldn't tire me too much.
"Achoo, tumit," I said. She followed me down the stair and out through the kitchen cheerfully, head and tail high. It was plain to me, as we stepped outside, that this was Achoo's kind of day, cool and sunny, a few clouds in the sky, a light breeze that carried off any bad smells. It bore instead the scent of woodsmoke and cut hay from the east, harvest scents.
We walked east ourselves, down Nipcopper Close, then left on Westberk. The Nightmarket rose before us, all shabby and tattered in the bright September light. The soldiers posted at intervals along Stuvek Street were allowing folk to pass through, rather than forcing them to walk around the closed market to go where they wished. At twilight, doubtless, they'd be turning folk away, unless they were bribed proper. I doubt that the rushers who fetched the Pells' corpses here were all that clever about sneaking them in.
I passed the soldier that was guarding the join of Stuvek Street and Peachfuzz Lane, looking around me. Every shop and stall that stood yet was locked and barred. All showed damage. Many had lost awnings, shutters, even entire walls. Two for One was a blackened ruin on my left. I stopped and waited, stretching my back out, while Achoo gave Two for One a good sniffing.
When my spine bones stopped popping, I called, "Achoo, kemari" and she trotted over as if she'd been doing it to my command all her days. "Good girl," I told her, and gave her a bit of dried meat I'd warmed in my hand on our way from our lodgings. She bolted it and whuffed softly, a polite way of asking for more.
"No," I said. "Oh, pox, what's the word? Tak. I shouldn't spoil you." Achoo sighed and looked down. My heart went all soft and I gave her the other piece I'd been holding. "But that's it," I told her, trying to sound masterful. "Now we're going to do some work."
I'd been saving the little stir of air beside King Gareth's Fountain for a day when I was alone and had a bit of time. Not only was this such a day, but now I had a need of it. We stepped up to the north side of the fountain. Folk were avoiding the area, having heard already of the dead men left here yesterday and not wanting the Pell brothers' ghosts to follow them home. I have no reason to fear ghosts, knowing they will come to me or no. I also knew that, unless they were hungry, they would not visit me here.
My interest was in the small whirling round of dust at the fountain's base. It spun right before the spot where the word Gareth was carved into the stone. The swirl was the tiniest of dust spinners, no more than three inches high and six inches wide. It had been there since midsummer, born on the breezes that had blown while the city was sick with the red flux. Unless a windstorm came to feed it stronger currents of air, or unless I did something, it would die in the winter cold. I hated it when they died so young, before they'd had a chance to really taste life in the open air.
I pulled a bag of dust from my pocket. I'd made it up a while back, when first I noticed other such young spinners. Sometimes I am able to make them stronger, sometimes not. In bags like this I put samples of street grit from every part of Corus I visited, in the hope that the new spinner could draw on the strength of the city to live, not just on that of the place where it whirled.
I do confess, I work all this out as I go. Having never met anyone like me, and knowing that my lord never found a mage who had heard of any like me, I craft what I may and pray that it works.
"Achoo, dukduk," I said after she finished slurping from the lowest dish in the fountain. I still feel silly when I give her that word to get her to sit. "Diamlah." She sat, cocking her head as she watched me. I barely noticed that Pounce had appeared beside her.
I opened the bag. Closing my eyes, I prayed to the Black God. It seems to me that he is the one I should speak to in these matters. If he claims the pigeons, and the ghosts, mayhap he governs the things of the air, like dust spinners. No one has ever told me he does not, in any event. This is the first time I asked him about it, though.
"Great One, if you wish it, allow this spinner to grow high and strong like its brothers and sisters in the city," I whispe
red. "Allow it to feed on and carry the air that blows here. And – whatever else seems fitting to you. Forgive me. I've never tried to talk like a priestess before. So mote it be."
Mayhap this is why priestesses and priests train for years, to talk so elegantly.
I stepped into the heart of the spinner. It spread to fit around both of my feet, losing most of its height. Holding my bag at a slight angle, I narrowed my eyes against blowing dust and began to pour a thin stream of dust straight down into the spinner's edge. I continued to pour until my bag was empty. All of the dust in it had gone into the spinner. None lay on the ground. Now I closed my eyes and, like a looby, lowered my hands to my hips and raised them slowly above my head.
"Come up," I whispered, hoping that no one could see me. I lowered and raised my hands twice more, because everyone knows these things work best in the Goddess's threes. Twice more I whispered, "Come up," hoping the spinner understood either my words or my thoughts.
I waited. Then I heard the scratch of grit blowing over cloth. Slowly the hems of my tunic began to flutter and flap. I felt windblown dust on my hands. It moved no higher. At last I opened my eyes. The spinner had grown and widened. It spun now as high as my ribs, and it had picked up bits of twigs, cloth, and leaves from the riot. It was wider, too, wide enough to leave an inch of air around me.
I closed my eyes once more and invited it to release whatever talk might have become trapped in its breezes. A roar exploded in my ears. I shrank, covering them, but the roar was in my head in truth. No amount of ear covering could stop it. The noise came from the riot. It sounded like a screaming monster made of human voices. I wondered if a spinner could go mad, but this one spun on, not even burdened by the roar.
" – here. Right... here." It was a mot's voice, breathy, as if she carried sommat heavy. She was much closer than the roaring mob, and she was familiar.
