Page 24 of Bloodhound (Beka Cooper 2)

I smiled at him. "We met him in Corus. During a riot, actually. And then on the boat here."

Okha laughed. It was a warm, rippling chuckle, the kind that made coves trip over their feet. "Met during a riot! Well, that's one way, I suppose. And Hanse?"

"The same way," I replied. "And Hanse's man Steen. They invited us to supper tonight, and we've been with them ever since."

"I can see you won't require Nestor and me to show you the sights, not if you're with that crowd. Come in," Okha called to the knock on the door. It was the young servant with his drink and my twilsey. Okha gave the lad a coin and a bit more flirtation, then let him go. As he sat gracefully again, he told me, "They're big gamblers, and they know everyone who plays."

"Good people to know when you're Dogging money," I said, thinking of all the coin that had gone through Dale's fingers already this night. I sipped my twilsey. It was very good, the best I'd ever had. "I hear even Pearl Skinner gambles. Is that her only habit? Or are there others?"

Okha grimaced, as if his drink was sour. "If you're planning revenge for this morning, Beka, forget it now. People who try to hurt Pearl have been known to end their lives flayed, gutted, and hung on the gates at Guards House."

He had a sad, distant look to his eyes. The person who'd met that fate was someone he'd known – now there was something I would bet on.

"So she takes that ridiculous street name serious," I commented, when the silence got uncomfortable.

Okha's eyebrows went up. His thoughts plainly returned to this room and this conversation. "Skinner, a street name? Oh, no. It's her family's name and her father's old trade. Not that he plies it anymore. He was a vicious old sot who mysteriously fell into the sewers and drowned ten years ago. As did the trull who called herself his wife, and Pearl's two older brothers. All at different times, all in the sewers. Shocking luck, wouldn't you say?"

"Pearl seems to have a mean streak," I admitted.

"And an affection for coming at you from behind, though she hardly bothers anymore," Okha told me. "Not when she has Torcall, Jurji, and Zolaika to do her vengeances for her."

I thought that over for a moment. "Jurji. Is that the Bazhir who sits beside her at the Eagle Street court, the one with the curved sword?" Okha nodded. I guessed again. "The older cove, Eastern Lands stock, that's Torcall."

"Torcall Jupp," Okha said, and took a sip of his drink. "He's no hothead, unlike Jurji. He and Jurji are Pearl's main bodyguards. She changes the other around, but those two are constant."

"You mentioned a Zolaika?" I asked.

"Did you see an older woman in attendance?" Okha asked. "Heavy makeup, dreadful wig?"

It was my turn to make a face. "She led the gang that grabbed me and Goodwin."

Okha nodded. "She is Pearl's killer."

I stared at him.

He smiled. "She is not as stiff as she acts, nor as slow. The makeup comes off – it is painted onto a light piece of muslin she can pull off her face. A quick scrub with a wet cloth and you would not recognize her. The red hair is a wig." Okha leaned forward and tapped my wrist with two fingers. "Remember her, Beka, and tell Goodwin. If Pearl wants folk dead in silence, never knowing who murdered them, she sends Zolaika."

I remembered that lofty, mannered doxie, and I just couldn't fit my mind around it. But surely Okha would know. "How can you tell? How can anyone tell, if she is unseen? Pearl could just take a coincidental death and say she set it up."

Okha sighed. "If the death is an important one, or a threat, Pearl leaves pearls by the victim, or on the victim. It's what she did to Sir Lionel's children, when she thought he grew too nosy. She had pearls laid on their pillows, three years ago. Everyone knows. It's why he sent his wife and children to their home fief, and only visits them. I'd worry for Nestor's safety if it weren't for Haden and Truda and their friends. They're splendid guards." He rose and sat before a table laden with pots of paints and powders. Taking up a small, silver hand mirror, he began to examine his face. "Forgive me. They'll be calling me back soon."

"But Haden and Truda are just children," I said.

"Street children, for all Nestor's had them in his house for two years," Okha told me, wetting a tiny brush in a dish of water. He set about renewing the black lines around his eyes. "They run with their gang when there's no work to be done, and their gang sleeps in the basement during the winter. The things they do with knives and ropes! They're fine pickpockets, too, though they're careful not to interfere in the Rogue's trade. Nestor uses them for spies, or loans them out to Dogs he trusts." Okha smiled at me. "They're not cheap, of course. But as you learned with Haden, they are very good."

I was surprised Haden and Truda's friends had not robbed Nestor into poverty. Mayhap he had his own ways to discourage that. "I saw Haden," I told Okha. "Goodwin did, too."

Okha smiled. "And much put out about it Haden is, too. He says the two of you must have little ghost eyes flying behind you, because not even Nestor sees him, and Nestor knows he is there."

For a moment I watched Okha fix his makeup and check his hair. It was a wig, I knew, but unlike Zolaika's, it was a beautiful wig. With every move, every adjustment, he became more a woman. Lady Teodorie, with all her manners and elegance, could not match him for beauty and grace.

"How do you do it?" I asked him. "Become all wonderful and lovely like you are out there?"

He turned and looked at me with shock, something dark and sad in his eyes. It slowly vanished.

"You are an odd one, aren't you?" he asked from somewhere between his mot's world and his cove's. "You say little, but you make me want to talk about things that I don't usually babble about, you know. Maybe it's those eyes of yours. You don't judge..."

I looked down. "Most folk find my eyes frightening."

"My experiences with 'most folk' are not so good that I am inclined to follow their standard," Okha said. His voice was very bitter. He turned back to his mirror. "I had very good teachers, people who took me in when my family cast me out. I worked and I studied, everywhere I went. But that isn't what you're asking."

I shook my head. Since he wasn't looking at me now, I added, "Not really. Your beauty comes from the inside. You don't put that on with a brush and powder."

"Inside I am a beautiful woman," Okha said, fiddling with a perfect curl. "The Trickster tapped me in my mother's womb and placed me in this man's shell."

I'd heard of many tricks done by the gods, but surely this was nearabout the cruelest. "I'm sorry," I whispered.

"At least I understand what happened," Okha said, getting to his feet and smoothing his dress. "How many like me live our lives without ever knowing? How many of us never feel right in the world where we live, and never realize that a god turned our lives all on end? Some of us even claim the Trickster is one of us, and makes us so She/He has company."

"Have you asked the god?" I wanted to know.

Okha gave me a tiny, bitter smile. "The god touched me once, Beka. I'd as soon not get his attention again."

Someone pounded on the door. "Amber, Amber, sorry, but Dale Rowan's looking for his girl. He says he's lost two hands of cards, and she's his luck!"

"I'm not his girl!" I said.

"But you're sitting with him at his table?" Okha asked me. He was already running his hands over my hair, smoothing it, using touches of his comb to tease locks out of my coil and forward over my cheeks. "The one who sits with a gambler is his luck, or her luck. Dale's a true gambler, especially if he starts to lose." He called to the cove outside the door, who'd begun to knock again, "Just wait, silly!" Okha snatched up a clean brush and dipped it in a tiny pot of paint. Before I could dodge, he'd set it to my lips. Next he dotted scent just under my ears, and tucked the bottle in my purse. It was a beautiful perfume. "Lily of the valley," he told me. "More suited to you than rose or violet. Now, let's go see Master Dale!"

I breathed it in. I felt strange. More beautiful. More like a grand mot like Okha. But that felt so strange, too, because I

am no beautiful mot. I looked at my palms, to assure myself that I was still Beka. There were my baton calluses. I might smell like a flower in a noble's garden, but in the morning I would still be a Dog. I sighed my relief.

Okha led me downstairs to the room where my companions were playing. Dale was on his feet, arms crossed as he glared at the table, the other players, and the cards. "I won't touch a hand again until I see Beka," he told them. "How's a cove to know if a mot's his luck if she's not even here?"

"Because she stands right behind him while he roars like a bull, precious," Okha – no, he was all Amber Orchid now, graceful and grand – said with a laugh. "Good evening, guests. Welcome. For those of you who are strangers, I am Amber Orchid, a singer who is sometimes welcomed to these rooms, though not, of course, when there is a game." Just the way he made his voice dip and flow turned his speech into a gentle joke on the players. They laughed.

Dale turned to look at me and bent down to speak in my ear. Amber swept forward, still talking to the folk in the room. Dale whispered, "Where did you go? I missed you! And I lost two hands!"

I stared up at him. "A mot has places to go where she isn't likely to want company! And I was bored. Don't go thinking I'm your property, Master Rowan!"

Plenty of coves I knew would have bristled right up. Dale only scratched his head, then grabbed both my hands and kissed each one. "I'm a bad escort, and that's the truth," he told me, a smile of regret on his face. "I get caught up in the play and I forget all my manners. I'm sorry. Do you really not care for the game?"

I was trying to get my hands back, but not very hard. He'd laced his fingers through mine. "I don't gamble," I mumbled. "I don't even know the rules, and I can't see, on a little chair right behind you. Let me go, folk are watching!"

"But your hands are warm," he said in my ear. "And what's this lovely new scent? I like it."

"Dale, are you playing or not?" growled a cove seated at the table. "Your bet's not laid down!"

"A few more hands of cards, and we'll find someplace to dance," Dale wheedled me. "You do like to dance?"

Of course I love it. It's one of the few sociable things I can do without talking.

Dale grinned. "Oh, you like that idea? I finally found something that pleases her!" He glanced at the ceiling. "Thank you, Goddess!" He looked at me once more. "As for seeing the game – "

He turned to sit, and in turning, he spun me until I sat on one of his knees. I made a noise, I know it, and then I said nothing else. I only hung my head so my face wouldn't be so visible to everyone else. I knew I was blushing fierce. I peeked once to see where the strangled noises came from. Goodwin, curse her, was trying not to laugh, and doing poorly at it. Since I'd gone for Dog training, no cove save Rosto the Piper had been this careless with his hands around me, and even Rosto had never had the gall to sit me on his knee! Mayhap he knew he'd have got an elbow in the eye for his trouble. And yet I thought of doing no such thing to Dale. I don't know if it was the warm clasp of his arm about my waist, or the teasing jiggle of his leg under my rump, or the way his beard tickled my neck as he leaned in to explain what his cards meant. I only know that my dress, decent enough before, now seemed scandalously low-cut. Moreover, from the way his arm drew its fabric and the fabric of my shift tight over my peaches, he knew I was not thinking of the cards.

"What did I say?" he murmured to me. "My luck is back. Three Ladies and two Queens – the Goddess favors a humble courier tonight!" He slid two silver nobles out into the middle of the table. "See, that's a hand I'm betting on, five cards." He spoke loud enough that the others could hear, as if he taught me.

Goodwin tossed her cards facedown on the table. "I have naught to work with," she complained.

"Cold fingers, Dale?" Hanse asked with a broad grin. He threw five silver nobles onto the table. "Match me or kill your cards, man!"

"Kill?" I asked Dale, speaking as loudly as he did, taking my cues from him.

"Put them down. Leave this hand of the game," he explained. He inspected his small heap of silver coins, sliding one or two around as if he considered matching Hanse's bet.

I wondered how many of them were coles. Only one or two of them were scored to show they were all silver, unlike Hanse's nobles. "What if you do that?" I asked. "Do you get your two coins back?"

Everyone at the table laughed. "Once money's in the middle, it stays in the middle, same as a dice game or any other bet," Steen told me. "The winner takes it all."

Dale sighed and shoved in three coins. "I'm demented, mayhap, but my luck has to return sometime."

Flory thrust in four silver nobles and ten copper ones. Steen also bet.

"See, Goodwin figures her cards are no good," Dale told me. "She kills them and she wagers nothing more. She does not lose, but she does not win."

I glanced at Goodwin's eyes. They were sharp as they rested on Dale. She knows, I thought. He has fooled Hanse, his friend, and Steen, who knows him, too, but he hasn't fooled Goodwin.

She caught me watching her. One of her eyelids twitched a hair in the smallest of winks.

There was a lot of groaning and shouting, all good-natured, when everyone showed their cards and Dale proved to have the best hand. The pack of cards went to Steen. Dale explained how they were shuffled, or mixed up, so folk wouldn't get the same cards again, then the manner in which the shuffler gave out five cards each to the players.

Three games later, though Dale was still winning, he stopped the play. "I promised my luck a change, and I don't want her to desert me because I didn't keep my word!" he told the others as I got off his knee. "We're going to find some dancing."

"Now that's somethin' like!" Flory said, jumping up. "I'll get the girls. They'll have found some coves by now!"

Dale was scooping his last heap of silver coins off the table and into a bowl brought by one of the serving maids. She nodded and took it away, which seemed to me to be very trusting of Dale. Did they check the coins to see if they were pure silver?

He had kept two silver nobles back. Now he offered them to me. I scowled at them and then at him.

"Mithros's spear. What is that for?" I demanded.

He looked startled. "It's the custom. When someone brings you luck, it offends the Trickster if you don't give that person something in thanks. It's as if you say you don't value the luck."

"I'm sure he knows you value him, and I'll not be tipped like a backstreet trull," I snapped. "You brung your own luck, knowin' the game and the way of playin' the cards." I put a hand over my mouth, hearing myself slide into Cesspool cant. I hardly ever do it. Here I'd been thinking he liked me, but I might as well have been a serving maid or a doxie he asked to perch on his leg!

"No, no – curse it, Beka, you're the prickliest woman I've ever met!" cried Dale.

"No, I am," Goodwin said. She stood nearby, smiling, our capes over one arm. "But she comes very close, I have to say."

"It's not just about the luck. Yes, I had a feeling you'd be lucky for me, but I like you!" Dale stuffed the coins in his purse. "There! The vile money's all gone!"

I had to fight not to smile. He looked comical, his brows arching into his hair, his eyes alight with outrage and dismay, his cheeks flushed. Goodwin handed my cape to him. Carefully, as if I might bite, he came at me, holding it out. I let him drape it about my shoulders, my eyes on him the whole time. I supposed, if he'd thought of me like any wench he'd pay to blow on his dice or cards, he'd not be so upset.

As I pinned the cape with my brooch, I heard him mutter, "I'll just have to buy you something pretty."

I glared at him.

"Peace!" he said. "Peace! Otherwise how will we dance together?" With temptation in his voice he added, "I know where they sell the best spiced fried dough in all Port Caynn – better than Corus, too. Black God strike me if I lie."

I put my hand on his mouth. "Don't talk lightly of the Black God," I told him. "He's always about." I should know.

Impudent mumper that he is, he kissed my palm.

"Sir, yer winnin's," said the maid who had taken his silver. Now I saw why. She had exchanged it for gold. He'd have fewer coins to weigh down his purse. He tucked them away and gave her a copper noble for her trouble. I shook my head and followed Goodwin outside, thinking that they treat coin like sweets in this place. Do they know about the problem with silver coles? Not if the way I'd seen silver change hands that night was any guide. Was the trouble something known largely by the guild banks, that were keeping silent? Surely an educated cove like Dale would have heard something. Hanse at least was checking all of his silver, from what I'd seen.

We didn't have far to go to find the dancing that Dale had promised. There were pipers, drummers, and tambourine players in Seafoam Square, performing for all manner of folk. I noted sailors, tradesmen and tradeswomen, craftsfolk, even a handful of nobles, and a pair of Dogs in uniform. I saw one purse-switching, an exchange of a coney's purse of coin for a red purse of coles. I kept my gob shut while I marked the filcher's face. I danced with Hanse, Steen, Dale, and two coves I didn't know before Pearl's longsword guard, the one Okha had named Torcall, caught me up.

"Let go," I warned him. "Now."

"Calm down," he said. "It's just a reel. Soon over."

"I didn't say I'd dance with you, Pearl's man." I was deciding which knife was the closest. I'd have to be fast. Odds were he'd give me but the one chance to go for a blade.

"Afraid, King's Dog? Afraid of a little dance?" he asked me.

All right. I'd dance with him and see what he wanted. My friends were close enough, and my knives were closer.

If he had a point, he never said what it was, pox and murrain on him! When the reel was done, he bowed and went off into the dark. Had I not been among strangers, I would have shouted for him to come back and fight like a Dog. Instead I stood there, clutching my fire opal and cursing to myself in silence.

Dale found me. He grumbled how everyone was dancing with me but him. Not seeming to notice my foul humor, he swung me into the dance square that was forming. After that he didn't give me up until my feet ached and my mood was much better. He is a very good dancer and lifts me as if I weigh no more than a kitten.

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