Page 37 of Bloodhound (Beka Cooper 2)

"Quiet down, you mudskippers!" she cried. They obeyed, though some were yet snorting. "You've given us a good laugh, Cooper, and you know how to treat a Rogue proper." She fingered the pearls I'd given her. "I guess Rosto taught you some-thin'. You can stay until you give me reason to throw you out. Mayhap Sir Lionel will look for you harder than most. More like he'll just whine to my Lord Provost about you. That's more like him. He's a whiner, not a doer. You and the hound may stay, for now." She waved us off.

Achoo and I walked through the Rats, who patted my back and joked about my tale. I pouted, or smiled, or handed out little light slaps, playing my part, and held my course for the privies. Here they were set outdoors, up on a platform so them that drove the scummer wagons could empty the barrels from the alley behind. There was a fence closing the courtyard off, so folk couldn't leave this way easy. Looking at the brown stains on the fences and wall around the privies, I shook my head and breathed through my mouth. Seemingly folk who were in too much of a hurry to wait for the three stalls to clear used those instead. I wouldn't like to try climbing those slippery lengths of wood, for certain.

I did my business and sat there a little while, waiting for my shakes to end. I'd pulled it off. I'd played the part and they had believed. Now I had time to think of something else.

Achoo and I went back inside, to the second-floor gallery, where tables and chairs were set. These were yet empty and gave me a good place to view the floor below. Achoo settled beside me as I watched folk come and go. I even dozed, mayhap for an hour, if I judged by the light that streamed through the few windows. When I woke, Achoo had climbed to the bench next to me. Her eyes were filled with starvation.

I looked at her. "You're a mumper, plain and simple. I'm surprised you don't roll instead of walking, the way you eat." Achoo leaned against me and sighed. I gave her a strip of dried meat as I looked down at Pearl's court. Rats sat, eating and talking. Pearl was having a meal of shellfish and rice, chewing with her mouth open. She could have done with Lady Teodorie's fan on the back of her head, I thought. I would back my lady against Pearl any day. A doxie was towing a grinning cove through a door that led, so my map told me, to a private room off the hall. And Dale Rowan stood in the middle of the floor, speaking with Jurji. The Bazhir pointed up to where I sat. Dale nodded, clapped him on the shoulder, and made for the stairs.

I fidgeted with my belt pouch. What was I to say after last night? Should I leave, avoid him entirely? I really didn't think he was part of the colemongering ring, but that could just be my heart talking. If he was innocent, I was bound for all manner of trouble. Shouldn't I keep him out of it?

Dale came up behind me then. I knew his step, though I had only known him for a few days. He cupped my chin in one hand. Tilting my head back, he gave me a kiss that set my whole body burning. Finally he freed my mouth, though not my chin. "What in the name of Mithros and the judges of the underworld are you doing here?" he asked me, his face upside down before my eyes. "Serenity said you left with no warning, never came back. Then the Deputy Provost's men came looking for you at her place and mine!" He kept his voice soft. "Now I find you here? What manner of cow flop have you stepped in?"

"You give me a headache, making me look at you this way," I said, buying myself time to think. "How hard do they search for me?"

Dale kissed me again, then sat next to me, putting his arm about my shoulders. "Achoo, you're supposed to look after her! Instead here you are, giving her your countenance and comfort!" Achoo wagged her tail and did her happy dance for him. Dale raised his brows. "Now I understand. You're just as bad as Beka is." To me he said, "Sir Lionel's Dogs are searching the markets. I didn't stop by Nestor's kennel to see if he'd heard. How did you manage to get up the Deputy Provost's nose, sweet?"

I looked at my lap. "I said he was stupid," I began.

Dale burst into laughter. Folk below turned to look up at us, grinning. No doubt they knew I was giving him the tale I'd given Pearl.

He heard my story out with snickers at all the right places, but at the end he took me by the shoulders and gave me a gentle shake. "Beka, you know better!" he scolded. "You don't go calling the nobility stupid, however stupid they may be! They're too prideful and they have long memories! Was anyone else there to hear you?"

I shook my head. I hated lying to him. He seemed honest and true when he was like this, but I couldn't trust my feelings entirely. He was a gambler. He was good at hiding what he truly thought.

"Gods be thanked for that. Without witnesses, there's a chance he'll lose interest," Dale told me. "With them, nobles always feel they have to make an example of you."

Dale picked up my hand and kissed the inside of my wrist slowly, as he liked to do. I'd thought that perhaps, now that we'd had a tumble, his touch wouldn't unravel my tripes as it had before. I was wrong. Now my every muscle went loose, knowing just what he could do with that warm mouth and those gentle, long fingers.

"Stop it," I whispered, trying to tug my arm away. "I'm in trouble and you're – "

Dale looked at me, his gray eyes bright and teasing. "You need to hide, I understand that. We have private rooms all around us, cozy little rooms with locks on the doors. You hide in one, and I'll keep you company. Much cozier than sitting up here." He kissed my cheek, then the side of my neck. "Hide, and tell me why you talked to the Deputy Provost like a looby, when I know you're no such thing," he murmured into my ear.

I was going to push him away, but my hands lingered on his chest. "He's a fool," I murmured back. "I hate fools."

"All the more reason for me to believe you'd never act like one yourself," he whispered, wrapping his arms around my waist. "You're either stupid or you're clever, pretty, pretty Beka, and I know you're not stupid." He pulled me half onto his lap. "Look, I brought you a present." He slipped it from his own neck over my head. The fine gold chain was still warm from his skin. I looked at the pendant that lay against my uniform tunic, a jagged piece of glassy, dark brown stone framed in gold wire. In the brown depths of one side, when I angled it toward the torches, I saw sheets of deep crimson. Flipping it over, I stared at the other side. Scales of blue and green light seemed buried just under the surface. It was a Sirajit opal.

"Don't screech about the price and how you're not bought," Dale whispered, trailing his fingers down the side of my neck. "I've won a lot of games in the last two days. Your luck stays with me. That's the best kind. And the stone wasn't that expensive. It was a piece off of a greater stone, too delicate itself to be worked. I told the cove who sold it to me that it was meant for one who'd love it for its own sake. After I'd bought it, of course."

"Of course," I agreed, knowing it did no good to argue with him about his strange gambler's code. It is a splendid stone.

"A bit of pretty to cheer you up, seeing's that you're having a bad day," Dale whispered. He touched his lips to my ear and then to my neck.

We were kissing greedily when a loud voice in the room below made us stop. We slid over on the bench to see who was so angry.

"Bread just went up two coppers the loaf, I told you, are you deaf?" Fair Flory stood before Pearl, her hands on her hips. "That's two increases in less than a month!" Behind her waited some of her flower girls and orange sellers. None of these were the tiny, pretty ones, either, but the ones built on the solid side, mots who worked the rowdy drinking and gambling dens. "Only two ships brought harvest wheat from the south this week. The captains say it's a bad year down there. We've no rye at all! Plenty of farmers are hangin' on to what they have, for their own winter."

"One captain says it's a bad year and you're panickin', Flory?" Pearl asked, a sneer on her face. "Ye'll stir up the Roguery with rumors and little to back 'em?"

"Not on the say-so of just one captain, and it's not just rumors," Flory snapped back. "And I'm here to ask you, you've put by to cover your own, right?"

"What's my supplies to you, Flory?" Pearl snapped. "I don't go thrustin' my nose into your business!"

"Rogue's stores is my business," Flory replied. "I pays you my cut, my people hand over their cut, all like our law bids. But my ear's sharp, Pearl Skinner, and I've not heard of you layin' up stores. There's no word anywhere of you buyin' grain and oil to keep our people alive through the winter. That's Rogue's duty!"

Pearl stood. Her hands were hidden in the folds of her clothes. "As if I'd share my business wiv a brass-backed trull like you!" The weapon must have been tucked under a slit in her skirt. Pearl drew it now. It was a long knife with a dark ivory hilt and a blade that looked wicked sharp. "Are you challengin' me?"

"I'm lookin' to our own good," Flory snapped, but she looked nervous. "You spend our coin like it's ale. How're we to know you're ready to feed them as give you a cut of all they make? Them as do the work? How do we know it ain't all gone to them curst teeth?"

I heard the Rats below mutter at that. It was hard to tell if they approved of what Flory said or if they were angry with her.

Pearl leveled her long knife at Flory. "Either challenge me or shut yer flappin' gob," the Rogue snarled. "Come on, Flory! You want my throne?"

Flory backed up a step. Pearl looked at the others who had muttered. "What about you? And you? No? You, then?" She pointed her blade at someone else each time she said "you." Each time that person flinched. Pearl's face twisted with disgust. She almost had my respect, standing there with her knife out, wearing a long dress of stained satin over cambric. Her hair straggled out of its knot, hanging in tangled locks. "Gutless milksops, all of you!" she cried. "Easy to gossip in the shadows, innit? Not so easy t'take the Rogue on! You lot wouldn't last a bird's breath in my place, not with winter comin'! Well, keep your cods dry! There'll be bread in the Roguery, aye, and meat for all of you whinin', pukin' brats! And the next one to mutter wakes with a cut throat, my word on that!" She sheathed the knife. "Get out o' my sight, Flory, you and your whores." As Flory and her mots turned to go, Pearl yelled, "Leastways I never made my livin' on my back!"

Flory whirled around, a knife in her hand this time. "It's an honest livin'!" she cried, taking a step forward. "We don't suck the coin away from them that work for it!" Two of the flower girls seized Flory by the arms and dragged her from the room.

Pearl laughed. She picked up her tankard and drained it. "Stinkin' trollop," she bellowed, but the flower sellers and orange girls were gone.

Dale and I watched as folk who had stayed swarmed around the dais.

"Oh, they want to make sure Pearl believes they're faithful," Dale muttered sourly as he emptied my pitcher down his throat. There was very little cider left in it. "Goddess tears, Beka, why can't you drink like a normal person!"

I looked at him. "My head spins if I have too much. I don't like it, so I don't drink, most of the time."

Dale shook his head at me. Leaning over the gallery rail, he snapped his fingers. One of the maids looked up and nodded. As Dale settled back on our bench, he told me quietly, "Flory doesn't know the half of it. I heard two higher-ups in the Grain-seller's Guild tell my masters that if wheat went up, barley and rice will, too. If they don't go double in price by the end of day, I'll eat my boots. Rye's clean gone from the market."

My stomach dropped. Meat follows grain, vegetables follow meat... At those prices, my savings will vanish by spring.

"It might be all right if King Roger has done as he should, and put by grain and oil himself," Dale told me, seeing the look on my face. "He'll see to it the guards are fed, the same as the army. The guilds will tend to their people, and the Rogues to theirs. The decent nobles will look after their people, too."

I looked at the table, knife-gouged and old. What of the folk who had no guilds or army or kennels to belong to? How many decent nobles were there, anyway?

"Here's what worries me, Beka." Dale placed silver coins in front of me, face side down. Each of them was cut through the side with the Tortallan sword and crown. At the bottom of the cuts I saw the gleam of brass. No doubt these were the coins I'd seen in his home. "I'd been hearing the word coles of late, so I looked at my own coins. My copper and my gold pieces are good. But far too many silver coles have come my way. One or two, for a cove like me, who roams all over the kingdom, that I expect. A friend melts them down and gets the silver for me. But not this many coles. I'm not the only one who's getting bit this bad. So I'm wondering, here are Beka and Goodwin, fresh in town. Maybe they're looking for colemongers."

I laughed. "If my lord Gershom was sending Dogs out for colemongers, don't you think he'd get his finest bloodhounds? Goodwin's one of the best, but she'd be part of a team, not holding the leash on one of Lord Gershom's pets!"

The maidservant came with a bottle, a cup, and a pitcher. The bottle was wine, for Dale. The pitcher was cider. Dale gave her a copper half-noble for thanks, and a pat on the bum. I kicked him under the table.

"I was just being polite!" he protested.

"Mayhap she'd like to keep her bum to herself," I told him. "If you need to be patting someone, pat me."

He sighed. "I suppose you're right, about not being on the hunt. But don't you want to know who's doing this?"

He's being canny, if he's one of them, I thought as I took a gulp of cider. Mayhap he thinks I'm so dazed with love that I'd never suspect him. I wish I was so dizzy with it that I'd quit wondering about him. This way, wanting him, liking him, then wondering if he is in it, hurts.

"I leave that kind of Dog work to the wise ones," I told him. "I get myself in enough trouble without trying to outthink Rats as use their heads."

"I know something we can do that doesn't involve thinking," Dale whispered, snuggling closer. He began to kiss me.

It turned out one of those private rooms was very near. Achoo guarded the door outside. Inside, Dale worked hard to make him and me forget things like higher prices, false coins, and the Deputy Provost. He even dozed after, though I could not. All too soon my brain was bustling again. I wanted to imagine our future together. Since that was a bad idea, I tried to figure out how long I had to stay hid and what else I might find out before Goodwin returned with my lord Gershom.

Where is Goodwin right now? I wondered as I smoothed Dale's fine hair with my fingers. I try to write it down now as I thought it out then: Goodwin would have reported to my lord and explained the state of things here. Would he believe her when she said Sir Lionel had lost control of his city to his Rogue? He must. It's why he sent her and me to Port Caynn, after all.

Say Lord Gershom did believe Goodwin. He'd have to convince the Privy Council that it was needful to mount an operation in Port Caynn. Goddess, at least a couple of days to get anything from that bunch of noble slugs. Then assembling all they might need and the return to Port Caynn.

I'd be on my own for at least a week. I could not flee to Corus, difficult as things are. I'd told Goodwin I would gather information here. That information is important, more important than my running the moment things get a little chancy.

Sooner or later Pearl would learn of my lies. I'd have to leave the Court of the Rogue before then. Would Dale put me up? Could I trust him?

Mayhap I could, for a day or so. Certainly I'd learn what he's made of, were I to ask. Truly I don't think he is in the cole-mongers' ring. He likes a game where the chances are more than good he will win. Pearl's game is not one of those.

Sunset was gleaming in the windows when we dressed again and left the room. Achoo greeted us in wriggling quiet. She knows she and I are on duty, even if I tried to forget with Dale for a time. We went back to our same table. A maid was just setting more drinks before us when a big-bellied young mot came before Pearl's dais on the floor below, breathing hard. Her face was marked with tears. She collapsed before Pearl as the Rogue and Zolaika admired someone's gift of a gold statue.

"Majesty, you must help us! Gods witness it, you must!" the mot cried. She actually reached out to clutch at Pearl. Quick as thought, Torcall had his sword unsheathed. He set the blade in front of her hands. The young mot pulled them away. "Forgive m

e! I'm out of my head with grief, I forgot – "

"What is it now?" Pearl asked with a sigh. "Have you a gift for me?"

The mot looked startled and frightened. "Oh – no, no, but surely in this case – "

Pearl looked away.

"'Tis your business, too, Steen said it was!" the mot cried.

Dale sat up straight at my side.

The mot went on. "When he changed his plans so suddenlike, Steen told me 'twas your biddin'! And now they've taken 'im to the cages, him and all the others!"

Pearl drank from her tankard. "Steen is supposed to be away," she said at last.

"He said he might be home this afternoon, or tomorrow mornin' at the latest," the mot said. She kept her hands on her belly, as if to calm the babe within. "I thought I'd meet them. He told me, see, what gate they'd come in. The caravan got here, sure enough. As soon as it was through the gate, Dogs pounced on 'em. They cut at the packs. Most was just filled with bales of cloth, but there was silver blocks in the middle two."

"So they was carryin' silver for the Smith's Guild," Pearl said lazily. "So what?"

The mot shook her head. "They didn't have the royal stamp, Majesty. I was standin' right close, even though Steen was signin' to me to get back. The silver wasn't marked at all. The Dog Sergeant ordered the Dogs to collect it. Then he said everyone in the caravan was arrested for transport of illegal silver! They took 'em all to Guards House, in the King's name!"

"How can it be stolen from the Crown?" Jurji the Bazhir asked, confused. "We haven't heard of a large robbery. We'd know."

Zolaika answered him. Pearl was staring at the cup in her hands. "All silver mined in Tortall is the Crown's property," she said slowly, as if she gave a small child his lesson. "It goes to the Treasury, where it is registered, spelled by royal mages, and marked. Everyone must buy silver with the Crown's stamp on it. If the silver is unstamped, it is illegal. As far as the law is concerned, it is as good as stolen."

"They took all the guards and the merchants!" cried the mot when Pearl still said naught. "Hanse and my Steen and Amda are friends of your'n, everyone knows that! Can ye do nothin'? They'll start to question them anytime now!"

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