Mastiff

  I was asleep on the open journal when Sabine came in. “It’s after midnight, but not by much,” she told me when I asked the time. “I’ll take Achoo out. Go to bed.”

  I blinked at her. “Did he try to get under your skirts? The prince?”

  Sabine grinned at me. “No. He was with us six years ago when I told the king that if he did not take his hand off me, I would break every bone in it. He even reminded me of that tonight.” More quietly she said, “There’s something on his mind. Prince Baird will usually flirt with anything in skirts, and he didn’t even try. By the way …” She reached down the front of her dress and pulled something out. It was a metal stamp. When she showed it to me, I saw it was made in the shape of the four leaves.

  “Where?” I whispered.

  She pointed to a drawer in the desk and then very quietly replaced it there. She went to a little trouble to place it exactly as it must have been when she’d taken it, and closed the door. I clasped her shoulder, so she knew I approved. She gave me a cheerful wink.

  Then she took my ink and put the stopper in the bottle. “Go to bed, my dear. You’ve had a hard day.”

  I obeyed Sabine and sought the comfort of the pallet.

  Wednesday, June 20, 249

  Queensgrace

  For all that I’ve risen at dawn nearly every day of my life, if only to visit the privy or take Achoo to do the same, it is always a source of unhappiness to me. I am used to true wakefulness around eight of the clock, being an Evening Watch Dog who comes off duty at the first stroke after midnight. That brief waking at dawn is the world’s and the gods’ way of saying they still own me. My body wants relief, my hound wants relief, and one day a week I must report on my hobblings in the magistrate’s court beginning at seven in the morning. On this Hunt, of course, we rise at dawn to make use of the daylight. I would be far unhappier about it, I suppose, did I not want to find that poor lad and those Rats that have done this to him and his parents.

  When Achoo nudged me awake, I groped for my clothes and belt. I did not bother with stockings, but thrust my bare feet into my boots. I tiptoed around Sabine’s cot and opened the door to the solar. “Quietly,” I whispered to Achoo.

  I heard a rustle and turned. Sabine stared at me, one hand clutching a knife that had not been in view a moment ago. I pointed to Achoo. She blinked, then nodded.

  “Take weapons,” she mumbled. “Nowhere’s safe.”

  “Boots and belt,” I said, wondering if, in her half-sleeping state, she’d remember the nasty things in my belt pouches and the blades in my boots.

  Seemingly she did. She slid her blade under her pillow, and was instantly asleep. Pounce moved onto the warm spot I’d left to continue his own slumbers. Even constellation cats like their naps.

  Achoo and I slid into the darkened solar. Two lamps, one by our door, one by the main door, offered a bit of light, enough that I could see a path between the ladies on their pallets. Some offered snores to the Dream King Gainel. Others murmured. Their dreams were more peaceable than mine, where Holborn and I had been fighting again. That made dawn rising easier. It put a halt to the sight of his face, red with the fire spirits he’d been drinking, eyes narrow and cruel as he cried that I wrung all the joy out of life.

  Carefully I opened the door, fearing to wake a lady and start an outcry, praying the guards outside were asleep. In fact, the guards were no longer there. Mayhap Niccols thought all those ladies were enough to keep me inside. In any case, the broad hall was empty.

  We left the castle near the area where Tunstall and Farmer camped with the prince’s men. Certainly I couldn’t let Achoo ease herself where they walked, but the servants’ privy and the chicken coops were close by, and the barrels in which castle garbage was put. Surely no one could object if I took Achoo there.

  We hurried past the men’s camp. Some of their hounds came to attention, watching us, but they were well trained. They would not make a noise or come for us unless we tried to enter the camp. Even at this little distance I heard men’s snores. Shivering a little in the cool morning air, I didn’t envy Tunstall and Farmer their night in the open. The warmth of the lady’s office had been a welcome change.

  The servants were stirring already, but they said naught to me, nor I to them. They looked as sleepy-eyed as I felt as they visited the privy and ran in and out of the guest quarters. The slaves were about, too, carrying heavy loads of wood for the castle fires. They acted strangely, lifting a shoulder and running from me as if I’d hit them. Had I been more awake, I might have stopped one to ask what in the god’s great gut ailed them, but I was too busy waiting for Achoo to find a spot.

  She did her business in back of the servants’ privy, but she was not ready to return to the ladies’ quarters. She wandered behind it, among the garbage barrels, until I lost sight of her. At last I got impatient and whistled her up. We were to attend that meeting with our partners while the household was at morning prayers. That had to be soon. The breakfast bread was already done. I could breathe its scent, heavy on the air that came from the kitchens.

  My whistle got a reply, of sorts—two sharp barks. I disliked that. Achoo hated to raise her voice. She only did so when she could neither see nor smell me nearby and she’d found sommat she wanted me to look at.

  “Achoo?” I called.

  Again she called, two barks. This time, after a short wait, she barked twice again, then waited, and barked two times more. She needed me to come to her. I did so. She never called without reason, any more than she would shout. I picked my way through the muck that flowed between the privies and the barrels. The smell was thick as a Port Caynn fog. I breathed shallow with my lips open to spare my nose from truly taking in the stink. Searching among the barrels, I was amazed at how much this great castle could throw away. Everywhere I saw the marks of castle scavengers, looking for extra food or bits and pieces they could put to use.

  Achoo stood next to a barrel with her tail tucked under her rump. She looked at me and whimpered. I went to see what she had found.

  The gixie Linnet was sprawled naked atop heaped slops from the kitchens. Her face was purple and swollen. One of the pads I’d made so she could turn the spits without burning her hand was the rope used to strangle her, the bands of cloth I’d sewn for straps dug so deep in her neck I could barely see them. I tested one of her outstretched arms. It would not move when I gave it a push, a sign that the rigor of death had set in. That would have begun four to six hours after her murder, so she’d gone to the god at least that long ago. Carefully, with a whispered apology, I used my fingertips to push her up on her side. The blood in her body had flowed down into her back and bum, pooling there, turning that part of her skin purple. She had lain this way since death, as blood goes to the lowest place when we die, and does not move once it sets. They had killed her and dumped her in the garbage. I was certain they’d done it because she had talked to me.

  I know I stood there a little time, thinking of prayers and forgetting them halfway through. The garbage scavengers, the human ones, the feathered sort in their spinning flight overhead, and the castle’s four-footed rats, none of them dared come near when I looked at them. Or mayhap it was the sure aim I had with the rocks that littered the slimy ground, a childhood skill I had never let rust. I do not think I’d killed more than a rat or two when I heard Farmer say, “Cooper? I was trying to meditate, and I heard Achoo bark.”

  “You know her bark,” I said, letting the stones drop. My hands were filthy.

  “It’s different enough from the hunting hounds in the camp. They don’t bark in signals,” Farmer explained. “Why are you here?”

  He was behind me. I turned sideways so he could see the barrel and Linnet.

  Farmer’s mouth went tight. His eyes were flint. “Goddess bless her, and Mithros curse the ones who did this,” he murmured, like a prayer. He asked me, “Is this the girl who talked with you yesterday?”

  I nodded.

  Farmer rubbed his chin, thinking.
“I can find where she was killed,” he said quietly.

  “Do so, if you please,” I said. “Anything we can learn …”

  “It doesn’t hurt them, the things I do with the dead,” he said, digging in a pocket. “I swear it. I had a dead-speaker, a mage who can talk to them in the Peaceful Realms, ask for me. Those who remembered said the shell doesn’t matter once they’re done with it.” When I looked at him, he shrugged. “I worried that I was hurting them. That they might feel what I was doing to their bodies, and creating a seeming would bring back the pain of their deaths.” He produced a handkerchief and passed it to me. “Your face is, um, wet,” he explained.

  My face? I looked down. The front of my tunic was damp. I’d been weeping without knowing it.

  “I want His Majesty to put their heads on pikes over the palace walls,” I said to Farmer. I hardly knew my own voice, so dark was it. “I want them to rot up there, the target of every gull and crow in Corus.”

  “If we recover the prince, I imagine you can request that, and the king will only ask you if you want ordinary pikes, or gold ones,” Farmer told me. “Will you wait here and keep onlookers back while I get my things?”

  I nodded. He hesitated, then took his handkerchief from my hand and wiped my cheek. “You missed where your skin brushed some—dirt, there,” he explained. He gave the linen square back to me and hurried off, winding between the barrels, skidding a little in the muck.

  I scrubbed my hands well on the handkerchief before I reached into the pouch for meat strips. I gave some to Achoo and told her that she was a clever hound, finding Linnet even when I wasn’t looking for her.

  We were left alone until I saw Fay picking a path toward us. She was already well powdered with flour, beads of sweat making paths through it on her cheeks.

  “They told me a cracknob in black was settling here like she meant to nest,” she told me as she drew close. “Stands to reason it’s you.” She looked at the body. “Ah—Linnet. Poor thing.” She made the Sign against evil on her chest. Then her sharp eyes took me in. “You’ll not get permission for a funeral from my lord and my lady. She’s a slave. And the house ones won’t touch her, not when she’s been left this way, as a warning. The outsiders will bury her away from the castle. You stay clear of that. My lady will have your hair just for being here. It’s unseemly.”

  “It’s my work,” I replied. “She was murdered.”

  “So she was,” Fay told me with a nod. “And every servant and slave in this house will be taking care that they aren’t the next. The sooner you and your friends are gone, the safer all of us will be.” She turned and walked away. “I’ll send some cloth you can wrap her in, but they’ll have to wash it and give it back.”

  It was between her leaving and Farmer’s return that the pigeon came, landing on the barrel next to Linnet’s. It was one of the wood pigeons, three times the size of a city bird, gray and pink in their feathers. This one was pale gray on her back, almost gray-pink on her head. She looked at me with an inquiring eye, as if she wasn’t sure of me.

  Luckily I had my belt on, and a full pouch of corn. “Yes, you’re looking for me,” I said, offering the bird the corn. “I’m her as speaks with the ghosts.” My hand was shaking, I was so upset, and my proper way of speaking had gone straight to Carthak.

  “No one saw us talking.” Linnet’s voice came from the air around the bird. “ ’Twas the pads. I put ’em on both hands, ’cause they made it so easy to turn spits with the pigs on them.”

  I heard steps. I turned, but it was Farmer. I put a finger to my lips and turned back to the pigeon. A boiling heat raced from my gut up my throat. “Those kitchen fussocks complained of you over those pads?” I kept my voice soft for all my rage. I’ve learned not to frighten the dead.

  “No,” Linnet said. “A stranger come in, wantin’ to know if you’d been about and what you was askin’. I kept to me spits, but he saw the pads and asked if I made ’em myself. Boss cook said I’d no sewing nor time to sew.”

  Farmer moved up beside me. Now the ear of his I could see was glowing a yellowish white. So was his mouth. I glanced at his hands. One forefinger shone the same color. He’d been at his strange powders again.

  “They come for me at night, whilst I slept,” Linnet said. “They put a hood on me and took me someplace. They kept me hooded the whole time. I never saw their faces. They wanted to know what I said to the Dog.” I heard her sob.

  I opened my mouth, to tell her she could go, but I closed it again. She had stayed behind because she wanted to. She was not leaving because she had sommat yet to tell me. I wanted her to have her peace, but I wanted anything that would lead us to her killers more.

  “How did they speak, Linnet?” Farmer asked. Now I knew what this powder did. It made it possible for him to hear and speak with the ghosts. “What did they sound like? Noblemen? Countrymen?”

  “Just one spoke. He was a hard man, a noble,” Linnet said. “I said the Dog only talked of the slave train and when they had come. He said I lied. He hurt me with magic. I told him the same thing until he got angry and killed me. The birds said the one who feeds and listens would come if I waited, so that’s what I did. And they were right.”

  “What did you wait to tell me, Linnet?” I asked. I felt the bird peck at my palm. It was empty. I fetched out more corn for her and smoothed the feathers of her breast. “What’s so important that you would not leave until you spoke to me?”

  “They dyed No-Skin’s hair black, and his skin dark brown,” she said. Our guesses were right, then. “He’s got a tattoo for the master’s—the count’s—slaving company on his right shoulder. The four leaves in the circle, that tattoo.”

  Farmer tugged the bronze token from his breeches pocket. He held it in the hand with the glowing finger before the pigeon.

  “That be it,” Linnet said. “That’s the company Master’s part owner of. They come by every summer, twice, so my lord and my lady can look over the stock.”

  “Did No-Skin tell you his real name, or the name of his family?” I asked. “Did he tell you how he came to be a slave?”

  “He told me nothin’,” Linnet replied. “He was afeared to. He gave me this great farrago of a tale, sayin’ if he told anyone anythin’, he’d be hurt for it, and any hurt he took, his parents would feel it. They could even die, if he was hurt bad enough. He said one of the mages with the slavers, the one called Viper, she showed him a picture of his ma bleedin’ ’cause a girl shoved him. Have you ever heard the like? And over a weak slave that could hardly work.”

  “But you believed him, didn’t you?” I asked her quietly. I knew the sound in the voice of one I questioned, the sound of self-doubt and growing belief. “You knew there was sommat not right going on.”

  “For what good it did me nor No-Skin,” Linnet retorted. Her voice was growing faint. “I’ll tell you this for free. The mage as hurt me? I heard him tell someone ‘they’re halfway to Frasrlund’ when they wrapped the cord around my throat. That’s where you’ll find No-Skin. I’m done now, Beka. I’m weary.”

  “Black God give you peace, and accept my thanks,” I whispered to her.

  “They was nice pads to use with the spits,” Linnet replied. I could barely hear her. “I wish I’d had ’em longer.” She was gone. The bird took off, circling her body before it headed out over the wall. A guard on the wall aimed his crossbow at it, likely thinking to shoot his supper from the sky. He did not see the small, blue-glowing stone that flew straight at him. When it hit, he dropped his bow with a cry and knelt on the walkway, clutching his head.

  I looked at Farmer, wanting very much to hug him for saving the bird. Luckily for my dignity, he still glowed yellow at ears and mouth, which kept me where I stood. He shrugged and said sheepishly, “It seemed wrong to let him eat one of our Birdies.”

  I slapped his back, as a fellow Dog would do. “Good work, Farmer,” I told him, so he would know I approved. I turned to Linnet’s corpse. Having my back to him made it
easier to say, “I did not tell her they’d used the strings of the pads I made to kill her.”

  “I didn’t get that part,” he admitted. “What were these pads?”

  I explained about Linnet and her blisters from turning the spits.

  “Seeing that you gave her one good thing on the day she died, forgive yourself, Beka,” Farmer advised. “If you hadn’t done that for her, and someone had seen her talking with you, her end would have been the same. She wouldn’t have had an act of kindness on her last day. Neither of you knew the use to which they’d be put.” Farmer unslung his pack and balanced it against the slightest edge of the barrel, that had been occupied by the wood pigeon, to open a front pocket and remove a handkerchief.