Mastiff

  “Why is the king shouting?” I asked them. His Majesty’s voice came from down one of the halls.

  Mistress Orielle found her handkerchief and blew her nose. “The Lord Chancellor of Mages was found at dawn in his office, murdered,” she said. “It’s disastrous at such a time.”

  I stared at her. “How did you find out—oh. Magic.”

  “Ironwood spoke to the Corus palace when I told him what Farmer had seen,” Orielle told me. “Everything there is all upended.”

  “He didn’t tell the palace folk what has happened here?” Tunstall asked, alarmed. So was I.

  “No, of course not!” Orielle replied, outraged. “No word is to leave this place until decisions are made. His Majesty has placed Lord Gershom in charge of everything, and Lord Gershom has been … quite firm about that.”

  “Everything? He hasn’t sent for the Knight Commander of the King’s Own? The Prime Minister?” Master Farmer asked. Tunstall glanced at me and raised his brows. This was a shocker. Why would His Majesty do such a thing? Then I had a thought. Mayhap the king already believed the raiders had inside help. Maybe he’s not trusting anyone at either palace just now, except my lord.

  I knew Lord Gershom and the king were friends from the king’s wilder days. My lord had saved the king’s life on many an occasion, and he’d hidden many a mistress from the knowledge of Queen Alysy. Now I wondered what other things my lord might have done for him, that the king would place all responsibility for this mess as it stood in Lord Gershom’s hands.

  Lady Orielle was clearing her throat to get my attention. “What did you find?” she asked me.

  “His Highness’s dirty clothes. They’re important,” I told her when she frowned. “The scent hounds will need them. They must be kept separate and untouched.” I offered her the bag, but chose not to mention the two pieces I’d put in my shoulder pack. If the king didn’t trust the palace folk, neither would I. “This must be sealed and put aside, in case we don’t find the prince here.” Mistress Orielle flinched, but she took the bag from me. I looked at Tunstall. “Any word of the kidnappers?”

  Tunstall leaned over, about to spit, then thought the better of it. He took his arm from Mistress Orielle’s shoulders instead. “None of them among the dead. Every body is someone known by the folk here. The melted ones were known by jewelry, amulets, and so on. They’ve not found any dead younger than twenty. And all the fairest young mots and coves are gone, too. Twenty-eight missing, total.”

  Mistress Orielle buried her face in her hands. Tunstall looked at us, having said all he meant to say.

  “Perhaps it’s time to let Achoo go to work?” Master Farmer asked. “Set her to track the prince, now that she has something to give her the scent?”

  Mistress Orielle got to her feet with Tunstall’s help and let Pounce and me squeeze by as he climbed the last step to stand with Master Farmer. “I’ll take good care of the clothes, don’t you worry,” she told me, patting the bag. She looked beyond us. Master Ironwood was approaching. I’d thought he looked bad when he greeted my lord at the front door. Now he looked worse. “We have the prince’s dirty clothes to care for,” she told him.

  “What do I care for dirty clothes, you idiot female?” he snapped at her as he passed us by. I bristled and stepped onto the ground floor. Achoo came with me, growling, her head down.

  Mistress Orielle set her hand on my arm. “I’m used to it,” she said, her soft voice matter-of-fact. “It doesn’t bother me.”

  I would have said, “It bothers me,” but it wasn’t my place. If this quiet little mot was the queen’s personal mage, she was far better able to defend herself than I could.

  I knelt beside Achoo, telling her, “Mudah.” Achoo looked at me, as if to ask if I was sure, then relaxed. Master Ironwood was gone down the hall in any event. Tunstall and Master Farmer were waiting. I held a stained and smelly loincloth under Achoo’s nose. She gave it a good sniff before she began to sneeze. “Maji,” I said. Get to work. I looked around for Pounce, but he had disappeared again. I hoped he was going to drop a wall on Master Ironwood for his meanness, but knew it wasn’t likely. He would call it interference and tell me to drop the wall on the mage myself.

  Off went Achoo. I cleared my thoughts and followed. In the years I have been running with her, I have found that I make my own contributions, keeping my eyes and ears open as I follow. Up the stairs she took me, stopping often to turn, sniffing. On she would go. I was fairly certain that she smelled the raiders as they carried the lad back along the hall from the nursery, but Achoo had to work in her own way. She could be chasing the prince as he came in from play, sweating and leaving his scent in the air where a hound with an uncanny nose would find it hours, even days, after. She had to breathe in all of the scents and then unravel them.

  Achoo halted at last, thwarted by the end of the wooden floor and the gaping hole where the roof, attic, nursery, and whatever lay below had dropped into the cellars. Three charred boards, held by whatever remained of the magic that reinforced this wing of the palace, jutted out over that gaping pit. I had the strange fancy the hole was a giant’s mouth, the boards rotted teeth.

  “Achoo,” I called softly. I didn’t want to command her when she had the scent, but she was making me very nervous. She circled on those boards, blowing smoke and the scents of charred wood, paint, and flesh out of her nose. The spells were lace. What if the threads that held those boards up snapped under her?

  I offered the loincloth silently, about to call her a second time, when she straightened and trotted back past me, her plumed tail in the air. She was on the move again. I followed her back down the hallway. We passed the waiting stairwell. Achoo ignored it. The prince’s captors had not taken him downstairs here. We passed an open linen closet where a noble lady sobbed into a pile of folded sheets and a maidservant awkwardly patted her on the back. The maid glanced at us, but the noblewoman never looked up. Next I looked into a room where Master Ironwood sat in a window, a bowl between his hands. He stared into its contents as a lilac glow shone on its surface.

  Then Achoo found a stairwell she liked. She ran swiftly down, but I had to go more carefully. Pooled blood made the marble steps hazardous. Someone had fought like a centaur for this passageway. At the end of it lay a dead man, as I had expected. Gods all witness it, he was chopped meat in chain mail and the tunic of the King’s Own, his head still barely attached. From the state of the landing, he’d made the invaders pay for every gouge on his poor body.

  I cruich crouched down beside him. Achoo, in the open door to the gardi garden, whined.

  “Diamlah,” I told her. “Pox rot it, you know what I must do here.”

  Achoo gave her near silent “wuf,” as much of a rebelion rebellion when I’d told her diamlah as she would give. She waited as i closed the big cove’s open eyes with my fingers and set two copers from my purs on them. Them collecting the ded dead had not found him. Id hav to let them know he was here. “Black God take you gentle, brave defefe defender,” I whispered. “The living will cary your duty now. Find the Peeceful Realms and rest.”

  “what’s this?” I heard Master Farmer say nearby. I knew he and Tunstall had followed us but I hadnt wanted to attend upon them. I was working with Achoo

  “Quiet, kraknob!” Tunstall whispered. “Shes as close to being a priest of the Black God as mmakes no difrence in a temple so keep your gob buttoned!

  I must stop. I am to tired to rite mor untl Ive had a proper sleep.

  Saturday, June 9, 249

  The Summer Palace

  Now I am better for a bit of sleep and a decent meal. I always forget how much a Hunt takes out of me, until the next time I am on one.

  When I stood beside the dead soldier of the King’s Own, Achoo was ready to leap out of her skin, she was so anxious to keep on. Anyone might have thought I’d cost her hours instead of a minute at the most. I stepped out into the garden with her and gave her the order to Hunt. Master Farmer and Tunstall followed us.
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  Off she went, tracking the scent into the night. A vast glow grew behind us, throwing our shadows over the garden paths. I glanced back to see it came from all around Master Farmer. He was lighting our way. The dead had been cleared off, so there was naught to hinder Achoo as she trotted downhill. She leaped the garden wall handily. It was more of an ungraceful scramble for us humans, but she made sure I was over before she went on, across the road we had taken not so long ago to reach the front door of the Summer Palace. The young prince’s captors had not even bothered to conceal themselves at that point. They had followed the road straight down to a walled gate that overlooked the sea, knowing they had left everyone in the Summer Palace dead. Were they laughing as they passed through?

  I kept to the roadside as Achoo and I continued on. I knew Tunstall would pause to inspect the footprints at the gate, to see who came and who left. Achoo led me down a broad path that wound into the rock formations below the wall. I could see where the path split off twice, to rise toward other parts of the palace. I wasn’t certain if it was Master Farmer’s pearly light that made my vision of those paths waver, or the remnants of the spells that had once hidden them. In any event, Achoo had no interest in anything but this route. She followed it all the way to a long, narrow shingle of beach. There she ran to and fro between the waves and the stone cliffs that sheltered it, barking furiously at the Emerald Ocean. Seemingly she wanted it to give up the prince she was seeking.

  “Tide’s still high,” Master Farmer said as he came up behind me, still casting light around us. “Doubtless it’s washed away all traces of the ships’ landing spot.”

  I saw sommat on the waves. Hurriedly I stripped off my boots and weapons belt and waded in after it while Achoo set up a yelping I was sure they could hear atop the cliffs. The riptide dragged on my knees and ankles, trying to tug me out to sea. No wonder the coast folk talk of mermen and merwomen grabbing hold of someone from under the water—it almost felt like hands about my legs, when no one’s seen any of the sea people in two hundred years!

  Achoo set up a mourning howl as I grabbed the thing I had seen. It was the body of a cat. Other bodies floated by me—dead rats of the four-legged, pink-tailed kind. I grabbed one of the rats’ bodies, and a floating whip. Then a strong arm wrapped around my waist and Tunstall towed me back to shore.

  “A little cold for a sea bath, isn’t it?” he growled in my ear. “And what was that smokehead thinking, to let you wade in?” He dumped me on the sand.

  I glared up at him. “I’d have liked to see him stop me.” I dropped my findings on the wet sand before him and Master Farmer while Achoo whined and sniffed me all over anxiously, licking my face and arms.

  Pounce had caught up with us again. He looked at that poor dead cat, his tail lashing, then said, Achoo tells you that while she may be silly, she knows better than to go into the angry waters.

  “Achoo only has a name for being silly because she gets bored easy, she’s so clever,” I told Pounce. The two coves were still staring at the things I had fetched from the waves. Seemingly they hadn’t got their import yet. I went on telling Pounce, “When she gets bored, she’ll do anything to keep from being bored, even if it means just chasing butterflies or leaves. I had to get those things because they tell us sommat that’s very, very important.” I looked at the coves. “What manner of fleeing raiders take time to throw their cats and rats into the sea? What manner of slavers toss their whips overboard?” I pointed to the cargo of rope, rats, and whatnot that floated on the sea at the outermost edge of Master Farmer’s light. “There’s more coming in with the tide.”

  “The beasts weren’t tossed,” said Tunstall. “They drowned.”

  Master Farmer crouched on the wet sand, scooping a bit up in his hands. He let it fall and took out that lens of his, putting it to one eye. “Ach,” he murmured. “We need more light.” He released the lens, tucked it away, then got up and went to a tall stone that thrust out of the sand. He laid both hands on it for a moment. Suddenly it blazed all over, but only in spots, those spots giving enough pure light to cover the beach.

  “You put light in the rock?” Tunstall asked. I half hid behind my partner. I’m not at my best with mages in the first place. It was one thing to speak with Master Farmer if he was a Hunter like Tunstall and me, but I couldn’t do that if he was going to make lanterns of things that don’t hold fire.

  “Not the rock,” Master Farmer said cheerfully. “But there are quartz crystals in the rock. Their nature makes it possible for them to hold light for quite some time.” Now he sounded like a mage, and a clever one at that. Why play the fool, then?

  He sat cross-legged at the edge of the wet sand. “I have mage work to do here, if you will excuse me. It may take some time.”

  Tunstall sighed. “Mages. They’re like cats, forever walking their own path. Why don’t you search the north end of this beach for anything that might tell us about our raiders, and I’ll search south. Oh, wait.”

  He ambled over to the glowing rock. There he bent down and picked up two smaller stones that had gotten caught in Master Farmer’s light spell along with the main boulder. Pounce trotted over to rub against Tunstall’s calves. Then the cat leaped up to a flat space on top of the big stone. Tunstall gave him a quick scratch around the ears. As Pounce curled up for a nap, Tunstall tossed one of the glowing stones to me. “Nice to have stone lamps,” he said, and walked south.

  Achoo came galloping to me, sensing we were about to do actual work. With her at my side, I took my fireless stone lamp along the northern end of the beach, using it to inspect the sand from the waves’ edges to the bottom of the cliffs. I found a child’s wooden dog, a toy meant to be pulled on a cord, and a woman’s scarf. They may have been left behind after an afternoon by the water. Achoo sniffed them and turned away—they did not come from the prince, or his scent had washed clean. Mayhap the toy belonged to one of the other missing children? Given the coating of sand on both, I misbelieved they had been left by the captives.

  I had reached the rocky foot of land that walled off the north side of the beach. Even an adventurous holidaymaker would be hard put to it to climb over this high, stony spur of the cliffs to see if there was a beach on the other side. I was about to turn back when the light from the crystals in my rock sparked an answering gleam at the base of the stone. I knelt to see what it was, setting the toy and the scarf aside.

  I picked up a bronze pendant or ornament. It hung from a thin leather strap that had been worn through at the end. Did the owner even know it was missing? It was nearly flat and round with a raised edge. At the center, also raised, was a design of four lance blade leaves, laid with the narrow tips meeting in the middle.

  I turned the dangle over in my hand, wondering who had brought it to this far corner of the beach. Holding up my stone lamp, I inspected the sand around me and then the cliffs. Here I found one more trail, half blurred by the spells that still remained on it.

  Achoo and I climbed that trail a little way. I stopped and raised my bright stone to examine my surroundings. Stone steps were planted in the steep hillside. They led to the Summer Palace. The walls on the trail were slabs of the same rock as the cliffs, rising high above my head. Defenders could pour anything from arrows to boiling oil on anyone who came this way, and they would have no room to hide.

  Turning to climb down, I saw light on the sea at the edge of the cove. I shoved my fireless stone lamp under my tunic in case more raiders had come. As I stared, though, the lights traced fiery lines as they flowed to the center of the cove and stopped. There they continued to move, shaping figures in the air. Slowly the shapes became familiar—curved sides, flat-faced sterns, masts, sails. Two ships drawn in fire floated over the middle of the cove.

  I snatched up the toy and the scarf I’d found in addition to the brass dangle, then raced with Achoo back to Master Farmer. I kept an eye on those ghost ships. More details appeared to fill in the ships’ outlines, until I could even glimpse the pilot’s
wheel on one. When I halted next to the mage, he didn’t even look at me. His gaze was intent on the ghost vessels.

  Tunstall reached Master Farmer just after I did and dumped the things he had found on the sand. “Trickster’s blue pearls, what’s this?” he demanded as I added the toy and the cloth to the pile of findings.

  Master Farmer looked up at us. “There are reasons Gershom called on me,” he said. “I can raise the image of something that’s buried, under the ground or underwater.” He held up his lens. “Once I noticed the traces of magic on the surface out there, I used my lens to see if there was more power under the water. The raiders never left the cove. They sank.” When we stared at him, he shrugged. “Many folk carry magic with them. I found the crew’s charms and amulets and the magics that went into the ships when they were built.” He pointed at the ghost vessels. “With all that, I could draw images of what’s there. The closest ship is two hundred feet off. Oh, and the magic that blasted the bottoms out of them and kept anyone from escaping, that’s there, too. It’s a complex mix of powers, curse it all. Even if I knew the mages who did it, and that’s not likely, I wouldn’t be able to tell if they’d had a hand in this.”