Bloodhound (8 page)

I took the hound on up to my rooms. Pounce talked to Achoo softly as we climbed, in animal sounds I did not understand. Only when we were inside did I inspect Achoo's leash and collar. Kora had cleaned and oiled both, but that did little to improve them. Both were made of worn, twisted, dirty leather, not at all up to Dog standards.

There is naught I can do now. I can only hope that Hemp-stead left none of his hairs tangled in the leather. Mages can do a fearful lot with a cove's hair.

It is stifling in here, even with every shutter open. There is no breeze at all. While writing in this journal, I have sweated through my clothes.

Tonight's watch will be nasty, if the heat does not break.

Long after watch, near dawn.

Pox rot this cursed watch. I am so weary I can scarce hold my pen, yet what must I do the moment I unlock my door? Achoo greeted me, whining and dancing. She trotted to the edge of the stair and back, her tail between her legs.

She couldn't have been plainer if she'd spoken in Common. She also was plain about expecting me to hit her because she had to go on an errand that came from sitting indoors all through my watch. I closed and locked my door and went downstairs with her. My head was spinning, I was so weary.

Achoo raced down the steps and out the door. She must have been full to bursting. I found her in the street, not even the courtyard, doing her business over the gutter. I had to admire the person who'd trained her to go through doors and gateways to find a gutter. Even my lord Gershom's or my lady Teodorie's hunting hounds, trained though they are, forget themselves indoors sometimes.

"Good Achoo," I said, reaching to scratch her ears. She cringed away from me. I turned my hands over and crouched slowly. It was hard to do it and not fall over. I let her come to me. She sniffed my hands. I scratched her chin a little, then gently did her ears. I never let her suspect that I was in a killing rage at her last handlers.

When she leaned her head back, showing just the tips of her teeth in a hound's grin, I lurched to my feet. She stepped back from me. "Time to go inside," I told her, keeping my voice gentle. "Elsewise I'll fall asleep right here."

She followed me back up to the room, her feet thumping on the steps.

I've managed to write this much, but the letters are dancing on the
pg
page. I told the easy
parrte
part about coming
hom here
home here. I will write more of this
nyt
night after I sleep. I ache in my every bo

Sunday, September 9, 247

Ten of the clock on Sunday morning.

being yet a record of the events of the Evening Watch of Saturday, September 8th

It is too hot to sleep more this morning, and no matter which way I turned, something hurt. I woke to Achoo panting in my face, making me hotter still. "I am surprised you held your water so long," I grumbled as I pulled on my breeches. All my body ached.

Achoo went out with Kora at breakfast time
, Pounce told me.
She has a charm that slides the bolts on the door
.

I was too weary to be angry. Instead, as Achoo took care of her necessities, I drew a bucket from my landlady's well and dumped it over my head. Lifting it hurt my arms dreadfully, but it was worth it to feel cool all over. I led Achoo back upstairs. She was in fine fettle this morning, her tail waving like a banner. I gave her and Pounce cold meat pasties for their breakfast and settled down to finish my accounting of yesterday's watch, the Evening Watch of Saturday, September 8.

First I had to check with Mistress Trout that I would be allowed to leave Achoo tied in the backyard this evening. Five coppers bought her agreement. I left Pounce to bear Achoo company. I set them both up in the kitchen garden behind our lodging with a bowl of water and their supper. Achoo I tied to a long rope attached to a post, in case she got the urge to wander. Then I reported to training.

When I got there, Ahuda was waiting for me. Her arms were crossed over her chest.

"I'm informed you consider yourself a scent-hound handler now," she told me.

I winced as I handed her the notes on what I had gathered from the pigeons and the spinners. I should have figured Hempstead would rush to bleat his tale in Ahuda's ear. "Sergeant, I never tried to take Achoo from him. He was the one who thrust her on me."

"Never mind, Cooper. I'd have taken the poor thing myself, except I'm no street Dog. We don't have any more handlers." She rubbed her nose. "It's not what I would have chosen, but it may serve. It won't hurt you to have a handler's skills. Stop by my desk after your watch musters off duty, and I'll give you the allowance for the hound's food and care. You still see Phelan, don't you?"

Phelan had been Achoo's handler before he'd left the Dogs. "Yes, Sergeant, I do."

"Have him teach you the commands until I can get you regular training. It's just as well you're between partners, wouldn't you say? Now get in that yard and warm up."

Word raced ahead of me, as always. By the time we walked into muster from training, Goodwin greeted me with, "You're turning us into a menagerie, Cooper, is that it? First a cat, now a hound – what's next, winged horses?"

"Always wanted to see those," Tunstall remarked with a sigh. There was a light in his eyes as he added, "Always wanted to ride one."

"Didn't that barbarian nursemaid tell you winged horsies are stories, man?" Yoav teased. "You go ridin' stories, you're due for a long fall!"

"Hempstead
made
me take Achoo," I told Goodwin. "Besides, you should see her. Skin and bones and open sores."

Tunstall went to spit on the floor. He stopped, seeing Ahuda's eye on him. "It's a tiny soul that'll beat an animal, even one as silly as that Achoo," he said, his voice a soft growl.

"Muster up!" Ahuda bellowed. We took our places in the ranks. Ahuda gave us our orders for the night and called up the Senior Dogs for anything special.

When Ahuda dismissed us to duty, we walked out into the courtyard, where the heat smothered us. It clung wetly, filling our noses and lungs. We all grumbled, each in our own fashion. Saturday is a big market day. Plenty of folk come out when their jobs are done. On a night like this, with the heat so bad, tempers would be short.

The free-roaming Senior Dogs and Corporals bunched up near the gate to choose their routes. Goodwin picked the Market of Sorrows for the three of us. The lordlings and rich merchants who came to look over the slave merchandise after dark would be short with the beggars and street folk. Things would go smoother if we were there to stop trouble before it began.

"Any word?" Jewel asked me. "Ahuda said you had sommat troublin' on the rye crop."

I told him what I'd learned while the others listened, frowning.

"That's bad," Yoav said. "If it gets out, it could start a panic."

"I gave it to Ahuda," I told them. "She's always careful with the delicate things."

Tunstall growled. "I'd like to get my hands on the kind of snake that would sell folk rotten grain."

We all growled our answer. Everyone would be looking at any seller of rye now, alert for anything that didn't look or smell as it should. The Senior Dogs and us lucky enough to be partnered with them lingered a little while longer, talking about the harvest in general. None of us were eager to rush out into the heat and the business of the watch. Despite the shadows granted to us by the city walls and the coast hills, the air felt just as hot and sticky as it had during full daylight. At last our knot of Dogs undid itself, Jewel and Yoav going one way, Goodwin, Tunstall, and me another.

We'd just ambled a couple of blocks down Jane Street when Tunstall halted and put a hand to his ear. I'd heard something, too. We all waited, listening. Then we heard it clear. Somewhere from the direction of the Nightmarket, Dogs were blowing the General Alarm signal on their whistles.

We turned down Sophy Street at the trot, bound for the Nightmarket's eastern edge at Feasting Street. We knew this was bad. Five regular pairs and two roving ones had the Night-market on Saturday. If the ones who sounded the whistle continued to do so, it meant that fourteen Dogs were in trouble there.

Goodwin halted us a block short of the Nightmarket. The whistles had continued to blow. "Weapons check," she said. "Mother, watch over us."

"So mote it be," Tunstall and I whispered. The Great Mother Goddess was not who either of us prayed to first, but we would take all the help we could get. I checked my knives swiftly, though I'd done so before leaving the kennel, and made certain my arm guards were tightly laced. I mourned the absence of my armor, which lay snug at home, because I'd decided it was too hot to carry. Then I drew my baton and gave Goodwin the nod. She and Tunstall had gone through the same checks that I had, though perhaps they had not hated themselves for leaving their armor at home. They were wearing their gorgets, which made me kick myself again.
They
had thought it was worth at least wearing their neckpieces. Mine wouldn't have made me sweat
that
much more.

"Keep breathing, keep learning," Ahuda says.

Goodwin held up her whistle, which hung on a thong from her gorget. Tunstall produced his, hanging around his neck. I showed her mine. "Very good, Cooper," Goodwin said. "Let's go."

We emerged onto Feasting, the eastern edge of the market, batons in hand. Our view was blocked by the rows of stalls in front of us. The trouble was doubtless in the heart of the market, where there was more open ground. We swung down to the Rovers Street border of the market and trotted along until we found the edges of the crowd. The open heart of the market was filling up with the kind of cracknob who always came to see what the fuss was about.

Using our batons and elbows gently, ordering these loobies to go about their business or go home, we muscled our way to King Gareth's Fountain. It stood at the heart of the central square, four shallow bowls of lesser and lesser size along the length of a carved stone pillar thirty feet in height. It gave a determined climber a good view of the square between Stuvek Street and Rovers Street. A handful of lads and gixies had already climbed it to take in the events at the south side of the market.

"Up you go, Cooper," Goodwin said. "You're the lightest."

"Not to mention the most junior of the team," Tunstall added.

I undid my weapons belt, and gave it and my baton into Goodwin's care. They would only hinder me as I went up.

I clambered up the sides and over the three lowest bowls, shifting the lads and gixies who didn't want to make way. Lucky for us all they let me pass once they saw my uniform. Standing in the last bowl, hanging on to the crown-tipped point, I could see where the problem was.

The crowd had turned into a boiling mass of hornets at the front, all its attention centered on a line of Dogs – eight at the center with one a step back on each side, whistles to their lips. That was all but two of the pairs assigned to the market. The line of Dogs stood at guard, their batons horizontal in their grips, before the Two for One bakery. In front of Two for One hung its famous slate sign,
Day-old loaves, 2 for 1 copper
. Only someone had crossed out the
2
and chalked the number
1
in its place.

"Bread!" them in the crowd were shouting. "We need bread!" Mostly those in the lead were women armed with naught but market baskets. Behind them were others, coves and mots alike, better prepared for a brawl with bottles, stones, sticks, and jars.

It was unthinkable. Two for One had sold day-old loaves of bread two loaves for one copper ever since I could remember. They bought up much of the city's fresh bread at the end of the day and sold it here the next day at that rate. In the Lower City, even one copper made a difference.

"Move on!" shouted the burliest of the Dogs. It was Greengage, one of our Corporals. "Be about your business. I'll have no trouble tonight!"

"Easy for you to say!" I heard a mot cry. "You're paid a decent wage! One copper, two, it's no skin from your cheek!"

The two Dogs at the ends of the line of guarding Dogs took a deep breath and blew the summons to all Dogs in the area. They were right. Ten Dogs, or even fourteen when the two other pairs arrived, weren't enough for this crowd, and the folk in it weren't calming down.

"Bread," folk in the rear of the crowd began to call. "Bread, bread, bread."

"Eat this, cur!" I heard someone yell. "Here's fare ordinary folk can buy!"

I looked back at Two for One in time to see a rotted cabbage head hit Greengage straight in the chest. It splatted brown-gray sludge over him and the Dogs on both his sides.

Down the fountain I went, ordering the others who climbed it, "Get home afore you get your bones broke!" On the ground again, I told Goodwin and Tunstall what I'd seen. Goodwin returned my belt to me and watched as I buckled it on, making certain everything was settled where I could reach it. Then she handed me my baton.

We all gave each other a last swift going-over by eye to see that all buckles were done up and all laces were tied. Then Goodwin nodded to the left. That would be our direction around the fountain, toward Two for One. She and Tunstall moved first into the crowd, then I stepped in behind them, as we had done at other crowd fights, so I could guard their backs.

Folk around us surged forward, punching their neighbors and shrieking, "Bread!" as sweat poured down their faces. The heat alone might drop a third of them soon enough. Our job was simple. We ordered the brawlers home. If they disobeyed, they got a taste of the baton. Rushers with clubs or blades in their hands got the baton to the head, hard enough to drop them. We didn't need anyone up and about who'd come with a mind to draw blood. Our job was to clear these folk out. And we had to get them that weren't fighting out of the way. It was hard, fast work and left me no time to think about how frightened I was. I'd never been at the heart of a riot, only its edges. I felt beat at by the noise alone.