Tortall Universe:

Song of the Lioness quartet

The Immortals quartet

Protector of the Small quartet

Tricksters duo

Beka Cooper series

CIRCLE Universe:

The Circle of Magic quartet

The Circle Opens quartet

THE WILL OF THE EMPRESS novel

MELTING STONES original audiobook and novel

Anthologies, Short Stories, Collections and Articles:

Young Warriors: Stories of Strength anthology, edited by Tamora Pierce & Josepha Sherman

Network for Good - links to nonprofits aiding victims of Hurricane Katrina (including animal rescue)

Excerpt from TERRIER: A Tortall Legend

Note to readers: Beka (Rebakah) Cooper is 16, and her world is very different from that of the other Tortall books, the one of knights, palaces, and the nobility.  Her world is centered on thieves, shopkeepers, beggars, drinking dens, and the Court of the Rogue.  She was born in the Lower City, Corus's worst slum; it's where she feels most at home, though she's spent the last eight years living in the household of the Lord Provost.

She's a new member of the Provost's Guard--a rookie cop, in a time cops make their names based on personality, attitudes toward money, willingness to break heads, and love of the law.  Beka intends to make her mark in this hard world.

I have this journal that I mean to use as a record of my days as a Provost's Dog.  Should I survive my first year as a Puppy, it will give me good practice for writing proper reports when I am required to write them as a proper Dog.  By reporting as much as I can remember word by word, especially in talk with folk about the city, I will keep my memory exercises sharp.  Our trainers told us we must always try to memorize as much as we could exactly as we could.  "Your memory is your record when your hands are too busy."  That is one of our training sayings.

For my own details, to make a proper start, I own to five feet and eight inches in height.  My build is muscled for a mot.  I have worked curst hard to make it so, in the training yard and on my own.  My peaches are well enough.  Doubtless they would be larger if I put on more pounds, but as I have no sweetheart and am not wishful of one for now, my peaches are fine as they are.

I am told I am pretty in my face, though my sister Diona says when my fine nose and cheekbones have been broken flat several times that will no longer be so.  (My sisters do not want me to be a Dog.)  My eyes are light blue gray in color.  Some like them.  Others hold them to be unsettling.  I like them, because they work for me.  My teeth are good.  My hair is a dark blond.  Folk can see my brows and lashes without my troubling to darken them, not that I would.  I wear my hair long, as my one vanity.  I know it offers an opponent a grip, but I have learned to tight braid it from the crown of my head.  I also have a spiked strap to braid into it, so that any who seize my braid will regret it.

 I want to write down every bit of this first week of my first year above all.  For eight long year I have waited for this week.  Now it has come.  I want a record of my first seeking, my training Dogs, my every bit of work.  I know I will be made a Dog sooner than any Puppy has ever been.  I will start to prove I know more than any Puppy has ever done my very first week.

It is not vanity.  I lived in the Cesspool for eight year.  I stole.  I have studied at the knee of the Lord Provost for eight more year, and run messages for the Provost's Dogs for three year, before I ever went into training.  I know every street and alley of the Lower City better than I know the faces of my sisters and brothers, better than I knew my mother's face.  I will learn the rest quicker than any other Puppy.  I even live in the Lower City now.  I know none of the others assigned to the Jane Street Kennel do so.  (They will regret it when they must walk all the way home at the end of their watch!)

So my first week is of particular importance in this journal.

Pounce says I count my fish before they're hooked.  I tell Pounce that if I had to be saddled with a purple-eyed talking cat, why must I have a sour one?  He is to stay home during my first week as a Puppy.  I will not be distracted by this strange creature who has been my friend these last four years.  And I will not have my Dogs distracted by him.  Four legged cats--not even ones who talk in cat but make themselves understood in Common--have naught to do with plain, honest Dog work.

I am assigned to the Jane Street Kennel.  The Watch Commander in this year of 246 is Acton of Fenrigh.  I doubt I will ever have anything to do with him.  Most Dogs don't.  Our Watch Sergeant is Kebibi Ahuda, one of my training masters, my training master in combat, and the fiercest mot I have ever met.  We have six Corporals on our Watch and twenty-five Senior Guards.  That's not counting the cage Dogs and the Dogs who handle the scent hounds.  We also have a mage on duty, Fulk.  Fulk the Nosepicker, we mots call him.  I plan to have nothing to do with him, either.  The next time he puts a hand on me I will break it, mage or not.

There is the sum of it.  All that remains is my training Dogs.  I will write of them, and describe them properly, when I know who they are.

April 1, 246

And so this is my day at last--my evening, in truth, as I have been assigned to the Evening Watch at the Jane Street Kennel.  The Watch Commander is some member of the As the sun touched the rim of the city wall, I walked into the Jane Street Kennel in uniform.  I was able to get it all for free from the old clothes room at my Lord Provost's house.  I wore the summer black tunic with short sleeves, black breeches, and black boots.  I had a leather belt with purse, whistle, paired daggers, a proper baton, water flask, rawhide cords for prisoner taking.  I was kitted up like a proper Dog and ready to bag me some rats who broke the king's law.

Some of the other Lower City trainees were already there.  Like me they wore a Puppy's white trim at the hems of sleeves and tunic.  None of us have figured out if the white is to mark us out so rats will spare us, or if they will kill us first.  None of the veteran Dogs who were our teachers would say, either.

I sat with the other Puppies.  They greeted me with gloom.  None of them wanted to be here, but each district gets its allotment of the year's Puppies.  My companions on this bench feel they drew the short straw.  There is curst little glory here.  Unless you are a veteran Dog or a friend of the Rogue, the pickings are coppers at best.  And the Lower City was rough.  Everyone knew that of the Puppies who started their training year in the Lower City, half give up or are killed in the first four months.

I tried to look as glum as the others.  The truth was, I had asked to be sent here.

Ahuda took her place at the tall sergeant's desk.  We all sat up.  We'd feared her in training.  She is a stocky black woman with some freckles and hair she has straightened and cut just below her ears.  The story is her family is from Carthak far in the south.  They say she treats trainees the way she did in vengeance for how the Carthakis treated her family as slaves.  All I knew was that she'd made fast fighters of us.

She nodded to the evening watch Dogs as they came on duty, already in their pairs or meeting up in the waiting room.  Some looked at our bench and grinned.  Some nudged each other and whispered and laughed.  My classmates hunkered down and looked miserable.

"They'll eat us alive," my friend Ersken whispered in my ear.  He was the kindest of us, which worried me.  "I think they sharpen their teeth."

"Going to sea wouldn'ta been so bad."  Verene had come in after me and sat on my other side.  "Go on, Beka--give `em one of them ice-eye glares of yours."

I looked down.  Though I am comfortable enough with my fellow Puppies, I wasn't so comfortable with the Dogs or the other folk who came in with business in the kennel.  "You get seasick," I told Verene.  "That's why you went for a Dog.  And leave my glares out of it."

Since Ahuda was at her desk, the Watch Commander was already in his office.  He'd be going over the assignments, choosing the Dog partners who would get a Puppy.  I asked the Goddess to give Ersken someone who'd understand his kindness never meant he was weak.  Verene needed Dogs that would talk to her straight.  And me?

Goddess, Mithros, let them be good at their work, I begged.

Who would I get?  I know who I wanted.  There were three sets of partners who actually tried to do the job.  I took my mother's good luck charm from my pocket and kissed it.

Outside the market bells chimed the fifth hour of the afternoon.  Dogs going off-duty lined up before Ahuda's desk, their Puppies at their backs, to muster off their Watch.  When Ahuda gave them the nod, they were done for the day.  Their Puppies, six of our classmates, sighed with relief and headed out the door.  Before they left they looked at us, each telling us what we were in for in their own way.  Some gave us a thumb's up.  A couple mimed a hanging with a weary grin.  I just looked away.  What was so hard for them?  They'd had day Watch.  Everyone knew that evening Watch got the worst of it in the Lower City.

With the day Watch gone, Ahuda pulled a slate in front of her and called out the names of a pair of Dogs.  They'd been lounging on one of the benches set around the walls for folk to wait on.  When they looked at her, she jerked her thumb at the commander's door.  They settled their shoulders, checked each other's uniforms, then went inside.  I knew them.  My lord Gershom had commended them twice, once for bravery in a fire, once for bagging a riverfront smuggling gang.

Once the door closed behind them, Ahuda looked at us.  She didn't need to check a slate for our names after a year of kicking us around the training yard.  "Puppy Ersken Westover.  You're going to be assigned to those two Dogs for training.  Step up here."

Ersken flinched, then stood to whistles and applause from the veteran Dogs.  I straightened his clothes while Verene kissed him and our fellow trainees clapped him on the shoulder or shook his hand.  Then Ersken tried to walk across that room like he was confident he could do the job, in front of about twenty ordinary folk and the Dogs of the evening Watch.

Hilyard elbowed me.  "You coulda given him a kiss, Beka, to brighten his last hours."

I elbowed him back some harder.  Hilyard was always trying to cook up mischief.

"My kisses ain't good enough?" Verene demanded of him.  She punched his shoulder.  "See what sweetenin' you get when they call you."

Ersken came to attention before Ahuda's desk.  She looked down her short nose at him.  "Stop that.  Relax a moment.  The commander's giving them the speech, about how they're not to break you or dent you or toss you down the sewer without getting permission from me first."

Ersken's lad's apple bobbed clearly in his throat when he gulped.  The Dogs laughed.  Then one of them called, "Don't sweat it, lad.  We're all just workin' Dogs down here."

"They keep the honor and glory and pretty girls for Unicorn District."  That Dog was a woman whose face was marked crossways by a scar.

One of them said, "Up there, the fountains run rosewater.  Here they run--"

"Piss!" cried the Dogs.  It was an old joke in the Lower City.

The Commander's door opened.  Out came the two Dogs.  They looked resigned.  The heavy-set one beckoned to Ersken.  "Let's go, Puppy.  Let's get our glorious partnership rolling.  You don't say nothin', see?  We talk, you listen."  He clamped a thick hand on Ersken's shoulder and steered him out of the kennel.  Ahuda called for a new Dog pair to see the Commander, then the next of us to wait for his training Dogs.  It was Hilyard's turn.  Just as she'd threatened, Verene gave him no kiss.

While we waited for the Dogs to collect Hilyard, a woman called, "Sarge?  Be there word of who left old Crookshank's great-grandbaby dead in the gutter?"  We looked at her.  She was here to visit a man in the rat cages out back, mayhap.  She had five little ones with her, hard to watch over in our crowded kennel.  She must have feared there was some killer of young ones out there, and refused to leave them with anyone.

Ahuda shook her head.  "There is no news, Mistress, but if you're afeared for your own, I'd counsel you to let go your fear.  Crookshank is the evillest pinchpenny scale and landlord in the Lower City.  He buys for coppers what's valued in gold.  If one of his firetraps burns with a mother in it, he sells the orphans for slaves.  He's got more'n enough enemies.  Any of them would have strangled that poor little one."

"Aye, but no one kills women and children," muttered a veteran Dog.  "Not when they're no part of your business."

Ahuda glared at him.  "We'll catch the rat and flay him living, but I'll bet anyone here Crookshank drove some poor looby to Cracknob Row.  Your little ones are safe, Mistress."

It's true, Crookshank is the most hated man in Corus.  It's true also that family is off-limits if they aren't in your enemy's line of work.  To kill a rival's child-kin is to become outlaw to people who hardly recognize their own law and never obey what the king hands down.  And poor Rolond Lofts had been killed for a message, my landlady said.  He'd been left in the street before one of Crookshank's respectable shops.  In the five days since then, the vicious old man had closed that shop.  Now they say he sits in his fine house with windows covered in black, no candles or lamps burning, his untouched food drawing flies.

"I'll wager the ol' scale got the best to seek the lad's killer," a cove among the folk said.  "Come on, Sergeant.  Who'd Crookshank buy special t' get put on the murder?  I heard he got teams on each watch."

"He did, not that it's your business," Ahuda said, not looking up from her writing.

"Who's it on this watch?" someone else called.

Ahuda looked up with a scowl, ready to tell these folk to hold their tongues.  It was old Nyler Jewel who told them, "Why, me and Yoav, good cityfolk."

They all stared.  Doubtless they knew that Yoav's sister hung herself but three months back.  Her man had sold her to pay a debt to Crookshank.  Jewel and Yoav would never sweat to seek Roland Lofts's killer, no matter how much his great-grandda paid in bribes.  The Dogs picked from the Night and Day watches were also Dogs with a grudge.  And Crookshank Lofts had so many enemies he didn't even know it.

While Ahuda had read out the names of the fourth pair to see the commander, Matthias Tunstall and Clara Goodwin came in.  I put my head down so my bangs hid my eyes and watched as they found themselves a patch of wall to lean on.  Of the three good pairs here on Jane Street, they were the best, Goodwin a Corporal, Tunstall a Senior Dog.  They could have had any posting in Corus they wished, but they'd kept to the Lower City.

One night, my lord invited them to supper for a task they'd done very well.  I hid in the drapes of the little supper room to hear the legends talk to Lord Gershom.  He'd offered them a new place, but they'd refused.  Tunstall said, "Clary and me, we know the Lower City.  The worst ones know our little ways.  The people of the Court of the Rogue have memorized our bootprints, bless their silly cracked heads.  It suits us, don't it, Clary?"

And Goodwin, she'd chuckled.

"The pickin's are richer elsewhere."  My lord Gershom was amused, I could hear it.  "The Happy Bags of bribes for the kennels are fatter in other districts."

"We're humble folk," Goodwin said.  She had a voice like dark honey.  "We like humble pickings.  And the bones that come from the Rogue's Happy Bags are rich enough."

I'd never be assigned to them, I knew.  They didn't get Puppies.

Now Goodwin and Tunstall gossiped with their friends among the Dogs, joking as other pairs came out with a Puppy.  These Lower City veterans are a hard crew, wearing metal throat protectors and metal-ribbed arm guards as well as the regular uniform.  Their gloves, studded with metal on the backs and lined with mail on the palms, hung at their belts, along with lead-weighted saps.  Even other Dogs were wary of these folk, respectful of their ability to stay alive.

I would be the last one called.  I was looking around as my last yearmate went to Ahuda, then left on his first Watch with his Dogs.  I wiped my sweating hands on my breeches.  Then I nearly swallowed my own tongue, because Ahuda called, "Tunstall and Goodwin."

"No!"  Goodwin looked at me, her brown eyes sharp.  "No, no.  We don't get Puppies.  We don't like Puppies.  No offense, whoever you are.  We have never had a Puppy."

"You're past overdue, then."  Ahuda had no sympathy in her eyes.  "Your luck just ran out.  Join the rest of the Dogs."

Goodwin headed into the commander's office like a hawk that had sighted prey.  Tunstall ambled after.

They are a mismatched pair.  Corporal Goodwin is five feet six, two inches shorter than me.  She is stocky, wears her dark brown hair cut short.  She has brown eyes, a small beak of a nose, full lips.  They said she'd put down a Scanran berserker when he'd killed three men in a fight, her alone with her baton.  She is fast and all muscle.  She'd been a Dog seventeen years.

Senior Dog Tunstall has partnered with her for thirteen.  He's been a Dog for twenty in all.  He is seven inches taller than me, long armed, long legged, with deepset brown eyes and a long, curved nose.  I think he looks like an owl, though he's popular enough with the women.  He wears his hair cropped short all over his head.  There is gray in it, and in his short beard and mustache.  He is funny and easy-going.  He could be a Watch Commander, even a Captain.  So could she.  Neither of them want it.  The street is what they know.  Kennel rumor say he was some kind of hillman, mayhap even a renegade from one of the eastern hill tribes.  Whatever he'd been before coming to the Provost's Guard, he is one of us now.

"Rebakah Cooper."

From the laughter in the room, it wasn't the first time Ahuda called my name.  I went to stand before the desk.  She looked down at me.  "Don't let them rattle you," she advised.  "You've got the best.  That's the only extra chance I wangled for you.  And if you're smart, you won't depend on your other connections high up to grease your way with them."

I looked down.  As if I'd ask for help from my lord!

"Better not be cooing our tales in his ear, neither."  I didn't know the voice and I didn't turn to look.

"She never did when she was a runner.  I knowed she saw plenty.  She had two years worth of chances."  That was a voice I knew, Nyler Jewel's.  "Never you worry about lil' Beka."

I just kept my head down.  I hate being talked about like I was a cut of beef the butcher left out too long.  All the same, turning to talk back like Ersken would do made my tripes wring out.  I'm not the kind that talks back to folk.

Besides, I could hear shouting behind the commander's closed door.  Since the commander is a man, I knew it was Goodwin who wasn't happy.

She walked out of the commander's office, slamming the door.  I added another test to that short list: surviving my Dog partners.

She came up to me and looked me over.  "I have two rules for you, Puppy."

I looked down.  I always do, I can't help it.  Meeting people was the hardest part for me.  It never got any easier.

She grabbed my chin with her hand and forced me to meet her eyes.  "Hmf.  Are those blue?  Pale enough to be ice.  Creepy eyes.  Look me in the face when I'm talking to you, Puppy Rebakah Cooper.  Two rules.  Speak when you're spoken to.  And keep out of my way."

She let go of my chin and glared up at Tunstall, who had joined us.  "All right?  Time to start the babysitting detail."

He smiled, looking even more like a tall, gangly owl.  "Come on, Puppy Cooper."  His voice is deep, with a little bit of hill accent.

I followed them outside.  I wasn't going to tell Goodwin that in my breeches pocket was the parchment all trainees got when we had passed our tests.  It had the rules to follow with our training Dogs: "Speak when you're spoken to.  Keep out of the way.  Obey all orders.  Get killed on your own time."

Between the kennel door and the Jane Street gate is the courtyard where message runners and more people with kennel business wait.  The crowd was bigger than usual.  They knew Puppies were being assigned and wanted to see who got what.  The noise they made when they saw Tunstall and Goodwin with a trainee was deafening: whistles, laughter, plenty of comments about what Tunstall might do with me.

I kept my head down and tried not to listen.  I didn't think the body could bend in those directions.  Not that I'd know.  Most of the other girl Puppies had tried a lad or two--at sixteen, some mots, like my old friend Tansy, were married.  I haven't.  Since Lord Gershom brought my family into his house, I have only wanted to be a Dog.  Canoodling and falling in love would just distract me.

Passing through the gate, I saw movement in the shadows.  One shadow came over to walk with me.

"Pounce," I muttered, "scat!  Go away!"  Pox and murrain, he never listened!  I told him I didn't want him about this week!  The curst cat always finds me.  Tonight I'd even tried to lock him in, folly though it was.  I had shuttered the windows to my rooms, and barred them, and locked my door.  I had made sure he was inside--I'd heard his yowling as I ran down the stairs.  Eventually he always gets out, but I'd hoped he'd take the hint and leave me be!  "I'm on duty!"

"I'd best not be hearing noise from you, Puppy," Goodwin called over her shoulder.

I shut up and flapped my hands at Pounce.  He ignored me, dratted creature that he is.  Stupid cats stay home when they're locked in.  I wouldn't be having this problem if he were normal.

"Tunstall, why is there a cat following us?" Goodwin asked.  "I don't want to be falling over some stray black cat."

"It's not a stray, Goodwin.  He wears a collar."  Tunstall bent down and scooped up Pounce.  I glared at my cat, silently daring him to scratch or bite him.  Instead my contrary animal turned his whiskers forward in a cat's smile, and let Tunstall scratch him under his chin.  Pounce didn't even struggle when Tunstall halted in a patch of fading sunlight to inspect it.

Then he saw Pounce's eyes.  "Mithros.  Goodwin, look."

Goodwin looked.  She swore.  It's about half and half, who swears and who calls on a god, when they see Pounce's eyes.  I can't blame them.  I nearly fell out of the stable loft when I saw the kitten I'd just found had purple eyes.

"Are you a god?" Tunstall asked Pounce.

"Manh!" my idiot cat said.  He added a few sounds like "mrt," as if to prove his catness.  For once they even sounded like cat to me, when so much of his cat noises sound like speech most of the time.

"If he is a god, he chooses not to say," Goodwin said.

"He wears Cooper's collar."  Tunstall looked at me.  "Do you have a magical kitty-cat, Puppy Cooper?" he asked me, raising an eyebrow.  "You may answer."

The words stuck in my throat.  I shook my head, wishing I could fall through the slops and garbage of Jane Street.  He's just Pounce, I wanted to explain.  He's odd, but you get used to his ways.  But of course I couldn't say a word.

"Her cat?"  Goodwin looked at Pounce's collar.  "And with those eyes, he's not magic?"

My soon-to-be-sold-for-dumpling-meat cat reached out and patted Goodwin's nose.  "Stop that, you."  But she smiled when she said it, and she scratched him behind the ears.  Pounce rubbed his head against her hand like she was the one who spent precious coppers on meat that she chopped for him herself.  "You brought your cat?  Speak up, trainee."

I tried.  I did.  And I remembered her warning to look her in the eye.  So I managed that, but the speech just wouldn't come out of my throat.

Goodwin lifted Pounce from Tunstall's hold.  "Did you bring him to the kennel?"

That was easy.  I shook my head and got out, "N-no, Guardswoman."  I didn't think I could call her Dog without permission, or even Goodwin.

"He followed you here."  Goodwin's fingers were brisk but affectionate behind Pounce's ears.  The little traitor wrapped his forelegs around her neck.

"Yes, Guardswoman."  I would have given anything not to have to meet her clear brown eyes.

"Clever cat," said Tunstall.  "Tell him to go home, Puppy."

Goodwin put him down.  "You, scat.  She has work to do.  Hard work, staying out of my hair."

I glared at Pounce--wait till I get you home, you ungrateful furball!--and pointed in the direction of our lodgings.  He trotted across the street.  I couldn't watch him further, because Tunstall and Goodwin were on their way.

People greeted them from doorways and stalls, wanting to know who the Puppy was.  I hung my head as they whistled and catcalled and shouted their offers to buy or sell me or play with me.  And for the hundredth time I cursed my shyness, that made it so hard to talk to my Dog partners, even when I was bidden to, or to answer the street folk back, the way Tunstall could.

"But she's our Puppy, Inknose.  If we let her fetch you, she'd just hurt you."  "Leave the lass alone, Wildberry, you saucy wench.  She'll never be as beautiful as you and your sisters."  "Shut up, Paistoi.  You ain't paid the Dogs for the last batch of Puppies you sold in Siraj."

In between his remarks to them, he explained things to me.  "Since we're a senior pair, Cooper, we have no fixed route.  Three days a week we roam the Nightmarket and the Lower City between Rovers Street and Koskynen, Northgate and Little Stormwing.  Two nights we're in the Cesspool, Stormwing Street to Mulberry and Charry Orchard.  We work our own seekings unless assigned one by Ahuda, we get papers when we need help on a seeking, and we have our flocks of birdies who give us what we need to seek.  And if we have aught that's good, we wander off our wanderings.  Senior pairs do that.  Clary?  Aught to add?"

She looked at him.  "I'm bored."

Tunstall scratched the back of her head.  "And you say I'm a barbarian.  At least I know how to train a new warrior.  Halt right there, Cooper.  Look about you.  What do you see?"

It was too easy.  Not ten feet off to our sides, a pickpocket moved in on a pickle woman.  I put my hand on my baton, but Tunstall slid in like ink in water.  He laid his baton gentle on the boy's hand just as the lad touched the mot's purse.  Tunstall shook his head.  The pickle woman started to shriek at the thief.  Tunstall gave her a smile and a copper.  "How about one of your pickles, mistress?"  Like anyone in the Lower City, she got distracted by business.  When she started to fish for a pickle in the barrel, Tunstall raised his baton from the lad's hand.  The pickpocket ran.

Tunstall traded copper for pickle with a bow and took a big bite of his snack.

"Oh, get on.  No wonder they call you lads dogs, thinkin' you can charm an old hag like me with a wag of your tail!"  The pickle seller bridled and blushed, then tucked her coin away and headed on down the street.  There was an extra twitch to her hips.  I'd wager she'd give her husband an extra warm night, thinking of the tall Dog who had flirted with her.

"If her husband comes looking for you, I won't be your second, not after the last time."  Goodwin nudged him with her elbow.  "I stood there like an idiot while you made the cove laugh so hard at your jokes he ended up buying all of us breakfast.  Some duel that was."

"Well, I didn't kill him, and he didn't want to kill me.  Everyone was satisfied with his challenging me, except maybe for the seconds."  Tunstall looked at me and beckoned for me to come up level with him.  "Now, Puppy, you saw him.  That's good.  You'd've made a fuss--maybe not so good.  What grade pickpocket was he?"

Great Mithros, a training question.  My brain scrambled.  Then I remembered and met Tunstall's eyes.  "He'd no knife, so he was a true pickpocket.  Slow as he is, he prob'ly won't live to be a master pickpocket."

Tunstall prodded me.  "And what's the street word for master pickpocket?"

"Foist, sir," I replied.

"So she knows the words," Goodwin muttered.  "So what?"

Tunstall patted her shoulder.  "Well, we don't go around raising a fuss for minnows, Puppy.  I don't like standing before the magistrate any more than I must.  It's less time spent out here looking for truly dangerous folk."

That made sense.  I nodded, and saw that Pounce had returned to sit at my feet.  I tried to nudge him away with my boot.

"Come on," said Goodwin.  "The evening's young, and I was thinking we might pay Crookshank a visit.  I'd like to talk to him about that load of pink pearls that went missing off of Gemstone Mews.  If he's half as cracked by grief as they say, mayhap he'll get careless in his talk."

I did look up then.  She was grinning, with all her teeth on show.  They were strong and white, like the wolves' in the royal menagerie.

"Now Clary, that's not nice," Tunstall told her.  "He's in deep mourning for little Rolond."  Quick as a snake he looked back at me.  "Puppy, who's Crookshank?"

He startled me so that I answered without thinking.  "Biggest of the Nightmarket receiver--scales.  Owns a piece of most what's lifted, half of the luxury goods, minimum.  A quarter of the loaner trade.  And he's got property, about twenty buildings in the Cesspool.  Twenty more in the greater Lower City."  I swallowed and remembered where I was and who I spoke to.  "Sir."

"What do you expect, Mattes?" demanded Goodwin.  "She's lived in my lord Gershom's pocket for eight years.  She had to pick up something if she wasn't completely stupid.  Knowing isn't the same as doing."  She walked out into the crossing of Gibbet Corner and Feasting Street, where stalls filled the huge square before us.  We had come to the Nightmarket.

I nearly fell over my like-new boots with surprise.  She knew who I was!  I was fair certain it wasn't covered in what the commander said when I was assigned to them.  She'd known of me before.

Does she know I'm friends with Crookshank's granddaughter-in-law Tansy, and my mama with his daughter-in-law Annis? I wondered sudden-like.  How?  No one from their old Cesspool district was allowed at Rolond's funeral or ever at the house.  So I should tell the Dogs . . .

Trotting to catch up with them, I changed my mind.  It wasn't needful.  Tansy wouldn't come out to say hello to visitors, if Dogs could rightly be called visitors.  She hadn't left the house since Rolond was killed.  If Annis came to see us, she'd never give me away.  She was a hard one, as fit a woman who made herself her father-in-law's right hand.  I could tell Goodwin and Tunstall I had friends in the household later tonight, when we were off the street.

The Nightmarket was just stirring up for business.  The torches were just being lit, the sun being behind the wall in the Lower City.  Plenty of folk were still at their daily work.  This was quiet time for the Market.  Buyers and sellers were talking among the stalls, collecting gossip, beginning to cook, adjusting weapons.  It's my favorite time in the Nightmarket.

We walked along.  Stall vendors and market regulars called greetings to Goodwin and Tunstall.  Two other pairs of Dogs worked the Nightmarket, but we didn't even see them.

I was trying to wave Pounce off again when Tunstall halted.  I could see that big beak of his twitching.  "I smell apple-raisin patties," he announced.

Goodwin turned to him and rolled her eyes.  "Glutton," she said, her smile a mocking hook at one corner.

Tunstall led us down the bakers' and spicers' row of the market until he stopped at the stall that spread those good smells.  I knew them well myself.  I don't know anyone who won't swear before all the gods that Mistress Deirdry Noll is the best baker in all Corus.  And Tunstall's luck was in, because Mistress Noll herself was minding the trays of baked goods.  "Mattes, I should have known that nose of yours would sniff out my patties!" she said with a laugh.  She even reached up and tweaked his nose.  That he was Matthias Tunstall bothered her not a whit.  "Give me your handkerchief, you great lummox.  Mistress Clary, how do you fare this good evening?"

"As ever, Mistress Deirdry," Goodwin said.  "None of your daughters could take the stall tonight?"

"Not tonight."  Mistress Noll used a flat scoop to place six fat patties, heavy with cinnamon, on Tunstall's handkerchief.  She looked as she always had to me, plump, her gray hair braided, pinned, and coiled at the back of her head, brown eyes, a small nose and straight mouth.  She wore a brown cloth gown under her white cook's apron.  She had always seemed old, but seeing her like a Dog, I thought she was no more than fifty now.

She tied Tunstall's handkerchief to make a bundle of patties and handed them over.  He reached for his purse.  She put fists on hips and drew herself up as tall as she could go, which was no more than my shoulder.

"As if any Dog in the Lower City paid for a little something to get him through to his supper from me!" she said, all huffy.  "I'd smack your face if I could, Mattes Tunstall!"  She looked at Goodwin.  "Men!  No notion of what's proper!"  She flicked out a slip of cloth that had been washed so often it was almost sheer and settled three patties on it.  "That's for you, Clary, since I know you're nicer about your handkerchief than he is, the big barbarian."

Tunstall mumbled something through hot filling and crumbs.

Goodwin leaned in and kissed Mistress Noll's cheek.  "Thank you," Goodwin said, her deep voice amused.  "Don't mind him.  He wasn't housebroke when I bought him, either."

Mistress Noll looked down.  "Pounce, you little beggar, what are you doing here?  Don't tell me you've run away from Beka.  The two of you are melted together."

My friend cried "Look in front of you!" in cat.  It always amazes me that he can do it and decide who will understand him that time and who will not.  He's done so since he ordered me to find him four years ago, when he was a noisy little kitten.

This time I was the only one who understood.  Mistress Noll only chuckled and offered him some of the fish paste she'd using for the dumplings she fried at the brazier in the stall.  When she straightened she saw me.  "Goddess bless me, it is Beka!  All grown up and--partnered with you two?"  She looked at Goodwin and Tunstall.

"She's a trainee, not a partner."  Goodwin smiled barely.  "How'd you get to know her, Mistress Deirdry?"

Out came another worn bit of clean cloth.  Mistress Noll popped three apple fritters onto it--she knew well they were my favorites.

"Hey," said Tunstall, "hers are bigger."

I forgot who he was and grinned at him.  Then I ducked my head.

"Well, you'd better take care of her.  I've known her all my life, and you couldn't ask for a better-hearted gixie," said Mistress Noll.  "I told her she ought to have let me make dumplings of you years ago," she told Pounce, scratching his ears.

Pounce mewed sad enough to pull her heart-strings.  He might have been thanking her for the scratch with his last, starving breath.  I glared at him, telling him with my eyes, You're disgusting.  Tell me you didn't have a beef supper before I left.  He licked his chops as Mistress Noll gave him an even bigger ball of fish paste.

Goodwin asked, "Mistress Deirdry, did you hear about old Crookshank's great-grandson?"

Mistress Noll looked at Goodwin sidelong.  She knew she was being played for information.  Tunstall gave her a big shrug, as if to say, She's my partner.  What can I do?

Mistress Noll busied herself with pressing dough flat on a small table by the cookpot, what she'd been doing when we came her way.  "As if anyone didn't know of it, poor little mite.  It's a disgrace, it is, taking a quarrel with the old man into his family.  Barbaric.  Mayhap they carry on so in Scanra, or Barzun, but not here.  Whoever did it won't last long, breaking the Rogue's law like that."

Tunstall grimaced.  Goodwin sniffed.  The Rogue was old and should have made way for someone younger and strong, who could keep order among the city's thieves.  Instead he'd fixed the Court of the Rogue to keep himself alive and his chiefs keeping his skin safe.  He didn't look out for the people of the Lower City anymore, only his chiefs and the folk who added to his treasure chests.

Pigeons started landing on the stall's canopy.  "Scat, you nasty things!" cried Mistress Noll.  She grabbed a broom and jabbed it at the canvas.  "Don't you go leaving your mess on my goods!  Beka, go stand somewhere else!"

"Mistress Deirdry, she's our trainee, she must stand with us," Tunstall reminded her.  "And what's she got to do with pigeons?"

I swallowed and thanked the Goddess I hadn't done just as Mistress Noll had bid me.  I'd have been in trouble if I'd moved at someone else's order.  Above us I heard the whispers of voices as the birds whirled and spun over the thumping canopy.  Bits of human talk were coming through pigeon calls, as always.  "Rest at . . ."  "Spend it . . ."  "Mama!"

Pounce's loud and imperious meow cut through the noise.  As if he'd given them an order, the pigeons flew over to Moneychangers' Hall and settled on the carvings that decorated the front of the place.

"Beka always seems to have some tailing her," Mistress Noll told my senior partners.  "Some bit of strange magic, I wouldn't doubt.  It's in her father's family"  She smiled at me.  "Maybe one of them got re-born into your cat, girl."

"You'd think they'd be roosting, this hour of the night."  Goodwin brushed her sleeves as if she thought to find droppings on her.

"There's so much light here they carry on like it's day," Tunstall said.  "Just because you don't notice anything but humans doesn't mean the rest of us don't."  He plunked down a copper noble.  "One of your beef pies, Mistress Deirdry, as a grieving gift."  He leaned closer and said quietly, "Any little whispers about who might have been around the Crookshank child too much who shouldn't have been?"

Mistress Noll carefully settled the pie into a cheap basket.  "Mattes Tunstall, you know very well anything useful doesn't come to someone like me.  I'm old, and unimportant.  No one shares anything with old folk.  We're finished, we just haven't died."

"But you're not finished," Tunstall told her with a flirty smile.  "You sharp old folk are everywhere, aren't you?  You're everywhere, and you see and hear everything."

"And if you did hear something . . ." Goodwin hinted.

"It would be a wondrous thing.  Still, I'd pass it on to the two of you, respectful as you are.  Would that others were like you."  Mistress Noll gave Tunstall his change and the basket.  "Fare you well.  If you return the basket, you'll get five coppers returned."

"No problem," Tunstall said with a grin.  "I'll just have my Puppy fetch it back to you."

Crookshank's house was to the rear of the Nightmarket, the biggest house on Stuvek Street.  Pounce wandered off into the market whilst a manservant let us in.  We waited in a sitting room whilst he fetched Annis Lofts.  I wondered if I ought to tell my Dogs that Mistress Annis and my mama had been friends.

Mistress Annis came before I could fish the words from where they were stuck in my chest.  She wore black for her dead grandson, a long black tunic over a black underdress.  She'd been crying.

"You can see Father Ammon, for the good it will do you," she said.  I'd forgotten the old scale's real name was Ammon Lofts, he'd been Crookshank for so long.  "He's done little but sit in the dark.  He hates you two enough, mayhap he'll move for you.  This way."

Goodwin looked at me.  "Puppy, sit," she ordered as she and Tunstall followed Annis.

Instead I walked around the room where we'd been waiting, pricing the little pretty things and hangings.  Crookshank had probably bought the whole room, furniture and all, with one day's taking of stolen goods, and he'd've paid them that stole it only a part of its worth.  That was what scales did.

"Well, he didn't throw them out."  Annis tried a smile on me, but it didn't work that well.  She offered me no embrace, for all her sorrowing.  "Look at you, all kitted out like a Dog.  Will you start tattling on old friends, then?"

"All Dogs walk that line, you know it same as me, Mistress Annis," I told her.

"So you do."  Her face shook.  "Oh, Beka, I wish your mother was still with us.  I miss her so much."

"I miss her, too."  Only two years Mama had been gone.  By the time my lord had taken my family into his house, the lung rot had a grip on Mama that no healers could chase off.  She'd hung on six more years, doing her best for us, but the Black God in his mercy took her in the end.  "I know she would comfort you if she could, Mistress Annis."

She wiped her eyes.  "You'd think I'd be done with tears by now.  Beka, Rolond was only three!  Who would kill a baby only three, who went up to everyone just as friendly as you could ask for?"  She blew her nose.  "Will you see Tansy?  It will do her good."

I wanted to see Tansy.  It's hard, these days.  Crookshank don't like his granddaughter-in-law mingling with old friends from the Cesspool.  Old friends from the Cesspool who lived in Provost's House are even worse.  And with a child and husband, Tansy finds it even harder to get away.  I would have done anything to see her.  "I was ordered to stay here," I said, trying not to whine.

Annis gave me the oddest smile.  "Do you truly think they'll complain to know you're friends with Tansy?  Surely you know Dogs are always looking for a back door to a house.  Up till now, they've never had one here.  They'll be delighted."

I didn't know about delighted, but I used my wits for a moment.  Annis was right.  They would be glad I had friends in Crookshank's very own family.  I hope they won't be vexed if I don't go bearing tales.  From the little I did hear from Tansy, Crookshank is a cruel father-in-law and grandfather.

I nodded.

"I'll tell your Dogs where you are, if they're done with Father in any hurry," Annis said.  "He was growling and snapping when I brought them to him, though.  They'll want to see what they can wheedle out of the old coin-pincher.  Come.  See if you can get Tansy to eat sommat."  She led me through the house, past servants who nodded at her and gawped at me.  I wish I could say it was the uniform that drew respect, but I glimpsed smirks and pointed fingers as they remarked on my Puppy braid.  Only my first day of wearing it, and I can't wait to get that part of the uniform off.

"She's got another babe coming," Annis told me as we climbed a narrow servants' stair.  "She can't starve herself like this."  Two stories up, we came out of the stair and walked down a hall.  Annis showed me into a fine bedchamber.

There Tansy lay on a large bed, staring at the ceiling.  I could see the swell of her belly.  She has mayhap four months to go yet.  The room wasn't the best place to think of such things, draped as the bed was in black muslin.  The small mirror was draped in black, too.  Tansy wore a black gown and a rumpled headcloth, and other black clothes were strewn all over the room.  Annis whispered to her, begging her to sit up and greet me.

"Go away!" Tansy cried, flinging herself across the big bed, away from her mother-in-law.  "I don't want to live!"

There was a water pitcher nearby.  I picked it up and said, "Excuse me, Mistress Annis."  I judged my throw carefully and tossed the water all over Tansy.

She shrieked and came off that bed like a scalded cat.  She hurled her sopping headcloth at me.  I dodged it.  Then she came at me, ready to claw my eyes out.  I grabbed her wrists, just liked they'd taught us.

"Shame on you, wailing like a cracknob, not thinking about your poor mama-in-law or that babe you've got coming," I told her.  "Shame!  You hold Rolond's ghost here.  Let him go on to the Black God's realm peaceful-like."  I knew it was a lie, knew it was being murdered that kept that baby's ghost about, but Tansy will fret herself to death if you didn't speak stern to her.

She crumpled up and began to cry.  I sat her on the bed and took the drying-cloth Annis gave me.  "Are you going to eat something now, like a sensible girl?" Annis asked her.  "Or do I refill the water jug?"

Tansy nodded.  "Soup, please."  Her voice was hoarse.  "Mayhap some rolls.  And . . . and milk."  She smoothed her hands over her belly.  When Annis went to get those things, Tansy looked at me.  She gave me a quivery smile, though she was still crying.  "You never had patience with me.  Even when you was five and me eight, you was still older and lecturing me like a granny."

"Especially when you was making an ass of yourself," I reminded her.  "If you're going to mourn, do it proper, in a temple.  Give Roland toys for an offering, or his favorite sweets.  But this does you nor him no good at all."

Tears rolled down her face.  "Who would kill Roland, Beka?  A little boy who laughed whenever he saw a new face?"

Like as not, that's how whoever doused Rolond caught him, I thought.  "I hope to find out.  I want to catch them that done it.  He was sweet."  He'd grinned at me once, showing off the two whole teeth he'd just grown.  My belly hurts to think on it.

Tansy wiped her eyes on her sleeve.  "Goddess bless us, you're dressed up like a Dog.  A trainee.  A Puppy.  You'll get yourself killed, Beka.  Knifed in an alley somewhere, strangled, dumped in the river--"

I glared at her.  "And you weeping in a chamber is better."

Tansy held her head high.  "Leastways I'm not poor and scraping burnt porridge from a pot to feed . . ."  Her mouth trembled.  "I wanted out of Mutt Piddle Lane, Beka.  Herun wanted to take me out of there.  I've a good man and a fine house."

I couldn't argue.  It's thanks to my lord Gershom that I am out, and my family.  That Mama had a decent bed to die in, and that my sisters and brothers are learning proper trades.

Since talking was so discomforting, I did what the training masters said and looked Tansy's room over.  The Lofts family lived in good style.  The clothes chests were fine cedar, ornamented with mother-of-pearl and polished brass.  A table supported pots for perfumes and lotions.  She had shell combs and brushes, ribbons in a carved wooden bowl, and a figure of the Goddess as Mother to bless her room.  Shelves on the walls held pretty things with no real use to them.  I wandered over to look at a row of stone figures.  One was only uncarved rock.  In the candlelight it sparked bits of colored fire from a pale orange bed, rough to my fingers like sandstone.  I turned it every whichway, fascinated.  The fires came from smooth pieces in the sandstone, strips, dots, and even one tiny shelf that shimmered pale red, blue and green in a creamy setting.  It was really no bigger than the first joint of my thumb including the nail, but it invited me to stare at each piece of it.

"What's this?" I asked, turning to show it to her.

"Goddess, take it!  I don't ever want to see the curst thing again!" Tansy cried.  "Herun brought it to me.  Gave it to me like a jewel, says it's going to see us all move to Unicorn District.  The next day they stole my Rolond.  It's ill luck, is what it is!"

"I don't see magic signs on it."  I held the stone to my nose and sniffed.  "I don't smell any oils or such-like."

"I don't care."  Tansy was weeping again.  "You know what they say.  If sommat new comes in your life and bad luck follows it, then it must have followed the new thing.  If bad luck follows you, Beka, my advice, throw the rock in the Olorun with a curse to whoever sent it.  And no, it wasn't my husband putting a curse on me.  The only reason he's not here now is that he keeps searching the streets, hoping for word of who killed our child."

I'd heard that.  I put the stone in my pocket.  "Tansy, can you think of anyone fool enough to try this way to attack Crookshank?  Or why?"

Her eyes flashed at me.  "Go away, Beka.  You talk like a Dog.  Just take that bad luck rock with you."

I hesitated, but I knew when I'd made a stupid mistake.  I went to put my arms around her.  When she drew away, I gave her a glare of my own.  "It's not the Dog as wants to hug you, pox rot it."

She hesitated, then let me hug her.  "Gods bless.  The Black God will keep Rolond's spirit safe until you come to him again," I whispered.  I hope so, anyway.  He was murdered.  The Black God may not have him yet.

The door opened.  A maid with a tray of food came in with Annis.  "The Dogs are asking for you, Beka," she told me.  "I told them I'd hoped you'd do Tansy good, and I was right.  Get along with you."  She hugged me, too, and kissed my cheek.  "Do you burn the incense for Ilony's ghost?"  I nodded.  I wasn't about to get weepy about Mama.  Annis pressed a copper into my hand.  "Buy that lily-of-the-valley scent she loved, and tell her I miss her."

"I'll do that, Mistress Annis.  Goddess bless you and yours."  I ran off, remembering the way downstairs.  I didn't want Goodwin and Tunstall waiting for me a moment longer than needful, particularly not if they were vexed that I'd left my post.

Goodwin scowled when I came up.  Tunstall was munching a pastry.  He swung the empty basket for the grief gift on his finger.  "Trot this back to Mistress Noll, Puppy, then meet us right here," he said as we walked outside.  He flipped the basket into the air.

I caught it and did as I was bid, shouldering my way through the small crowd of customers to return the basket.  I looked around for Pounce, but he still hadn't returned.

"You were longer than I thought," Mistress Noll said as she passed me the coppers she would have kept if Tunstall hadn't returned the basket.  "Don't tell me they actually talked to the old boot-licker."

I shrugged and smiled, then returned to my Dogs.  That's one of the big rules: Dog business stays with the Dogs.  Of course she wanted to know if Crookshank had said anything.  I wanted to know if he'd said aught of interest.  Not that I dared ask.

They waited still before Crookshank's house.  Though the Nightmarket was filling up, and those that passed greeted them, I noticed that folk took care to give the two Dogs some room.  Goodwin stood with her feet apart, balanced, hands hooked in her belt, her dark eyes not missing a face.  Tunstall juggled his dagger, flipping it from hand to hand, always catching it by the hilt, though it spun end over end in the air.

"Puppy," Goodwin said, pointing to the spot right in front of her.  "Mistress Lofts informed us she was a friend to your mother, and you are a friend to the young Mistress Lofts, the mother of the dead child.  How is it you neglected to mention it to Mattes or me?  Look at me when I'm talking to you, Puppy Cooper."

I managed it.  I don't know how.  "You didn't ask, Guardswoman Goodwin," I said real fast.

"She's got a point, Clary."  Tunstall gave his dagger a last flip, and tucked it into its sheath with the same move he'd taken to catch it.  "When you have connections someplace where we're poking our noses, Cooper, speak up.  We're good, but we're not mind readers."

"Did Tansy say anything?" Goodwin asked.  "No, don't tell us here.  Save it till we're secure.  You'd better not have depths, Puppy Cooper.  People with depths are usually more trouble than they're worth."

"She says that because she's deep," Tunstall explained to me as Goodwin walked on.

"I heard that," she called over one shoulder.

I fell in behind them, turning the rough stone over in my hand.  I wanted to keep it to myself, seek on my own to see if it was important or not.  Herun Lofts thought it was valuable, and he'd been raised at Crookshank Loft's elbow.

Still the training masters were strict about that kind of thinking.  No going behind a partner's back.  Definitely no going behind your training partners' backs.  But how could a sparkly little piece of sandy rock change Crookshank's fortunes, and so his grandson's?  I knew rubies, emeralds, and sapphires didn't look too promising when they were dug from the ground, but at least they were stones.

The clocks were chiming the eighth hour when I heard an uproar.  My Dogs heard it, too.  We picked up the pace, following shouts into the depths of the Nightmarket.  The crowd was by the square's fountain.  From the way folk yelled and traded coin, there was a fight at the heart of the crowd.

Tunstall rose on his toes to get a look.  "The Parks brothers.  Some poor scut must have looked at them wrong.  They're taking it out of his hide."

Goodwin poked one cheering man with her baton.  "What are the odds?"

"Three to two against the new fish," he told her without looking away from the fight.  "He's supposed to be wrestlin' champion at his sheep scummer village.  He says his brothers are bull-throwers--Mithros, if those two are the brothers . . .  I'm offerin' five to three against the Parks lads!"

I heard wood splinter.  Someone screeched for the Guard.  Goodwin sighed.  "I was about to make some money.  Tunstall, Puppy, come on.  Puppy, you just stand by with your baton out and watch.  If someone tries to brain me or Tunstall, then you can move.  Otherwise keep out of our way."

I got my baton out and followed as they pushed through the crowd.  They used batons when their voices didn't make folk move fast enough.  We broke through into the fighting ring.  The breaking wood must have been the nearest ale-seller's stall.  The poles that supported its canvas sides had been broken.  Its roof hung down.  Leather jacks and wooden cups were scattered over the cobbles in puddles, at least until the quickfingers little ones who haunted the Nightmarket ducked in to steal them.

What held the crowds' attention was the five brawling coves at the center of the mess.  I knew the Parks brothers.  For once it looked as if they had taken on a bigger load than they could carry.  The three country lads were country big, and they were used to country loads.  One of them proved it when he picked up the older of the Parks men and lifted him over his head.  He aimed for the five leveled fountain, dedicated to the memory of his glorious majesty, King Jonathan the First.

Goodwin stepped in.  Gently, for a Dog, she thumped the country fellow across the belly with her baton.  The air went out of him.  He dropped his man.

One of his brothers, with eyes as blue as the sky and a face as open as a field, stepped in to save him from the small woman.  He didn't know Tunstall had come up between him and his remaining brother.  My male partner didn't even take out his baton.  Tunstall just grabbed that cove's head and his third brother's and banged them together like eggs.  Then he let them sit down.

The Parks who'd been fighting with that third brother roared and charged Tunstall, head down.  Tunstall turned to the side and swung up his bent knee.  He caught the charging Parks brother on the chin.  The cove decided to lay down.

I looked at the Parks brother who'd been dropped.  Plainly he'd hit his face hard.  He lay unmoving.  Goodwin bent down to check his heartbeat.  Then she peeled back his eyelid.  "Well, if he's got a brain, it's still working.  He--"

"Hey!" someone yelled behind me.  "Boys, city folk done attacked the Weatherskill lads!  To me!  To me!"  I turned.  Three more country men were running straight at me.  The one in the lead, who did all the squalling, had a chopping knife out.  It was fully two feet of blade on a hilt, the size of a seaman's cutlass.  Evidently no other Dogs had seen it and made him stow it before he walked the streets.

I did what Ahuda had taught me.  This cove had his eyes on Tunstall and Goodwin, not me.  He never saw me hit him hard on the wrist with my baton.  When he dropped the weapon, he bent to grab it.  I hit him on the spine, praying hadn't done it too hard.  I didn't want to cripple him, just stop him.  One of his friends grabbed my arm.  I got hold of his little finger with my free hand and bent it back hard.  I'd had it done to me.  I know that's too much pain to bear for long.  Sure enough, he let go with a yell.

Then Goodwin and Tunstall were there, taking care of those two louts.  When they were all down and we'd hobbled them with rawhide cords, Tunstall got his whistle and blew three short blasts and two long, the signal for the cage Dogs on duty outside the Nightmarket.

"Take them all," Goodwin said when they arrived.  "Let them argue about what happened while they enjoy the cages."  She looked at Tunstall and me.  "I don't know about you two, but I worked up an appetite."

Someone yelled, "I had bets on that fight!"

"Nobody won, cracknob!" someone else called.  "Ye don't win an' ye don't lose.  Get yer coin back or maul them as stole it!"

"You who hold the bets!"  Tunstall's bellow could shake the palace walls.  "Pay back every copper you hold.  If I hear that any of you cheated a bettor, that cheater sees me on his doorstep--or hers--on the morrow!"

"He means it, too," someone whispered.  "Give the money back, y' looby.  Tha's Tunstall talkin'."

As we passed through the crowd, I heard folk murmur, "Nice work, Puppy."  "Neat job."  "Cool head, this one."  "Ilony Cooper's oldest girl.  You know the one."  "Mother woulda been proud."

That was the funny thing about the Lower City.  They wouldn't like me so much if I caught them on the wrong side of the law, but until that time and even after, I was one of them.

I jumped.  Goodwin had moved back to walk next to me.  "You think you're their golden girl now, Cooper?" she asked, speaking for my ears alone.  "Wait till you have to take in someone they love, someone popular.  One of the ones with the easy smile and the charming way about them.  You'll learn fast enough whose side they're on.  I thought I told you to stand fast and do nothing."  I opened my mouth.  She raised a finger.  "You did right.  That harvesting knife would have been a real problem, and you were closest.  Just don't make a habit of it, understand me, Cooper?"

"Yes, Guardswoman Goodwin."  I met her eyes for a moment, because I had to, before I looked away, cursing my shyness.  I had tried to conquer it, I truly had.  So far, I had failed.  I would keep working.

She and Tunstall led me down Pottage Lane, to a small eating house called the Mantel and Pullet.  Everyone there knew my Dogs.  They even had their own table.

Tunstall gave me a copper noble and jerked his head toward the bar.  "Ale for us two, and whatever you're having," he said.  "We'll order you the baked rat special."

I had his measure enough to dare a small smile before I hurried to the barkeep.  He'd already drawn ale for Goodwin and Tunstall in leather jacks with their names burned in the sides.  "What of you, pretty Puppy?" he asked, leering at me.  "A nice strong ale to loosen your belt?  Wine, for your first day?"

I didn't have to look at him.  "Water, sir, if you please."

"You're joking."  His voice was flat as he said it.

"No, Master Barkeep.  Water, please."

"You've something against my good brown ale?  Strong enough to stick a spoon in!  'Tis good enough for any Dog or soldier as walks through that door, good enough that the king himself, gods save him, has drunk it, whilst you turn up that dainty nose--"

A man leaned past me and knocked on the plank bar.  "Listen, keg-tapper.  Rather than waste time yapping at a pretty girl who's not interested, why not occupy yourself pouring out for me and my ladies, and let her be about her business?"

I glanced at him and stepped to the side, to clear my arm just in case.  He was dangerous-looking, white-skinned and dark-eyed, with hair so fair it could almost have been white.  He winked at me as he leaned in for the barman's attention.  I figured him to be in his early twenties.  I was first in my class at guessing men's ages, so I felt sure of that.

A barmaid passed me a mug of water.  "If you wants a jack, bring yer own," she told me, eyeing the newcomer with wicked intentions.  "With your name on't, so's you won't be tasting anyone else's mouth-leavings."  She skipped away from the barman's slap.  I went back to my Dogs with our drinks.

"Took you long enough," Goodwin said.  She grabbed her jack and downed half of it.  I placed Tunstall's before him.  Like everyone else in the house, he watched the newcomer.  The cove was carrying drinks over to a pair of women who had grabbed an empty table.  Neither sat until he did.  One was plainly Scanran, a tall blond mot two or three years older than me, wearing men's clothes and a sword.  The smaller one was brunette, of mixed blood, my height.  She wore a sleek blue dress. I could not tell her eye color hard in the murky light.

"What do you think, Cooper?" Tunstall asked.  "Guard from some other city?  Off-duty army?"

"The blonde mot could be a mercenary of some kind."  It was easier to answer if I didn't have to look at him.  "The cove's never been near military discipline."  I remembered a Y-shaped scar in his eyebrow and muttered, "Or if he was, it didn't go well."

Goodwin emptied her jack and shoved it at Tunstall.  "I'll have a second.  Tell that scut if he gives our Puppy a hard time again, I'll make him eat a keg after I empty it."

As Tunstall left us, Goodwin said, "Read me out the man.  Don't look at the man.  Look at me."

I opened my mouth and croaked.  My throat had gone dry.  I cleared it.  No sound at all came out.

Goodwin snorted.  "Drink some water, and don't look at me, then, if that helps.  Mother save us, you'd think I was a monster.  The man, Puppy, the man.  He might be escaping with the crown and scepter this very moment.  Tell the kennel Dogs who they're sniffing for."

I drank and looked down to read out the man's looks as I was taught in training.  "Early twenties, five feet ten inches, slim, muscled.  Sideways forked scar, left eyebrow.  Hair very fair, eyes brown, skin pale.  He's never worked hard, not with that skin.  Long nose, full lower lip, thin upper.  High cheekbones, thin cheeks.  Very striking.  Carries a purse and his belt knife in sight.  Knife at the back collar, one inside both forearms, knives over each kidney, boot knives.  I'm not sure if there's a buckle knife.  If there is, it's a design I don't know.  Earring, left ear, silver skull.  Scarred knuckles."

Goodwin leaned back, whistling softly.  "Very well then.  You've earned your supper.  I won't throw you in the river, either."  She looked at the ivory man, rubbing a scar on her cheek as she did.  "That's a very dangerous new cove who's come to town, and what for?  Trouble, no doubt."  She seemed to be talking to herself.

Tunstall came back with more ale for both of them.  He was followed by a cookmaid with a tray of supper.  My Dogs hadn't stinted.  There was eel tart, roast hare, split-pea soup, and cheese fritters, along with a loaf of country bread and butter to spread on it.

"Eat up," Tunstall ordered as he cut up the hare and Goodwin the eel tart.  "It gets busier as the evening gets older."  He and Goodwin served out the food.  "So what do you think of our pale fellow?"

Goodwin was ladling soup.  "All the city knows that Kayfer Deerborn is a joke as a Rogue.  The carrion crows and the hopefuls are coming to town.  It's to be expected."

I knew what she meant.  Our thief-king ruled because he let his district chiefs keep the biggest part of their profits.  In return they guarded his life.  Now word was out.  The chiefs weren't as vigilant, or they were lazy.  More and more young folk were restless under a Rogue who let no one move up in the way of things.  It was time for a new ruler.

Goodwin reached across the table and tugged my bangs.  "Puppy!  Tell us how you came to be talking all friendly-like with the dead baby's mother while me and Tunstall traded lies with Crookshank.  Don't look at us or we'll be here all night.  Just report."

I drew on my plate with my dagger and told them how Mama was friends with Crookshank's daughter-in-law.  How Annis had been a customer when Mama sold perfumes, soaps, and herbs.  When my lord Gershom took us in, Annis stayed friends with us.  She and Mama often shopped the Daymarket on Mama's good days.  How one time, I went to see my friends and Tansy got the notion that we should go to Daymarket.  There we found Mama, and Annis, and Annis's son.  Herun looked at Tansy's curls and dimples and bright eyes . . .

"Young love," Tunstall said with a wistful sigh.  "It's so simple.  Remember when it was simple?" he asked Goodwin.

"Simple for you.  You're a simple creature," Goodwin told him.  She made a beckoning gesture to me with one hand.  I have a feeling I will get very familiar with this gesture, a come-on twitch of just two of her fingers.  "What did Annis and Tansy say tonight at Crookshank's?"

I repeated all of it, as exactly as I could remember.  Then I handed over the rock Tansy had ordered me to take.  Tunstall pushed aside the plates and set it between them.  It was an ordinary thing, a piece of sandy-feeling stone in shades of orange, mostly triangular on the long sides.  There were tiny smooth specks, two glassy strips on different sides, and one larger glassy chunk in one side.  Tunstall reached into an inner pocket and fetched out a small thing like a white pearl.  He blew on it and set it on the table next to the stone.

Light spread from the globe.  While the room's lamps flickered, this light was steady.  As it touched the stone, it brought glints of fire from its surface in colors like cherry red, sapphire blue, grass green.  The shiny step-like bit changed, now red, now green, now mixes of both colors with flecks of blue.

"Pretty toy."  Some of the other Dogs came over.  It was Jewel's partner who spoke.  "Where'd y' get it?"

"Tansy Lofts--Crookshank's granddaughter-in-law, that married young Herun Crookshank--she gave it to our Puppy," Goodwin told him.  "Ever seen anything like it?"  I was trying not to slide under the table.  I did make myself as small as I could.  I had to get better at being around folk.

More Dogs and a few off-duty soldiers came over to see, too.  They all either shook their heads or said no to Goodwin's question.

Otterkin, one of the Dogs with the magic Gift, touched the stone.  It sparked, throwing off lights in the colors of its glassy bits, then turned back to normal.

"It's no spellstone," Otterkin said.  "I suppose it could be used for one, but it's like none I was ever schooled with."  She shrugged.  "You could always take it to Master Fulk."

Everyone groaned or rolled their eyes.  I clenched my fists and watched my Dogs.  I'll take the stone to Master Fulk if they order me to, but he'd best play nice.

"I suppose we should, though I trust your expertise over Fulk's," Goodwin told Otterkin.  "I saw him turn a boil once into a case of them, all over the poor Dog who went to him for help."  The other Dogs muttered agreement.  They knew Fulk.

The light from Tunstall's globe faded.  He picked it up, then the sparkly stone.  "It'll make a nice toy for your cat," he told me, handing the stone to me.  "Young Herun Lofts isn't the sharpest arrow in the quiver.  No doubt he thought he'd discovered rubies, or some such.  Anything else to report, Puppy?"

"Nothing more to report, Guardsman," I mumbled, wishing the others would go away.

And they did wander back to their tables to finish their suppers.  Goodwin ordered me to do the same.  There was still more work in my first day.

Reprinted with permission of Random House Children's Books, from TERRIER: A Tortall Legend by Tamora Pierce. Copyright (c)2006 by Tamora Pierce.

all site content copyright Tamora Pierce except where noted
page design by Cate Burlington