Mastiff: The Legend of Beka Cooper #3, page 10
Sunday, June 10, 249
Ladyshearth Lodgings
Coates Lane
Port Caynn
being an account of the events of Friday, June 8,
at the Summer Palace
beginning at dawn on that day
Achoo woke me, having natural errands to run. I was at a loss at first. My window looked out over rose vines, which would have hurt my poor hound dreadfully. It also looked out into pouring rain. I spat into it and closed the shutter. Seemingly these vile mages wished to ensure that we never got Prince Gareth’s trail again.
Happily my uniform, clean and dry, was folded and stacked before my door. It took me but a moment to put it on and to find a pair of the room’s last resident’s sturdy shoes. They did not fit. I had to put on my own boots, which were nearly as wet as when I’d taken them off.
Pounce remained abed. Achoo led me through the smoky-smelling halls, trusting her nose to guide her outside. We ended in the kitchens. There I came to a halt while Achoo raced through an open outer door into the rain. Tunstall stood before the hearth, a pan in one hand and a spoon in the other. He spoke to an audience of ladies, gentlemen, and soldiers of the King’s Own who gathered around the great worktables. Two of the ladies were placing utensils on trays. A third was trimming flowers to fit prettily in a pair of thin vases. Master Farmer was in the kitchen as well, gutting and cleaning some fine, fat trout with the speed of a practiced cook.
“Now, see, my mother never held with Bazhir seasonings,” Tunstall was saying. The mot with the curling red hair who had gone off with him the night before assisted him, passing him what he needed. “But my lady has a taste for dishes with cumin, and she got me to like it, too.”
“You’re in service to a lady, Tunstall?” asked one of the men in the King’s Own. “How can you manage that and yet be a Dog?”
Tunstall looked down at his chickpeas and took a breath. This was always a difficult moment when we dealt with the nobility. “I mean my lady Sabine of Cahill, the knight. We are good friends.”
From the deep silence, I knew they all realized how close that friendship was. I sucked up my courage, because speaking before these folk was not to my taste, and said, “Cooking? You’ve got a mage and a Dog cooking?”
Tunstall and Master Farmer both looked at me like my brothers caught stealing sweets.
“What’s most magecraft, if not cooking?” Master Farmer asked. “As for this, if you want a meal that’s not stale or raw, then we cook, or you do, Cooper. Our poor friends here don’t know how.”
It seemed our circumstances, living in the half-destroyed palace, lacking servants, with few high officials keeping an eye on everyone, led to a relaxation of the rules. Certainly I felt comfortable enough to say, “All these folk and none of you know anything? Not so much as how to boil an egg?”
One lady held up a bandaged hand. “I got this cutting the bread.”
“Goddess save us all,” I said. What a menagerie had assembled in that kitchen, between the nobles and we Hunters. “Has anyone collected eggs today?”
My sole answer came from a number of pairs of blinking eyes. I didn’t dare ask about milk. Someone must have done the milking, or we’d have heard the cows, but that someone was not in the kitchen.
I went over to Master Farmer. “As soon as you can, please tell my lord Gershom that servants must be brought in,” I whispered. “We can’t look after an entire palace.” I saw a stack of baskets and pointed to three ladies. “You will come collect eggs, for Their Majesties,” I told them. I found pails and chose two mots and two coves who had something intelligent and humorous about their faces. “You may learn to milk cows, also for the sake of the realm.”
I walked out of the kitchen into the rain, not entirely sure they would follow. They did. They knew where the farm buildings were, nicely hidden behind hedges and trees. The nobles used the barns for canoodling, from what I heard.
I showed the ladies how to deal with the hens, with results of a mixed kind, including a number of scratches and smashed eggs. Our luck was better in the cowsheds. Some hostlers who had gone with the royal party to Blue Harbor the night of the attack had milked cows as servant lads. They were already seeing to that work. They were happy to let the gentlemen carry the buckets to the kitchen.
I did not return with them. Sooner or later Tunstall would remember that I knew how to make pasties. He would set me to baking for everyone. We all would be far better off if the nobles went crying to Lord Gershom for servants he could trust. As long as Master Farmer, Tunstall, and I were the only Dogs present, we should be about Dog work. Right now, with the curst rain washing away His Highness’s scent, it seemed to me the closest Dog work lay in the ships that had been raised from the ocean floor last night.
Achoo found me in the garden. Together we walked down through the gardens along paths that had turned to small streams. At least the area was now cleared of the dead. The gardens were being washed clean as the crushed flowers and bushes recovered from their injuries. No one was silly enough to be out in the wet like me. Even the guards at the gate that overlooked the sea cliffs kept to their shelter. They stuck their heads out, ready to object to my departure, but saw my uniform and opened half of the gate for me. Achoo raced through. I followed at a more clumping pace, thanks to my shoes.
Using my spelled mirror, I saw that even the shreds of the path spells were gone this morning. I hoped they got some more mages and soldiers here soon, as well as servants. I didn’t like having this beach and these paths open. Summer is prime raiding season for the fearsome ships from Scanra and the Copper Isles. Even the Yamanis sometimes reach this far south in their attacks.
When I prepared to descend in Achoo’s wake, I saw that any raiders might think twice before they tried to come up. The heavy rains had turned the path into a rushing stream.
“Achoo!” I called. “Achoo, where have you gone?” She had vanished.
I heard a yelp from below. I reached out to grab a rock at the side of the path, hoping to climb it to see where my empty-headed hound had gone. My boots slid on the mud under the water, pulling me into the current. Now I knew what had happened to Achoo. The tumbling water thrust me down the steep hill, ramming me into stones and gravel. I broke all of my nails as I tried to grab for a hold on the rocks. I had nothing cushioning my back, and only a thin summer-weight tunic and breeches between me and a ten-squad of bruises.
The stream dumped me at the foot of the cliff and sank into the sand as I cursed the cod-kickers who had called the rain. Achoo ran to me, whining as she licked my hands and arms. After the water, her tongue was startling in its warmth.
“I’ll live, girl,” I told her as I struggled to my feet. My poor friend was covered in mud. I ran my hands over her body and limbs to be sure she had taken no hurt. Once I was certain that her bones were unbroken, I looked around us. “I daresay neither of us will be happy about it for a day or two, but we’ll both of us live.”
Achoo gave me her encouraging “roof,” the sound that usually meant “We’ll do fine.”
The tide had come in. The pair of ships that had been raised by Master Ironwood and Mistress Orielle from the bottom were now moored fast to the very stones of the cliffs by heavy ropes. They were half afloat, tugging at their ties to the land, but moving very little. Rope ladders hung from the bow of each vessel. Someone had gone aboard after the mages brought the ships up.
I wiped my muddy face on my muddy arm. Achoo whined as the sea winds blew rain, spray, and the darker scent of bad things done into our faces.
“Tunggu, Achoo,” I told her. “There’s no way you can get aboard one of these.” Even my girl couldn’t climb a rope ladder.
Achoo whined louder and yipped, her way of arguing. She even tucked her tail between her legs, which always made me feel like a brute.
“It’s for your own good, so stop that,” I said gently. I know how it feels to be left behind when I want to Hunt. “If you think of a way to climb up, you’re welcome. Go find someplace out of the rain.”
I looked up around the rocks at the foot of the cliff until I found a stone that ought to be out of the water if the tide came all the way up to the rocks. There I left my boots and stockings. Achoo slunk up and lay down beside the stone, the very picture of misery and abandonment.
I walked down to the closest ship, the Lash, and gripped the rope ladder that hung from her prow. Swiftly I clambered up. At the deck I discovered that each vessel had a flat canvas top from rail to rail, with the naked masts poking through the cloth. I was suspicious right off. Checking the canvas with the mirror in my pocket, I saw that it glowed with the same magic as the rest of the ship, part of the trap that had kept the dead from floating to shore. I wondered if we ever would have found the vessels had it not been for Master Farmer. Somehow Ironwood and Orielle did not seem like the type to investigate the cove.
I put my mirror in my pocket and dropped through the opening at the prow onto the deck. My feet went clean out from under me, sending me on a skid across the slanting deck until I struck a barricade. It gave in a way that made me scramble back from it. In the dim light that came through the holes around the edges and masts, where the canvas met wood, I squinted at what lay before me. I’d hit the bodies of two rowers bowed over their oar. Shaking, I made the Sign against evil on my chest. Only when I’d caught my breath did I inch closer for a better look. There was sommat strange about the way they sat, bent over, arms stretched out, thrusting on their oars, as if they’d been frozen in the middle of their work.
I moved closer still. Mithros witness it, the oar had grown up and over their hands, holding them there.
For a moment I waited, trembling, trying to work up my courage for what must be done. I scolded myself for a coward, and numbered all the corpses I’d handled. Wasn’t it me that washed Holborn and laid him out for his burial, without a tear? I’d dug bodies out of scummer and sewer water with little more than a kerchief over my mouth for the smell, so there was no good reason for me to falter.
I slid over until my legs dangled in the gap in the wood where the oarsmen sat. Then, carefully, begging the dead mumper’s pardon like he had the ears or the soul to hear me, I reached down to take anything that might be in his pockets.
Sparks leaped up to shock me. I yelped and flinched, brushing the dead oarsman’s arm. Bigger sparks jumped to me, stinging harder.
“Pox and murrain, protection spells!” I snapped. I tried to wriggle away on the ship’s deck. I touched the cove accidentally with my foot and got spark-bit one more time. “Ow! Plague take all mages who won’t lay a protection spell that doesn’t hurt!” At last I thought to use my head. I took my mirror out again and looked about me for magic. Spells of a deep purple color, almost black, coated the ship’s wood and the captive dead. More spells, dull bronze in color, were fixed to the canvas overhead.
“Spells to keep any from picking the pockets of the dead, and spells to keep the ship and the dead from rotting, I’ll wager,” I said to myself. “And never a thought taken for a poor Dog who needs to collect evidence.”
Vexed, I sat back and thought. I needed to explore the rest of the ship. I hadn’t brought a lamp, not knowing the sails covered the deck. I chose to deal with that first, returning to the prow, where I had boarded. There I drew my long knife. Someone had started a cut in the canvas already—last night, mayhap, when folk were looking to see how the ships went down. It even could have been Master Ironwood or Mistress Orielle who had sealed them this way.
Starting at the cut, I dragged my razor-sharp knife through the canvas, down the spine of the ship, admitting what light there was along with the rain. I had to step around a cove who was collapsed facedown on the walkway that ran between the rowers’ benches. From the whip that still lay in his fist, I could tell he was the overseer. It was the deck that held him. It had grown around his feet, and then his hands. I shuddered when I saw it had also grown up around his face. I wasn’t about to try to examine the contents of his pockets. Some other poor mumper could have that chore.
At last I reached the ship’s stern. The wheel gripped the pilot’s wrists in its wood. The rail had wrapped a cove and a mot in its wooden embrace. They leaned forward, pressed down by the sail. When I cut the heavy cloth entirely in half and flung it off of them, they remained bent over, their bodies stuck in that position. From long nights with the healers who worked with the dead to tell Tunstall and me what they’d died of, I knew all of these corpses would remain in their final positions for at least one more day, mayhap two. The priests called it Death’s rigor. I thought it was a curst sad way to be stuck after dying, and prayed that when my end came, I would get caught flat, in my bed.
I poked them, and the pilot, with my baton, with no results. Feeling bolder, I reached out to search the woman’s pockets, if she had them. The moment I touched her skirts, the protection spells sparked out at me, leaving a blister on one of my fingers. I cursed myself blue, for all the good that it did.
Back down the walkway I went, throwing the leaves of sail to either side to lay the deck partially bare. I knew rain would not wash the powerful spells away and I wanted to see the deck more clearly.
At the stern rail I leaned over to see if Achoo had come to sit at the foot of the ladder and stare woefully at me. Instead I looked straight down into Tunstall’s face as he climbed the ladder, his glowing rock shining through his tunic.
“Cooper, you hurt my feelings, running off,” Tunstall called as he swung onto the deck. “Just for that, no chickpeas with eggs and cheese for your breakfast.” He slipped to fall on his back.
“It’s slippery,” I told him, trying not to smile. I have been in some bad places where I have thought that Mattes Tunstall looked like the handsome young god in the stories. This was not quite that bad. Still, I could have kissed him. The place had me well spooked.
Tunstall grunted and sat up. “Now that you warn me, it is slippery.” He set about pulling off his boots and stockings. He tucked his stockings inside his boots and threaded the boot tops through his belt. “What have you found so far?” Tunstall asked, rubbing his knees. Of course they pained him on a day like this.
“Protection spells. Nasty ones that bite.” I showed him the red spots on my hand. “As for the crew, the ship grew up around them on deck, and the sails came down, sealing them underneath,” I said, helping him to his feet. “They were trapped.”
He took his glowing rock from his tunic. I went around to the rail and found a point where the sail had been threaded through an oar hole. Tunstall helped me to pull the cut canvas back so we could see how it was fastened. The cloth came out in a neat strip from the mainsail, went through the oar hole, and wove itself back into the sail, without a seam showing. It made me think of how the wood of the oar, the wheel, and the rail had all come out and around their victims, then returned to the main piece, as if it was their nature to grow around human flesh.
“Beghan,” Tunstall whispered. It was a word in his native Hurdik that meant something like “so bad I want nothing to do with it.”
“We don’t get a choice, remember?” I asked. “We have to follow this trail to its end.”
“I’m hoping the prince’s trail doesn’t stink so bad,” Tunstall muttered as he looked at the oarsmen closest to us. With the sail pulled back he could see the neat bands of wood that locked their hands to the oar. “My skin is creeping. Let’s see what’s below, Cooper. They’re not paying us by the hour.” He walked carefully toward the big hatch at the stern of the ship.
“So far we’ve not been paid at all,” I reminded him, following. “And I can’t say much for the food, either.”
“You could have had my chickpea dish.” Tunstall knelt by the hatch cover and lifted it away to reveal the hold. By the light of his stone lamp we could see what lay below. There were stairs, or a sloping ladder with wide steps, all stained with old blood. Water gleamed at the bottom.
Tunstall turned and began to descend, the lamp lighting his way. Once he was down, I sucked up my courage and followed him.
Tunstall made room for me at the foot of the ladder and held the glowing rock up to reveal the contents of the ship’s hold. A large gap in the keel lay half in, half out of the sea-water that rocked the ship gently. This vessel was not fitted for long travel, but I already knew that, because it was a small galley. There were a few crates, barrels, and sacks placed in the stern and in the shadows of the bow, just touched by the light. Six people lay in bunks fixed to the hull, three on each side. All of them were chained to their bunks. I could see those in the middle and bottom bunks. A hand dangled from one top bunk. The occupant of the opposite one had half crawled out of hers before she had drowned. Seawater had soaked everything down there, clean up to the underside of the top deck.
There was no telling how many others had been aboard. They could have been swept out to sea through the gap in the center of the keel. The hole itself was near twenty feet long and twelve feet wide. I wondered how long the ship had stayed afloat with so much of its keel missing.
I took out my spelled mirror and used it to look around the hull. There was magic laid over everything. “I’ll try to check for anything they might carry, or what’s in the bags, if you insist,” I said to Tunstall. “But it’s spelled. You’ll have to put up with me yelping and whimpering if you do.”
“Hmpf.” Like most of the senior Dogs, Tunstall had learned a lot about magic over the years. “Let me try.” He left the ladder and waded around me, bending down to peer at the body in the middle bunk on my left. He held the stone lamp up so we could both see everything clear.
“A lass, perhaps twelve or thirteen, blond, just blooming,” he said, and reached into the boxlike bed, for her arm, I suspected. “Ach!” he cried as sparks bounced off his arm and chest.
“Hurts, doesn’t it?” I asked him. I aimed the mirror at the broken wood in the keel, but it showed me only the thin purple sheet of the protection spell.
