Bloodhound (51 page)

"Listen close," she whispered. "If you hear nothin', open 'er up."

The ladder let me straight down into Pearl's dressing room. Quick I went to the door and peered into the room beyond. It was empty. I could see magical letters written all around the edges of the door and the lock. It seemed Pearl thought that was protection enough for this place.

Both rooms were pigsties. Aunt Mya would have set Pearl to scrubbing floors for the condition of them. I was grateful for Pearl's habits. All those clothes heaped together were a stew of Pearl's scent. In a pile of what must be laundry I found, and took, two well-used breast bands and a pair of equally used loincloths. With my prizes in hand, I did not linger. I stuffed them into my pack and scrambled back up the ladder. The gixie and I returned to Achoo and the lad.

"What was that for?" he asked.

"She stole Pearlie's underclothes," the gixie said with a grin.

"Ye're livin' a dangerous life," the lad told me. "Are ye workin' a magic with them, then? It's the headsman if ye get caught with that, y' know."

"You're teaching law to a
Dog?
Never you mind what I need those things for," I said. "I'm guessing this passage wasn't something Pearl added?" I hung my boots around my neck.

The gixie shook her head. "None o' them knows about these."

"Then how do you know about 'em?" I asked.

The look that both of them gave me said I would never find out from them.

The lad took the lantern and guided us, crawling with it in one hand, stopping often to listen for footsteps and voices. Carefully we moved in that gap between the second and third stories, passing through the main building and into the next. At last the boy opened a door and stepped outside. I smelled wet earth and muck. He motioned for us to hurry through. We stood on a narrow stairway that led down the outside of a house on a side street, past the ground floor and into a cellar passage. No one was nearby to see us as we hurried down the splintered stair with only the small lantern to show the way. At the bottom the lad passed the lantern to the gixie. Then he worked the lock on the cellar door with some picks and let us pass through.

"I'll meet yez on Eagle Street," he told us. "I need t' make sure it's clear when yez come through there." He closed the door. I heard the clack as he locked us inside.

The gixie held up the small lantern so we could see the doorway cat-corner from us in the cellar wall. A cold breeze came from it. "Through that an' down the stairs," she told me.

"You trust your friend?" I asked.

"More'n I trust you," she replied. "Let's go, afore some'un finds us here."

"Wait," I said, hurrying to put my boots on.

"If ye went barefoot, ye wouldn't spend so much time on yer feet," she said. She spat on the floor.

Achoo and I followed the gixie across the cellar and through a new doorway. Beyond this one lay a number of uneven stone steps that led down into the chilly breeze. As we descended, I felt the earth rise higher and higher over my head. I did not like it. I miss the free movement of the wind and the sounds of birds. I feel as if I lose some part of my hearing in these damp places.

The smell got into my nose – scummer, mold, rotting muck, the gods know what else. I heard squeals when at last we stepped onto the walkway in the tunnel's side below the streets. Achoo lurched ahead. She liked to chase four-legged rats as much as the two-legged kind.
"Tumit!"
I whispered. She dropped into place, tail between her legs.

"Don't she bark?" the gixie asked.

"Sometimes," I said. "Mostly we work quiet. Behave," I whispered to Achoo. "You're on duty, same as me."

The gixie's eyes flashed as she looked back at me. "Ain't you off duty?"

"Not till I've caught my prey," I told her.

"As bad as Sergeant Haryse and his lot," she said over her shoulder, stepping past a heap of something or other. Achoo and I jumped it together. I landed too near the edge of the walkway, my boot slipping in muck. Achoo clamped her teeth on my belt and dragged me onto the stones.

"You know Nestor Haryse?" I asked the gixie, trying to keep my voice steady. I'm no delicate mot like my sisters, but the thought of landing in the soup beside us made me want to puke up my tripes. I ruffled Achoo's neck fur and gave her a strip of dried beef in thanks.

"All the city knows 'im. One day Pearl will tire of toyin' with the sarge and she'll serve 'im up flayed. 'S a shame," the gixie added as we turned down another, bigger tunnel. "He's one o' the good 'uns. He gives you 'is word, he's told you true – hush!"

We ducked into a deep tunnel I hadn't even known was there. The gixie closed metal shields over the lantern's sides, leaving us in the dark. We shrank back and waited as I heard the same thing she had, voices in the big tunnel. Six Rats, carrying torches, passed the opening of our hideaway.

"She's losin' 'er grip, I tell yez," one of them said, his voice a growl. "She's not keepin' Rogue business inside the court. She's lettin' Dogs into it, an' cityfolk, an' who next? The guilds? The Council o' Mages? The sarden King?"

"Hesh yer gab," a mot whispered. "Ye're makin' Stormwings fer yerself."

They were out of my hearing. I dared not follow to listen, but I wanted to. Instead I waited until I could hear no sound of theirs before I whispered to my guide, "Are they like the rest? Worrying about the attention Pearl is drawing?"

"Course they're afraid," the gixie said. "We belong in the shadows. Cityfolk don't look there. But Pearlie keeps drawin' their attention, d'ye see? What good are shadows if cityfolk start lookin' in 'em?" She led us out into the bigger tunnel again.

We had to hide twice more as other folk used the sewers to get where they were going. You'd think I'd grow accustomed to the stink, but it only bothered me more as we plodded along. By the time the gixie took Achoo and me up a narrow stair, my eyes watered so much I could barely see. I had to breathe with my mouth open because my poor nose was beyond stuffed. When we reached cleaner air inside the Eagle Street court, I was so happy I nearabout cried.

We entered quiet, like mice, but there was no need. The place was deserted, with Pearl being elsewhere that night. The only person to enter as we hid beneath a table was the lad.

"Plenty of them that was searchin' have stopped in the drinkin' dens an' eatin' houses," he told us when we stood. "They've set watchers in case Her Majesty comes by, but they're not wastin' time huntin' a runaway Dog. On'y Pearl's closest folk are still huntin'. You must worry them."

"So I should," I muttered. "Now, where's this room you told me of? Or was that just fumes?"

The lad took us behind a pair of storerooms. No one would come here to find the smaller room behind the first two unless they knew it was there. Once he'd closed and locked the door, the boy lifted the gixie up on his shoulders. She tugged on a grip set into the ceiling, then jumped as she clung to it. Her weight pulled down not just a large trapdoor, but a set of stairs built in.

"No ladders for Her Majesty?" I asked as Achoo bounded upstairs ahead of us.

"Her?" the gixie asked, and snorted. "That'd be work, and she don't work no more."

Up the stairs we went.

"Now, this part is tucked away, like," the lad whispered to me. He showed me how to grip the rope that would draw the heavy trapdoor-and-stair back up after us. Before I so much as touched it, I got the gloves I kept in my pack and put them on. They were special made, leather over silk with signs of protection woven into it, a gift from Goodwin and Tunstall when I was made a true Dog. Nothing I touched would hold a trace of my essence, should Pearl have a mage go over this place later. Such gloves are illegal, but magistrates look the other way when it's a Dog that wears them.

Once the gloves were on my hands, I grabbed the rope and dragged at it. Hauling that curst trapdoor up was no light piece of work. "We checked the building all round," the lad told me. "Unless ye measure the halls on all sides, ye'd never know there's rooms tucked between 'em. Figure this is where they useta hide them that's on the run from the Dogs, or them that was kidnapped for ransom, or them that was held for... other things."

"There's spells in the rooms so's ye can't hear what goes on inside," the gixie explained to me.

Down the narrow corridor we went, past three other doors. I had to ask, "You're certain no one's here? No one will pop out and put a magic on us or come after us with swords?"

The lad pointed to a black stone like a gem set in the center of each door. "When some'un's within, this lights up all blue."

So I felt like twice the fool, guided by these two who knew so much more than me.

The fourth door had a dark gem at its center, like the others. It also had a lock. I took out my picks. Luckily for my pride, I opened the lock as fast as my guides might have done.

"Pretty," the gixie told me with a pat on the shoulder. "If Doggin' don't work out for you, our chief might give you work burglin'. He's easier t' live with than Her Majesty."

"Thanks," I muttered as Achoo and I followed her inside.

The lad barred the door once we were in. The gixie used her lantern to light others inside the room, so I could see clearly what was there.

Even a little bit of it would have sent Pearl and anyone who helped her with this straight to the Rattery, and to the oil pots from there. With so much evidence, even the most pinch-coin bookkeepers at Guards House will pay for good-quality mages to lay spells of search and naming on it all, to find who helped Pearl. There were crucibles and tongs for metalworking, and a furnace made for the heating of small amounts of metal. The furnace was set into the wall. I was certain it would share a chimney with either the main room or a kitchen. A kitchen, more like, so no one would suspect the smoke that poured from it yearlong.

On the worktable someone had placed trays of block-shaped molds. The metals would be poured into them to cool. Under draping cloths I found metal stamps with King Roger's profile on one side and the sword-in-crown on the other, the most perfect copies of the legal stamp as anyone could want. Chests on the floor held rounds of brass like heaps of thin noble coins, thousands of them. Small blocks of metal, blackened with soot to make them pass as charcoal with inspectors, turned out to be silver under the dirt. I counted only ten of those. None bore the Crown Treasury's mark, without which they were as illegal as those metal stamps.

What will Pearl do now that she is down to ten blocks of silver? Her fresh silver shipment is in the Deputy Provost's hands. Mayhap she'll try to steal it back.

"But this is mad," I said. "If she turns all those brass rounds into coles, she'll make no one rich, not even herself. She'll need a barrelful to buy a loaf of bread, because a silver noble won't be worth spit. The more coles that's on the market, the less they're worth." I looked into the trunk. It was full of red leather purses, the ones her filchers swapped for purses of good coin. "She gives these false coins to her enemies, did you know that?" I asked the lad and the gixie.
"They
get hobbled and questioned for colemongering, when they was set up by her. Innocent folk are tortured and killed while she ruins the money."

They both shrugged.

"It's naught to us," the lad told me. "We've got neither coin nor friends. No one helps us."

"We helped you, but that's b'cause I owes you, and I hates t' owe," the gixie added.

I shook my head and closed the trunk. Around the room I went, seeing what else was there. Smiths' gloves and aprons, files, cloths for polishing, buckets of water and buckets of ash, account books. Account books! Pearl was so prideful she never thought anyone might come here and use any of this against her!

"Speakin' of what's owed," the gixie said.

I came to myself and picked up a chisel from a shelf. "She has clothing stores, you said. She hasn't forgotten that much of what she owes her folk?" Rosto had clothes rooms all over the Lower City. The Rogues always kept stores of garments, so their people might get clothes for cheap, or even for free, if they were in a fix.

"Sure," the lad told me. "There's one downstairs. I was just thinkin' I need a coat, what with it gettin' cold, like."

The gixie grinned at him. "We can help ourselves and never pay Her Majesty a copper."

I pointed at the second door. "Is that another way out?"

The gixie nodded. "Goes right down by the clothes room, even."

I opened the door we used to enter Pearl's colesmithy carefully, making sure no one had come along. Then I used the butt of my chisel to smash the gem that glowed if folk were inside. Now any Dogs I sent here would know which room to break into.

Stepping back inside, I closed the door and bolted it. Then I stuffed the lock full of a special clay I carried in a small jar in my pack. It would dry fast and as hard as stone, making a lock useless. Anyone who wanted to enter would need a ram to break the door down. I would make sure my Dogs had that.

I broke the gem on the other door as my two Rats went out. I locked it with my picks, then stuffed that lock, too.

This time we took a real stairway. When the gixie undid the catch that opened the secret door at the bottom, the lad slid out. A moment later he beckoned to us.

We went out and closed the hidden door behind us. I marked an iron cresset set in the wall. The gixie thrust it back to close the door. When I tugged it, the door opened again. A push of mine shut it. The door fit snug in the wall, its sides scarce visible.

The lad used his lock picks on the clothes room just across the corridor and used the gixie's lantern to light some lamps inside. Achoo and I followed them. Achoo quickly fell in love with the place, sniffing everywhere, while I closed the door behind us and looked around. My hound also did a small, rude act in the corner. I pretended not to see.

The light showed off crates and crates of garments and footwear, some good, some worn. I even saw fighting gear in a row of its own – no weapons, but padded leather jerkins, arm and leg braces, and armored caps. The lad went straight to that. The gixie dove into a crate heaped in velvet. I found a crate of religious habits. These rooms didn't just supply a Rogue's folk with new clothes when their old rags fell apart. Sometimes, when a gang was putting together sommat special, they needed special garb. With the right payment to the Rogue, they could have it.