Bloodhound by Tamora Pierce Read Free Book Online Page B

with big hauls and then money in their pockets reached the city, it would be another matter. Killings would pick up then.
    I located Phil easily. He was at the Daymarket fountain with his fellow carters, as I expected. They were hunkered down in a circle, their eyes on the ground. As I walked up to them, I heard the clatter of a dice cup.
    I grabbed Phil by his ear. He came up with a yelp, scrabbling at my wrist. His friends started to laugh.
    "That your woman, Phil? Looks a bit skinny for your usual taste!" one of them japed.
    "Stuff yer gob!" someone said. "Don't you know who she is, you crackbrain?"
    Phil twisted around to look at me. "Mithros's staff, Beka, wha'd you want with me? You ain't in uniform! You got no call to haul me about like some Rat!"
    "I don't?" I asked. I leaned in so his friends wouldn't hear me whisper, "Coles to Baker Garnett, Phil." I looked at the coins in front of the gamblers. All were coppers. "Any of those yours? Do you have a bet down?"
    His mouth opened and closed like a fish's. Then he shook his head.
    I let go of his ear and tucked my hand in the crook of his arm. "We'll talk, all nice and cousinly." Gentle-like I towed him out of earshot of his friends.
    "If you was nice and cousinly, we wouldn't have this talk at all," he groused.
    "I didn't hit you, did I? It's just a few questions, and I'll be on my way. Oh, and maybe a look in your purse." I've never had to deal with family as a Dog before. I can't say I care for it.
    We perched on the driver's seat of his cart. I looked at Phil as he wiped his brow with a ragged handkerchief. When I was eight, before fortune smiled on us and my Lord Provost brought Ma and our family to live in his house, Phil was my handsome older cousin. He helped Mama carry baskets of laundry and brought us bundles of food from my Granny Fern. Now he was a husband and father to four little ones of his own. There were crow's-feet at the corners of his blue eyes, and he didn't laugh so much anymore. Providing for a family did that to Lower City coves. I hoped I wouldn't have to deal hard with him.
    "Your purse," I said, and nudged him with my foot.
    He glared at me. "I'd think you'd trust family." He edged away and upended his purse on the bare spot of bench he'd left between us. I took the worn leather bag from his hands and made sure he'd kept no coins back from me. "You're a cruel, suspicious mot, Beka Cooper. You always were. Doggin's the right work for you."
    His coins were all coppers. "You gave your only silver to Garnett?"
    "No. I had two other coins. Once I knew they was tainted, I went to a friend with a forge – no, Beka, I'll not give up her name! She melted the coins down and separated silver from bronze. She bought the raw metal, so I saw a bit of money back. Not what my day was worth for curst certain, the sarden belly robbers."
    I'd no interest in anyone who melted down the coles only for the metal. "You saw them melted?"
    "Mithros strike me if I lie. Goddess tears, Beka! Mayhap I weren't raised in Provost's House, but I know what harm coles do."
    I patted Phil's arm and picked up his coppers, sliding them back into his purse. "So where'd you get the coles? Gambling? You know Delene will have your hide if she catches you dicing." I jerked my head toward his friends and their game.
    "Ah." Phil shrugged. "This here? It's a stupid little two-and three-copper game. I'm out if I lose that much. I'll not play with my little ones' bellies, no, nor Delene's, either. If I lose, I go without. And I never gamble for silver. That's beggin' to get bit. I made that coin on the straight, Beka. That's what turns to glass in my gullet. One of the boats from Port Caynn brung in bales of Copper Isles silks. The coves as was bringin' it in hired me to cart it up to Starshine Warehouses. Durward, him as hired me was called, and the other fellow was Talbot."
    "Had they last names?" I asked him.
    The look he gave me could have peeled whitewash from stone. "Like they'd give