Mastiff by Tamora Pierce Read Free Book Online

animals. I had two of the sweetest little dogs.…” She wiped her overflowing eyes on the back of her wrist, like a child. “Not bold warrior girls like Mistress Achoo.” Achoo knew she was being praised and wagged her tail. When the queen lowered her hand, Achoo licked it.

    There was noise at the door. Men came in. The first was King Roger, a handsome, tan cove in his early forties with gray eyes. Like the queen’s, the king’s eyes were red and swollen, though they were dry now. His reddish-brown hair flipped up around the sides of his head in runaway curls. I spotted a few gray hairs, mostly at the sides. His black silk hose and blue silk tunic were streaked with ash. He’d washed his hands, but his nails were dirty and there was soot in the creases yet, as if he’d been digging in fire-blackened ruins. There was a broad streak of ash on his cheek. I’d seen him in parades. Like the queen, he had an air about him that made him the center of the room.

    Master Farmer slid straight from his chair to his knees.

    “Achoo,
turun
,” I whispered. Achoo lay flat on her belly, her head down between her forepaws.

    Only the queen and Pounce stayed where they were. Her Majesty offered him her hand. “My love, I have been telling them what happened,” she explained. “How we found … things, when we came home last night.”

    His Majesty looked at the three of us. “Rise, please. There isn’t room enough in here for kneeling.” His voice was pleasant to hear, musical in a way. I did not look at him as I got to my feet. All I could think as I stood there was the jokes from the days before his second marriage. “Randy Roger,” “Roger the Rigid,” stories of merchants’ daughters, soldiers’ daughters, noble daughters, Player queens, courtesans, and trollops. Tunstall’s lover, the knight Sabine, had earned herself a spell of patrol in the gods-forsaken eastern hills when she offered her king physical violence if he didn’t keep his hands to himself. Her late Majesty, Queen Alysy, had lived with all his canoodling by turning a blind eye and a deaf ear. Word was that since his marriage to Queen Jessamine, he had yet to stray. From the look he had given her before I lowered my eyes, I could tell the word was true. The king loved his young queen.

    “His Majesty has also been telling me what was found.” That was my lord Gershom’s comfortable drawl. I glanced up at him. I’d never seen my lord afraid before, but he was frightened now. “It seems to me that we are best served if my team can set about finding where the raiding party came from, and where they went to.”

    “It is perfectly obvious.” That third voice was coming from the plump, white-haired fellow I guessed to be the king’s personal mage, the one who had met us at the door. Like any mage in service directly to the Crown, he would have been trained at the City of the Gods or, rarely, the Carthaki university. I suppose that being acknowledged to be at the height of your craft would put a smug set on your face, but I didn’t like this fellow all the same. I would have broken the vows he’d made to go hunting for the missing child the moment he was gone, not told Their Majesties my vows forbade me to do it.

    “
Perfectly
obvious,” he repeated. I was looking up by then. Lord Gershom was staring at the mage. His Majesty had an arm around the queen’s shoulders. Both he and the queen gazed at the mage with no expression at all. “It was a raiding party from the north, or the Copper Isles. We must get word to our brethren at the palace—”

    “That the raiders may have the heir to the throne in their hands?” Lord Gershom asked, his voice harsh. “Are you a born hoddy-dod, or was it your learning that brought you to a crawl?”

    “I will not trust the palace mages!” snapped the king. “With the row they’ve put up over the new mage laws and taxes, you’d think I’d attacked them! They will be happy to gain power over our