The Heart of Dog Read online

  He was a disturbed old ex-duster. I didn't do anything besides bring him a few meals, sneak out some of the family's old clothing and once a pillow. An old ex-duster who wanted to return the kindness, to save me from the misleading perm ways of my family. I understood that later. And in a way I suppose he did. When he took me away from all I knew, it was the strongest lesson I ever could have learned. Nothing is forever. Things change, whenever and wherever. So embrace the change. No ties, no extended responsibilities to others, nothing to lose. Dive into the change and ride it like a wave.

  The uni shouted warning; a huge chunk of flooring broke away and tumbled down the levels, leaving the others scrambling for safety while Shadia clutched the edge of the maintenance shaft. Time to leave.

  "That's it, people," the uni said. "He's not coming to us. I wish there were something we could do, but—"

  "Give me your uni coat," Shadia said abruptly.

  He gave her a baffled, resistant look, one arm raised to usher the other two back toward the shaft.

  Shadia stepped away from it. "Your coat," she insisted. The man and woman hesitated by the exit, watching them. "You want to save the akliat? Hand it over!"

  Still baffled, less resistant, he peeled it off and passed it to her, a long, dark tailored thing that smelled of sweat and stress and physical labor. Shadia tented the collar over her head. She put her hands halfway up the sleeves that were way too long for her anyway, and turned the coat into a draping cloak, turning her upraised arms into cave-enclosed branches. She didn't have to warn the others to hush; they'd done so on their own, letting their hopes burst through to their faces.

  Shadia raised her arms a little higher within her self-imposed cave and gave one of the casual little chirrups she'd often heard from Feef. A long trill with a few clucks at the end, a soft repetition...

  He sprang from his corner, scuttled across the rubble, and climbed her like the nighttime tree she pretended to be. Fast enough to make them all gasp. And then she steeled herself for the stench of him...but the stench had transformed to perfume, a crisp pervading caress of a scent; his soft, suede-skin arms clung to her not with fierce intent, but gentle trust.

  Slowly, filled with a sweetness she could just barely remember, she let the coat slide down to her shoulders and closed it around the both of them.

  They clapped for her. The man, the woman, the uni...the people several levels below on the first intact inner ring, watching it broadcast on their PIM gridviews. She met the grin of the uni with a surprised gaze, and he nodded at the maintenance shaft. "Go."

  The others went. And Shadia turned to follow, awkward under the burden of coat and akliat, in wavering mid-step when the uni shouted and the grid-watching crowd gave a collective gasp of horror. She saw it from the corner of her eye, the bulk of falling debris, screeching metal against metal as it bounced on the way down.

  She'd never get out of the way. Not in time. Duster-like, she was ready for that...except within her whispered a long-forgotten child's voice, something that treasured the newly rediscovered sweetness in life and didn't want to give it up again so soon...

  Something hit her hard. She twisted, trying to cushion the akliat even as she protected him from above, and all the while he exuded his scent of trust. A horrible crash buffeted her with sound and everything went dark, dark with a great heavy weight upon her.

  She waited for the pain.

  "Close one, eh?" said the uni's voice in her ear. "Come on, then. You're the one that knows the way, I think. Let's get you and your new friend out of here."

  I don't understand. He could have been killed. He doesn't even know me, doesn't have any of a perm's affection for those they keep around them.

  I don't understand.

  She led him through the darkness and back to the dimly lit pole shaft. She did it in silence, moving carefully to protect Feef, moving slowly to accommodate the tremble in her limbs. When they reached the level they'd come from, he put a hand on his own coat and stopped her before she remembered that dusters didn't like to be touched by strangers. That everyone was a stranger.

  "I work the duster turf, mainly," he said, and his voice held an understanding she'd never heard before. "Never yet met one who hadn't already lost too much to listen, but you..."

  She looked at him, going wary. Feef snuggled against her and before she could stop herself, she stroked the absurd fluff of his topknot where it poked out at her neck.

  The uni gave the smallest of smiles. "We're not so dim as you dusters think, perms aren't. Sure, we lose things, and then it hurts. It's just..." he shrugged, losing most of what little composure he'd had. "It's just that—it gives us—"

  She thought of people rushing to help strangers and other strangers cheering her success with Feef and yet other strangers who mourned. Perm strangers, who somehow weren't really strangers at all, not as dusters defined them. Perms left themselves open and vulnerable to the hurt and disillusion that dusters scorned, but...

  "You could have been killed," she said. Killed, tackling her to take them both flying into their only safety instead of diving there himself, a certain save.

  "Yes," he admitted.

  "A duster wouldn't have done it."

  "No. A duster wouldn't."

  "You leave yourself open to lose things," she said, and looked down at her hand a moment. Then, gently, more naturally than she'd have thought possible, she offered it to him. A perm gesture. "But it gives you this."

  His uncertain expression made way for a smile. It cracked the dust on his face and crinkled the corners of his reddened, irritated eyes. He looked terrible, and he looked wonderful. "Yes," he said, taking her hand. Only for the briefest moment. Then he coughed and said rather brusquely, "Let's get you and your new friend home, then."

  Feef's House. Sounds like a good name for a petcare center.

  ~~~~~~~~~~

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  ~~~~~~~~~~

  A Bitch in Time

  The Right Bitch series #1

  by Doranna Durgin

  The premise for the original anthologies in which these stories appeared? Write about a chick in chain mail. Uh-huh. You see what I did there, right?

  ----------

  1.

  Shiba sat on the bare wood planks of the cabin porch, wiggling her posterior away from a persistent splinter. Chain mail hung heavily on her shoulders and across her back, and the leather-lined helmet chafed her across the ears despite its custom contours. Across her broad chest hung a short row of service pins and one smooth, polished medal.

  Shiba would have ripped it off if she'd been given the choice. What good was valor when it wasn't enough?

  Good for a thorough rolling-on, that's what.

  Beside her stood the Line Mate, the man in charge of the border cabins representing the first line of defense against illegal magics. "Patience," he said, resting his hand on the skirt of mail that hung over her long ears. "He'll be here. Naught for you to worry."

  Shiba made a grumping noise and lifted her nose to the air, expertly sorting it for any taste of stranger-odor. There! Was that..? She whined, licked her lips, and tried again. Definitely!

  "Coming, is he?" the Line Mate asked, eyeing the path that led from the woods. His other name was Eldon, though Shiba thought he ought to pick one name or the other and stick with it. "All right. Just you keep in mind that he's recently lost his own partner. That does things to a lineman, you know."

  Shiba's tail quivered, and her forehead furrowed into furry wrinkles. The scent of her new partner was strong in her nose, stronger than any words Eldon might say. People talked all the time anyway, whether they had something to say or not.

  She strained her eyes—not the strongest of her senses—and yes, there he was! Just visible through the trees at the edge of the cabin's small clearing, a tall walking stick in one hand and a full satchel slung over his shoulder. Shiba whined as he emerged from the woods.

  "Easy," said Eldon, as Shiba's new p
artner approached. The man's easy stride seemed a tad too casual.

  "Tallon," Eldon said. "Welcome. You made good time."

  "Good enough," the man said. Shiba liked his voice. It had a roughly furry texture not unlike her own. He nodded at her. "See you musta spent some time getting ready for me. Wasn't necessary."

  "I didn't do it for you," Eldon said. "She was strongly attached to the old man. It's good for her to have a little ceremony, something to mark your arrival as out of the ordinary."

  Tallon dropped the satchel and looked thoughtfully at his new linehound.

  Shiba gave him her Noble Beauty pose. After all, she was of the best bloodlines and strikingly marked. The black of her back was glossy beneath her chain mail, and her chest, belly, and legs were white, so heavily ticked with black that from any distance they looked blue-silver. The black of her head and ears was divided by a neat ticked blaze that spread out to take over her muzzle, and her eyebrows were punctuated by deep brown. Her body was sturdy, her tail strong and graceful, and her ears fell long and soft, the perfect compliment to her hanging flews. Best of all, her legs—long, heavy-boned and angular—were up to the task of following her incomparable nose.

  She knew all this because Jehn, her former partner, had told her so. She believed him utterly, just as she believed everything he said.

  Tallon just shrugged. "We'll get along fine," he said. "Jehn'll have trained her right, and beyond that, a dog's a dog."

  Eldon's amiable expression froze into speechlessness; he gave Shiba a quick if somewhat furtive glance.

  A dog's a dog? Shiba's Noble Beauty stiffened into I-Did-Not-Just-Hear-That. Her ears, previously cocked forward into floppy wings, flattened. She rose and circled the man, eyeing him with cold brown eyes. A dog's a dog?

  Well, this dog was a bitch.

  Tallon would not only do well to keep that in mind, he was about to find out exactly what it could mean.

  She gave his satchel a sideways look. Eldon's eyes narrowed. Eldon knew.

  Shiba dropped shoulder-first on the satchel. Dramatic wiggles, exuberant flourishes...

  The stinky carrion roll.

  2.

  Tallon seemed to have missed the point, for he never made the necessary overtures to earn Shiba's forgiveness.

  Of all the linemen on the border, why give her this one to break in? No matter how long he'd been a lineman, Tallon was green here, in her territory. Here, where a lifetime—all three years of it—of protecting the border from spellrunners meant that she knew all its hiding places and all the tricky runners working the area. They didn't get past her—not when she worked with Jehn.

  For a while, spellrunners had even taken to disguising magicsmell with the much stronger scent of critter. It'd worked, too, because Shiba had a linehound's inborn and passionate hate for the oily-furred, long-bodied, toothy-jawed, witless—and here she had to pause in her thoughts to get hold of herself—critters. Why, their true name was such an abomination that a proper bitch never even said it, not even to herself.

  Critter, that's all they were ever called by the linehounds, all of whom were thoroughly educated to resist their natural compulsion to hunt down and shred every critter whose scent trail they crossed.

  But that spellrunner ploy had worked only briefly—only until Shiba caught the faint scent of magic beneath the critter/human trail, and thus learned that critter and human smell combined was as good as smelling magic.

  Oh, Jehn had been so proud of her the day she'd treed those wily spellrunners! And how silly they'd looked, perched up in that small trembling tree with one limp, tubular critter body dangling from each heel and spinning lazy circles just over Jehn's head.

  Shiba's tongue lolled out in a laugh just thinking about it. For once, it was a memory of Jehn that didn't bring pain or guilt along with it. She'd done a good job that day, and Jehn had bragged of it amongst the linemen.

  Tallon's voice interrupted her morning bask in the sun. "Let's go," he said. "Time for rounds."

  He took to the woods, heading for the worn path that followed the line of the border—and there, Shiba's jaw snapped shut as he moved out before her, his stupid walking stick at his side where he should have left space for her. She followed in his footsteps, but clogged her nose with his dust for only a few moments before breaking out ahead of him.

  "With me!" he said sharply, letting her know that he didn't trust her to work at any distance.

  His pleasing voice had long since lost its charm.

  Shiba, moving right along in her leggy trot, was tempted to not hear him. But no, for the sake of Jehn's memory, she couldn't do that. She snorted a little Sneeze of Impatience and let him catch up.

  But when she glanced back, she saw he was fumbling at his waist for the leash he kept wrapped around his body.

  The leash! She stared at him in horror. She hadn't been on a leash since she was a yearling! How could he—

  Her body folded in mortification until she cringed at his feet. Oh, what would Jehn say? For Tallon must have seen how close she'd come to not hearing him, and now he didn't trust—

  Smffle. Even in her mortification, Shiba had to breathe. Tallon's hand hesitated over her neck. Smmmmfle!

  Crittersmell Tallonsmell oldoldJehnsmell deersmell summerbellsinbloomsmell crittercrittercrittersmell and beneath it all, magicsmell.

  No magic made it past her border!

  Shiba barked, the short, choppy bark that signaled trail, and looked up at Tallon, waiting his decision.

  He didn't make one. He hovered over her, his hand clearly thinking leash while his mouth hesitated on the command to find it. Shiba's nose told her crittersmell magicsmell and she hunted the air, eyes on Tallon, until the odors resolved themselves. Crittersmell magicsmell crittermagicsmell!

  Shiba bawled full trail cry right in his face.

  Tallon, so startled he tumbled back on his human bottom, yelped, "Son of a bitch!" as Shiba surged forward, mastered by the smell of magic and no more by any lineman. Not even Jehn could have stopped her as she lunged into the trees and latched on to the trail. "Son of a bitch!"

  No. Just bitch!

  She ran the trail full out, until the crittersmell overwhelmed the magicsmell altogether, so sharp it stung her nose and she ran with her head in the air, belling triumph to the trees as she raced past. She overshot the trail, and it took only seconds to backtrack the critter where it crouched in a tree. Treed, treed, TREED!

  Her sweet, full trail cry turned choppy. She stood against the tree trunk, getting a face full of crittersmell from the scruffy specimen clinging to the lowest branch of the tree. Stupid critter, it ought to have climbed higher! Treed, treed! she barked joyfully, leaping up to fairly blow its fur back with the blast of sound.

  The less significant noise of Tallon's approach cornered very little of her attention. Bounding ever higher, she bellowed treedtreedtreed critter! and on her last bounce, leapt so high her head came level with the critter's.

  With a squeak of mindless fear, it shot out off the branch, landing squarely on Tallon's chest. His stupid walking stick flew into the air as he slapped frantically at his body, always one slap behind the panicked critter. Finally the thing launched off his head, and as Tallon flung one last grab at it, he lost his balance.

  He landed hard.

  The air whooped from his lungs—but that didn't stop him from snagging Shiba's collar as she bounded after the critter. She dragged him several feet, belling trail all the while, until his shoulder slammed up against a tree and stopped them both.

  Magicsmell! she cried woefully, and looked directly down into his face, wild with the pull of it.

  He still hadn't found his breath, though he seem to be trying to say something. His face red, his lips moving soundlessly, all he got out was, "—a bitch!"

  He was learning! But was he all right? The noises coming from him didn't sound normal.

  Panting, Shiba looked down the scant hand's breadth separating her nose from his face, and—
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  3.

  Shiba stretched out full length on the shady side of the clearing, her ears mournfully long and her eyes accusing and wounded. Chained. Disgraced. Fastened to the cabin porch like any common hound mutt.

  Maybe if she hadn't been so hot from the run...maybe if she'd had time to calm, to regain her composure, maybe if—

  No. Face the truth of it. She drooled as a matter of course.

  It was just Tallon's bad luck to have had his mouth wide open.

  4.

  Shiba wore her harness with ill grace, plodding along the border path with her ears hanging low. The harness, like her chain mail, was meant for combined operations with other linehounds and their Linemen. Not for daily work.

  Definitely not.

  Sullenly, she kept just enough tension on the leash to throw off Tallon's natural stride. The tip of that stupid walking stick stubbed against the ground in uneven intervals, providing spiteful satisfaction.

  At least Shiba had Eldon's mild comments to salve her wounded pride. "Did you check your detector?" he'd asked Tallon, referring to the only magic allowed in this territory—a crude device that marginally detected the magic Shiba could sniff out so easily.

  They'd spoken in the cabin, where they'd thought Shiba—chained to the porch—couldn't hear. And when Tallon admitted he didn't think to check, Eldon said, "Shiba's not a [critter]-chaser. Give her some room."

  Except he hadn't said critter. He'd said the Awful Word instead. Even so, that hadn't stopped the little swell of appreciation in Shiba's hound heart.

  Not that Eldon's words had done much good.