One Dog Night

Growing boys, it's said, need their sleep. The sixteenth Suitov lord got little enough of it, up at all hours with his books or some obnoxious experiment or another, and was getting even less recently. The usual suspect in this regard was seventeen years old, dark-haired, olive-eyed and completely uninterested in him, all of which was enough to distract any skinny fifteen-year-old who was in the process of discovering girls.

The immediate cause of insomnia, however, was the howling of a stray dog outside his window, audible even above the rainstorm. The cacophony had been going on for several minutes. Suitov's motley servants were mostly day staff, while the guard, the most leathery specimen of old soldiery he'd been able to hire, could sleep through a great deal worse than a nuisance dog, all of which meant it was up to the young lord himself to do anything about it.

He got up. The legs of his pyjamas currently ended a good couple of handspans above the carpet. He waved his left hand, casting a pale yellow glow that followed him out of the master bedroom.

Lord Suitov of Applestone, because nobody was watching, frisked down two and three stairs at a time, span around once on the lower landing and finished with a bow to the empty main hall. It was tiled. He never wore slippers. He sauntered to the door, opened it and looked down at what was outside.

The dog was standing back in order to see the upper windows, with erect ears cocked towards the door. A mongrel; good parts shepherd and scent hound, if he was any judge, and bearing the cautious, sentient expression Suitov knew well in strays. Dogs who searched your hands for weapons and your eyes for malice. Dogs who stayed always out of boot's reach. Knowing dogs. Cynics.

This one was male, fully grown, the size of a setter, possessed of disproportionately large paws, and rail-thin. The eyes, rusty brown, were dull, squinting, somewhat rheumy and not making prolonged contact with his. The tail was held low, moving very slowly from side to side. Rainwater was dripping from his chin. He had not worn a collar in months or more. He was exhausted.

"Was there something?" Suitov said.

In addition, from the look of things, the dog had come straight up the drive, almost changed his mind twice and hesitated for some time before starting to howl. The gravel was causing him discomfort, which was suggestive of distance travelled, and he seemed to be slightly favouring his right hind leg. The excellent condition of his teeth was apparent when, after a watchful pause, the dog started howling again, higher and less loud.

The animal's general condition made it impossible to tell his age. Suitov would have guessed anywhere from three to six. If this had been an ordinary dog. He was not, of course.

The dog, sensing scepticism, sat up and begged a little desperately.

"Very well, then. Come on in," Suitov said in his very thickest East Induban dialect. The dog started forward an instant before he moved to hold the door wider. Interesting, that, very interesting, but of course not conclusive; Suitov could have let some intonation slip through, careful as he'd been not to. It is hard to lie to dogs.

Once inside, not many ordinary strays would have studied the portraits on the wall, looked hard at Suitov's features and mentally adjusted his potential worth upwards by several orders of magnitude (all the while shedding a small river across the hall floor, but Suitov seldom noticed things like that). That was interesting too.

The fire in the kitchen had burned down to a lazy red glow. Suitov threw the light upwards to settle near the ceiling. He watched the dog flop in front of the fire with an audible squelch.

"More sog than dog, aren't you, lad?" he said. There was no reply. He turned and retrieved one of the large towels from a shelf. Suitov had not yet been trained out of using the best linen for such things as cushioning catapulted plant pots and drying wet dogs. He cooed a few soothing things in the process. The dog had no complaints; in fact, he seemed past caring.

His pads, as expected, were tender and torn. That hind leg was mobile. Flexing it elicited a lift of the head and the sigh of an old campaigner, but no signs of agony. Neither were there any other obvious injuries or sore areas. The dog tangibly flinched when Suitov examined his eyes. They were redder than they had looked from a distance. They had no pupils. Suitov appeared not to have noticed anything out of the ordinary. This was easy to achieve. After all, he'd seen exactly what he expected.

Three years weren't so long that he couldn't recognise the nature of the thing in his kitchen.

He fed the fire. Then he fed the dog. Fortunately for canine digestion there was beef without onion, and to the relief of the best china Suitov had always preferred the tin plates. The dog got up expectantly as food approached.

"That's a good boy," Suitov cooed, placing the dish in front of him with a dim clink, "don't suspect a thing, do you? Silly pigeon. Eat up that nice poisoned meat then, there's a lad."

But the creature had frozen after "suspect" and now quivered, uncertain. His lips curled slightly, once and twice. His eyes moved from lordling to meat. A bell-pull of drool swung from those impressive jaws.

"Smells all right to me--oh bollocks," said the dog, looking aghast at Suitov and preparing to run. Slow reactions, too slow. Must be stomach warring with common sense.

Suitov smiled, careful to show no teeth. "It's all right," he said, and he felt it the way he sometimes could and he pushed the feeling out in his voice. All all right. "Eat up. It's safe."

He retreated to a reassuring distance and the dog, after a halfhearted hesitation, commenced attempting to inhale both dish and contents. He looked up every second or two, as if gauging how much more he could get away with before cutting his losses.

Suitov had seen it all before. He could usually have strays eating out of his hand before long. It just took patience, gentleness and the willingness to see the other fellow's point of view. Dogs were easier than other people. They didn't care if you were a pinch-faced widow or a spotty youth in badly-fitting pyjamas. Dogs would like you even if you were young and inexplicably awkward around girls. Besides, when a dog bit, it was seldom premeditated.

He hadn't owned a dog in over three years. Giving Shuckie away was the last thing he'd done before leaving, not really expecting to be back. He got a blanket down.

The dog licked the plate clean and then nosed it over to see if there was anything edible on the other side. Now that's familiar.

Suitov removed it and spread the blanket out on the hearth. He said "You can sleep on this. Sorry to trick you." Then he turned and quit the room, the light bobbing after. The door he left open a crack, enough for a nose. Trust: one earned it.

Frerene was just telling him that she'd never consider a boy who didn't speak any other languages, while Suitov was trying to explain to her that he spoke seven, but finding himself unable to remember the Soprone word for gyroscope, which was somehow critical in getting her to believe him, when he gave up and awoke. "Glilyo, dash it all," he snapped, then wondered why.

Early morning light. Wilmer due later that morning, hellhound in the kitchen, Opper/Carder dispute wanting a little artful prodding before he got officially involved, Frerene still not in love with him, Lea Plumb's brown rot situation under control when last heard from, letter from aunt wanting reply, legally-required birthday portrait two months overdue. It was clear which of these warranted his immediate attention, so Suitov proceeded sedately downstairs.

The kitchen door was precisely as he'd left it. So, though, was the blanket he'd spread on the hearth. It had not even been walked on. Suitov dropped the arm he'd used to push the door open and cursed his misjudgement -- he'd been sure the dog would stay, at least for the night -- even as he wondered how the animal could have rebolted the back door from the outside.

It was at this point that he noticed the black mass in the fireplace. He moved closer and crouched, hands on knees. The dog was lying atop the cold ashes -- no, not on top of them but among them. He had been in there before the fire burned out, Suitov would swear to it.

Somehow, that particular characteristic had never been mentioned to him. To think he'd run around tricking the creature into talking when simply setting him on fire would have proved the hypothesis. Or not. That method might present some difficulty when it came to control groups. Perhaps some manner of enclosure with...

Suitov, forgetting yet again to eat breakfast, unbolted the door and went outside to continue his observations of the newts. Having seen the poor creature so obviously exhausted, he was in no tearing hurry to get answers out of him.

He was waiting on the front lawn by the time Wilmer arrived. Wilmer declined to come indoors, saying it was too nice a morning to waste, relieving Suitov of the need to explain why he had been burning retrievers.

They dispensed with the usual prosaic duties and Suitov had barely begun teasing ideas for the new wing out of him when Wilmer looked behind him in mild startlement. "I didn't know you had a dog, Rige."

Suitov half-turned to see the animal heading towards them. His gait was smoother, his eyes a brighter red, he had rolled off the worst of the ashes and he seemed to have drunk, probably from the water-butt outside the kitchen window. He was wagging.

"Neither did I," Suitov said dryly.

The dog sat and offered his paw to Wilmer. Clearly this pooch could detect a pushover from thirty paces. Wilmer shook the paw delightedly and started rubbing up his flank. The dog fawned with an utter dearth of discretion.

"Well, I say it's about time. A country gent like you, with all that woodland and meadowland at your disposal? I can't believe you haven't already got one."

Suitov shrugged.

"Who knows? Maybe he'd even make you adhere to a sensible schedule," Wilmer said, abandoning the attempt at primness when he added "Who's a good greathoundy then?" to a delighted dog.

Suitov, who preferred to plan for the worst and allow the world to surprise him pleasantly, hadn't long considered the possibility that the dog would want to stay. Interesting. What had swayed him from being ready to run at a moment's notice to barrelling over and introducing himself to the locals?

But there were so very many things he needed to know before he permitted anything of the sort, and no man or beast could rush Suitov into a decision he had not thoroughly thought through, so he pried Wilmer's attention back to architecture to see what the dog would do.

The dog waited. He waited in the ostentatious manner of one who doesn't wish to interrupt, but is nonetheless obliged to draw your attention to the fact that he is displaying patience of a most commendable grade. Occasionally he chewed a hock.

At length Wilmer said goodbye. "Someone's been waiting very patiently!" he added, causing the dog to start squirming in delight again.

"Until tomorrow, then, you old soft touch," Suitov scolded him. Wilmer's softheartedness was in fact the chief reason Suitov was so fond of him, but he was hardly going to admit that. There would be nothing left to tease him about.

Together, lordling and dog watched Wilmer leave. The dog looked up at Suitov. Suitov scrutinised him. The tail kept wagging.

"Were you staying for breakfast?" Suitov asked sardonically.

The dog looked over his shoulder. "If you insist," he said.

And he followed Suitov back to the house.

The hearth, covered in prints and smears of ash, told its own story.

"Are your paws feeling better?" Suitov asked.

"Yeah," said the hound. He looked at Suitov for a moment then lost the nerve for whatever else he had been going to say.

"The study, I think. The housekeeper gets in soon, and I suspect you might frighten her."

"Breakfast?" prompted the dog.

Suitov smiled apologetically. "She is a better cook than I." This raised a cock of the ears and a hopeful wag, and the dog followed him.

Once both were seated and Suitov's offer to start a fire had been declined, he offered his opening gambit. "I suggest frankness is called for. We can exchange question for question. What are you called?"

"Mistake," said the dog. "You?"

"Suitov," he said, "but Mistake What?"

"By Rover out of Brimstone," said Mistake. Clearly this was a pedigree. Sire and dam... Brimstone! Now, if that didn't absolutely...

"My title is Lord Suitov, technically a warlord. Your master?" Hellhounds could only lie about this particular question by omission, assuming always that the information Suitov had was correct.

"Haven't got one," said Mistake.

And that raised a lot of ideas, some of them plainly ridiculous, so Suitov affected only mild dubiousness instead of the excited curiosity he truly felt.

"You live here alone?" Mistake asked.

"Mm. Servants and friends. I know everyone in the surrounding area, though. What brings you to these parts?"

"Misunderstandings elsewhere, the kind involving mobs and pitchforks."

"Tut, how very unfortunate."

"I've seen worse. Where's your parents?"

"Dead," said Suitov. "How came you to be wandering loose?"

"Tell you when I know you better," said Mistake.

"Of course. How old are you, then?"

"About thirty, I think. And you're, what, half that? Still a kid."

"The law considers me an adult, and I have held the responsibilities of one for some time," Suitov said in a frosty tone.

Mistake tensed up, conscious of having put a paw wrong. "Uh, yeah, sure. I didn't mean..."

"Yes," said Suitov, who was always upset by seeing somebody flinch as though expecting to be hit, and consequently found himself unable to stay stern. Honestly, I'm as bad as Wilmer. "Do you always sleep in lit fireplaces?" he asked.

"Uh, you saw that? Right. It, uh, keeps the fleas down."

"No doubt." Suitov gazed at him for a second or two, then glanced up. "I think I hear the housekeeper. I shall see about breakfast. I shan't be long."

Mistake whined hopefully at "breakfast", but he stood at the same time as Suitov. "Sweetoff, wait a sec. Very important question."

Suitov paused at the door. "Well, it's your turn. What?"

"Are there," said Mistake most carefully and deliberately, with his ears folded back at the very thought, "are there any cats around here?"

"I don't believe we see more than one in a couple of years," Suitov remarked.

"Hot bath, I've hit the jackpot," said Mistake, and he sat down again with a big grin on his teeth.

Suitov first informed his housekeeper of the dog's presence, which she had already inferred from the trail of muddy prints, ash and filthy towel. The housekeeper still remembered the swan episode and consequently took the attitude that this latest flight of eccentricity was by no means as bad as it could have been. Suitov, self-conscious enough at least to be glad of the admirable young woman's patience, casually let slip something about conjunctivitis at the same time. He saw no pressing reason to mention that the dog, in addition to being red-eyed, could talk, appreciate art and lie in fire.

Mistake, once introduced, made every attempt to be ingratiating. The skinny thing seemed accustomed to making himself smaller than he was, with the result that the dogshy housekeeper was soon won over. After being fed (along with so shameful a display of sitting up for a sugar lump on his nose that it shall not be mentioned at all), the dog went outside and ran around the back lawns, nose to the ground, reading unfathomable doggy things from the garden's pages.

Suitov, lost in thought, watched him. The rain had added some bounce to the flowers and left the air smelling green. Mistake wandered around, adding his own contributions to the bouquet here and there.

Suitov wanted very much to get to the bottom of the dog's presence here. He had a great many suspicions. The question needed careful handling, however, because as stage-managed as his arrival seemed, Mistake was still something valuable. He must be kept reassured while Suitov looked for hidden strings.

He first considered the course of events. Suitov had come briefly to Brimstone's attention after hearing of a different hellhound's apparition in the vicinity and investigating further. Following his interview with Brimstone, other things had assumed greater importance than hunting hellhounds. Meanwhile, true to her expressed whim, the hellbitch had not been sighted in the area since. Three years had passed without any reason to imagine it was not all over. Then a dog showed up, claiming to be Brimstone's offspring.

If I ever have a son, you should take him. That was what Brimstone had said. He had reviewed his notes last night and recalled that hellbitches placed little value on male puppies. Power, ferocity, nose, strength: all of these were considered to be passed on through the female line. By that reasoning, a helldog was less valuable -- but was still more than most of those beings called demons could hope to have.

For any demon to take on a hellhound as its lifelong companion, a servant bound to her or his master by unbreakable forces, it must first obtain consent from the puppy's mother.

When a hellbitch legendary for her knowledge of the future says take my son, please, and then a son turns up, it begins to look awfully like permission given in advance.

If I ever have a son... But the timing made no sense. Mistake claimed to be about thirty years old. If he was lying, that was simple, but Suitov was inclined to believe him, which would mean Brimstone had been obscuring the truth three years ago. She'd already had a son of twenty-seven. Or had she meant another son? Her declaration seemed to imply she had none. Suitov had found her amusingly oracular at the time. Now he wished she had spoken more plainly.

That still left the question of Mistake himself. He did not seem to know who Suitov was, or rather did not seem to expect Suitov to know who Brimstone was. Why pretend that, and why turn up at all if pretending? What manner of thing is our meagre Mistake? Fluke, pawn, conspirator or lone confidence trickster? All that could be said for certain was that he was no normal dog. With super-canine intelligence comes more capacity for deception. It is difficult to lie to quondam actors, too, and although he would have liked to believe that Mistake was as open and obvious as his oscillating rump and heavy-footed fawning seemed to suggest, Suitov was by no means certain.

Judging by the occasional look he cast Suitov's way, and the wariness still lurking in his eyes, neither was Mistake.

A pretty puzzle for such a pretty morning. Suitov stood, watched and pondered the wisdom of looking a gift hellhound in the mouth.

The one thing Suitov did not question was his own decision to let Mistake into his home in the first place. There had been no other viable choice -- well, unless one expected Suitov to ignore an opportunity to examine something interesting and highly dangerous, and that really would be too unreasonable.

Following a brief visit to the coldstore and the flower garden, Suitov used the journey to Airstone as an opportunity to quiz the dog further. It was a pleasant stroll through light woodland and fields.

"Bit early in the day for boozing, isn't it?" Mistake asked, referring to the jar in Suitov's left hand. It was tightly sealed and still cold; clearly even this was not enough to fool a dog's nose.

"It certainly would be," Suitov replied. "Do you drink alcohol?"

"Given half a chance," said Mistake.

"But don't you feel its effects?"

"Yeah, of course. Leastways until I jump in a fire and burn it off," said Mistake. "Rabbits!" he added, and ran away and stuck his head down a hole.

Suitov kept walking. Presently, Mistake returned with wagging tail, empty mouth and scuffs of damp soil on his glossy black coat. Duty, it seemed, had been discharged.

"Where we going?" Mistake asked.

"Airstone. Second of the four villages in the district."

"What're we doing there?" Mistake asked with a sly glance at him. Oh yes, lad, I notice the "we". Still trying to decide whether I mind it.

Suitov replied "Sorting out a pair of feuding so-and-sos who ought to be old enough to know better."

"What're you going to do, club 'em with the jug then beat them to death with the posy?"

"You'll see," Suitov said, juggling the bunch of flowers into the crook of his left elbow and using the freed hand to brush some loose hair off his face.

Mistake hared off again, this time to touch noses with a curious brown cow. Suitov idly wondered if tails could be sprained by overuse. Wagger's cramp, so to speak?

The dog returned once more. "Bribery then. Gotta be," he said.

"You'll see."

Which was the most Mistake was going to get out of him, despite such obvious ruses as the dog could come up with.

After those had been expended to no avail, Suitov asked "Do you know any... tricks? Besides sitting up and offering a paw?"

"Yeah, loads," said Mistake. "Well, some. Well, one. Well... look, I'm a really fast learner when I want to be, right?"

Suitov smiled. "Well, you can fetch sticks, I trust?"

"I am the king of the stick. Not like you can throw one carrying all that."

"Certain of that, are you?" Suitov asked, crooking a little finger.

Mistake woofed in consternation when a large stick whizzed around his head and waggled back and forth in front of his muzzle. It subsequently flew halfway across the meadow, dog hurtling behind. These events repeated themselves several times before the outskirts of Airstone. Suitov stopped 'throwing' the stick once the risk of somebody else seeing exceeded an acceptable level, leaving Mistake to trot along behind him carrying the thing in his mouth. He too had become a lot quieter now they were close to buildings.

Drops of condensation began to bead like sweat on the jar Suitov carried. He looked carefully along the main road, a one-time cart track recently elevated to flagstones and in very good repair. Seeing nobody much around, His Lordship swung his lanky legs over the fence, strolled past one house and placed the jug on the doorstep.

Mistake had stopped a short distance away behind a dog-rose bush and put the stick down. He looked over his shoulder, folding one ear back as he did so, then when Suitov returned the way they'd come, he asked lowly "Not gonna knock?"

"Patience!" Suitov said and started along another track.

"You're a magician, right?" Mistake muttered behind him.

"A bit of one."

"'Cause that cider jug's been in the sun half an hour and it's still cold."

"Well observed. It will seem more convincing thus." Now they were far enough away, Suitov turned back and snapped his fingers twice. Somewhere behind them, a door resounded with a firm thump. "Knock knock," he said to the dog.

"Are you gonna tell me what we're doing now?" asked Mistake, briefly lifting himself off his front paws and sticking his nose in among the bunch of flowers Suitov was still carrying.

Suitov tapped him on the muzzle with a finger. "Our feuding pair, Mr. Jahn Opper and Middy Aering Carder, have been at each other's necks for the best part of half a year. The cause of the argument was a goose, not that I think either of them cares any more. Most recently, Carder is attempting to bring Opper to law over a gatepost, which matter, should she press ahead with it, will become mine to deal with. That will result in tedium, paperwork and a deepening of the feud, whichever of them comes out on top. I consider this an annoying precedent to permit to be set, especially when there are newts to study, and am strongly inclined to thwart it. Now, Opper's cider is sought after for miles around, while Carder is much noted for her prize flowers..." He waited to see whether the dog would fill in the rest.

"So? How's bringing Opper more cider going to help? 'Part from getting him drunk?"

Suitov clicked his tongue. "Clearly it would be pointless to bring Opper cider. Fortunate, then, that that was Carder's doorstep."

Mistake worked it out and sniggered. A dog's snigger is a throaty, whiskered and ribald affair. "You're setting 'em up, you cunning bastard," he said approvingly. "Do you think it'll work?"

"One moment..." There were fewer people out this way, more orchards. Suitov swung past a smaller cottage and laid the flowers on the front path. Shortly afterwards he repeated the knocking trick.

"Very many things could go wrong, of course," Suitov said. He had in fact identified eight or nine completely different ways in which this could end in disaster. Hope for the best, by all means, but keep the sandbags at the ready. "Still, they must speak to each other at least once before they realise what has happened, and then with any luck they will waste time wondering who the culprit was. Meanwhile..."

"Newts," Mistake filled in.

Suitov shot him a conspiratorial smile. "Well, not only newts. Masonry chisels too."

Then he caught sight of Frerene in the distance, stood on his bootlace and fell flat on his face.

Curses. Curses. He scrambled to his feet again in time to catch Frerene ostentatiously pretending not to have noticed.

Frerene was the only woman in the world. The fact that other women did, in truth, exist was, Suitov felt, the exception that proved the rule. Those anomalous others weren't her. They didn't have her way of angling her chin when she was considering something, her gracious laugh or the curve of her neck, and not many of them shared her complete disinterest in him. They could therefore safely be discounted as an irrelevance.

Suitov managed to brush himself down before Frerene reached hailing distance. To a less partial observer, she was on the tall side for a seventeen-year-old, healthily curved and striking rather than beautiful. Local gossip would beg to add that she was given to putting on airs.

"Miss Caldear," Suitov croaked.

"My lord," said Frerene breezily. She knew she didn't have to call him that. Nothing Frerene did was unintentional, she wa... wait, this was the point at which he must say something dramatic and awe the beloved with his wit.

"Is that a new dog, my lord?" asked Frerene.

"Sort of," Suitov said.

Something snappy! Specific! You can still salvage -- ask about her! For goodness' sake smile! Suitov, forcing a simper across his face, managed "Do you like dogs?" His voice seemed to be forgetting that almost half a year had passed since it broke.

"Oh, not particularly, Lord. They do follow one about so -- and with such terribly solemn and single-minded devotion." Frerene made an utterly charming throwing-away gesture with one beautiful hand.

Somehow, Suitov reflected, these encounters never went according to plan. He cursed his excellent peripheral vision for making it so difficult to miss the expression on Mistake's face.

If he didn't wish to resign himself to bachelorhood for life, he felt, he must wrest control of this conversation immediately, so Suitov said "A pity. In fact I brought him to see if you would like him."

This had the welcome side effect of wiping the smirk off Mistake's muzzle.

"Oh," said Frerene in a tactful tone that set Suitov's heart racing. She looked down at the dog. "We have so little space, you understand, and he is rather peculiar. Those eyes..." She lifted the dog's eyelids gently with her thumbtips. Mistake licked his nose and wagged alarmedly.

Suitov was for a moment seized with a mad impulse to invent something wrong with his own eyes.

"I think he will be happier with you," said Frerene with all the diplomacy of the middle of five children.

"Perhaps you are right. How is the family?" asked Suitov, at last steering the conversation into safer waters.

---

"You've got it bad," Mistake remarked once they had begun walking back.

"I have no idea to what you are referring," Suitov scowled.

"For the record," continued Mistake, "I don't mind being used to pick up chicks, but you're very bad at it."

"Frerene is not a chick," said Suitov icily.

"Got it baaaad," reiterated the dog.

Suitov snorted.

"If you wanted to know," Mistake continued with badly faked innocence, "she's a lot more interested than she's letting on, but she's gonna keep stringing you along if you don't do something about it."

"Thank you, but I do not require your assistance with this," Suitov muttered.

Mistake headbutted him in the leg from behind. "You do. Dude, you totally do."

"Is that so."

"Yeah! I'm great with the ladies."

"Like when she looked at your eyes, eh?"

The dog whined a yawn. "That's different. It just takes the wrong superstitious yokel to notice and next it's the scythes and flaming torches."

Suitov looked into middle distance. "Frerene isn't superstitious. She is one of the most shrewd, rational..."

"...eyes of virgin olive, hair of blistering bistre, skin of peachy peach, will you listen to yourself?" Mistake butted in.

Suitov did, and stopped walking, and folded his arms before looking at the infuriatingly correct dog. "All right," he said. "I've never had trouble relating to women in the past. Always seen them as friends and equals, really. Lately, though..."

"Yeah, I know how it goes. They suddenly start smelling really interesting and you can't think straight, right?"

Suitov snorted again. "Something like that."

"Which is why you need me! I've been round the houses. I've played this game. I've got the nose. I can help!"

"And all of this would have nothing to do with you wanting a nice safe home with meat dinners, long walks and someone who respects you for what you really are, I suppose?" said Suitov.

"It might have a bit to do with it," the dog admitted.

He paused for a long moment, then: "Mistake."

"What?" said Mistake, nervously.

Suitov scooped up a fallen stick in his left hand and sent it flying. "Fetch."

Watching the dog fly after it amid excited yaps, Suitov reflected that Frerene might not be the only one who was coming to enjoy stringing somebody along.

Suitov fell into thought on the rest of the walk home. Throwing the stick was almost mechanical.

He couldn't read her; that was what was frustrating. Suitov was used to being able to guess what anyone was thinking, but Frerene...

---

Little Rigey, in a four-and-a-half-year-old fit of temper, had declared that he was going to be an agrochemist and not a warlord. For this, he had been barred from the library. He faced this, as everything, with blank-faced equanimity, not realising from his father's reaction how frustrating this was, and instead spent some time in one of the sun lounges. There were some interesting inconsistencies in the window glass, and Rigey had come across a mixture of ink that faded very quickly in sunlight. Combining the two seemed natural.

After setting up his experiment, he picked up one of his mother's books. (Reason dictated that he had been barred from the library, a location, not from books, a class of object.) Pink covers with hearts on signified little to Rigey, but they turned out to be fiction, which was disappointing. He leafed through three or four simultaneously until one scene puzzled him sufficiently to grab his attention. The heroine noticed that the villain was lying by reading his expression.

Reading? Could one 'read' someone's face - observe his expression and interpret deception from it? Now he thought about it, Rigey had seen his mother do that. At the time he had assumed she must have had prior knowledge.

He had to investigate this. Scientifically. He began by listing the parts of the face...

Suitov didn't recall clearly, but he had a vague impression that for some weeks afterwards, passers-by in the villages risked finding themselves accosted by an expressionless, pale-skinned little boy demanding "Are you sad? Why?" It was not long before little Rigey learned how to smile and how not to make incessant, ferocious eye contact. He was a lot less disconcerting to meet after this, and profoundly more popular at family gatherings. He continued to learn.

His mother had occasionally related the story of young Rige glancing up from a book during his seventh birthday party, seeing one of his distant cousins deep in a brown study of a potted amaryllis and walking over to her to tell her something nobody else heard. The young lady in question later reported his words as "Don't feel insecure. He would pay you more attention if you talked to him about frogs." This meant little to her chaperones, but she was a little pink around the cheeks.

---

Yes, he had got quite good at doing it with everyone else. But Frerene entirely befuddled him. Apparently this was what love was like. It really was most curious. Yes, fascinating. He kicked a tussock moodily.

Mistake, meanwhile, eventually tired of the stick and followed along. Suitov briefly debated taking him into Toxtun to the pub. The rest of the Pack would be there... but no. Too much exposure, too soon, with too little data. Home, therefore - and, with any luck, answers.

Mistake flopped on the paving slabs and watched Suitov watching newts, giving the occasional wag of his tail. When he was presented with one nose-to-nose, he craned his ears almost painfully forward and sniffed and whined at it.

"Do they speak to you?" asked Suitov.

"Not in a sense you'd recognise. It's more like a bunch of sensations and blind intentions."

Suitov looked down at the creature holding to his fingers. Sometimes he felt, himself, like a sequence of blind intentions. It's an ill-adapted animal indeed whose basal instincts point towards books, rather than food, fights and females. I should have made a rotten newt. He put her back.

The newt leapt into the water with a plish and Suitov walked inside with a dog at his heels. The housekeeper obliged by being in, giving Suitov an excuse to get the dog where he wanted him.

"Take. Eat. Do not put down and forget," said the housekeeper, insisting a small jug of soup into his hands. Suitov nodded thanks and absent-mindedly stepped around the dog.

He waited for Mistake to finish begging (successfully, the scoundrel) before leading him into one of the studies and casually closing the door. The dog lay down and chewed his sun-dried beef. Suitov sipped the soup, then put it down and forgot about it.

As soon as Mistake's mouth wasn't full, Suitov said "Well, your fur is shorter than your mother's."

"Yeah, that's not the only way I'm disappointing," said Mistake.

There was a pause.

"When'd I tell you she was a longhair morph?" Mistake asked, slowly.

"You didn't," stated Suitov.

The dog carefully stood up, eyes fixed on Suitov. He noticed the closed door. He flattened his ears.

"What is this? Is she here?" he asked. Suitov had the impression the whites of his eyes would be showing, if he had had any.

"Brimstone is not here," he told the dog.

"You've seen her." It wasn't just the eyes. He was bristling, seeming quite effectively bigger, and teeth were showing. Mistake, for the first time, seemed dangerous.

Suitov was forced to concede that it may possibly have been somewhat unwise to corner a frightened hellhound.

But he calmly said, "Yes, I have met her once."

"When?" demanded Mistake, obviously controlling himself with difficulty. One way or another, that rug is in some danger, Suitov thought.

"Three years ago."

"No! I - mean, when for her?" Mistake asked.

That made Suitov blink and take a second to absorb the implications. They were... Unexpected. He considered an answer.

"She seemed adult, fully-grown. She said she belonged to a demon named Miserere. She had no scars or injuries and her teeth were in good condition."

"Could be any time," Mistake growled. Then he snapped at a speck of dust that got too close.

"Are you saying," Suitov said, formulating the question with some difficulty, "that Brimstone's time is not the same as my own?"

"Hah! Don't tell me you believed her fortune-teller posing!" snorted Mistake. "What sort of moron believes in seeing the future? I wasn't six weeks before I figured that one out."

Suitov cocked his head, content to let contempt play out into prolixity. Mistake licked his snarling lips grandly and continued, "So Brimstone's getting mortals to do her dirty work now? I woulda thought she'd rather die. What's she suckered you into and how's it involve me? And don't try telling me she's suddenly discovered her maternal side, 'cause she hasn't got one. She doesn't want anything to do with me... right?"

In the dog's shifting posture, Suitov watched the interplay of anger, resentment, fear and some deep longing. The abandoned child without a mother... dash it all, don't anthropomorphise. That hidden longing may well be for his teeth to meet in my throat.

He said "Oh, when I talked to her, it seemed you did not yet exist. If either of you is to be believed, that is."

"Believe what you like, mister."

This wasn't going to get much further. It was time to shift the dynamic. Suitov called on all those centuries' worth of breeding for imperious formidability. "And if, in the circumstances, I should be more inclined to think that you came here with Brimstone's full knowledge, if not at her explicit instruction?"

Mistake gawped. His doggish nature didn't know whether he should tuck his tail and lick his nose or bristle and bare his teeth. Suitov gathered thunder into his countenance and pressed further, advancing on the animal.

"Was the idea to look starving and harmless in order to win my sympathy? Did Brimstone think of that? Did she show you how to shiver? Coach you in cringing? Prepare you to play it for pathos?" With a dog, talking or otherwise, the tone of voice was more important than the words.

Mistake was circling him at a steady distance, ears back and licking a snarl from side to side.

"Was I the first to let you in, or am I only the one who looked richest and stupidest?" asked Suitov, taking a step closer. The dog must either bolt or attack, and it mattered a good deal which one it was.

Instead, and to Suitov's great interest, the dog did neither. He stood his ground, albeit shaking a little. "Is this a fucking test?" he said.

Suitov gave up on the act and drew off by the same distance with a sheepish quirk of his mouth. "Yes," he said. "Sorry. Had to get my own back for being called stupid. How could you tell?"

"The voice. The undertones. You think too nice. Definite regard for the other guy's welfare in there."

"You hear more than most," said Suitov.

"Of course I do, I'm a dog," said Mistake. "Don't get me wrong, you're good. It'd have fooled a human ear probably. Home, you almost had me in spite of it all. That's quite the alpha growl you got on you."

Suitov sighed. "It ought to be, I suppose. I was bred for riding around shouting at people. It's in the bones."

"Did I pass, then?" said Mistake, sitting and scratching his neck.

"Wasn't that sort of test."

He took a moment to undo some (but not all, oh no) of the extra precautions he'd taken before the conversation began.

"What did Brimstone say to you?" asked Mistake.

"She said if she ever had a son, he might come here," Suitov told him.

"She said that?" Mistake had one ear up, one ear down, puppylike - Suitov appreciated the effect, though it wasn't going to win him over, of course. "No bloody wonder you're suspicious," Mistake added.

"And did she send you here?" he asked the dog, holding his eyes.

"I didn't even know where here was. She didn't send me - I swear on my ability to lick my balls."

"That's good enough for me," Suitov said dryly.

"You hafta understand one thing," said Mistake. "Hellhounds, well, we don't izzactly plan things. Brimstone makes snap decisions and then sticks to them out of bloody-mindedness. She's not a brooder."

Suitov smiled.

"What?"

"Oh, I was reminded of an old fable we have. When men and women and dogs formed their abiding partnership, they divided the times up between them. The dogs would worry about what was now; the women and men about what was past, what was to come and what was not. We think the dogs had the clever end of the deal." Suitov paced around while talking, ending up near the door, which he opened a little way, then stood aside.

The dog rose and walked out, pausing afterwards to see that Suitov followed. After a pause he said "I can't help noticing that you killed someone."

"Can you really smell such things?" Suitov asked.

The dog continued along the landing with a swish of his tail and sniffs in various places that needed sniffing. "It's not exactly in the nose, not completely. It's more in how you and the world around you relate to each other. Who'd you kill?"

"A murderer. One who killed for money."

"Oh," said the dog, unperturbed. "Don't like assassins then?"

"I loathe assassins," said Suitov emphatically. "Moreover, this one had annoyed me particularly by killing a family member on my land."

The dog stopped and turned sideways on to look at him. "Your mum or your dad?" he asked.

It was Suitov's turn for a moment's pause. Then he shrugged and said "My father. On my land. The matter had to be dealt with." Almost ran away instead, though, didn't you? "I dealt with it; it is now past and, fables notwithstanding, I do not find it necessary to dwell on it."

Mistake nodded. "I killed a sapient once," he said. "It was an accident, but they didn't believe me. I almost ended up skinned alive, and I mean that lit'rally."

"When was that?"

"Maybe ten or eleven years ago. A long way away. I don't stay in places. Not after they see the eyes or hear me talk."

Mistake fell silent at that, coming within earshot of the staff. Suitov conversed with them for a time, settled the dog down in front of the kitchen fire and returned to certain of his projects. A couple of hours later he remembered the mug of soup and, congratulating himself on his improved memory for such boring trivia as food and sleep, reheated it with a few finger-waggles. This spared the carpet when, more hours later, the empty mug slid past his sleeping elbow and off the edge of the drafting-table, there to bounce harmlessly off the dark green pile.

Well, so the dog had killed someone. At least he hadn't been hired to do it. Suitov was aware that his thought patterns had shifted from finding reasons not to keep Mistake to dismissing reasons to send him packing.

He reminded himself that the advantages of having a wet nose and wagging tail around the place could easily be reproduced by adopting a pup from one of the villages. Mustn't ascribe excessive weighting to proximity and convenience. In other words, there was no need to keep this dog just because he was here.

The wet nose under discussion poked its way out of the front door. Suitov was currently standing at the top of the steps, in the early morning light, raking the gravel of the driveway. This was accomplished without touching it physically. When one is fifteen and a new mage, one tends to do things the flashy, inefficient way for the sake of it.

"Don't you have servants for that?" Mistake asked.

"I have my reasons," said Suitov.

"You could replace it with flagstones," suggested the dog.

"I could."

Mistake advanced and sat beside him. "It'd be easier on people's bare paws."

"But I'd lose my guestbook," said Suitov.

Mistake cocked his head and whined softly, nonplussed. "If that's a guestbook, what are you doing to it?" he said.

"Turning the page," said Suitov. "What do you do for teeth?"

"Whatcha mean? I've got some."

"Indeed, and they look brand new. You told me you were thirty. Don't they wear down?"

"Of course, as long as I chew enough things," said Mistake.

"And if you don't?" Suitov asked, with a glance down at him.

"Then they overgrow and I start to look scary," said the large, black, red-eyed dog.

"I see."

The gravel being in a satisfactory state, Suitov's left hand fell to his side and found the dog's head already there. The fur was darker than slate and very warm. Suitov thought of magma.

"You're quite manipulative, aren't you?" said Mistake.

"A bit. You're quite straightforward, aren't you?"

"Yeah. I don't mind or anything," said Mistake. "Home, I'd lie all the time if I was any good at it. Maybe then more people'd let me stay."

Suitov tickled behind one black standy-up ear. "I don't lie all the time. I follow a code, actually. Just not a chivalrous one."

Mistake's tongue lolled. "Codes of honour? You a secret idealist or something?" he said.

"Dragannerie's not a code for idealists. At least, not ones who value honour and being respected above getting things done."

"I've never been respected," said Mistake. "Always wanted to give it a try."

A twitch of the dog's ears, followed by the sound of shoes on gravel some way off, told Suitov he was about to receive the visitor he'd been expecting. It was Jurian, the son of the postmistress, who bowed a little awkwardly, delivered a note into his hands and hared off.

The note read Arrived in Waifstone late last night. Easel and brushes.

Suitov folded it and put it into a pocket. "I'm going on a short trip," he said to Mistake. "I will permit you to accompany me if you so desire."

He turned around and headed inside and upstairs.

Rhythmic pawfalls climbed behind him. The dog said "Where we going? Another walk? See some sheep?"

Suitov picked up the small brown leather overnight-case he had left ready at the end of his bed. "A fair chance of horses," he said.

Mistake had to hold his tongue while Suitov left the housekeeper instructions and picked up the packed food she had prepared. Once they were outside and cutting through the semi-tame woodland that bordered the front of the Suitov estate, he asked "So what're we running from?"

"An unimaginable horror," Suitov told him with a scratch behind the ear.

There was a single high wall to pass over. Suitov had to shove Mistake up to the top from beneath, aided by woody creepers that the dog might have noticed had a suspiciously pruned look. They walked a while, then Suitov took them out of the treeline opposite where the mail coach stopped. They were early.

"When you say unimaginable horror," Mistake prompted.

Suitov shuddered and looked down at him. "Portraiture," he said.

Mistake fastened his ears upon the road that curved out of sight towards Airstone.

"You scared of having your portrait painted?" he asked sceptically.

"It's so dull and frustrating," Suitov said, "and they invariably make me look awful."

Mistake regarded him for a while before looking back along the bending road. "Isn't that the artist's fault? I mean, there's nothing physically wrong with you. Surely you can just hire a better one?"

"I always end up looking so dashed young," said Suitov, and kicked a stone across the road with feeling. He turned on Mistake, whose attention was still around the bend. "What are you looking at, anyway?"

"Your lady love's coming," said Mistake.

"What?!" Suitov span around so fast that one of his feet almost kicked the other from under him. Recovering, and lowering his voice, he continued "You mean Frerene? Here? You might have warned me; I'm totally unprepare..." He stopped because Frerene had just rounded the bend and no doubt caught a good glimpse of him whispering urgently to a dog.