March 18, 406 [H.E.: the Human Era]
In all those lessons for which I was made to memorize chants and prayers I never used, couldn't our temple priestesses have taught one—just one!—lesson on what to do with a boy who is too smart for his own good?
I am at my wit's end! My George was taken up for stealing and I had to go to the Jane Street Guard station.
I thought I might die of the shame. I know it is this place and the friends he makes here. Even the families who do not teach their children the secrets of theft look the other way because it puts food on the table. And I am too newly come. I cannot tell them, "Keep your children away from my son. Do not let them teach him to steal."
I want him to rise in the world. We are poor now, but I pray we will not always be so. And I cannot afford a better place to live. My family will not have me back, not after our last meeting. So I am left here, trying to raise a lad who sees and hears and thinks too much, in the city's worst slum.
At the station there my scapegrace was, seated on a bench with the Guard who'd caught him. "It was but a handful of coins left on a counter, Mistress Cooper," the Guard said. "And I recovered them all. It's his first time, and I owe you for makin' my wife's labor so easy." He looked at George. "Next time it's the cages for you, and maybe a work farm," he warned. "Don't go makin' your good mother weep."
I grabbed George's arm and towed him out of there. We'd no sooner passed through the gate into the street when he tells me, "Up till a hundred year ago they was called Dogs, Ma." He was talking broad Lower City slang, knowing it made me furious. "Ye know why they changed it? They thought folk mightn't respect 'em if they went about callin' them after curs like they done for three hundred—"
I boxed his ear. "I'll have no history lessons from you, Master Scamp!" I cried, tried beyond my sense of dignity. "You'll keep your tongue between your teeth!" Everyone we passed was smirking at us. They knew our tale, knew I'd been dismissed from the temple. They believed I thought myself better than they were, because I kept my home and my child as clean as may be and taught him his letters. Let them think it. We will not always live in the Cesspool. My George is meant for better things.
Thieving is not among them, I swear it.
When I got him to our rooms, I let him go. He stared at me with his hazel eyes, so like mine. The beaky nose and square chin were his father's, a temple worshiper I saw but for one night. George would be the kind of man women would think was so homely he was handsome, if he lived. I had to make certain he would live.
"The shame of it!" I told him. "George Cooper, how am I to face folk? Stealing! My son, stealing!"
He looked me boldly in the face. "We're gettin' no richer from your healin' and magickin', Ma. I hate bein' hungry all the time."
That cut me. I knew he was hungry. Did I not divide my share so he had more, and it still wasn't enough? So he would not see me in tears, and because he needed it, I sat on our chair and turned my rascal over my knee. I gave him the spanking of his young life.
I stood him on his feet again. His chin trembled, but he refused to cry. The problem is, my lad and I are too much alike.
"There's more important things than wealth," I said, trying to make him listen. "There's our family name. Us above all, George, we don't take to thieving." I had thought to wait until he was old enough to understand to tell him about Rebakah Cooper, but I believe the Goddess's voice in me was saying it was time. He needed to hear this. I took down the shrine from the wardrobe top, where I kept it safe from small boys. I opened the front to show him the tiny figures of the ancestors.
"See how many of your great-grandfathers wore the uniform of the Provost's Guard? What would our famous ancestress say if she knew one of her descendants was a common thief?"
"We've got a famous ancestress?" George asked, rubbing his behind.
I picked up Rebakah's small, worn statue. I took it out often when I was a girl, because she was a woman, of all the ancestors who wore the black tunic and breeches of the Guard. There was the cat at her feet, the purple dots of paint that were its eyes worn away just as the pale blue paint for her eyes was worn away. The shrine was old, given to me by my great-aunt when I was dedicated to Temple Service.
I showed him the figure. "Rebakah Cooper," I said. "Your six-times-great-grandmother. Famed in her day for her service as a Provost's Guard. She was fierce and law-abiding and loyal, my son. All that I want for you. And she was doom on lawbreakers, particularly thieves. Steal, and you shame her."
"Yes, Ma," George said quietly.
"Remember her," I told him, giving his shoulder a little shake. "Respecther. Respect me."
He put his arms around my waist. "I love you, Mother," he said. Now he talked perfectly, as he'd been taught. He helped me to clean up from the medicine making and to make supper.
It is only in writing about this day that I realize he never said anything about thieving.
No, he will obey me. He is a good boy. And I will make an offering to my Goddess to guide him on Rebakah Cooper's path.
)
BEKA COOPER is a rookie with the Provost's Guard, and she's been assigned to the Lower City. It's a tough beat, but Beka can hear the voices of the dead on the wings of pigeons, and Beka's birds clue her in to two major murderers on the loose. The rest of the Guard is busy investigating the fire opal killer, so it's up to Beka to nab the Shadow Snake. Tamora Pierce begins a new Tortall trilogy introducing Beka Cooper, a young woman who lived 200 years before Pierce's popular Alanna character. Pierce employs first-person narration, bringing readers even closer to a character that they will love for her unusual talents and tough personality.
