The Jaguar Knights (13 page)

Hogwood and Wolf duly admired the little carvings but were puzzled by their backs, where each bore a stud like a small mushroom.

“What are they for?” he asked, just as she said, “What are they?”

“Why, those are labrets, of course!” Grand Master laughed. “Lip ornaments. The green stone is jade, I believe. I must report, Inquisitor, that I noted many corpses with pierced earlobes or lower lips and some with pierced noses, so I assume that much evidence was stolen before I arrived. Excepting one more item, these are the only true valuables I found.”

“I will give you a receipt for them,” Wolf promised, for they both knew how suspicious the officials in Chancery could be. “And I’ll offer reasonable payment for any more turned in.”

“Lips?” Hogwood tossed one of the labrets and caught it. “Surely,
such a weight would drag down the lower lip and expose the teeth? Wouldn’t that look ugly?”

“I’m told it does,” Grand Master said solemnly.

“Told by whom?” she snapped.

“Where in the world has this stuff come from?” Wolf asked.

Hogwood frowned at his clumsy interruption.

“That is for you to determine.” Lord Roland reached to the bottom of the bag. “This, finally. This is my favorite.” He produced a flat package.

Holding it so Hogwood could watch, Wolf opened the cloth wrapping to reveal a roughly pentagonal plate about the size of a man’s outspread hand. Its front surface was a mosaic of innumerable tiny fragments of greenish-blue stone, depicting the face of a cat with lips open to reveal the double row of fangs. The image would have seemed fiercer and more impressive had its eyes not been closed and its color not so improbably non-cat. The backing was a thin sheet of dark wood, which protruded slightly beside each ear and was pierced to take a thin leather thong.

“Curious thing,” he said. “It would not be popular as a pendant, though. Most ladies would object to the weight. It would anchor a small boat.”

“No woman would be allowed to wear that.” Hogwood disentangled the thongs and extended them. “The right is shorter than the other. Both seem to be bloodstained. Was this cut by Sir Fell?”

Inscrutable, Roland sipped his drink. “Why do you ask?”

“Sir Lynx described a battle with a giant masked warrior. Sir Fell struck him on the shoulder, the right shoulder. The pendant fell to the floor?”

Grand Master smiled and nodded. “Correct. I admire your reasoning. We found it not far from Sir Fell’s body, near the hearth. The giant’s corpse lay just outside the door, and there was a fragment of thong embedded in the wound. It has a sinister beauty, this feline, wouldn’t you say?”

“It is the emblem of a chief,” Hogwood said, “like the cat’s-eye swords you both wear.”

Wolf resented that comparison. “Why are its eyes closed?”

“I’m sure that is significant,” Roland said, “but again you must seek wisdom elsewhere. The stone is turquoise and the fangs seem to be seashell. Exquisite workmanship, you agree? It obviously belongs to the same artistic tradition as the cats on the clubs.”

“It has that same strangeness,” Hogwood agreed. “But surprisingly naturalistic, too.”

“Like the labrets.” That was Wolf’s contribution to the learned confabulation.

“You will observe,” said Grand Master, who had had several days to observe, “that the stones suggest the spotted rosettes of ounce fur.”

“My lord,” Hogwood said in her iciest inquisitor voice, “you are keeping information from us. Who told you those sticks were called atlatls? Who described labrets to you? Where have you seen these things before?”

Former Lord Chancellors were not easily browbeaten. “I am withholding no facts, inquisitor.” His voice was tempered steel. “To burden you with guesswork would not advance your search.”

“By law, you are required—”

“By law my Privy Councillor’s oath takes precedence. I will answer to His Majesty.”

“You told me yourself, Hogwood,” Wolf said, “that your superiors withheld information from you to avoid biasing your thinking.”

“I did not! What I said was—”

“Come, now!” Grand Master said easily. “I suggest you both leave your cares for another day and attend to your personal needs.”

“First I will see these corpses you have collected,” Hogwood snapped.

“Then I hope you have a strong stomach. Pray come this way.”

Wolf followed the two of them down the creaking stairs, even more deeply troubled than he had been on the way up. He had never met the word
labret
before, but he had seen one the previous day. At Ironhall, among Grand Master’s personal treasures in his bedchamber, he had noticed a thumb-sized golden stud bearing a serpent’s head; he had admired its workmanship and assumed it was some sort of foreign decoration—the Order of the Golden Snake, perhaps. Now he knew
what it was and why Lord Roland had known that excessively obscure word meaning “lip plug.” He must know where his own labret had come from, and therefore what people had attacked Quondam. So why not say? He was withholding vital information from the King’s inquiry. But to doubt Lord Roland’s loyalty was blatant insanity. Wolf had said so himself only a few minutes earlier.

T
he Great Tower is no longer in use,” Roland explained as they trudged through the bailey’s slush, “except to stable bats and rats. The floors are unsafe.”

He unlocked the door with a key as big as a boot. Having no windows, the lowermost room had taken on a foul smell of death, like a badly maintained outhouse. It echoed creepily. As Wolf’s eyes adjusted, the wan beams of the lanterns reached out into the darkness to reveal row after row of corpses on the floor.

“First look at these two.” Grand Master led the visitors to a pair of shrouded bundles on makeshift tables. “I had these wrapped in the hope of keeping rats away from them. I shall have to move…you may wish to have them moved to the icehouse, Sir Wolf.”

“Good idea,” Wolf said. “Others will want to see them after us.” He opened the flaps of heavy oiled canvas and uncovered one of the mysterious raiders.

He was young, stocky, and certainly darker than any Chivian, perhaps chestnut color as Lynx had suggested, although it was hard to judge corpse pallor in that light. His only garment was a loincloth consisting of back-and-front flaps hung on a cord, but what he had lacked in clothes he made up in decoration, being painted in gaudy stripes of red, black, and yellow.

“His feet are muddy,” Grand Master said, “so he came barefoot. The breechclout is universal, but most of the others wore more—tunics,
capes, cloaks, feathered headdresses. Some had greaves on their legs and a few wore a sort of padding, like cotton armor. I wonder if this lad was of low rank or just demonstrating his courage?”

Hogwood peered at an obscene clot like a blackberry over his heart.

“Unlucky enough to encounter Sir Mandeville, I fancy,” Roland said, “since he was the only one sporting a rapier. But physically this man is typical. No sign of beard stubble and only traces of a mustache, although he seems quite adult. Note that his lower lip has been pierced. He wore the crystal labret I showed you. You would think he would have preferred to invest in better armor instead.”

“Noble birth and low rank?” Hogwood suggested. “Or lowborn and high rank?”

Wolf said, “The poor devil was even uglier than I am.”

Grand Master shook his head. “Beauty is largely habit, Wolf. By our standards, his nose may be too long and his lips too thick. His eyes are not quite the shape ours are, but his companions all look much like him, so I expect his sweetheart considered him handsome enough. He was a husky chap, you must admit.”

“Well, we can discard any notion that these men are Chivian, or even Euranian.”

“Indeed you can. Look at the other one. He was certainly a leader.”

Roland led the way to the other table, and Wolf guessed what they would find there from the length of the bundle—and he no longer expected stilts, although Lynx’s estimate of seven feet tall seemed reasonable. This corpse’s skin was the same color as the other man’s, and at first glance he seemed lean, almost slender, but that was an illusion caused by his height, for his limbs were meaty. He had not been slain with rapier finesse. The corpse was black with dried blood; fragments of white bone shone in the gaping shoulder wounds. Lynx’s cut along his ribs was trivial, but Fell’s slash at his loins must have cleaved his liver in two. Yet still he had fought, this giant warrior, overcoming even Blades.

Ripped remains of a feathered cloak were glued to his body by caked blood, as was his breechcloth, but Wolf began his inspection by bringing his lantern close to the boots with claws on them that Lynx had mentioned and so nearly died from. They seemed strangely
misshapen—too long and lacking a proper heel—and each bore four black, curved talons, which were not at all fragile. Those and the spotted fur itself were coated in clotted blood and fragments of flesh. Realizing whose that was, Wolf turned away in revulsion.

Or else just in refusal to accept an impossible conclusion.

“The claws seem to be retractable,” Hogwood announced, studying the right hand. Hand, not glove.

Wolf forced himself back to the great feet, and this time saw them as they were—enormous furred paws. As a man, the monster had been a giant; judged as a cat walking on its toes, its proportions were more understandable. Legs, arms, and torso were human; hands and feet were not.

He and Hogwood converged on its head, which still bore a golden circlet supporting a plume of feathers. The helmet was no helmet, any more than the gloves were gloves or the boots, boots. Its eyes were closed, but the great jaws hung open, its huge fangs still bloody. No human mouth could have crushed Lynx’s shoulder.

“Fire and death! Is it man or brute?”

“Man,” Hogwood said. “It gave orders, remember?”

Lord Roland chuckled. “Would you argue with them?”

“Or both?” said Hogwood. “Man and pard combined? Or did he die while changing from one to the other?”

Wolf raised his lantern, its flame dancing as his hand trembled. His questions spilled out too loud, echoing in that sepulcher. “What do you know that you are not telling us, Grand Master? Did you not meet with such creatures back in the Monster War?”

“Not like this, I think. The chimeras we faced then were animals—unstable, short-lived, and no smarter than dogs. This big fellow was described as giving orders. He was in charge.”

“Is he a shape-shifter, then? Did he fly up to the lookout as a bird, and change into a pard for the assault? Was he changing back when he died?”

“I know no more about it that you do, Wolf.”

Hogwood’s voice was calmer than Wolf’s. “But you know where he came from, this half-man, half-cat. You know whose foul conjurations produced such a monster.”

“I do not know, Inquisitor.” After a moment Roland added, “The witnesses claim that he slaughtered three men singlehanded and two of those men were Blades. Does not a warrior so mighty deserve a better name than
monster
?”

“It will do until we find a better,” Wolf said.

During dinner, Wolf talked with Sir Alden—peppery, bristle-bearded, and much weathered—who regarded him and his fancy writ with the contempt due to an upstart court jester. Yet this was the man who had ignored a badly broken arm to drive a wagon all the way to Ironhall through the rigors of a Secondmoon night. Many men were living now only because of that feat, notably Lynx. The old campaigner was a very impressive man, and Grand Master’s smile in the background confirmed that Alden was the candidate he had in mind for acting warden.

Later the inhabitants of Quondam were assembled to hear the King’s writ read out and give three cheers for Athelgar. This time Wolf dared not brag about bringing the culprits to justice. No one would believe him. He explained that everyone would be required to make a statement to Inquisitor Hogwood. He also warned that all booty belonged to the King.

“However,” he added, “I will accept any souvenirs you turn in, with no questions asked. Gold I will buy for its weight in crowns, and I will pay fairly for anything else.”

The hall being the only warm place outside of the kitchens, Wolf settled there to read through the statements Grand Master had provided. Others seeking warmth or company spread themselves around adjacent tables or just sat on the rushes to gossip and ignore the minstrel wailing up in the gallery.

Soon a nervous youth shuffled up to Wolf, watched by many eyes.

He laughed. “Drew short straw, did you? What have you got?”

Shyly the boy produced a massive thumb ring, intricately carved and too heavy to be anything but solid gold.

“Now here’s a jewel fit for a king,” Wolf said. “The castellan would have had money scales around somewhere?”

The lad returned in a few moments with scales and an eager, relieved grin. It took seven crowns from Wolf’s expense pouch to outweigh his ring, but the boy strutted off with a negotiable fortune in place of stolen property that he would never have disposed of otherwise for anywhere near its true value.

Half the hall promptly stampeded in Wolf’s direction. He bought a chain and a pair of silver anklets, but the fourth man produced a gold duck as big as a plum, in itself heavier than all his remaining coins. Obviously Wolf had bitten off far more than his purse could chew. He offered the man an IOU, written in a fair hand on parchment, payable on demand by any of the royal coiners and slathered with an imposing wax seal. The hard-bitten Westerther farmer just scowled and clung tight to his loot. The treasure-buying project had apparently sunk at the dock.

“May I assist?” Grand Master inquired, joining the meeting. “I have every confidence in Sir Wolf and will be happy to countersign his notes, if you wish. Then, even if His Majesty refuses payment, you can collect from me.” He sat down and added his signet and signature.

That was good enough for the farmers and men-at-arms. They all knew of the great Lord Roland, both by reputation and now personally. With his help Wolf went on to buy earrings, bracelets, jeweled pins, necklaces, gem-studded sandals, labrets, ornate belts, deer, bees, monsters, birds, chains, bells, daggers, headdresses, cloak pins, and odd symmetrical plugs he was told had been extracted from noses. Steadily the pile grew. Gold and silver were easy to value by weight. For jade, crystal, turquoise, feather-work, and so on, he just set a price in consultation with Grand Master, refusing to haggle but trying to be generous without drawing the noose any tighter around his neck than it was already. He was convinced that he was doing his duty, yet he could almost feel the rough hemp against his skin. His authority did not extend to ransoming stolen property, for that was itself a felony, so there was a chance that Athelgar would simply seize the loot as his by right and charge Wolf with embezzlement of crown funds. He would enjoy doing that. It might even amuse him to leave Grand Master to pay the tally, but that was unlikely, because every Blade in the country except the Guard itself
would rise against him. Still, Roland was taking a risk in helping Wolf, and they both knew it.