The Jaguar Knights (19 page)

In his case, Orders Had Been Given. The duty clerk almost knocked over his inkwell at the sight of him—the lowliest drudge in the palace knew the King’s Killer.

“If you would wait in there, Sir…er…um…Wolf, I will inform His Excellency.”

The door he indicated opened into a library Wolf had never seen before. It contained no chairs, only bookshelves, a high reading desk, and two doors. A moment later the other one flew wide to admit Lord Chancellor Sparrow, all a-twitter.

Wolf bowed and rattled off the gist of his report in almost the exact words Hogwood had used the previous evening, stopping before he reached the marriage proposal. He proffered the written version, sealed and official, and his warrant with it.

His Excellency hissed out a very long sigh of relief. He beamed, rosy-cheeked. “Then there is no immediate danger of further attacks?”

“Not that I can see, but I do not know the reason for the first one. The conjuration potential is serious. They can undoubtedly seize any stronghold in Chivial as easily as they took Quondam. Since they know Quondam and how vulnerable it is, I recommend that either its garrison be substantially increased, or that it be abandoned altogether.”

“I must notify His Majesty. He may want to hear your report in person.”

“I have brought some evidence that he may wish to view.”

The little man frowned, carefully opening the seal on the report. “Oh, I doubt that.”

“For which I debited the royal treasury thirty thousand crowns.”

It was not often one got to see a Lord Chancellor turn
that
color.

H
aving made himself respectable, Wolf arrived at the Council Chamber to find the baggage waiting under the limpid gaze of Inquisitor Hogwood, immaculate in crisp black robes. The two towering Household Yeomen who had been set to guard it seemed so desperately glad to see him that he guessed she had been flirting with them. She was a superlative tease, and he was still cursing his folly at not grabbing what
she had so blatantly offered the previous evening. Lynx’s companion must have enjoyed herself, for she had not left until dawn.

“You may wait outside now,” he told the Yeomen.

The taller sneered. “Our orders are to stand guard in here, Sir Wolf.”

“Now they are to wait outside.” He no longer wielded the Crown’s irresistible authority and the Yeomen usually found Blades extremely resistible, so he quickly added, “I must lay out certain secret materials for His Majesty to see. Will you keep him waiting?”

That scared them away and Hogwood went to de-ward the bags. By the time the privy councillors started drifting in, the long table was heaped with feathers and gold, jade labrets and glass-edged swords, a rainbow hodgepodge like wares in some bizarre bazaar. As he was tucking the bags themselves out of sight behind a chair, she whispered in Wolf’s ear, “There’s one missing. A gold thumb ring with an eagle’s head in jade.”

Only an inquisitor could have performed such a feat of memory, but now she had told him, he could recall the item and confirm that it was not in sight. It would have been easily palmed—by Baron Roland the previous evening, even by the Lord Chamberlain, who was presently sniffing at the gold collection. Or Hogwood herself. Was this yet another ploy to trap him?

The first councillors to arrive had been the Lord Chamberlain and a couple of dukes. The Earl Marshal was wheeled in and set out of the way. Then came Lord Chancellor Sparrow, closely followed by Grand Inquisitor, who took their favorite place by the window. In swept Mother Superior of the White Sisters, a huge woman like a galleon on a calm day, all canvas set, with her steeple hat as main topgallant. She proceeded majestically over to the exhibit, displaying disapproval worthy of the minatory Sister Daybreak.

Commander Vicious entered and glanced around before stepping aside to admit the King. All knelt and were told to rise.

“Speak up, Sir Wolf,” Athelgar said. “Tell us what you discovered.”

Wolf did, while everyone listened intently and the King himself poked and scowled at the long table, concentrating on gold and ignoring art. He interrupted only once.

“How much?”

“Not quite, sire. Twenty-nine thousand, nine hundred eighty—”

The royal cheeks flushed. “But those men had no right to any of this! When enemies attack one of
my
castles, the booty belongs to
me
!”

“With respect, sire, if I had held to that principle, none of the gold you see would be here now. The men accepted Your Majesty’s coinage at face value, so the hoard is worth more to your mint than you will pay for it.”

A sensitive point! Athelgar grunted angrily. “And what is in this bundle?” He sniffed disapprovingly.

“A human forearm, sire, with a catlike paw in place of a hand.” Wolf went to unwrap it. He had packed the grisly relic in salt, but it was definitely starting to rot.

“Never mind!” the King snapped, stepping back quickly. “Grand Wizard can examine it at leisure. Carry on with your report.”

After he finished they all had to ask him questions. Then they started querying one another.

“He doesn’t know if they were conjured to a ship waiting offshore,” said the Lord High Admiral, who was not as stupid as he looked, “or all the way back to the Hence Lands. Grand Wizard, is such a transportation possible?”

“Not by any means known to me,” the old conjurer said unhappily. “Our efforts to move people usually end in pâté.”

“What do you know about Tlixilian enchantments?” asked a duke.

“No more than what Sir Wolf told us.” Grand Wizard wrung bony hands. “I’ve heard the human sacrifice stories. Rubbish!”

“Well, Mother?” the Chancellor said. “Do you agree with Sister Daybreak’s opinion? How many of these articles do you sense are conjured?”

Mother Superior turned at bay, like an ox mobbed by squirrels. “None of them, but I agree with Sister Daybreak that one cannot have a man-cat chimera without using conjuration. So, like her, I must assume that this trash may be tainted in a way I cannot detect.” The galleon had run aground and didn’t like it one bit.

Wolf said, “One article is…” No,
two
were missing. “In addition to
these articles, sire, we brought back a mosaic pendant depicting the face of a Tlixilian pard, which Baron Roland called a
jaguara
. My brother, Sir Lynx, was carrying it and I failed to get it back from him this morning. That one I am certain is conjured, because it has changed its appearance since I first saw it.”

The councillors demanded details and lost interest when they heard them.

“So your conclusion is that the attack was not intended specifically to abduct Baroness Dupend?” Athelgar was pleased.

“That is my personal belief, sire.”

“This pin?” Mother Superior declaimed, holding up one of the palm-sized cloak fasteners. “Inlaid with turquoise, malachite, mother-of-pearl, and…is this pink shell?”

No one spoke.

“Wasn’t Baroness Dupend once the Marquesa Celeste?” she demanded.

The King nodded with a brow of thunder.

Matron Majestic sailed on undeterred. “Hers had a cat’s face…. Do you recall, sire, how some years ago you presented the Marquesa with a pin like this, displaying the visage of a pard?”

Athelgar shrugged. “Vaguely.” He had given her everything imaginable.

“It came from the Hence Lands! Didn’t it?” Her voice rumbled like surf.

“We do not recall!” When the King snapped like that, the subject was to be considered closed.

“I do,” Grand Wizard mumbled in his fondly fuddy way. He might not recall what day this was, but he could remember when many notable mountains had been only molehills. “It was a gift from the King of Distlain to His Majesty’s honored mother upon her accession. She made some remark about village craft trash…er, she did not care for it.”

“Her judgment is usually sound,” Athelgar said threateningly. This subject was
definitely
closed.

“She donated it to the crown jewels,” Lord Chamberlain remarked.

Grand Wizard mused on, oblivious, “I was asked about it. The Marquesa
wore it a few times at court functions. It was…er, outré as jewelry. Unique, really, but she had taken a fancy to it. She was deeply enamored of His Majesty—”

Flaunting a unique emblem of royal favor would have appealed to Celeste, no matter how ugly she thought it. Hogwood and Wolf exchanged looks. Now they knew the real reason for Lynx’s fixation on the jaguar pendant—Celeste had worn one like it.

“I remember well!” Mother Superior boomed. “She wore it three times and every White Sister in the palace had nightmares of being stalked by giant cats. We begged Your Majesty to ask her not to wear it again! Not that we could find any conjuration on it,” she concluded vaguely.

“It was delightful!” said the old conjurer. “Chips of stone glued on a silver plate. It was just after Your Grace appointed me…” That put the incident before Wolf arrived at Court, which explained why he had never heard of it.

“This is irrelevant!” the King roared.

“It’s not!” Wolf said. “And I withdraw my conclusion that the raid on Quondam was not specifically directed at rescuing Celeste.”

Even if one’s sovereign was an idiot who gave crown jewels away to floozies, one never contradicted him. Alerted by the appalled silence that followed, the culprit babbled suicidally—

“Celeste wore that pin at Quondam, sire! My brother told me she wore all her jewelry all the time and that means she wore the Tlixilian jaguar, and if the new one has managed to conjure him in a few days, then what could the other have done to her in four years?”

More silence.

“Conjured your brother?” Athelgar said. “Sir Lynx?” His cheeks were as red as his goatee.

Wolf was underwater and sinking fast. “My brother is strangely fascinated by the pendant the jaguar monster wore. He joked that he’d earned it as a battle honor. He wore it on the journey back to Grandon. And I…I forgot to get it back—”

“The witness is lying,” proclaimed the right-hand Grand Inquisitor.

“My brother insists he will deliver it only to Your Majesty.”

“It conjured him?” the King asked again.

“Well, he is obsessed by it. And it did open its eyes!”

“Where is Sir Lynx now?”

Wolf explained.

“No, we do not want him seen at Court!” the King decreed. “But we do want that pendant. Now! Go and get it! And tell him he is to remain out of sight during our pleasure.”

Wolf bowed and headed for the door. Vicious opened it for him, giving him a very nasty look.

S
corning to run, Wolf strolled out through the antechamber, scrutinized by a score of eyes, half of them Blades’ and all of them curious, although no one was brash enough to ask him who had died this time. Then a voice shouted, “Wolf!” behind him, and Hogwood came swishing along in her robe. He waited for her out in the hallway.

“We’ll take a coach,” she said. “I’ll meet you at—”

“We?”

She clutched his arm. “Wolf, it’s not just the pendant! We must find him before he sells that ring! The King’ll hang him for grand larceny.”

“And you won’t?”

“Of course not! Idiot!” She pushed him impatiently. “Go! I’ll get my bag. Wait for me at the west door!”

He had been planning to take a horse, but coaches always stood ready at the west door, so that might be quicker. By the time the doorman had summoned a brougham for him, Hogwood arrived, clutching her black bag and puffing hard. The driver cracked his whip and they rumbled out under the arch.

The rain had stopped again while the clouds regrouped.

“Wolf?”

“Yes?”

“Can’t you trust me just a little bit? I really do want to help Lynx.”

Those eyes, those eyes! But if he trusted her even a little he was going to find himself trusting her absolutely, which smelled of rank insanity.

“You’re not a typical inquisitor.” He risked a smile, which he rarely did, since to describe his teeth as lupine would be flattery.

“You’re not a typical Blade.” She grinned impishly.

“In what way exactly?”

“You never bedded me.”

“I was a fool.”

She sighed. “Yes, unfortunately.”

“I think that pendant has stolen Lynx’s wits.”

“His
binding
stole his wits. The pendant reminds him of his ward because she wore a pin like it, and his binding will give him no rest until he finds her.”

“Yes. I mean no, it won’t.” The world was big, but a binding was implacable. “Why is the Dark Chamber involved? He has committed no crime.” The plaque was no crime, so far, but the missing ring was likely to hang someone.

Hogwood made an exasperated noise. “It isn’t! The Council went into secret session and dismissed me. So I’m free to help. I want to, Wolf! Honest! I should have seen Lynx pocket that ring. I swear I’m trying to help.”

Wolf did not bother denying that Lynx must have taken the ring.

The Pine Tree was a clean, respectable tavern patronized by minor gentry visiting the capital. The Guard used it for business, as Wolf had by parking Lynx there, because the proprietor, Emil Montpurse, was notoriously discreet. He also favored Blades with favorable rates for private matters—so favorable that there were persistent rumors that the Pine Tree was owned by the Order itself, or perhaps Grand Master.

Rain was starting again, but Wolf sent the coach back to the palace rather than have it stand there and attract attention. Master Montpurse had seen him with Lynx earlier and raised no objection when he and Hogwood headed upstairs to visit him. Their knock went unanswered. The lock clicked open at Hogwood’s touch. Lynx’s baggage was there; he was not.

“He may have gone for a walk,” Wolf suggested weakly.

“He’s taken his brown pack. Open that big one! I need something you are certain is his.”

Wolf’s dagger severed the ropes. He pawed through contents until he found a shabby old jerkin he recognized. Hogwood wrapped her tracker in it and put it back.

“It needs an hour.”

“Let’s ask around downstairs.”