The Jaguar Knights (16 page)

She nodded. Perhaps it was a trick of the wind and the sunset, but
he could have sworn he was seeing an inquisitor blush. She must have a doctorate in blushing.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “Then why pack a negligee? I think the Dark Chamber wanted a handy assassin on staff and you were assigned to trap me. What sneaky conjuration can you pull on a man in bed, Inquisitor?”

She said coldly, “No conjuration will work on a bound Blade, Sir Wolf, as you well know.”

Certainly no enchantment could warp his loyalty without killing him, so Wolf was not seeing the whole plot yet. “Your technique is not exactly subtle, is it? Did you fail seduction classes?”

“No, my instructors praised me highly.” Sarcasm slid off her like rain off a duck. “We were taught how to snare normal men by leading them on and then refusing them satisfaction, but that trick is useless with Blades. Subtlety will not work on them.”

He couldn’t resist asking, “What does?”

She sighed. “Anything. Just being female. You’re the first Blade in history to refuse a chance like that. The negligee was a mistake.”

Such brazen vulgarity disgusted him and emphasized how young she really was. “And all this to avenge the late, unlamented Inquisitor Schlutter?”

“No. The purpose was what you said, to enlist you into the Dark Chamber.”

He stared at her.

She stared right back. “Truly.”

He had suggested that without believing it. The trouble with snoops was that you never knew how many layers there were. Catch other people in a lie and then you’d probably dig out the truth, but with inquisitors you never knew what you were expected to disbelieve and what other lies lay behind the ones you could see, and what lies lay behind them in turn.

“You need an experienced assassin? You expect me to kill for love, not money? Or is there money involved as well? How much a head?”

“There is no point in negotiating.”

“But you admit you were assigned to snare me?”

She shrugged. “My mission was to hire you, but I have learned that Grand Inquisitor were mistaken in their assessment of you. You do not kill for pleasure, so you will not accept the offer I was authorized to make.”

“I love the smell of fresh blood.”

“No,” she said sadly. “You are not a violent man at all. The only time I have seen you lose your temper was with the seagulls. You were right when you said I feared your reputation, but now I have come to know you, I am truly sorry for you, a gentle man trapped in a vile job.”

“I don’t want your pity!”

“Was that what you were demonstrating last night?”

Wolf reminded himself that no man could ever win an argument with an inquisitor. Or a woman. “I am still curious to hear your offer. It will have to wait until after I’m released, though. Commander Vicious will not look kindly on me if I keep asking for weekend passes to go and stiffen someone.” Not that Athelgar would ever release him.

“That was to be part of the offer,” Hogwood said. “Release.”

He stood very still while his mind flailed like a flag in the sea wind. Yes, he had heard her correctly. The wind was stronger and colder, making him shiver desperately.
Release?
Freedom?

“Even the Dark Chamber cannot offer that.”

“Yes, it can.” Was that triumph glinting now or just mischief?

“Athelgar would never agree.”

“He can be persuaded.”

“To use conjuration on the King is treason. Even to tamper with my binding is.”

“There is another way.”

“Wolf!” a voice cried. “Wolfie!”

Two people were riding in from the moor.

He forgot Hogwood. He yelled, “Lynx, you crazy man!” and went bounding over the gorse to meet him. “Did Master of Rituals say you could get out of bed?”

His brother peered down at him, trying to force his usual amiable grin from a face so pale that it shone like ivory in the gloom, a rictus of pain and exhaustion. “Of course not. Haven’t made up the rest of my blood yet, is all.”

Lynx began to dismount, lost his balance, and cried out in alarm. The mare was already spooked by the fire. Wolf tried to catch him, but Lynx fell like a mountain and flattened him into the heather, while his mount went bucking and kicking off across the moor. It was a humiliating accident to happen to a pair of Blades.

Lynx found Wolf’s top end and demanded, “You all right, Wolfie?” Then he collapsed on top of him again, howls of laughter alternating with gasps of pain as his scars pulled. Wolf was so happy to see him better that he began laughing too, still pinned under him.

The other arrival was an angular figure in a practical tweed riding costume, staring bleakly down at them. “Sir Wolf, I presume?” she inquired icily.

Lynx caught his breath with an effort. “Sister Daybreak,” he gasped. “Got no sense of humor.” He went back to laughing.

N
o, Sister Daybreak could never have laughed at anything in her life. Receiving Grand Master’s appeal in the absence of Mother Fire Rose, who had been in Grandon all winter, she had traveled from Lomouth to Ironhall the previous day and been very unamused to discover everyone sworn to secrecy and unable to tell her anything.

The following morning Wolf’s crazy brother had insisted on riding over to Quondam to retrieve
Ratter
and had offered to escort her to Lord Roland. Master of Rituals had sworn he would never arrive at Quondam alive, and had been proven unpleasantly close to right. Lynx didn’t care. He had his sword back, having met Tam and Grand Master on the way, and he never stopped grinning and joking while they loaded him on a litter and carried him into Quondam.

Sister Daybreak resembled an angular tree trunk washed up on the shore, bleached, scoured, and stripped of its bark. Her voice was a raven’s croak, her face bleaker than Starkmoor, slashed into deep lines of disapproval.
She especially disapproved of grotesques holding high office and read Wolf’s warrant through twice before accepting that His Majesty could have made such an error.

Later, after she had dusted herself off and changed into her White Sister robes—white steeple hat and all—she was able to disapprove of a cramped baronial bedroom as the site of an important meeting. Hogwood was there, of course, applying her fishy stare, and Lynx sprawled back against pillows on the bed, working his way through half a roast goose and three flagons of beer.

Daybreak sipped water and declined further refreshment. “I am starved for information, though. Even Grand Master told me almost nothing. There was a raid, I understand. Men were killed?”

“Between eighty and ninety,” Wolf said. “They took greater losses than we did, because they used ineffective weapons. Such as this.” He had the chest open by then and began, as Grand Master had, with one of the cat’s-paw maces.

Sister Daybreak did not approve of it. She felt it, sniffed at it, and passed it back, shaking her head. “A curious thing, but it bears no trace of spirituality.”

He offered a gold labret. She hesitated over that, frowning distastefully. “No. Nothing. What is its purpose?”

She disapproved of that, too. And so it went. Wolf produced only a small fraction of the artifacts in the chest, because if there had been any really serious conjurations there, she would have sensed them from downstairs. Some she seemed to find more distasteful than others; some she examined with extra suspicion—peering, sniffing, touching, even seeming to listen to them—but her conclusion was always the same: None had been conjured in any way.

Wolf did not believe this. The raiders would not have believed it either. Any conjurer would insist that good-luck charms were useless, as likely to summon bad fortune as good, but no soldier would go into battle without one. Even some Blades wore them. Love charms were effective, which was why they were illegal. The status that cat’s-eye swords gave their bearers was mostly granted by law, but a White Sister could smell spirituality on them, left over from the binding ritual, and only
they could undo that binding, so the swords did have power. The men who attacked Quondam had decked themselves up in gold, body paint, and jewels for some good reason.

Like Grand Master, Wolf left the pard mosaic plaque to the end. Hogwood had compared it to a cat’s-eye sword, and on viewing it a second time he could see how its closed-eye arrogance reeked of power. Its owner had certainly not needed any emblem to enhance his stature or fearful aspect, but if the pendant had been the secret of his shape-shifting, its loss had caused him to remain half man and half cat.

Sister Daybreak recoiled from the sight of it and seemed loath to touch. She peered at it quickly, then thrust it back.

“Nothing! Repulsive, but no spirituality.”

“Let me see that!” Lynx demanded, licking his fingers and showing interest for the first time. He grabbed it when Wolf held it out. “Whose was this?”

“Your furry friend.”

Lynx stared at it sadly for a moment. “Then I claim it by right of conquest!” He knotted the ends of the thong together and hung it around his neck.

“I’m not sure the King will permit that.”

“You know where it is when you want it.” He unlaced the neck of his doublet so he could tuck the pendant inside. “It’s safe on me.”

But was he safe from it? Sister Daybreak was staring at him as if he had filled his shirt with pig manure.

Wolf said, “Thank you for your reassurance that we have no evil conjurations to worry about, Sister. There are a couple of bodies down in the icehouse that I would appreciate your looking at also. If you feel up to it, we can attend to that and then go into dinner. Or it can wait until tomorrow.”

Was that a wisp of a grin crossing Hogwood’s face?

Sister Daybreak’s conical hat rose straight up, with her head still in it. “By all means let us get it over with. I have come a long way unnecessarily, but I wish to make an early start homeward tomorrow. Daybreak begins at dawn, I always say!”

“An excellent principle. Inquisitor, if you would be so kind as to
lead the lady down to the icehouse, I will follow as soon as I have locked these trinkets safely away.”

As the two women trooped out, Lynx yawned and stretched his arms. “For the last four years I’ve dreamed of sharing this bed. You weren’t the one I dreamed of sharing it with, of course, but I’m sure you won’t mind…” He flashed an arch look. “Unless you have plans to share it with someone else?”

The thought had crossed Wolf’s mind less than a hundred times in the last hour, but he said, “No. You’re welcome to rest there as long as you don’t mind candles burning all night.”

“How’s that slinky little inquisitor of yours, anyway?”

“She is definitely off-limits as far as you are concerned.”

“Ah? Like that?”

“No. Like nothing, but you stay away from her.”

Lynx chuckled—knowingly, as he thought. He made no move to put his boots on, so Wolf left him where he was and hurried down the stair after black robes and white robes. He very much wanted to hear Sister Daybreak’s assessment of the cat-man.

As it turned out, he knocked her hat off.

She had been warned! The woman was abrasive and arrogant, much too sure of her own opinions, but Wolf repeated that she was about to view a man’s corpse; he had been severely wounded and was not a pretty sight.

She knew better. “I have seen cadavers before, Sir Wolf. Pray be speedy lest we freeze.”

The icehouse was small and underground, set in the shady southwest corner of the bailey. At that time of the year it was almost completely full, and the two corpses had been dumped in on top of the stock, the big one at the front. There was very little headroom and Sister Daybreak’s towering hat was ridiculous. She was bent double, her nose almost touching the tarpaulin that Hogwood and Wolf were attempting to open one-handed. All three held lanterns, which cast an eerie golden light and make the work tricky.

“There!” Hogwood said, as they dragged back the last flap. The corpse lay on its back with its front paws crossed on its belly. Wolf was
at the head, Hogwood at the feet. Daybreak stood between them and for a moment she peered back and forth in incomprehension, trying to make sense of the gruesome display.

Then she gave a sort of yowl and leaped back, straightening up and slamming her head against the vaulted roof, dropping her lantern. Wolf and Hogwood let go of theirs in grabbing her, so suddenly they were a Blade and an inquisitor supporting a stunned White Sister between them in total darkness.

Wolf said, “I’ve got her. Can you make a light?”

The Quondam icehouse was not well kept. The floor was not only wet, as was to be expected, but also muddy, and in the process of hoisting Daybreak over his shoulder he trampled her hat into oblivion. She started coming around as he carried her up the steps to the bailey. She was a tough old slab of driftwood, though. After a rest beside the fire in the hall and a glass of mulled wine, she wanted to go back to work right away. Hogwood bandaged her scalp wound and Wolf ordered her to bed in the King’s name.

W
olf had hoped to leave the next day, but he knew Lynx would insist on going with him—anything to see the last of Quondam—and was not well enough to travel. Although Wolf’s conscience might have rejected that as a reason for delay, he did have legitimate business to finish and morning brought a drumming downpour that was certain to turn snowy roads into quagmires. He found Sir Alden leaning against a door-jamb scowling at the weather.

“Good chance to you, Warden.”

The soldier transferred the scowl to him. “You saying I’m to be Acting Warden?”

“I suspect it will be a permanent appointment. Name your stipend and I’ll swear you in.”

“King’ll want a lord.”

“He’ll have trouble finding a real lord willing to live here. What he needs is a damned good soldier.”

“Horseapples! Ought to rip the place down.”

Surprised to hear his own opinions coming from such a source, Wolf said, “Why?”

Alden spat into the mud. “If you can’t hold a fortress, you raze it so your enemy don’t use it against you. I’d need a thousand men to hold this place against what came by a week ago.”