The Jaguar Knights (24 page)

“Including being put in charge of trained inquisitors?”

“I think ‘in charge’ is not quite the right expression.” His wife’s eyes twinkled in a way he was learning to distrust. “Inquisitors are rarely given outright orders. Let’s see…I suppose Rule One is
Never get caught.
If you’re exposed, we never heard of you. And Rule Two would be
Tell all.
You must report everything you learn up the chain of command as soon as possible. No keeping secrets!” She thought for a moment. “The one that will bother you most is
Be right.
You can ignore instructions if you think they’re wrong and are willing to gamble on it, even flat-out disobey a direct order. A Blade who did that would be disciplined even if he was right, wouldn’t he? An inquisitor would be promoted.”

“What if he’s wrong?”

“We use him as a model in assassination classes, of course.”

“Reassure me that you’re joking. You’re warning me that I can never trust a subordinate?”

“Think of them as colleagues assisting you in your mission.”

Wolf decided that his would be a very small expedition. “Eidetic recall?”

“Perfect visual memory. Flicker can quote you any book he’s ever read since he was about nine, word perfect, starting at any page and line you ask, chapter after chapter. He can describe people he saw in a street a week ago.”

“And I suppose personation is acting?”

“Oh, much more than that! It means taking on a new identity for months or even years. Living, sleeping, breathing another life, never stepping out of the role.”

Perhaps the old woman he just met had been Flicker in drag? “And what’s narcotizing?”

“Putting yourself to sleep. That’s essential if you have to live on a knife-edge for weeks. Flicker can put himself into a two-day coma.”

A ten-year coma underwater sounded like a better idea for that one.

B
y late afternoon—after another six meetings, each more bewildering than the last—Wolf had a vague idea of what was in store for the future unofficial Chivian ambassador to El Dorado. While climbing a long flight of stairs burdened with three weighty volumes written in Distlish, feeling like a hound who has tried to play catch with a wasps’ nest, he turned to his irrepressibly cheerful wife and said, “Can we go back to bed now?”

She laughed and snuggled closer. “No, but that’s enough work for one day. You’ve done very well, love! You impressed them all, yes, even Edgewyrd! Now it’s playtime. I want you to give me fencing lessons.”

“
That
I do know something about!”

“Yes, and I warn you, you’ll be mobbed. They’ll all want them.”

“You’ll defend me.”

In a moment he heard the unmistakable echoing sounds of a gym in use. A few steps farther up he could smell it. It had once been the ballroom of one of those Amber Street mansions, but now it was stripped to bare plaster and a floor of scuffed boards, lit by late sunshine peering through high but very grubby windows, furnished with vaulting horses, bars, racks of foils, and full-length mirrors. It was large enough to look almost empty, although it currently held about thirty busy people, six of them adults. Five male adolescents were hopefully
swinging dumbbells and others were being coached in fencing, but most of the noise and dust came from a dozen or so children enjoying a semi-controlled riot in a far corner. It was not unlike an Ironhall scene, except that the small fry were too young and almost half the people present were female.

By the time Wolf and Dolores had donned masks and plastrons—for he would take no chances with his bride and knew she would not pad up if he did not—everyone else had gathered around, eager to watch a Blade in action. She turned out to be a much better fencer than he had expected, and she used Ironhall style. He coached her, rapping out encouragement without having to lie at all. By the time the light grew too tricky and he called a halt, the audience had more than doubled.

“I am not the first Blade to teach here,” he said.

“And won’t be the last,” Dolores agreed, puffing.

“I didn’t believe you when you said you could handle anyone else but Blades, love, but I was wrong. I think you could take almost any other man.”

“Not me,” said a familiar voice.

Wolf turned to face the inevitable sneer. “You’re the best, are you?”

Flicker said, “Yes. Want to try me?”

The kiddies buzzed approval like a fanfare of piccolos. Clearly he was the hero of the local immature.

Dolores made an angry noise and tossed him her foil, then her mask. He caught the first and batted the other away. Wolf threw his after it and stripped off his plastron. Then he said, “Guard!” and went for him.

It was soon obvious why the pest was known as Flicker, but he was not a Blade, and Wolf gave him a few bruises as reminders to watch his manners.

“Very good, though,” he said at the end. “Certainly anyone but a Blade would have to be very lucky to take you, Inquisitor.” He turned away to look for his wife.

“How are you at brawl?” Flicker asked.

The hall fell silent.

“I’m not familiar with the term,” Wolf said cautiously. Anyone who
would trust an inquisitor in that situation at that moment would have to be stark crazy.

Looking ominously content, Flicker tossed his foil to a girl nearby. “First, Sir Wolf, can you do this?”

He shot off across the gym like an arrow, slapped his hands down on a vaulting horse, spun up in a handstand, twisted in midair and then, instead of completing the loop to land on his feet, hit the floor spread-eagle, with a crash that made Wolf wince. He started to laugh and was silenced by wild cheers from the audience. Flicker sprang to his feet and came trotting back, grinning and acknowledging the applause. Clearly that had been an exceptional performance, even for him

“I rarely find a need for that skill,” Wolf said, puzzled.

The smile grew wider, hungrier. “Then we’ll go over to the polliwog corner and the mats. Bring your foil, Blade.”

Having no choice now, Wolf followed him, with the spectators trailing behind or running ahead. He was not seriously worried. Fast or not, there was no way bare hands could beat a rapier. He wondered why Dolores seemed so concerned.

They stepped onto the mats and Flicker turned, dropping into a half crouch. “You have a blade, Blade,” he said. “Kill me.”

Wolf used Cockroach—a suckering feint at sixte and lunge at quarte. Flicker slapped the foil aside and kicked, tapping the top of Wolf’s thigh with his foot to demonstrate what he could have done. In a real fight he would not have gotten inside
Diligence
’s guard like that and would have been disemboweled by Wolf’s dagger if he had, but there was no denying he had won the make-believe bout and the smaller kids all screamed in joy.

“Try not to vomit all over the rug, Sir Wolf.” Flicker himself was fizzing with excitement.

Wolf had seen bloodlust before and taken advantage of it. “I apologize for underestimating you. You knew that one, didn’t you? Try another?”

“Kill me.”

For a few moments Flicker circled around while Wolf held his ground, waiting for him to make a move. That was cheating a little, in that the man with the sword was supposed to attack; it would look like
cowardice very shortly. Wolf was forced to keep shifting his feet, and Flicker chose his moment to leap within range. Wolf countered with a straight no-nonsense lunge that should have cracked his breastbone. It failed to connect, the foil was jerked forward, and Wolf went over Flicker’s knee, impacting the mat hard enough to knock the air from his lungs. Flicker fell hard on top of him, sliding an arm under his to grasp the back of his neck. Wolf discovered he was helpless.

“You lost again, Sir Wolf,” Flicker whispered.

“So I did.”

Flicker chuckled and released him.

Wolf climbed to his feet and shook his head when offered his foil back. “What are the rules in brawl?”

The fuzz-faced pipsqueak was already back in his menacing stoop, hands waving slightly, as dangerous as a spanned crossbow.
“Rules?”

“Don’t injure your friends in practice matches is one!” Dolores’s shout carried a strong implication that Flicker had a weakness that way.

“Don’t injure
friends
,” Flicker agreed, eyeing Wolf like his next meal.

Wolf was now mad—not about to froth at the mouth or charge in all directions like a mad bull, but too mad to pick up whatever shreds of dignity he had left and go while the going was good. He had been made a fool of in front of an audience that included his one-day bride and this was intolerable.

“And what decides the bout?” He spat on his hands.

“Results.”

“Show me, then.” Wolf raised his fists.

Both Flicker’s feet hit him in the chest and down he went again, this time harder. Those meager mats might save a ten-year-old from bruising, but he weighed much more and lacked Flicker’s superlative skill in falling. Flicker caught his foot and twisted it hard enough to hurt.

“Broken ankle, Blade. You’re not doing very well, are you?”

In the next bout Wolf nearly landed a punch, except that Flicker threw him clean over his shoulder, to the worst landing yet. He tweaked Wolf’s nose. “Gouged eye, Blade.”

And the fourth time he pinned Wolf with
both
hands on the back of his neck.

“If I push just a little harder,” said an odious whisper in his ear, “your spine will snap, Sir Wolf. They won’t get you to the octogram in time, Sir Wolf.”

Barely able to breathe for the pain, Wolf just grunted.

Flicker did not accept that as surrender. The junior members of the audience were making so much noise screaming with mirth that he could ignore their elders’ disapproving shouts. “Then they’ll send me to Tlixilia with Dolores after all.”

“Try it and see,” Wolf mumbled.

Flicker released him and he collapsed with a gasp of relief. In a moment he managed to sit up. Flicker was squatting just out of range, eyes burning.

“More, Sir Wolf?”

Only a fool failed to admit when he was beaten. “Not today. You really are the best, aren’t you?”

Flicker nodded vigorously, still almost spitting venom.

Wolf was half again as old as he was and half again as heavy and yet Flicker could knot him like macramé whenever he wanted. He had lured Wolf onto his turf and rubbed his nose in it. Battered and bruised, Wolf could see only one way in the world to rescue anything at all from this humiliation.

“I’m a gentleman adventurer sailing to the Hence Lands with my lady wife. We have decided to take just two servants with us, no one else. You want to come along as my man?”

Flicker bared his teeth in anger. “Is that a serious offer?”

“Are you man enough to accept?”

He sprang to his feet. “Oh, master, let me help you up, sir! That was a nasty tumble you took there, master.”

“Thank you, Flicker,” Wolf said as he was raised, apparently effortlessly—Flicker was all whipcord muscle and knew how to apply his strength. “If you’ll fetch the wheeled chair, my man, I believe I could just manage to sit upright in it.” He was limping on both legs.

“Oh, please lean on me, master. You can depend on me always, Sir Wolf.”

Dolores had probably not overheard their exchange, but she could
guess what had been agreed just from seeing the transformation in Flicker, for now he was the perfect obsequious servant. She wore an expression of doubt and horror in roughly equal proportions.

“Congratulations, Flicker,” she said. “I’m happy you’re going to join us.”

He touched his forelock to her. “It’s very kind of you to say so, my lady. I will try to give satisfaction and justify Sir Wolf’s faith in me. Oh, master, do let me carry those!”

She regarded her husband’s condition angrily. “You should go downstairs and have your bruises healed.”

“No need!” Wolf would not give Flicker that satisfaction.

He said nothing else of importance until they reached their room, because he had his faithful manservant in attendance, carrying his books. The moment he sank down on a chair, Flicker was kneeling at his feet, helping him off with his boots.

“With respect, master, these seem a little scuffed. May I take them and clean them now?”

Homage was certainly better than homicide. “Do that. Be quick, though.”

“Of course, master. And have you some laundry I could attend to?”

Clothes were a problem. Now Wolf thought he might send his man out to buy some for him, but not yet. “Lady Attewell may have.”

With a perfectly straight face, Dolores gave Flicker a bag of laundry and off he went.

“How long will he keep that up?” Wolf asked, chuckling.

“Until he returns from Sigisa. Night and day. He really will do that washing himself.” Her voice rose. “Wolf, if you’re doing this just because you want to lord it over him, you’re making a bad mistake. You won’t score points off him. He just sees it as more of a challenge to stay in character.”

“That was not my intention,” Wolf said gently. “I’m hurt that you would think it was.”

“You’re a fool to take him! Why didn’t you ask me first?”

They must not have their first spat already, and over a pimple like Flicker. He stood up, wincing. “Partly out of wounded pride, I admit. Mostly because you told me he was the best and now I believe it. I have
never seen a man move like that!” Not Wyvern, the current Blade champion, or even Quintus, the one Wolf had slain.

She stalked over to the window. “But he hates you!”

He followed. “If he hates me because he wanted to go on the Tlixilian mission, then I have given him his wish and will trust him to perform as best he can. If he hates me because he lusts after my wife, that’s different. You told me he was like a brother to you and there was nothing between you. If that is not so, then of course I will withdraw the invitation.”

“It’s too late to do that. They’d all think I’d overruled you. No, Flicker won’t pester me.” She turned away when he reached for her. “A good servant wouldn’t dare presume so and he will always be the perfect servant. But he will try to upstage you.”