The Jaguar Knights (3 page)

“Because I was the best-qualified inquisitor available.” The gibe had amused her, which was a warning that the truth might surprise him.

“Qualified how, other than having shapely eyebrows?”

“I am not permitted to answer.”

Wolf hurled a bone into the fire. “This is ridiculous!” He studied her for a moment. “I know this fodder would sicken a sewer rat, but it’s cold out there, so
eat.
That’s an order. You’re as frightened as the King was. What do you fear, Hogwood?”

“I am not afraid!” Anger darkened the flush the fire had brought to her cheeks.

“Yes, you are. I know I have the ugliest face in Chivial and they call me the King’s Killer, but I rarely kill inquisitors, and never women or children, so you need fear nothing from me, girl. What else scares you? The journey?”

“Nothing!” She glared.

“You’re lying,” he said and cut a hefty slice of cheese.

Suddenly his assistant was wearing the blank, glassy mask of an inquisitor. Even the flush faded from her cheeks. “This collaboration is not prospering. Start again. You tell me your background and I’ll tell you mine.”

It was a peace offering, he supposed. They had time to kill, a meal to eat. A job to do. They couldn’t fight all the time.

“My history is no secret. I was born Ed Attewell in Westerth.”

“In Sheese, to be exact.”

“A totally unimportant mining hamlet.”

“Is it really?”

He ignored that dangerous invitation to tattle. “My father died in a rock fall, and my mother found another breadwinner. When she died in childbirth, he found another bed mate. When he fell down a shaft…and so on. I lost count. They got worse. Worse, they got drunk, and often on money I’d earned in the pits.” The last stepfather had given him the start of his face—the smashed nose, crumpled ears, gap teeth. “I had one full brother, Alf. When the current house brute started in on him as well, I decided it was time for us to leave.” Wolf had gone for him with a shovel, leaving himself no safe course except flight.

Hogwood had switched expressions, to Dark Chamber Sympathetic Face Number One, perhaps. “So what led you to choose Ironhall?”

He laughed and gulped down some ale. “Crime, of course. Every kid in Ironhall brags of a criminal past. I remember one thirteen-year-old who boasted of being a serial rapist until Prime asked him to explain exactly what a rapist did.”

Hogwood did not smile. “But he is one now, of course?”

“He’s a Blade in the Royal Guard!”

“The difference escapes me.”

Was this insubordination intended to be some sort of flirtation? Hogwood had a very kinky taste in men if she fancied Sir Wolf.

“The difference is that Blades seduce,” he said. “If I decided to give you a treat, darling, you would cooperate completely and thank me afterwards.” Incredibly, that was true. The legend would overcome even his gargoyle face and macabre reputation if he set his mind to it. It had happened more than once, although he was not proud of the fact.

Hogwood glanced around the dining room. “This is rather public. I hope you will rent a bedroom for your demonstration, Sir Wolf. And explain to me how this legendary side effect of the Blades’ binding conjuration differs from a love potion, which is highly illegal.”

“It’s more fun!” he snapped. Blades were notorious womanizers, but he had never heard of one being accused of rape.

“Then I’m curious to know why you so seldom employ it. But do continue. How did your crimes lead you to Ironhall?” Candlelight danced on the black agates of her eyes.

“Because we had to steal food to survive. They set dogs on us. Eventually we came galloping across Starkmoor, bareback on a stolen horse with a posse hot behind us.” Looking back, Wolf could see that the pursuers had let their quarry escape to sanctuary rather than see them hanged.

Two trembling kids were led up the narrow stairs to the stark and forbidding flea room. Sir Parsewood was Grand Master then—stooped and losing his teeth, but well respected. He got the true story out of two waifs easily enough, although he probably did not believe that Alf was thirteen, which is what Ed had told him to say. He talked with them separately, tested their agility by throwing coins for them to catch.

I have room for one,” he told Wolf. “If I choose you, will you stay?”

“Not without Alf.”

“And if I choose him, will he stay without you?”

“If you’ll let me get away before he finds out.”

But Parsewood accepted both of them and ordered a skinny boy named Willow to take the horse out to the men waiting on the moor, tell them it had wandered in the gate, and ask if it was theirs. The juniors thought it wonderful to have two Brats to torment instead of one. Wolf they labeled Dog-face, soon shortened to Dog so that Alf could be Cat. Ed took the brunt of the hazing, trying to stand up for Alf as he had at home, but two weeks later another boy was admitted, so Ed and Alf Attewell were promoted to candidates, logically choosing the names of Wolf and Lynx.

“A simple tale, Inquisitor. Tell me yours. What sort of family lets a daughter become a Dark Chamber snoop?”

Hogwood paused in raising a crust to her mouth to give him a very long stare, not the glassy-eyed snoop stare, just a stare. He was annoyed to find himself discomfited by it.

Then she said, “Have you ever heard of Waltham House?”

“There’s a Waltham House near the Bastion. It’s an orphanage endowed by Queen—”

“Run and financed by HM Office of General Inquiry. That’s where inquisitors come from. That’s the only home I’ve ever known, Sir Wolf.”

“All of them?” He had never heard this.

“All of us.”

“Spirits! No fathers, no mothers?”

Pleasure at shocking him flickered momentarily in her face. “Waifs left on the doorstep, or promising toddlers from other institutions obtained in exchange. The Dark Chamber
is
my family. I have been trained from birth for this work.”

He had never wondered where snoops came from. The idea of their black-coated forms emerging from some teeming ants’ nest made him squirm. “Time to go. The moon will be up.”

She resumed her picky eating. “The groom promised to tell me when it is.”

“You can’t rely on kids like him.”

“I can. He knew I was not a boy and he was not lying. Enough about background, let’s discuss qualifications. Why did the King choose you to lead this investigation, Sir Wolf?”

Hoping to shock her in turn, he said, “Probably because he hates me.”

She nodded. “Yes. That is curious. It is no secret that you and His Majesty detest each other, which is an absurd situation when you are spiritually bound to defend him to the death. How did this quarrel originate?”

“The Dark Chamber must know. If it matters, why weren’t you briefed on it?”

She studied him again, licking her fingers. “I thought we had agreed to cooperate?”

He thought subordinates were expected to be respectful to their superiors, but no doubt inquisitors kept prying from habit, just as Blades had to stay physically active. And the King’s motives might turn out to be very significant.

“It’s a stupid story.” But it had begun in Ironhall, with no witnesses except Blades, so the Dark Chamber might have failed to dig out the facts. “You won’t remember King Ambrose. He came to harvest Blades for the Guard only twice in my time at Ironhall—a sick, fat old man, barely able to walk. After that he let ripe seniors pile up like hay before assigning batches of them to courtiers and ministers.”

That royal error was later to turn the Thencaster Conspiracy into a Blade tragedy and give the King’s Killer his title.

“We all hoped he would die soon, which he did, and one blustery spring day his daughter came riding over the moor with the Royal Guard at her back. It had been many years since a woman had performed the binding ritual, and we juniors noisily laid bets on how many seniors she would kill before she learned how to handle a sword. Fortunately Prime was Hereward, a lad of much more beef than imagination. Amid the chanting and flickering firelight he sat bare-chested on the anvil in the center of the octogram and barely flinched when she rammed his saber through his heart. After that the other bindings were routine.

“Malinda was a staunch woman. I think her husband had taught her fencing. He had certainly tutored their son. We were all puzzled to know why she took only six seniors when there were so many waiting in line. The answer appeared a week later in the form of Crown Prince Athelgar, aged eighteen and as red-haired a Bael in those days as ever earned a dying curse. He insisted on fencing with some of the candidates. I was chosen and made him look foolish. That’s all.”

Hogwood frowned. “How foolish?”

“Very foolish.”

Wolf was only a fuzzy, but a better fencer than most of the seniors. He would have been promoted months ago, had there not been some sad clodhoppers ahead of him. An hour after the Crown Prince arrived, Grand Master sent the current Brat to find him. Parsewood played favorites, and Wolf was one of them.

“His Royal Highness,” he mumbled through his awful teeth, “has expressed interest in fencing with some of the candidates.”

“That would indeed be an honor, Grand Master.”

“I’m glad you think so. You will go first. If you fail to make him look like a paralyzed palsied duck with dropsy, you will find yourself on quadruple stable duties every day until you leave here.”

“The prospect forebodes, Grand Master.”

“Also flogged raw every morning after breakfast.”

“I do comprehend your position, Grand Master.”

“Knew I could count on you, sonny.”

They grinned together, thinking it was funny, but it did not turn out funny. Give Athelgar his due—one rarely got the chance—he might just have wanted to reassure Prime and the other seniors that he could use a sword, but he was displaying a typical lack of tact by reminding everyone that his father, the current King of Baelmark, had trained at Ironhall. The Blades of the Royal Guard who had been sent along to look after him were especially furious, checking and rechecking foils and padding. The entire school flocked out to the quad to watch.

When they had Athelgar wrapped up like a pudding, anonymous behind a chain mask, Grand Master called forward Candidate Wolf. Assuming he had been chosen for his ogreish looks as much as his ability, Wolf had deliberately mussed up his hair and discarded his shirt, although the day was chilly and everyone else was dressed to the gables for the royal visitor. He was still narrow-shouldered, all wrists and ankles, looking younger than his age, and adolescence had blighted his smashed face with pustules and brown moss he could not shave without bleeding to death.

This eyesore proceeded to make a public spectacle of the Heir Apparent. Wolf planted bare feet on the grass, hooked his left thumb in his belt, and parried every stroke. He scratched. He yawned. When the Prince paused to catch his breath, Wolf switched his foil to his other hand, and still Athelgar could not touch him. To be fair, he would have been judged exceptional by any standards but the Blades’, but Wolf made him look like a fretful rabbit attacking an oak tree. Juniors laughed outright. Guardsmen turned purple trying not to.

Hogwood tossed a bone in the fire and licked her fingers. “You were only doing what Grand Master told you.”

Wolf shrugged. “Nobody knew then how well our future King could carry a grudge.”

“It’s a nice story,” Hogwood said, licking her fingers. “I can’t believe it’s the whole truth.”

“I also lipped him a few times, but that started it. Now your turn. What makes you qualified for a mission this important?”

Hogwood shrugged. “A doctorate in conjury. I am the highest-ranking spiritualist in the Dark Chamber.”

Wolf opened his mouth and no words came out. At
her
age?

A stableboy came to smile worshipfully at Hogwood and tell her the moon was up and he had saddled the horses.

K
nowing the bare chalk hills that lay ahead, Wolf decided to take a pair of spare mounts, a precaution that would not slow them much. There was no real road there, even in summer, but the wind had cleared away most of the snow and he could steer by the stars. However romantic the combination of moonlight and pretty girls was supposed to be, he could see nothing endearing about that frigid night—breath smoking, horseshoes ringing on frozen ground, relentless cold eating in through his furs. Hogwood had no trouble with her evil-eye horse, so one of them was better than he had expected.

When they slowed the pace to rest the horses, she rode alongside, asking impertinent questions.

“There must be more to the King’s dislike of you than you have told me.”

“I told you I sauced him, and he’s a very petty person.”
Not an actual lie, just an incomplete truth.
“Why are you so afraid?”

“What makes you think I am afraid?”

Visual clues—the way she had kept her arms in front of her breasts, for instance, but he did not explain. Blades had professional secrets too. “You know a lot more than you have told me. I still think you were assigned to accompany me because no senior snoop would accept such a hopeless mission. You are worried because you know we are both dispensable and are heading into danger.”

“A wild hypothesis! You will be in far greater danger than I, Sir Wolf.”

“Why so?”

“Visiting Ironhall.” If she curled her pretty lip, it was hidden by her wrappings. “The Blades have a reputation for avenging their own, and no one has ever slain more Blades than you have. I am astonished that you have survived so long.”

Hogwood ought to know that he had visited Ironhall a dozen times in the last year, because he was first choice whenever Vicious needed
something done out of town—anything to keep him out of the King’s sight. Her briefing had been deliberately falsified.

“How many Blades am I alleged to have murdered?”