The Jaguar Knights (35 page)

“Don Lope, Dona Dolores, may I have the honor of presenting my dear wife, Fortunata?” Rojas had arranged for her to be on hand, of course—a very quick reaction to the news of the important arrivals. Wolf found it doubly remarkable because the grandees in Mondon kept their native or part-native wives and concubines out of sight of Euranian visitors.

According to the gossips of Mondon, Fortunata had been born into the highest level of Eldoradoan nobility. While still a child she had been dispatched to one of the minor cities to become a royal wife, and her caravan had been captured by a Distlish raiding party. After passing through various hands, she had become the gangster’s wife in settlement of a gambling debt. She spoke Distlish hesitantly, so Wolf and Dolores responded in Tlixilian.

Her eyes widened. “I thought no Distliard spoke the pure tongue, señor!” She meant they spoke the El Dorado dialect—courtesy of Heron-jade and Blood-mirror-walks, of course.

Now the
Alcalde
was even more puzzled, but he bade his guests be seated. They babbled flowery trivia about the voyage out from Distlain
and the news from Mondon. Considering that most of the social life in Sigisa was at the saloon-and-brothel level, Fortunata was amazingly poised. After his servants had brought refreshments and withdrawn, Rojas’s curiosity won out.

“Your visit to Sigisa is more than social, Don Lope?”

Wolf smiled. “Personal business.”

The major glanced inquiringly at the package bearing the royal seal.

“This?” Wolf said. “It’s a forgery, but quite a good one. Care to see?” He handed over the package, which was not in fact sealed by the seal dangling on the ribbon. The inside was blank. Wolf kept his smile firmly in place, for this was the point at which the mayor might send for thugs and thumbscrews, and then the visitors would leave with the flotsam on the morning tide.

Rojas studied the wax and the vellum carefully. “And its purpose?”

“Merely to get your attention, Excellency. I never
said
it was the King’s seal.”

Rojas laughed with every indication of real amusement. “Just to own this would get you hanged back in Ciudad Del Rey,
señor
!”

“But this is not Ciudad Del Rey.”

“True. So what can I do for you?” Smiling, he offered Wolf back the forgery.

“No, please keep that as a souvenir of a brash intruder, Excellency.” A little penmanship and a hot knife could make that document extremely valuable for anyone with a low scruple count. “I am considering tarrying awhile in your fair city to pursue…certain interests…”

The inquisitors had rehearsed him half the night. Distlish grandees did not sully their hands with trade, so ostensibly he was talking about land, but no one could acquire clear title to land here, for all of it was claimed by at least two monarchs. So there was meat under the pastry, and Rojas set to work to find out what it was. Wolf declined to be pinned down. In practice they talked about how the war was going, how a stranger might go about buying or renting a villa, and how one might meet interesting people in Sigisa. Money would be no problem.

Rojas was witty, subtle, and as cynical as only a vice lord could be. The war was nothing to him. Neither King nor Emperor claimed his
loyalty. “The Distliards are fools to pursue such a bloody struggle,” he said, “when they could gain so much by peaceful trade. And the Emperor is paying the price of arrogance. Had he been less greedy when he was overlord of the coastal cities, they would not have rebelled when the strangers came.”

“What of them?” Wolf asked. “Zolica, Yazotlan, Tephuamotzin?”

“Fools! We see their emissaries around town sometimes. You can know them by their high manner and low intelligence. They are so keen to settle scores with an ancient foe that they cannot see how much more dangerous Distlain is. They buy a jaguar to silence a noisy dog.”

“What will happen to them when El Dorado falls,
señor
?” Dolores asked. Wolf had been careful to keep the women involved in the conversation, so she could rescue him if he blundered into trouble.

Don Ruiz shrugged with both hands. “Then they will follow right after. That is
if
El Dorado falls.”

“Can it be that it will not?”

He smiled. “They are learning. You know the ways of the bullring,
señor
. If you do not kill the bull inside of twenty minutes, he will kill you.”

T
hat,” Wolf said as they left the Rojas mansion, “was without doubt the hardest conversation of my life. I never met any man so incredibly winsome. I hated lying to him! I am never any good at lying, anyway.”

The nightlife of Sigisa was beginning to waken—bands, drunks, drummers, lutenists, and singers, backed by massed choirs of frogs and monkeys in the jungle.

“That’s what I love about you, your naivete.”

“A simple ‘no’ would have sufficed. He saw through us, didn’t he?”

Rojas’s questions had been inoffensive, but he had kept pick-pick-picking at Don Lope’s fraudulent life story until he had unraveled it and
could see that Wolf had never set foot in Distlain any more than he had. So the visitors were spies. He had been too polite to say that, but knew. He was supposed to know, of course.

Terms had been settled over an excellent supper. His Worship the
Alcalde
knew of just the respectable villa the august Don Lope needed, and the owners—who had gone Home on some important business—would accept a very reasonable rent. If the spirits were kind, Fortunata could find the charming Dona Dolores some excellent servants by tomorrow. Don Lope and his lady were more than welcome to spend tonight here, at his hacienda. The spies had declined with thanks.

Wolf said, “I think he swallowed the bait, don’t you?”

“I don’t know.” Dolores was unusually subdued, holding tight to his arm and keeping her head down. “His wife loves him.”

“Does that matter?”

“It’s puzzling.”

“Did he ever tell us the truth?”

“I don’t know! In a way he never told us any lies at all.”

“What?”

Wolf felt her shiver. “Our teachers warned us that some people have no sense of wrong. They do not understand evil, so truth-sounding will not work on them. Ruiz must be one of those.” She laughed nervously. “He’s very good company, isn’t he?”

“Very. We can still take Flicker’s advice and strike inland.”

But she was not willing to consider that yet, and when they reached the ship and held a whispered consultation with the others, neither were they. Even Flicker wanted to press on with the dangerous challenge Wolf proposed.

Quin had already shipped out as a deckhand on a Distlish vessel, homeward bound.

Next morning the mysterious Don Lope and his charming lady arrived at their new home—just the two of them plus one female servant and four great sea chests.
Glorious
had already raised anchor and caught the tide. The villa was luxurious, at least by local standards, but one month’s
rent would have sufficed to build it in Chivial. Wages for the three servants waiting there came to almost as much, and the cost of the food they had already bought could have provisioned Greymere Palace for a week. This was Sigisa, the crumbling cliff-edge of civilization.

Rojas had been a little obvious with the servants, because they were all Distliards and any Distliard in the Hence Lands would rather starve than touch menial work. Perhaps Wolf was not supposed to know that. Or perhaps he was. None of the three impressed him, although Estavan, the gardener, could have uprooted palm trees with his bare hands, having being cast in the same giant mold as Heron-jade. Gustavo of the black fingernails was chef, and the smiling Che said he was to be majordomo, although he had no evident qualifications except a sensational profile.

Still, the hacienda was a mansion, a thatched, single-story wooden structure with several outbuildings, all reasonably furnished, all set in spacious grounds surrounded by a high stockade. The front entrance boasted a reasonable garden of trees and flowered shrubs. There was a gate on the ocean side, too, just above high-water mark, but currents off Sigisa were too treacherous for swimming—so Don Ruiz had said. Wolf ordered chairs set out on the lawn, where he and Dolores could relax in the shade of palm trees to enjoy a snack and the noble lifestyle they so richly deserved. The lawn itself was a scabby mess, only to be expected in the tropics and so near the sea, but the ground sloped down toward the ocean, giving them a fair view over the palisade. They debated whether the sail just dipping below the horizon might be
Glorious
departing.

Young Che brought out the food. “With your permission,
señor,
I will go out this afternoon to hire more workers, yes?” He flashed teeth like the breakers, white and dangerous.

“No,” Wolf said. “Until we discover on what scale we shall be entertaining I cannot determine what staff we need.”

“But,
señor
! A porter? Women to clean, surely?”

“Not yet! Meanwhile…tell Estavan I want those cactuses dug out. You can read and write?”

Che said, “Of course,
señor.
”

No need for truth-sounding to know he was lying. “Then prepare for me a detailed list of everything on the property from the beds down to the smallest spoon.”

That ought to keep him busy. Wolf cut his food with a special Dark Chamber belt knife and so did Dolores. Neither blade changed color.

“The quarry is running true so far,” he said. It was too soon for poison.

She nodded, not as cheerful as usual.

“And Megan is willing to sing her solo?”

“She says she can handle all three of them at once if necessary.”

They did not expect the violence to begin yet, or they would not leave Megan alone, although even Flicker admitted Megan was no mean brawler. She bragged that she had taught him all he knew.

When they had eaten as much as they could of Gustavo’s vile cooking, Don Lope and Dona Dolores announced that they were going out to explore the town. They began by strolling along to the
Alcalde
’s residence, where Dona Dolores called on Dona Fortunata to present her with a spectacular pearl necklace in gratitude for all her kindness. Curiously, Fortunata was as beautifully clad and groomed as she had been the previous day—apparently he kept her like that all the time. She wept over the pearls, and they certainly looked genuine. Rojas himself was not at home, to Wolf’s relief.

They did explore the town a little, but not enough to lose their supposedly unseen followers. When they returned to the hacienda, they were admitted by Che, who seemed not quite his former joyous self.

“Something wrong?” Dolores asked innocently.

Alas, Estavan had been bitten by a tarantula and had gone in search of a herbalist.

“It is not to be tolerated!” Wolf said. “A gardener so careless? Do not admit him if he returns.”

“I was hoping it would be Gustavo,” Dolores said as they went in search of Megan. “The shock might have shaken the dirt out of his nails.”

“How long until the conjuration wears off?”

“Three days. Maybe four for a man that size.”

They found Megan where they had left her, sorting Dolores’s clothes. She seemed a little flustered, but no worse off than that.

Dolores gave her a hug. “You all right?”

“I am very well, thank you, mistress.”

“And Che?”

Megan rolled her eyes. “A hard-fought battle. He was using some sort of charm, not just eyelashes, and I swear he has more hands than the King’s stables. I had just decided I was fighting on the wrong side when we were interrupted by Estavan’s screams.” She sighed regretfully.

Dolores grinned. “And where was Estavan?”

“In the master’s dressing room.”

A strange place to dig cactus! Che had been distracting Megan while Estavan tried to open a warded chest. Estavan’s arms were now useless.

“It is hard to find good help,” Wolf said.

They had raised the stakes and it was Rojas’s turn to roll again.

J
ust after sunset that evening, Che served dinner on the patio. Nights were darker and stars closer in the Hence Lands than they were in Chivial and Wolf found the tropical air as soporific as sweet wine. There was something sublimely relaxing about the ageless rumble of the sea.

“This does beat ship life,” he remarked, unobtrusively stirring his wine with his belt knife. He peered at it. No danger.

“Except possibly for the food.” Dolores was inspecting her plate of hors d’oeuvres. “The mushrooms.”

“Odd-looking mushrooms!” Wolf cut one and held his blade near the candles. “Remind me what blue means?”

“Probably not fatal, but certainly not wholesome.”

“Right.” He scooped up all the mushrooms and put them in his pocket. “We go with Plan One. You get Megan.”

Feeling the joyous tingle that came before a fight, he strode around the house to the kitchen, which was an open-fronted shed, set apart from the main building as a fire precaution. Gustavo was stirring a pot on the stove, virtually outdoors, but Wolf’s approach from seaward cut off his best line of escape. Megan had been backed into a corner beside the larder by the glamorous Che, although she did not seem very troubled by this situation. Wolf drew sword and dagger. Che noticed him and was distracted. Before he could start thinking
hostage,
Megan butted him in the face and made her escape, grabbing up a knife from the table as she passed.

“Stay where you are, Che!” Wolf waved his dagger. “Join him there, Gustavo. Don’t try anything. I am an expert swordsman.”

Señor!
What is the matter?” Che’s lip was bleeding.

Seeing Gustavo furtively comparing his distance from the back door to his chances of dodging around the hearth without coming within reach of
Diligence,
Wolf said, “Don’t even think it! I will slice you thinner than tortillas.” The only advantage to having a face like his was that people did believe his threats.