The Jaguar Knights

by Dave Duncan

  “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.

  4

  Knowing 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 instanc
e, 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?”

  “At least three, possibly five.”

  The correct answer was eight, which she should know because the Guard certainly did. “And how many other men?”

  “Inquisitor Schlutter for one.”

  Ah! Schlutter’s unpleasant end was the inquisitors’ main grudge against Wolf. He wondered whether they had told the girl anything close to the truth; also whether she had been assigned to him as an agent of vengeance. His Majesty’s Office of General Inquiry had a very long memory.

  “Inquisitor Schlutter committed suicide.”

  “He was murdered!” she shouted, shaken out of her flippancy at last. “By an outlaw Blade, while you stood by and did absolutely nothing to help him!”

  “It is bad manners to interfere in a private quarrel.”

  “You murder and then joke about it?”

  “You expect a serial killer to weep? We were sent to arrest Lord Gosse. He and his Blades had flown, leaving Sir Rodden behind to delay pursuit. Inquisitor Schlutter drew on him—drew on a Blade defending his ward! Coroners usually call that suicide, Hogwood.”

  “But Schlutter was in charge. You were supposed to defend him. That was what you were there for! Instead, you waited until Rodden killed him and only then did you kill Rodden. You snuffed him like a candle, they said. If he was so easy for you, why did you wait until it was too late to save Schlutter?”

  “It was my going-away present for the boy.”

  She stared at him aghast, knowing that he spoke the truth.

  Rodden had been Lynx’s best friend at Ironhall, and his death was entirely Schlutter’s fault. When Gosse’s other two Blades spirited their ward away, they left Rodden to cover their getaway, although he was by far the youngest. That was a breach of the code and Rodden quite rightly resented it. The trail was at least a day old by the time the King’s men arrived, so there was time to argue and heroics would do little good. He had understood that. Wolf could have talked him into letting the King’s men go past, and that would have saved his life, if not his sanity. But Idiot Schlutter tried to arrest him at swordpoint. Rodden resisted, of course, and after that there was no hope for him.

  Wolf’s turn. “Give me your professional opinion, Inquisitor. I know you have a golden key to open locked doors. Will it raise a portcullis?”

  “No.”

  “Knowing my brother, I am certain that Quondam was locked up tight three nights ago. Can you suggest any way the murderers could have entered such a fortress?”

  “Treachery or conjuration.”

  “Has the Dark Chamber any theories on who the raiders were?”

  “I was told it does not.”

  “A curious evasion.”

  Her chin jerked upward. “Agents are told only as much as they need to know. To burden me with theories might bias my investigation.”

  Her investigation? The child had grand ideas.

  “Does the Chamber know why they went to such lengths just to kidnap Celeste?”

  “Their purpose is something we have to discover. The Baroness may be irrelevant. My turn: Why did you accept binding to a man you hated?”

  Her excessive interest in Wolf’s past probably meant that she was after the Celeste story, which he had no intention of sharing with her, relevant or not.

  “Stupidity.”

  “His or yours?”

  “Both. By the time Malinda abdicated, I was ripe for binding. One fine spring evening Grand Master summoned us seniors for a little pep talk. The new King was on his way, he said. For five years, he reminded us, Ironhall had given us bed and board, refuge and education. We were rightly proud of what we now were, but Ironhall had made us so. When His Majesty chose to present the bill, it behooved each of us to honor that debt. Of course we all knew that the paradigm ingrate, the one who had refused binding many years before, had been the new King’s father, Radgar Æleding. There would be an odor of justice in the air if any of us chose to turn that table on Athelgar himself, but we all promised solemnly not to weasel out.

  “Who would be chosen? There were fourteen seniors and Grand Master was sure to hold back four or five to seed the next crop. Lynx and I were eighth and ninth, although we did not know which was officially which. I was privately resigned to being left behind as Prime. It was two years since I had shamed Athelgar at fencing. Judging by the way I had caught him looking at me on subsequent visits, his pride had never healed, so he would not want me lurching around the palace for the next ten years to remind him of that humiliation. I was certain he would assign me to some petty bureaucrat as a private Blade.”

  Next day Athelgar entered Ironhall for the first time as king. At his side rode a pudgy, red-haired young man. The candidates could not guess who he might be, but they knew where to ask, and the Guard graciously informed them that the popinjay was Garbeald Aylwining, childhood friend of His Majesty, recently come from Baelmark. Neither Ambrose nor Malinda had ever brought spectators along to a binding. Nervous and suspicious, the seniors retired to their dorm to await the ordeal.

  Parsewood always sent for the required number plus one, and an hour or so later the Brat arrived with a summons for the top nine, which was about what Wolf had expected. Putting on a brave front, the Blades-elect strode out to meet the monarch, loftily ignoring the excited juniors boiling along beside them.

  In the chilly, barren flea room they lined up before Grand Master and the King, while the mysterious Garbeald leaned against the wall with arms folded, watching the proceedings in contemptuous silence. The boys were shocked by their first close look at the two Court dandies. From the plumes on their bonnets to the pointed toes of their buskins, they sparkled and shone. Their polychrome sleeves were puffed and slashed beyond all reason, while their capes and jerkins came down only to their waists, exposing silken hose like paint from ankle to buttocks and gaudy, padded codpieces spangled with jewels. These were the new palace fashions that had appeared since the old Queen departed, featuring the new King’s taste. They made Parsewood look like a shabby old crow in his Ironhall patches, and the candidates even shabbier.

  “Prime Candidate Viper,” Grand Master mumbled, “His Majesty has need of a Blade. Are you ready to serve?”

  Viper agreed that he was, paid homage to the King, and was granted a gracious few words of welcome. Then came Second…and so on. Wolf had put himself at the end of the line, but when Number Seven, Hengist, had kissed the royal fingers, Parsewood passed over Lynx.

  “Candidate Wolf, His Majesty has need of a Blade. Are you ready to serve?”

  Wolf snapped back to the beating of hooves, moonlight like crystal, the iron world of winter…

  “I never expected him to want me,” he told Hogwood. “I stared right at him—which is not proper protocol with a king, of course—and he sneered back at me, daring me to let him put a sword through my heart in the binding ritual. If it missed by a hair’s-breadth, I would die, and Baels are not known for compassion. But all my friends were watching, so I had no choice. I walked forward and knelt to kiss his fingers.”

  “The logic escapes me,
” she said.

  “It escapes me now, but I was nineteen then. His Majesty said, ‘I do recall Candidate Wolf’s skill with steel.’ Who was laughing now? Well enough! It was an honor to be remembered by my sovereign and if he had left it there, as his mother would have done, then we could have all smiled and admired His Grace’s grace. But Athelgar Radgaring has the tact of a crotch louse.

  “ ‘Ready for a rematch, are you, Wolf?’ he said.

  “That was gloating. Yes, he was my King and I should have bridled my tongue. I didn’t. I said, ‘Don’t worry, this time I won’t be armed.’ ”

  Hogwood gasped. “That was insolence!”

  “That was stupidity! I told you it was stupid.” Wolf increased the pace, ending the conversation—but not ending the memories.

  Parsewood said hastily, “Finally, sire, I have the honor of presenting Candidate Lynx, who will henceforth serve Your Majesty as Prime, here in Ironhall.”

  Lynx bowed. That should have been that. The candidates waited for dismissal.

  “Well, my friend,” the King said, “who do you fancy?”

  “Viper, I think,” Garbeald said in a bored drawl. “I like his taste in names. And that last one. He is so incredibly ugly!”

  Athelgar laughed. “He doesn’t need a sword—he frightens people to death.” He smiled again. “But I want to bind Candidate Wolf personally.”

  The Bael shrugged and pointed at Hengist. “That one, then.”

  Athelgar nodded to Parsewood.

  “Candidates Viper and Hengist stay a moment,” Grand Master said. “The rest of you may go.”

  He in the Guard, his friend Hengist a private Blade, and Lynx as Prime—all Wolf’s predictions had been wrong and he was in shock as he followed the others out. They trooped downstairs to gird on their swords again, then to head out to the quad and the cheers of the assembled juniors. One of the knights was waiting below, congratulating each man in turn, but when it came to Wolf’s turn, he added, “A word with you, Candidate.”

  The others departed, leaving the two of them alone.