The Jaguar Knights

by Dave Duncan

  As Jorge had explained, all Basket-fox’s clients and allies would pretend to believe. Some of Flintknife’s weaker supporters might waver in their loyalty. Many, perhaps a majority, of the knights would wait to see who was going to offer what for their votes. No doubt Basket-fox was merely establishing Lynx as a valuable property that he could trade off at some future date in return for whatever it was that he really wanted, which would be something completely different. Think of cats, and mice.

  Eventually the warriors ran out of questions and sent Lynx away. He had no real hope that he would ever be accepted as Plumed-pillar Redux, but he would live at least until the knights reached a verdict, which would probably be appealed to the Emperor and Great Council. From a pawn’s point of view, this was better than the alternative, which was a one-way trip up a pyramid, and until that day came, as it must, he could live in a palace and guard his ward as closely as physically possible.

  A few days after the meeting in the Hall of Jaguars, Lynx had his fourth interview with his mentor. He had asked for it, indeed begged for it, because his feet and hands burned as if every bone in them had been hammered to slivers. They would continue to do so until Basket-fox instilled more virtue into the plaque in the process the Tlixilians called “blessing.” Even that might not completely cure the problem.

  Jaguar Flowering took a lot longer than an Ironhall binding—a year was standard. It involved rituals whose details Lynx preferred not to know, and long study to master the powers the knights wielded after their apotheoses. What Plumed-pillar’s plaque was doing to him—helped along by Basket-fox’s infusions of power, although no one admitted that, and perhaps by his Ironhall binding also—could produce nothing more than a change in his physical appearance. No one had ever heard of such a thing happening before, or could guarantee that this partial transformation would not kill him or drive him crazy.

  The sun had just set, painting the eastern volcanoes orange under a cobalt sky speckled with a few early-bird stars. The air was still, heavy with flowery, leafy scents. Lynx sat with Celeste outside their cabin, chatting endlessly with the interpreter, Jorge, and hoping fervently that he would soon be summoned to the Jaguar’s presence.

  “The…weather? What’s the word for weather?” Celeste asked Jorge. This was what they did all day—talk. They were making progress.

  “The weather is very fine,” Lynx said miserably. A life of pain would not be worth living.

  “The weather is pleasing,” Celeste agreed.

  “The weather is rarely mentioned,” Jorge said, “because it is always pleasant. Even in the rainy season, this is not a stewpot like the coast.”

  Celeste asked him to explain a couple of words he had used, and he did.

  “You are happy here?” Lynx said.

  “Happy? I have accepted my fate. There are worse lives. I am a cripple, so I will never be sacrificed on the altar stone. There is no finer city in the world than El Dorado.” Jorge was an educated man and had traveled widely in Eurania before coming to the Hence Lands. He had been a captive and slave for five years. “The worst part of my duties is helping to question my countrymen when they are made prisoner. That part I do not like.”

  “Torture?” Lynx wondered what torture could be worse than what he was enduring.

  “No torture. Eagles use the Serpent’s Eye on them, so they cannot lie, but I translate. And when they ask me, I must tell them that they will die.”

  Celeste started to ask a question in Tlixilian.

  Lynx was distracted. His pain faded away, icy water quenching the fires. All his knotted muscles relaxed.

  “He is here.” He peered around the shadowy patio.

  There was no one in sight…except Basket-fox, where he had not been an instant before. As his prisoners genuflected to him, he made a sound somewhere between a chuckle and a purr. “That feels better, noble Plumed-pillar, slayer of hundreds?”

  “Wonderfully better, mighty hunter of the night.” Lynx managed that speech all by himself. “Except…” He frowned and flexed his right hand. “Still a little…” He pointed, and Jorge supplied the word for wrist. “In my wrist.”

  The knight sank to the ground, graceful as a cat. He rested his front paws on his very human knees. He was unusually grandly dressed, glittering with jewels and bright feather work.

  “You will have to endure some discomfort. Even the normal Flowering is not for the faint of heart.”

  That sounded ominous. “I endured it once, I can do so again.”

  “Of course. I hear the carrier-of-nightsoil Flintknife is racing through the Flowering as fast as he can stand it, recklessly squandering captives.”

  “His crimes will catch up with him.”

  “Of course. And your fair concubine?”

  Celeste sighed. “The renowned silent slayer honors my life by asking. His kindness rules the night as the sun brightens the day.”

  She must have rehearsed that! She missed no chance to flirt with the old scoundrel. “Nothing personal, darling,” she had said the last time Lynx complained of her behavior. “You are a wonderfully strong lover, while that old tabby will be a wearisome chore, but my safety is your duty, is it not? Will I not be more secure as handmaid to such a great lord than I am shut up with a penniless imposter?”

  Her logic was impeccable, and she was being especially nice to him these days to console him.

  Basket-fox licked his fangs with a tongue like an insole. “We must think to your estate, kinsman.” He kept his great cat head toward Celeste, but his words were directed to Lynx, or rather to the fictitious Plumed-pillar.

  “I am already overwhelmed by my lord’s generosity.”

  Waiting for the interpretation, the Jaguar stretched, making his finery clink and sparkle. “But a knight of your eminence needs warrior attendants.”

  Lynx was suddenly permitted to notice a stripling warrior standing in the background clutching spear and shield, his face carefully impassive. He had not been visible a few seconds ago.

  The knight waved a paw. “This staunch young man is my great-grandnephew, so he is related to you also.” Any two knights in all Tlixilia were related to each other in some convoluted way. “Night-fisher is his name. He would be honored to wait on you.”

  Lynx glanced at Celeste and saw triumph. Strangely, Lynx sensed that his binding would not resist the change. Basket-fox would be a much more effective protector for Celeste than he would be, and to resist him would be dangerous for both ward and Blade. There was nothing to be done, and he appreciated that the Jaguar had eased his pain before stating the price, which was the gentlemanly way to do it.

  Sigh! “Nothing can ever match your generosity, shadow of the dark, not even close. All the world knows that your wealth is as boundless as the stars, but if there is any trifle left to me in my present downcast condition that might amuse you, I would be overjoyed to cast it at your feet.”

  The cat-man departed soon after that, with an arm around his exotic new playmate. Lynx remained, and so did his new aide-de-camp. Doubtless this Night-fisher would be deft at cleaning teeth and brushing fur, but he would never replace Celeste.

  VI

  Send Not Valued Dogs Against the Wild Boar in His Wallow…

  1

  The incredibly misnamed Glorious was a two-masted carrick, high front and back and low in the waist, a scruffy tub the size of two hay wains, carrying a crew of fifty. Dolores and Megan shared a closet-sized cabin in the aft castle. Quin, Flicker, and Wolf slept with the hands, which meant on deck whenever possible. In bad weather, they were battened down in the hold like apples in a cider press, a solid carpet of sea-sick men in windowless quarters barely chest-high, dimly lit by a few wildly gyrating oil lamps, reeking of bodies, bilge, vomit, feces, and rotted food. Only fools stood downwind of sailors.

  Like his ship, Captain Clonard was nigh as broad as he was long. He wore a fringe of curly brown beard, a kerchief around his head, and a large silver earring that was almost certainly a talis
man. He claimed to be a trader, but probably dabbled in piracy, smuggling, and slaving whenever the wind was fair. His officers were as scabrous a gang of villains as could be found anywhere, while the hands were a mixture of similar rogues and baby-faced innocents fresh off the farm. He would not discuss his relationship with the Dark Chamber—wiser not to know that, Dolores said—but he dealt honestly enough with his passengers, to Wolf’s continuing surprise.

  The menu varied as the voyage proceeded, but beans, bacon or pickled pork, salt fish, and hard, salted biscuit were the staples. Fresh pork, onions, garlic, cheese, bacon, and chickpeas appeared briefly after each landfall, even fruit for the first few days. They drank foul water or beer, and later wine, but never enough, because the diet was so salty. Washing was a fond memory, yet no one was ever dry. Sea water corroded the skin.

  Any unattached single woman among so many men would have been pestered, and Megan was winsome enough. With an experienced eye, she quickly selected Duff, the ship’s carpenter, to be her favored friend. He was a solid, soft-spoken man of around forty, seemingly easygoing, but when his good fortune was challenged, as it inevitably was, the battle was both bloody and decisive. Thereafter he was left to enjoy his victory.

  Not only were the passengers expected to help defend Glorious against Baelish pirates—which would certainly have been the wise thing to do had any appeared—the contract also required them to train the crew in the finer points of sticking sharp metal in people. Fencing helped pass the time, but until Wolf tried teaching swordsmanship to a squinty-eyed buccaneer on a wildly rocking deck with barely room to move between the mast and the rigging, with spray in his face and clothes drenched, while at any minute a foam-topped green wave might roll over the side and wash him into the scuppers, he had never realized how much Ironhall had spoiled him.

  Ships were the worst torture chambers ever invented, places of constant torment with death one plank away. At first the travelers were bounced and frozen, later bounced and boiled, and near the end they almost died of thirst, becalmed for three weeks with the sun balanced atop the masthead. Glorious first cut south from Chivial to Isilond, then bypassed Distlain itself to make landfalls in Granaira and the Llaville Isles, which Distlain owned, plus the Sauelas, which it did not. In Granaira the inquisitors picked up Distlish with a despicable accent. From the Sauelas they made the long sweep west and south to the Hence Lands, but the wind failed them a few days from their expected landfall. Just in time a stray breeze came by and wafted Glorious to one of the smaller islands, but one where there was water.

  “Nine months since Quondam was attacked,” Wolf said. “Maybe at last we may be able to do something about it.”

  “And make our fortunes, too,” Dolores insisted.

  Although it was the capital of Condridad, largest of the islands, the town of Mondon was only a splatter of timber or mud shacks, with no stone or brick buildings. It was also at its worst just then, near the end of the rainy season, with air like steam and a downpour every afternoon turning the streets to red quagmires. Thousands of gaudy birds swooped and screeched, the roaches were bigger than mice, and vegetation erupted in every corner, as if the entire settlement would revert to jungle the moment the people turned their backs. Mondon Bay was a magnificent natural harbor, though, and a busy one. Officially only Distlish vessels were allowed to drop anchor, but all eyes winked at that law. Glorious needed a refit, which would take a week or two.

  The inquisitors’ program there had been decided early and confirmed by months of wistful longing: first comfort, then society, then language. Their long ordeal afloat had left the team filthy and haggard, with every bone showing. By rights they needed several weeks’ rest to recuperate, but time did not permit this. So Don Lope Attewell moved his household into the town’s best hostelry in search of landlubber luxuries like soap and hot water. As soon as everyone felt human again, Flicker went off in carefully preserved livery to deliver a carefully forged letter of introduction to the Distlish governor.

  Wolf himself went hunting through the saloons until he found a penniless, highborn, insufferably arrogant Distlish don drinking himself to death, then lured him back to the hostel to sample some excellent Granairan red. By midnight, when the boys laid the lush out to dry on the boardwalk, Dolores and Wolf had acquired accents matching those of the bluest of azure-blooded Distliard aristocrats, albeit slightly slurred.

  Predictably, His Excellency was diplomatically indisposed and unable to receive the foreigner, but his wife and the other permanently bored upper-crust ladies of Mondon were snobs. They swallowed the bait and invitations began arriving the next day. Having no training in personation, Sir Wolf remained Sir Wolf. Lady Attewell, wife of a mere knight, became Lady Dolores, a noblewoman who had retained her title after marrying a commoner. Society ladies in the colonies would understand such matters. Indeed they would soon discover—from her servants, say—that Lady Dolores was a daughter of the Duke of Twobridge, no less. The tragic love story, the unwanted baby, the expulsion from Court and even from Chivial itself, could all be deduced from that, while especially sensitive noses would detect the fragrance of money available to make sure the reprobates stayed away. Why else would they be here, at the wrong end of the earth?

  The governor and his wife attended several of the dinners that followed. In fact the same faces appeared every night, and only the houses changed. Dona Dolores played her role so magnificently that she awoke some mornings weeping over the poor dead baby.

  For that first evening in society, Megan miraculously transformed milady from storm-battered waif back to ravishing beauty. Quin having hired a carriage and driver, Don Lope and Dona Dolores whirled off in state, with two footmen clinging on the back. Since they could find no excuse to take a lady’s maid to a dinner party, Megan went to bed, swearing she would sleep the clock around yet again.

  The tropic sun set early and a languorous night descended, the sky all stars, like silvery lace draped just above the treetops, and the steamy air scented with flowers and vegetation. With Distlish men greatly outnumbering Distlish women on the island and native wives banned from society, an admiring crowd soon gathered around Dolores. The men mobbed Wolf, most of them trying to sell him their plantations so that they could retire home to Distlain or head west to join in the war. Quin and Flicker scoured the kitchens for crusts of information. In short, all four inquisitors spied their heads off.

  Although they were staggering with weariness when they returned to the hostel at midnight, Dolores insisted on holding a conference, for that was standard Dark Chamber procedure, and Megan was wakened to listen. Shunning the stifling bedrooms, the team assembled on a balcony overlooking the harbor, dropped the role-playing, and conversed softly in Chivian. A gibbous moon shone peacefully over the bay, but the night was alive with frog songs, saloon quarrels, lute playing, and the constant whine of insects.

  The rules said they must start with the most junior, so he could show his stuff, if any.

  “Didn’t learn much,” Quin said complacently, leaning back against the rail. “Politics hasn’t changed from what the bats told us. The rainy season’s almost over, so the war’s about to start up again. This new Caudillo that King Diego sent out, Severo de la Cuenca—everyone has great hopes for him, but the Tlixilians are still holding their own. Last spring they sacked two towns and stamped out a major invasion, losses heavy on both sides. Dead, wounded, and missing in action are all equally dead in this war, of course. There’s talk of the El Dorado forces using metal weapons, so some of the smuggling is getting through.”

  He glanced sideways at Flicker, who had not said a word yet, but was quivering like a hound on a leash. Quin grinned and let him loose. “That’s about all that I—”

  The greyhound shot off. “You can’t be sure about the smuggling—they must have captured lots of weapons by now…but it’s likely. Even the locals hereabouts want to stretch the war out as long as—”

  Wolf started to ask why and Flicker leered tr
iumphantly.

  “Because for thirty years the Distliards have been setting themselves up with wide estates…here and on Mazal…plantations growing cotton, sugar cane, beans, ranching on higher ground for horses, salt beef, and leather…. They’re all in over their scalps in debt and the only cash market they’ve got is the army on the mainland. It’s a great pyramid built on war and slavery…. Slavery’s absurdly inefficient, because the initial investment and the capital tied up in security and housing is much more than the wages you’d have to pay free folk to work far harder, so the moment the war is settled the haciendas are all bankrupt.” He drew a breath about then. “I also heard that there’s not much wrong with glass swords.”

  Wolf made disbelieving noises.

  “So they say!” Flicker snapped. “ ’Long as you don’t parry with them. Use a shield for parrying and they’re more deadly. A glass sword can cut off a horse’s head with one stroke! The great advantages the Distliards had at first weren’t swords, they were horses and war dogs, which the Tlixilians had never seen before, so those are what we ought to be offering, not swords. Steel armor might sell, but cotton’s cooler. Horses…Tlixilians have captured a few and learned to ride them.”

  Dolores was nodding that she’d heard that too.

  “The ones who are really making money here,” Flicker said, “and will make a lot more, are the harbor merchants and shipwrights. If the Distliards can take El Dorado, then the trade through Mondon will be enormous!” Another breath. “If they can’t, then Eurania will start treating Tlixilia as a sovereign state and trade will bloom anyway!”

  He was an ingenious little slug and might even be likeable if he did not keep making eyes at Dolores. He had learned more in the kitchen than Wolf had in the dining hall.

  “Interesting but not immediately relevant. Thank you, Flicker. Good work. You, love?”

  “I collected the names of some grandees in Sigisa,” Dolores said. “It seems there’s only one counts for much at all.”