The Jaguar Knights (33 page)

“Our king does not want the Hairy Ones and their slaves to burn the floating city.”

“Your king will send his knights to fight with us?”

“First he sends me to ask a thing. Nine moons ago, knights of the floating city came across the ocean to the lands of my king, invaded his stronghold, slaughtered his men, abducted—”

As much as this terrible giant could display fear, he did so then. He shrank away, his brown face pale below its tattoos, white showing all around his coal-black irises.

Wolf said, “You are troubled and I know not why, Heron-jade.”

He looked wildly around, at the birds floating by, the great swoops of sail overhead. Wolf began to fear he might leap into the sea.

“What makes a warrior so afraid?”

Even for his size, Heron-jade had enormous hands. One of them shot out and grasped Wolf by the throat. Wolf grabbed his dagger, realized he could be dead already, and quietly sheathed it again, while glimpsing Dolores tucking a knife back in her sleeve. He was released.

“You have a precious jewel,” the eagle warrior said. “It beats.”

“Why did you think I might not?”

“It is a sad song.”

“Songs may speak true. Sing me the song.”

Heron-jade nodded, thought for a moment, lips moving. Then he began to chant, hoarsely at first, gathering confidence as he went.

Words rarely translated exactly, so that even in ordinary speech Wolf had trouble seeing the world his slaves described. Heron-jade would refer to Sky-cactus as his father and himself as Sky-cactus’s fledgling, yet
he would also tell of his father having been a taker of three captives who had given his precious jewel to a jaguar knight of another town many years past—which meant he had been sacrificed in the ghastly conjuring ritual, of course. When it came to song, meaning was as intangible as mist.

The Chivians exchanged smiles of triumph. Even Flicker looked pleased.

“Lizard-drumming was the true-born son of Quetzal-star?” Wolf asked.

“And mightier,” Heron-jade said solemnly. “Uncounted precious jewels wept for him.”

“Questions?” Wolf asked in Chivian. “Pass them through me.”

Flicker jumped in before Dolores could speak. “What can the witness tell us about the warriors who accompanied the four knights?”

“Just their regular war bands, I expect.” Wolf translated the question.

Heron-jade’s eyes seemed to turn even darker than usual. “Many great warriors. Men of great courage. Mighty lords.”

“Well done, Flicker! Of course an expedition into demon hell would call forth the show-offs. Volunteers, likely.”

Flicker looked smug. “It explains all the finery you collected.”

Boy Genius had seen what Wolf had not, that regular troops would not have worn so much gold, every amulet and talisman available.

“Any more questions?”

“How did they work the conjuration?” Dolores asked.

“I suggest we leave that for another session, love. I don’t want to push too hard. We have several days before we reach Sigisa. Quin, my lad, you will repeat this testimony to Grand Inquisitor, but how will you interpret it for them?”

Quin’s face went blank for a moment as he pondered. That plain, honest, workaday face was a good inquisitor face, dangerously easy to underestimate.

“Interpretation,” he said. “The attack on Quondam Castle was a unique event, not the opening of a general offensive. The Baroness’s jaguar pin had been regalia of a jaguar knight named Quetzal-star, who fell early in the Distlish invasion. Its new owner sent it home to Distlain and King Diego, who passed it on to Queen Malinda, who left it behind when she departed, and His Majesty gave it away to Marquesa Celeste. The implication is that nobody wanted to own it, and the effect it had on the White Sisters when it was worn is further evidence of its residual spirituality. At Quondam the Baroness wore it constantly and thus stimulated this remnant power to action. Lizard-drumming, Quetzal-star’s son and successor, sensed it in use and interpreted the call as his father’s spirit requiring rescue, so he and another jaguar knight purchased the aid of two eagle knights to go in search of it. Implication is that the eagle knights provided the transportation and the jaguars did the fighting. The jaguar knight killed by Sir Lynx was Plumed-pillar.”

“Very concise analysis, Quin. Any comments, anyone?” Wolf turned to Heron-jade. “Your words move us, Taker of Four Captives, but it is only a song. That was our land the great warriors saw. It is not always cold, not always dark. It bears flowers in abundance, in season. Nor was Plumed-pillar the only corpse they left behind. Many of our warriors and your warriors died. The person they took back to your land with them—what of her?”

“Her?”

“It was a woman they brought back.”

The giant howled, startling the entire ship. “The demons did this? Weep, weep for Quetzal-star!” He beat on his head with his fists.

Dolores’s face turned bleak, as if Heron-jade had just made his muscles seem less sexy. Quin and Wolf exchanged manly grins.

When the warrior stopped wailing, Wolf asked, “What happened to Quetzal-star after the rescue?”

He did not know. Lizard-drumming was not his lord. But if Celeste had since been murdered—to release Quetzal-star’s soul?—then Lynx would have sensed it, wherever he was. Had that most unfortunate of Blades gone mad in some foreign port?

Wolf told Flicker to escort Heron-jade back to the hold and bring up Pulse-obsidian and Serpent-night so they could have their turns on deck. They did not dance or sing; they just went straight into calisthenics. Despite the cramped conditions and although they could never have practiced together before, they put on an incredible acrobatic double act of warrior gymnastics.

Later they were questioned about their youth and training, none of which turned out to be of interest. They did confirm that Tlixilian politics were as complex as Euranian. El Dorado was ruled by an aristocratic warrior-caste, with the Emperor only chairman of the council. He would be succeeded by a close male relative, not necessarily a son. The greatest lords were the warrior-conjurer knights, but birth alone would not admit a man to the great orders; he must also be a great fighter. Pulse-obsidian let slip that Blood-mirror-walks stood highest among the four ex-slaves, being of very high birth, related to the imperial family. That and his growing battlefield prowess had destined him for eventual knighthood until he was wounded and captured by the Distlish.

Those two were sent back to their chains and up came Blood-mirror-walks himself. He was probably the youngest and certainly the shortest of the four, although almost as wide across the shoulders as Heron-jade. He might also be the smartest. He had limped when Wolf first bought him, but the healing had cured that. Seeing him looking curiously at
Diligence,
Wolf drew her and passed her over to him to study. Dolores glared at him for this foolhardiness.

“We Hairy Ones have better weapons than you do,” Wolf said.

The young warrior fingered the edge and tried the balance. “Sky metal. And you ride on deer. This is the regalia of a knight?” He pointed to the cat’s-eye.

“It is…How did you know that?”

“I was told so by someone.” Blood-mirror-walks returned the sword, hilt first. “But not all flowers bring fruit.”

“Why do you not acquire weapons like ours? We will trade them.”

The dark eyes were expressionless. “That is for the lords to say.”

“But when the knights went to the cold hell to rescue the soul of Quetzal-star, there were many weapons of sky metal there and they took none. Why?”

“I do not know.”

He did know. He just wasn’t going to tell. He had already learned from Heron-jade that the soul of Quetzal-star had been imprisoned in the body of a woman, and was equally appalled. This, in his opinion, was what came of fighting Hairy Ones. “A warrior must give his precious jewel to an honorable conqueror,” he explained.

“It is best to win, surely?”

He sneered. “And die of old age?”

“Had it been the rebels who captured you, instead of the Hairy Ones, would they have taken your precious jewel?”

“Of course.”

“And you would have submitted?”

“Proudly.”

His smile was chilling. To a Tlixilian, ritual vivisection was the finest death.

“Why did the jaguar knights ask the eagle knights to raise the wind? Do jaguar knights have lesser power?”

“Our knights have other powers.”

That was the last information Wolf got out of Blood-mirror-walks that evening, and next day the others were much less communicative than before. Quin overheard some of the harangue. They had been tricked, Blood-mirror-walks argued. It was better to die a slave than be indebted to a Hairy One of any sort in any way, and if the new kind
imprisoned knights’ souls in female bodies, then they were even worse than the Distliards. He ordered his companions not to cooperate with their captors and they swore to obey.

T
his is romantic!” Dolores said.

Which merely demonstrated, in Wolf’s cynical view, that one could get accustomed to anything, even shipboard life. They were up on the forecastle, sitting close, hugging tight while
Glorious
ploughed onward through a moonless night. Her sails were plumped by the warm trade wind, the sky was a glory of unfamiliar stars, and even the waves had a spooky glow. The rhythmic swish of waves against the bow and the creak of cables added a sort of lullaby. But this was the downwind end of the ship and somewhere ahead was a continent full of cannibals.

“Anywhere is romantic when you’re there, my love.”

“You’re learning.” She kissed his ear, the larger one. “Anyone but an inquisitor would be utterly deceived and swept off her feet.”

“I don’t have to sweep you off your feet. You are putty in my hands.”

She chuckled happily. “True.”

He was about to try a serious kiss when he heard voices and the rest of the team came trotting up the ladder to join them. A fiddle struck up amidships, a sailor began singing a lament, and others joined in.

Wolf began with a lament, also, stressing the problems that lay ahead. “Conference. We were sent to discover the
How
and
Why
of the attack on Quondam. Heron-jade has answered the
Why
question for us, so you get to go home and report, Quin, you lucky fellow.
Why
was easy,
How
will be hard. We were told in Mondon that in all their years here, the Distliards have learned nothing about Tlixilian conjuration. If even their allies guard the secrets so closely, would we do better if we were free to walk the streets of El Dorado? Who feels that we should declare our mission impossible and all go home with Quin?”

He was appealing to Dolores, although he knew she would be the last to quit. Tlixilian conjuration was to be her life’s work or the death of her.

Flicker said, “No one.”

“Let’s talk about it,” Megan said. “We did confirm that the
How
is human sacrifice. Chivial would never tolerate that. Do we even
want
to know any more about how they do it?”

“Yes!” Dolores never wavered in her enthusiasm. “I’ve told you! Conjuration requires both summoning and commanding. We summon the spirits inside an octogram and it’s almost impossible to apply their power outside it. Things or people can be enchanted and then taken out of the octogram, the way we were enchanted against fevers. The eagle and jaguar knights don’t cut out hearts on the battlefield, but they certainly do apply power there. It sounds as if they can enslave the actual spirits and take them away to use at another time and place. That’s the
How
we need to know! They just use sacrifices to summon the spirits, but we can do that in other ways.”

She was the expert. The sailors’ chant ended and for a moment only the ship and the waves spoke.

Wolf sighed. “Forsooth, then we press on, my hearties. We have our four messengers. We send them off to El Dorado, and stay put in Sigisa, drinking rum and dancing till dawn. Tell me what we do about de Rojas.”

Their sources in Mondon had known little of affairs in the interior, where
Caudillo
Cuenca battled the Tlixilian Emperor, but they had been well-informed about the scandalous, depraved island of Sigisa. King Diego’s writ did not run there. The government comprised an
Alcalde,
Ruiz de Rojas, and a city council. The council elected him and he appointed the council—a very tidy arrangement that kept all the crime under one management. Every saloon, dice game, and brothel paid its toll to Rojas. Not a bean was sold or a water cask filled without his sanction.