"She donated it to the crown jewels," Lord Chamberlain remarked.

Grand Wizard mused on, oblivious, "I was asked about it.The Mar- 139.

Dave Duncan P.

quesa wore it a few times at court functions. It was ...er, outre as jew-elry. Unique, really, but she had taken a fancy to it. She was deeply en-amored of His Majesty-"

Flaunting a unique emblem of royal favor would have appealed to Celeste, no matter how ugly she thought it. Hogwood and Wolf ex-changed looks. Now they knew the real reason for Lynx's fixation on the jaguar pendant-Celeste had worn one like it.

"I remember well!" Mother Superior boomed. "She wore it three times and every White Sister in the palace had nightmares of being stalked by giant cats. We begged Your Majesty to ask her not to wear it again! Not that we could find any conjuration on it," she concluded vaguely.

"It was delightful!" said the old conjurer."Chips of stone glued on a silver plate. It was just after Your Grace appointed me . . ."That put the incident before Wolf arrived at Court, which explained why he had never heard of it.

"This is irrelevant!" the King roared.

"It's not!" Wolf said. "And I withdraw my conclusion that the raid on Quondam was not specifically directed at rescuing Celeste."

Even if one's sovereign was an idiot who gave crown jewels away to floozies, one never contradicted him.Alerted by the appalled silence that followed, the culprit babbled suicidally- "Celeste wore that pin at Quondam, sire! My brother told me she wore all her jewelry all the time and that means she wore the Tlixilian jaguar, and if the new one has managed to conjure him in a few days, then what could the other have done to her in four years?"

More silence.

"Conjured your brother?" Athelgar said. "Sir Lynx?" His cheeks were as red as his goatee.

Wolf was underwater and sinking fast."My brother is strangely fas-cinated by the pendant the jaguar monster wore. He joked that he'd earned it as a battle honor. He wore it on the journey back to Grandon. And I ...I forgot to get it back-"

"The witness is lying," proclaimed the right-hand Grand Inquisitor.

"My brother insists he will deliver it only to Your Majesty."

140 THE J A GU AR KNIGHTS.

P.

"It conjured him?" the King asked again. "Well, he is obsessed by it. And it did open its eyes!" "Where is Sir Lynx now?" Wolf explained. "No, we do not want him seen at Court!" the King decreed. "But we do want that pendant. Now! Go and get it! And tell him he is to re-main out of sight during our pleasure." Wolf bowed and headed for the door. Vicious opened it for him, giving him a very nasty look.

6.Scorning to run, Wolf strolled out through the antechamber, scruti-nized by a score of eyes, half of them Blades' and all of them curious, although no one was brash enough to ask him who had died this time.

Then a voice shouted,"Wolf !" behind him, and Hogwood came swish-ing along in her robe. He waited for her out in the hallway.

"We'll take a coach," she said. "I'll meet you at-" "We?" She clutched his arm. "Wolf, it's not just the pendant! We must find him before he sells that ring! The King'll hang him for grand larceny." "And you won't?" "Of course not!

Idiot!" She pushed him impatiently. "Go! I'll get my bag.Wait for me at the west door!"

He had been planning to take a horse, but coaches always stood ready at the west door, so that might be quicker. By the time the door-man had summoned a brougham for him, Hogwood arrived, clutching her black bag and puffing hard. The driver cracked his whip and they rumbled out under the arch.

The rain had stopped again while the clouds regrouped. "Wolf ?" "Yes?"

141.

Dave Duncan P.

"Can't you trust me just a little bit? I really do want to help Lynx."

Those eyes, those eyes! But if he trusted her even a little he was going to find himself trusting her absolutely, which smelled of rank insanity.

"You're not a typical inquisitor." He risked a smile, which he rarely did, since to describe his teeth as lupine would be flattery.

"You're not a typical Blade." She grinned impishly.

"In what way exactly?"

"You never bedded me."

"I was a fool."

She sighed. "Yes, unfortunately."

"I think that pendant has stolen Lynx's wits."

"Hisbindingstole his wits.The pendant reminds him of his ward be-cause she wore a pin like it, and his binding will give him no rest until he finds her."

"Yes. I mean no, it won't."The world was big, but a binding was im-placable. "Why is the Dark Chamber involved? He has committed no crime."The plaque was no crime, so far, but the missing ring was likely to hang someone.

Hogwood made an exasperated noise. "It isn't! The Council went into secret session and dismissed me.

So I'm free to help. I want to,Wolf! Honest! I should have seen Lynx pocket that ring. I swear I'm trying to help."

Wolf did not bother denying that Lynx must have taken the ring.

The Pine Tree was a clean, respectable tavern patronized by minor gentry visiting the capital. The Guard used it for business, as Wolf had by parking Lynx there, because the proprietor, Emil Montpurse, was no-toriously discreet. He also favored Blades with favorable rates for private matters-so favorable that there were persistent rumors that the Pine Tree was owned by the Order itself, or perhaps Grand Master.

Rain was starting again, but Wolf sent the coach back to the palace rather than have it stand there and attract attention. Master Montpurse had seen him with Lynx earlier and raised no objection when he and Hogwood headed upstairs to visit him. Their knock went unanswered. The lock clicked open at Hogwood's touch. Lynx's baggage was there; he was not.

142.

THE J A GU AR KNIGHTS.

P.

"He may have gone for a walk,"Wolf suggested weakly.

"He's taken his brown pack. Open that big one! I need something you are certain is his."

Wolf's dagger severed the ropes. He pawed through contents until he found a shabby old jerkin he recognized. Hogwood wrapped her tracker in it and put it back.

"It needs an hour."

"Let's ask around downstairs."

She warded her bag and left it there, locking the door the same way she had opened it.

The taproom was almost deserted at that hour in the morning, smelling pleasantly of beer and new bread. A spotty boy was spreading fresh sawdust on the floor, Montpurse himself was wiping the tables.

He was a trim man of middle years, whose flaxen hair was fading away al-together rather than turning white. His sky-blue eyes, which normally twinkled with professional bonhomie, were wary now as he insisted he had not seen Sir Lynx leave and had not spoken with him since he ar-rived.

An inquisitor and a royal guardsman together could demand and get very nearly anything they wanted, but Wolf had always preferred hand-shakes to arm wrestling. "I am his true brother, master."

"I am aware of that, Sir Wolf." It was the inquisitor that bothered him. "We are on his side, I swear.The matter is extremely urgent. There has been a change of plan and we need to warn him." Hogwood interrupted. "Summon the rest of your staff. He may have asked directions of someone."

"I'm sure he did not," Wolf said. "We'll call back in an hour or so, master. Ask him to wait if you see him, please." He chivvied Hogwood out to the spring drizzle. "Lynx is a Blade! His ward lived in Greymere so he knows the terrain here like he knows his ward's face.What did you think he might have asked for?"

"A pawn shop."

"A fence, you mean. He'd go straight to Greasy Tom's. Come on."

Tom's was three alleys east and a mile down the social scale.Women 143.

Dave Duncan P.

shorter than Hogwood would have to stoop to enter that dingy, gloomy basement, and neither she nor Wolf could straighten under its ancient beams.The agglomeration of junk down there had changed little in the five years since he had first seen it, and perhaps in the fifty or so since Tom acquired the store. A lack of buyers was hardly surprising, because the stock reeked of dirt and vermin and was barely visible.

Greasy Tom had no desire to sell any of it, for then he would have had to go to the trouble of replacing it, and his real income came from fencing stolen goods. He was reputed to pay Blades top value for any trinkets their ladies gave them.There were bad apples in every barrel if you dug deep enough, and Tom probably made a handsome living off the Guard alone.

Their entry provoked spidery noises in back, until the nasty gnome came shuffling in from whatever horrors lay beyond the far door. He was a tiny, wizened scab of a man, smelly, corrupt, and old as the hills. He knew Wolf for a Blade at first glance, and bared a few dark stumps of teeth in a smile of welcome before he registered the inquisitor in the gloom.Then he shrank back like something slimy withdrawing into its shell.

"We have information," Hogwood said in tones grim enough to make any spine tingle, "that today you purchased a gold ring bearing a stone in the shape of an eagle's head."

Tom hunched even smaller, shaking his head but being careful not to speak. Wolf thought he looked as guilty as a dog with blood on its muzzle, but his opinions were not evidence.

Hogwood's were. "Did you? The article we are seeking belongs to His Majesty. Answer my questions.

If you lie to me I shall call the Watch."

Tom moaned. "How was I to know it was stolen? I did not know! The man was a Blade. Aren't Blades always honest?"

"No!" Wolf said, for now he had a thief for a brother."But always dangerous." He clickedDiligenceup and down in her scabbard."Hand it over."

"I'll fetch it, Sir Blade."

Hogwood nodded, so Wolf did not follow the spider as it withdrew 144.

THE J A GU AR KNIGHTS.

P.

into its web. It soon came crawling back to give her the ring, staying well away from the swordsman.

"How much did you give him?"

"Ten crowns, mistress."

Wolf had paid twice that for it.

"Do you want a receipt?" she asked. "Or shall we forget this hap-pened?"

He gaped a toothless maw at her."Forget what happened, mistress?"

"Let's go,"Wolf said.

It was a relief to be back out in the street just to breathe, and in Grandon that was a damning comment indeed.They took shelter under an overhang and watched rain dance in the mud.

"Where now?" he asked bitterly."The docks?" He was trying to re-call exactly what the Baron had told him the previous evening- information Lynx had certainly taken to heart. Chivian trade with the Hence Lands was small, Roland had said, maybe six ships a year, and most of those left from western ports, not Grandon. None would set sail in Secondmoon, certainly, so Lynx's best strategy would be to cross the narrow seas to Thergy or Isilond, and either ship out from there directly or work his way south to Distlain, although officially Distlain still banned all foreigners from the new lands it claimed.

"Or livery stables," Hogwood said. "We'd do better to wait for the tracker than run around blind."

"Then let's eat," Wolf said. "That's an old campaigner's advice-fill your belly whenever you get the chance.We may have a long day ahead of us." The moment he reported back to the palace, his brother would be a thief on the run.

7 They went back to the Pine Tree to eat pork pie and cheese, both of which were good there. Wolf ordered small beer because his binding 145.

Dave Duncan P.

made anything stronger taste like bile after the first few mouthfuls. Hog-wood shocked him yet again by ordering porter.

Between taking manful swigs, she scorched him with her great in-nocent eyes. "You realize that this is goodbye,Wolf ?"

"I'm sorry." It was true-no other lovely girl called him Wolf. "Why?"

"I failed in my mission. I'll be transferred elsewhere."

"No promotion?"

She frowned as she cut a tiny slice of pie."I was still hoping for one grade. Now I doubt it. We missed Celeste's pin, so we got everything wrong."

"I'm sorry. And very sorry it's goodbye."

She smiled sadly. "I'll have to find another monster to fall in love with."

After a moment's chewing, he said,"That may be kindly meant, but it still hurts. Not the monster part. I know I'm a monster. But don't joke about love.You relayed an employment offer, I turned it down.

Don't be hypocritical, blathering about love."

She reached across the table to him. "Wolf ...truly,I am in love with you!"

He ignored her hand."If you're feeling lusty it's my binding getting to you, that's all. I can't shut it off completely. Sorry."

"It isn't! I know what a Blade attack feels like. It's like being drowned in honey! Lynx's been trying to climb in my bed ever since Quondam. I am protected to some extent, but it was only being in love with you that let me hold out. One more night and-"

"Lynx wouldn't do that!"