The Jaguar Knights Read Online Free PDF Page A

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
    K nowing 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 instance, 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 neededsomething 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