Jade? What jade? It began to dawn on me that whatever was going on at Sandy was bigger than a chupacabra—a chupacabra that apparently did not exist.
"That would be very bad,” I said, like I was completely clued in.
"Very bad indeed,” Major Rucker said. "So you can see why I am eager to get things settled before everything blows up. One more incursion across the Line and we may well have lost them. There is a detail patrolling day and night, but those miners are sneaky I don’t know how much Buck told you about the Dithee—”
"She said you’d fill me in,” I said quickly. I didn’t know squat about the Broncos.
"There are five major clans of Dithee. They are interrelated, of course, but they each control their own territory. Although all the clans are equal in practice, some are stronger than others. There’s no one leader of the whole tribe, but some clan leaders garner more respect. Tilithay is the leader of the Red Turtle clan. He’s a good man, steady and wise, and very deliberate in his actions. He has a lot of clout and he is all for this treaty Which is good for us, as the jade is in Red Turtle territory”
Suddenly, I understood. Jade. There was jade on the other side of the Line, in Bronco territory, and Buck was making a deal with them to get it. The chupacabra was code for jade. No wonder Major Rucker had been willing to give a year off his life to ensure the swift arrival of his dispatch.
Jade is probably the rarest stone there is, and incredibly valuable. But the biggest jade mines are in Bir dieland, and so the Birdies have almost a total monopoly on it. They control the flow of jade, and with this control comes their power.
But what if they lost the monopoly? I thought back to my most hated and boring class at Sanctuary School: Economic Theory in Practice. If the market is flooded with a commodity, that commodity loses value. A country whose wealth and power is based on that commodity finds itself with too much of something that nobody wants because everyone already has it. That country’s economy collapses. And often, too, so does its government. If Buck flooded the market with jade, the Birdie economy would turn into worthless mush. The Birdie empire would be forced to its knees.
Pigface, Buck had been busy not putting all her eggs in one basket. Secret alliances with the Kulani Islands; secret alliances with the pirates; secret alliances with the Broncos—
But. But. But.
I realized something else. There was no chupacabra. Buck was not sending a chupacabra hunter. She was sending someone to strike a deal with the Broncos. And thanks to my lies, Major Rucker thought I was that person. Oh, fike.
I sat there, stone cold, while Major Rucker went on. “I’ve sent a message to Tilithay that you are here. I expect an answer quickly, and not soon enough for me. The sooner we can get all this settled, the better. Cierra Califa, eh. May she be free at last.” He raised his glass, and I did the same, echoing his sentiment and wondering what the fike I was going to do now. I couldn’t lie my way through a deal between Califa and the Broncos. There was too much at stake.
“Cierra Califa!” Major Rucker said, raising his glass again.
“Cierra Califa,” I repeated automatically My voice sounded a bit squeaky, but Major Rucker didn’t notice—for barely had my words died away when Captain Oset burst into the tent. Behind her a private clutched his rifle nervously. For one horrible moment, I thought she was there to arrest me. Then she said, “Captain Romney, I guess you’d better come. The chupa just went through the remuda. It got the guard.”
THIRTY-TWO
In Charge. Sigils. The Line.
THE FENCE AT ONE END of the corral was busted down; something had spooked the mules so badly they had stampeded. A thick metallic tang overpowered the smell of manure and mule. In the middle of the corral, a pond of black liquid shimmered in the starlight; under lamplight, it shone crimson red. A dark lump lay in the center of this pool.
Trying very, very hard to look as though I had seen worse, I stepped forward cautiously as the bloody mud sucked at my boots. One of the privates helpfully dipped the lantern lower so I could see better. I had not seen worse, not even in my nightmares. I swallowed hard. An experienced chupa hunter would not upchuck in front of everyone.
“I got an arm over here!” a voice hollered.
Another voice called, “I found his boot. Oh, and his foot, too!”
I glanced at Major Rucker. He had pushed his hat back on his head, and the lamplight gleamed off his sunshades, turning them into shining little moons. He looked mighty unhappy Flynn abandoned the dogs, who were yipping and growling on the far side of the corral, to huddle up against my legs as I petted him reassuringly.
“What happened?” Captain Oset asked the sergeant.
“Corporal of the Guard heard shooting, ran over, and found Private Hajo. Or what’s left of him, that is.”
“Where’s the other guard?”
“Don’t know, sir, but I got troopers out looking for him.”
Major Rucker, with no trace of disgust, had been looking quite closely at the wreckage of the guard. Now he said, “I don’t think the chupa did this.”
“What else, then?” Captain Oset said. “I told you it was going to get a soldier one day Pow.” I guessed she was not in on the chupacabra ruse.
“I never heard of a chupacabra killing a human. Look, he’s been ripped from limb to limb, and his throat torn out. And”—Major Rucker poked with his swagger stick—“he’s been chewed on. Chupacabras don’t chew their prey They suck them.”
“Nyana?” Captain Oset said to me. “What do you think?”
I didn’t think a chupacabra had done this, either, and not just because I now knew there was no chupacabra. Chupas may not chew on their victims, but jaguars sure do.
Before I could answer Oset, a corporal materialized out of the darkness in a bobbing circle of lantern light. “We found Mustadine. He’s scared kiltless, but he’s alive. He says he saw it and it weren’t no chupa.”
We followed the corporal around the corral to the hay yard, where a shivering private sat on a bale, clutching a bottle in shaking hands.
“Buck up, Mustie. It didn’t get you,” Major Rucker said kindly. “Tell me what happened.”
“I knew I was on duty, sir, but I got the polka real bad, and sometimes you just gotta go,” Mustadine said after another pull on the bottle. “I gave over to Pongo and he said he’d cover for me, and I ran to the bog, but it was occupado. So I went looking for a nice bush, you know, and no cacti spines, and anyway, I found a spot, and I was getting down to the dance, when all of a sudden I heard a weird scratching sound. Well, of course I didn’t move an inch, thinking maybe it were a coyote, but then I looked up and on the rock above me was the biggest cat I ever did see, as black as pitch.”
Pigface. Espejo had caught up with me. Fike.
“A black cat?” Captain Oset said, scoffing. “You mean like a bobcat?”
“No, sir,” Mustadine said. “I mean like a panther, a giant fiking panther.”
“Language!” the sergeant said sharply.
“I cry your pardon, sir, but that cat was big. I saw a panther at the Califa City Zoo once, but this was bigger. And that one was all spotted, you know, yellow and gold. This was as black as Choronzon’s nose. That cat scared the donk right out of me, begging your pardon, Captain, and I grabbed my rifle and shot at it, and it disappeared.”
“Did you hit it?” I asked hopefully.
“I don’t know, sir. It ran off, and I ran back here, right into the corporal who told me about Pongo.”
Mustadine led us to the area of his makeshift bog. There, on the rock, we found some enormous dusty paw prints and a cholla with a tuft of black fur caught on it. A few feet away stood a saguaro cactus with a gaping hole in its middle.
Apparently Private Mustadine was a lousy shot. What a fiking pity
“What shall we do?” Oset asked.
It took a second for me to realize she was talking to me. Everyone was looking at me expectantly, hopefully—Captain Oset, the corpora
l, the cluster of enlisteds behind them, even Major Rucker. I guess they figured, if I could take on a chupacabra, then I could get a jaguar, too.
So that was exactly what I would do. Turn the tables on Espejo. Hunt him down before he could hunt down Tiny Doom.
“The chupacabra can wait,” I said. “Let’s get this cat before he gets someone else.”
“Too bad La Bruja isn’t here,” Captain Oset said. “She can track anything. When she’s sober, that is.”
“So can Flynn,” I said. With a little help from a Locative Sigil, that is. “As soon as it gets light, we’ll mount up and head after it.”
Major Rucker looked skeptically at Flynn, but agreed. We left Captain Oset supervising the gathering up of poor Pongo and returned to the main post. A guard accompanied us, so Major Rucker couldn’t question me further on my plan, for which I was grateful, as it didn’t include him or the patrol.
“I’ll order the patrol at first light,” Major Rucker said, at the ramada of the UOQ.
“I’ll be ready,” I promised, thinking, I’ll already be gone.
By showing his hand—or paw, that is—Espejo had done me a favor. It was possible that he was just trying to draw me out, but if it was a trap, it wasn’t going to work. Come up from behind, Nini Mo said, and put your knife to his throat. Espejo could track me, but he didn’t realize that I could track him. That’s exactly what I would do. Get him before he had a chance to get Tiny Doom. Night was his time, Cutaway had said, and though she had cheated me, I believed her. During the day, he was weak. During the day, he had to hide from the sun. I would use this weakness to my advantage.
I sat a spittoon outside the bedroom door to act as an alarm when Captain Oset came back, then had another swig of Madama Twanky’s. I settled down to create a Locative Sigil, using the tuft of fur from the cactus as my locus point. Locative Sigils are easy; they are one of the cornerstones of rangering, and before I had been forced to drop my Gramatica lessons, I had gotten pretty good at them. When the sigil was done, I took Captain Oset’s sawed-off double-barreled shotgun off the gun rack and made sure it was clean. A carbine rifle would have longer range, but Captain Oset’s was gone from the rack, and it was too late to go down to the Ordnance Stores and requisition one. But a shotgun is more powerful than a carbine and doesn’t require any finesse. It would do just fine. Then I charged four shotgun shells with an Abacination Sigil. Let’s see Espejo stand against that!
Just before dawn, I hot-footed it down to the corral and got Evil Murdoch saddled without encountering anyone other than the night corral guard, who did not dare stop me. By the time the sun crested the eastern mountains, I had left the post, Flynn trotting along beside me. The Locative Sigil was tucked away safely in the breast pocket of my buckskin jacket. Two nips of Tum-O had soothed my bubbly tummy and I felt cool and collected. The weight of Captain Oset’s shotgun, now loaded with two of the sigil shells, hung comfortingly over my shoulder. The extra sigil shells, along with a few regular shells, were stashed in my other pockets. After running scared for so long, it felt good to act fearlessly.
I rode east, away from Sandy As soon as the flagpole was out of view, I dismounted and called Flynn over. He sat at my bidding, tongue lolling. The sun was already baking away the dawn chill.
“Sorry, baby dog,” I said, tying my lead rope to his collar. “I don’t want you to take off without me.” I took the sigil out of my pocket and fixed it to his collar, but as I activated it with a Command, Evil Murdoch strayed to the end of the reins to nibble on a mesquite tree. I jerked him away from the bush, which he didn’t take kindly to and jerked back. He pulled one way I pulled the other, and then the reins flew out of my hand. Evil Murdoch ambled away.
“Hey!” I made a grab for the reins and missed. Sensing my pursuit, Evil Murdoch picked up his pace. Dragging Flynn, I lunged at the saddle and came tantalizingly close to grabbing the right stirrup before Evil Murdoch lashed out with a back leg. I twisted away just in time. Murdoch gave another little kick, dust puffing in the air. He brayed derisively once—a mulish fike you —and then dashed into the river, back toward Fort Sandy.
Fike!
Flynn pulled at the lead, whining, and it was taking all my strength to hold on to him. The Locative Sigil was working, but I wouldn’t be able to keep up with him on foot. I had no choice but to return to the post and get another mount. I strained to reel the lead in so I could take the charm off his collar. Snapperdog did nothing to help me, just quivered and pointed and let out a few anguished yelps. He wanted to go!
A voice hailed me. “There you are, Nini!”
I turned and saw Captain Oset, reining in at the head of a detail. Behind her, a mounted private held the reins of a very pissed-off-looking Evil Murdoch.
“He’s a real clown, Murdoch is, Nini,” Captain Oset said. “You should thump him good. It’s the only way to get the message across. He’ll dump you in a cholla bush if he gets the chance.”
“He isn’t going to get the chance.” I took the reins from the private. “You are going to be a good boy, Murdoch, or you are going to be dog food. Your choice.”
Murdoch rolled a large yellowish eye at me as if to say You think, puggie, but he stood meekly as I remounted.
“Were you going to leave us behind?” Captain Oset said reproachfully.
“I’m sorry, Captain, but it’s best if Flynn and I track the jaguar alone. It’s very dangerous. No offense, but I need to focus on the hunt, not worry about bystanders.” Needless to say, I did not want Captain Oset around when I ran down Espejo.
“I don’t really feel very good about letting you go on alone,” Captain Oset said. “Major Rucker—”
Evil Murdoch suddenly lashed out and bit at Oset’s mule. The mule brayed angrily and snapped back. Murdoch bounced. I leaned backward, trying to keep my balance, and in doing so, dropped Flynn’s lead rope. Like a shot, Flynn flew down the road, the lead trailing behind him.
With a bellow, Evil Murdoch took off after him as I fought to stay on his back. I regained my balance and sawed at the reins, but it was like cutting wood with cheese. He didn’t slow down. Oset and the patrol were right behind me, whooping and hollering. Flynn showed no sign of stopping. The die was cast. For better or worse, we were on the hunt. When we caught up with Espejo, I’d just have to shoot first and then be surprised after that he was a man. The Abacination Sigils would be harder to explain, but I’d worry about that later.
As far as I knew, Flynn had never tracked anything in his life, but with the help of my sigil, he was like a bloodhound. He tore down the road and our mounts were hard-pressed to keep up. A mule at a fast clip is bouncy. My teeth rattled; my hinder jolted on Evil Murdoch’s spiny spine. Down the road, down the wash, up the wash, up the ridge, over the ridge, down the ridge Flynn went, our detail bounding after him.
“That dog can run!” Captain Oset hollered.
“I told you he was a great tracker!” I hollered back.
“Señor Jaguar is going to wish he’d never been born!” Captain Oset crowed.
Ahead of us, Flynn’s rope had gotten caught up on a cactus; he was struggling to free himself. I urged Murdoch forward, but with a writhing wrench, Flynn jerked free, leaving the rope tangled in the spines, and loped across a rocky riverbed. I followed, but Captain Oset shouted a halt.
“Why are you calling a halt?” I had pulled Evil Murdoch’s nose around to confront her.
“That’s the Line.” Oset pointed. “We can’t cross the Line.”
I looked back at the riverbed. Flynn was already scrabbling down the rocky grade.
“It looks like a wash.”
“Maybe so, but it’s the Line.”
“Do you want this jaguar or not?” I asked impatiently. “It killed one of your troopers. It could kill another.”
“Of course I do, but we can’t cross the Line,” Oset repeated. “It’s strictly against orders.”
“You all don’t seem too keen on orders out here,” I answered. “Yo
u openly practice magick. You’ve got ice elementals and sigil lights. Now we’ve got a man-eater in our sights, and suddenly orders are all that matter?”
“Some rules are too important to break.”
“You go back, then. I’m going forward.”
“I can’t let you do it, Captain,” Oset said. Suddenly I was staring down the barrel of her revolver. “I will have to put you under arrest.”
“If you want to shoot me, shoot me, but you are not putting me under arrest.”
“Better to be under arrest than dead.”
“I don’t think so. But let’s find out.”
Oset was chewing on her lip, and by that I was pretty sure she wasn’t going to shoot me. Her next words proved me right.
“Please consider this carefully,” she pleaded.
The soldiers were staring at us avidly; it’s always fun to watch officers threaten each other. I glanced at the Line; it looked like nothing, just a rocky wash. You could ride across it and not even realize you had done so. But it represented an agreement between the Broncos and Califa. Major Rucker had said one more incursion and the deal for the jade might be off.
Espejo was on the other side.
And there was a good chance Tiny Doom was as well.
It’s not all about you, Flora. These words echoed in my brain, although I couldn’t remember now who had said them. This was about more than just me. It was about the future of Califa, a future that I might never get a chance to share but that mattered more than anything else.
You aren’t the center of the world, Flora, the voice said.
And neither was Tiny Doom. Not when Califa’s freedom was at stake.
But Flynn, stupid Snapperdog with the sigil on his collar—I shouted at him to come back, but he had already reached the other side of the wash. The patrol set to hollering and calling: Good dog, come back, sweet dog, happy boy, come back! Captain Oset found some jerky in her pocket and waved it enticingly to no avail. Snapperdog had crested the opposite edge, and in a few seconds he had vanished.
Flora's Fury: How a Girl of Spirit and a Red Dog Confound Their Friends, Astound Their Enemies, and Learn the Impo Page 27
