The princess had insisted—and no one had dared to say otherwise—that Bogo be treated by her own personal alchemist. Although Bogo's own concerns were for the continued safety of both the princess and the queen, blood from his pierced shoulder had already soaked through his quilted tunic and was beginning to trickle down his leg, so he left his own protest unvoiced and sat down at the massive table that dominated the council room. The pain from the wound throbbed with every beat of his heart but he did his best not to show it, remaining rigidly upright as reports came in from throughout the palace and he waited for the alchemist's arrival. Mercifully, the three senior members of the council—Cerdo, Corazón, and Cencerro—had apparently been too stunned by the attack to protest being ushered out of the room; the last thing he needed was one or more of them sniping at each other or at him for political points while he tried to think.
The news was, unfortunately, exactly as he had feared: there was absolutely no sign of how the llama, whose crumpled body still rested on the floor in the middle of a slowly spreading red puddle, had made it into the palace or past the numerous guards who should have at least seen him. It was one of the reasons that Bogo absolutely despised the palace; to someone who had never seen it before it was awe-inspiring, with grandly vaulted ceilings, elaborate carvings and wall-hangings, and countless rooms and halls, but to the mammals who had to guard it the palace was an absolute nightmare. Centuries of building and remodeling at the whims of generations of the royal family meant there were long-forgotten or bricked over passages and rooms that were still occasionally accessible, and the protruding stonemasonry that made the building so elegant meant that even the familiar and well-used halls had blind spots even a fairly large mammal could hide in, to say nothing of the sharp corners an assassin might lurk behind.
Bogo's gloomy thoughts were interrupted by a rap at the door to the council room, which was remarkably more or less intact despite the massive crack that had formed from the force with which it had hit the wall. The powdery fragments that had fallen off the door and the wall formed a gritty mess across the entryway with the marks of paws and hooves standing out distinctively. The princess gave a little start at the knock, as she had on each occasion someone had requested entry since the failed attack. The queen showed no outward reaction, but she had far more experience controlling her features than her daughter. Still, Bogo knew her well enough to know that beneath her calm exterior, sitting at the princess's side and stroking her oddly woolly fur, she was afraid. Her hoof trembled ever so slightly and her mouth was a thin and rigid slash across her face as she nodded at Bogo.
"Pass phrase," one of the four mammals now standing guard just inside the council room called through the thick door.
After the llama's attack using incredibly powerful magic, Bogo wasn't taking any chances that the would-be assassin didn't have confederates that might try striking again. If it wasn't for the design of the hallways—and Bogo cursed the architects who had thought that alcoves and protruding pillars were worth the danger they caused—he would have insisted on moving the queen and princess, but the route to any other room seemed hideously vulnerable. I'm going to insist every single corridor in this gods-forsaken palace is plastered over until there's nothing to hide behind, he thought to himself before returning his attention to the response that came from the other side.
"Acta deos numquam mortalia fallunt," a male voice replied, stumbling slightly over the unfamiliar words of the dead language.
Although Bogo recognized the voice, he let out a breath he hadn't realized he had been holding once the guard reached the end of the pass phrase. Although the City Guard didn't carry them, he had heard of quauhxicallis made from certain birds that allowed the user to perfectly mimic voices. Since neither blood magic nor alchemy could—to the best of his knowledge—allow a mammal to read the thoughts of another and pluck a code from someone's mind, he gave a brusque nod to the guards at the door. After they first opened it a crack and verified the identity of the mammals trying to get in the door was opened the rest of the way and quickly shut after a rather peculiar pair.
One was Jaime of the Tecuani Barony, a stolid jaguar and one of Bogo's most trusted captains. The other was a mouse perched atop a large and apparently quite heavy wooden box that the jaguar was carefully carrying with both paws who Bogo recognized by sight as Princess Isabel's personal alchemist although he had never formally met the mammal. Even if he had never seen the mouse before, the fact that he was an alchemist would have been obvious; although the torc around his neck wouldn't have even made its way around Bogo's smallest finger and the ouroboros on it was consequently too tiny to see from across the room, the mouse was wearing the most ostentatious robes he had ever seen.
The mouse, who looked to be about forty with the beginning of a gut, had draped himself in midnight blue silk so covered with silver embroidery that it looked almost as stiff as Bogo's silver breastplate, and while the arcane symbols were impossible to make out they glowed with their own light. "Your highness," he squeaked in his high-pitched little voice at first the queen and then the princess as he bowed to each in turn.
"Tomas!" the princess said, her features brightening as she looked fondly at the little alchemist.
"Are you well, Princess Isabel?" the mouse asked, bowing again, "Were you injured?"
Tomas had apparently not paid any notice to Bogo, and the princess quickly waved the mouse's concerns away. "It's Captain General Bogo," she said, "He's been stabbed."
"Oh my!" Tomas said, bringing a tiny paw to his mouth as he turned at last and took Bogo in.
"Captain, bring me over at once," he ordered Jaime—rather needlessly, since the jaguar was already walking over to where Bogo sat.
Jamie set the wooden box down on the table with exquisite delicacy, but the mouse's features still darkened into a scowl. "Careful!" he admonished, "There are powers beyond your ken at work in this box."
It was a testament to Jamie's professionalism that he didn't give Tomas the evil eye behind his back but simply dipped his head. "My apologies," Jamie said in a carefully neutral voice and he turned to leave.
"Where do you suppose you're going?" Tomas asked, tapping an impatient foot before descending down a tiny set of stairs built into the side of his box and jumping to the tabletop with surprising grace for a mammal wearing such cumbersome clothes, "Open the case!"
Jamie did as he was instructed, revealing a dizzying array of glass vials of varying sizes and strange symbols etched into the cunningly made drawers that folded outwards as the lid was opened. Although some of the vials were about the size of Bogo's fingers, Tomas went to one that was so small it might not have been visible had it not been glowing with its own light. Unlike alchemical torches or the embroidery on the alchemist's robes, which glowed a pale silvery white, the little vial burned a fiery red almost too bright to look directly at. Tomas lifted the vial with both paws and held it aloft. "Behold the complete philosopher's stone," he intoned, although his solemnity was somewhat ruined by his squeaky voice, "The magnum opus of the Alchemist Guild, my proof of mastery over the very elements, the—"
"Tomas," Princess Isabel interrupted, "Captain General Bogo is bleeding a lot. Could you..."
She trailed off as she rolled a paw, signaling the mouse to get on with actually performing the treatment, and Tomas's pompous nature evaporated. "My apologies," he mumbled, kicking at the table sheepishly as his tail drooped, "Captain General Bogo, could you please remove your armor and tunic?"
The arm that had been stabbed was clumsy and numb as Bogo unbuckled his breastplate and set it aside, and pulling his tunic off was little better. By the time he was done, Jamie was standing at Bogo's side, Tomas balanced atop his palm-up paws and looking at the injury gravely. "A little closer, please," Tomas told Jamie, who dutifully moved the mouse closer to the injury. The little alchemist pulled a stopper too small to see off the glowing vial and then tipped its contents into the wound. The contents didn't seem to be liquid or a single solid, but were rather like a few dozen grains of sand as they tumbled out of the vial. The instant the first of the tiny philosopher's stones reached Bogo's injury, a sensation he couldn't describe came over him.
Bogo had never before been treated with a complete philosopher's stone, just incomplete ones. Privately, he had long-suspected that the only difference between the two was that incomplete stones were silvery-white and the Alchemist Guild only made red "complete" stones so as to boast that they had something that no one else knew how to make, but that suspicion instantly vanished. Whereas an incomplete stone used to treat an injury just tingled mildly as it slowly helped the body heal and kept infection at bay, the complete stone somehow burned and froze at the same time. It was an impossible combination of contradictions, the stones somehow feeling both red-hot and bitterly cold, liquid and solid, impossibly heavy and light as a breeze. Bogo grit his teeth against the feeling, which seemed to only be intensifying as it worked its way deeper and deeper into his arm. For a moment, he could feel his veins and arteries alive with that unnatural sensation before it stopped so suddenly it was like covering a torch.
The wound that had been in his shoulder was gone. It didn't look as though it had healed; it was simply gone, with nothing to indicate that there had ever been an injury in the first place. There was no scar and even Bogo's fur looked normal. "How does it feel?" Tomas asked, looking up at Bogo expectantly.
Bogo flexed his arm once, the muscles moving smoothly and without so much as a hint of pain. "It's healed," he said, "Thank you."
Princess Isabel applauded enthusiastically from where she sat, and Tomas gave a little bow. "That was wonderful," she cried, and Tomas smiled.
"It is my pleasure," he said.
"It was very well done indeed," the queen said, and she was looking at the mouse rather fondly.
Evidently neither the princess nor the queen was put off by the alchemist's arrogance, but Bogo supposed the queen, at least, had reason to be fond of him. Tomas had, after all, been one of the mammals who had enabled the queen to become pregnant with a chimera, and whatever his faults did seem to care deeply for the princess's well-being. "Close my case, please," Tomas said, turning up to Jamie, but before the jaguar could comply Bogo spoke.
"Could you examine our would-be assassin?" he said, and Tomas seemed surprised at the question.
"I beg your pardon?" the little mouse said, "I'm an alchemist, not a blood magician. I don't know anything about quauhxicallis—except, of course, that pure alchemy is far superior to anything as crude as blood."
He gave a disdainful little sniff, but Bogo wasn't willing to accept anything less than full cooperation. "That llama moved faster than anything I've ever seen," he said bluntly, pointing at the corpse.
A wall hanging had been draped over the body, but it was still incredibly obvious what it was. "I want to know why."
"I'm afraid I can't help," Tomas insisted.
"Do you mean that there's something alchemy can't do that blood magic can?" the queen asked, looking across the table at the mouse with a thoughtful expression on her face.
"Blood magic has its uses," Tomas said, and it looked as though every word cost him great effort.
"The captain general is right," the queen continued, "I've never seen a mammal using a quauhxicalli move so quickly."
"I suppose I could look," Tomas said, "But you can't expect anything; it's likely to be an advanced quauhxicalli."
"Or perhaps something new done with alchemy?" the queen suggested.
"Perhaps," the mouse allowed.
After an examination of nearly half-an-hour—with the queen deliberating facing the other way with the princess as she tried to engage her daughter in normal conversation—the little alchemist finally looked up from his work. Jamie had patiently done everything Tomas had asked, gingerly moving the body around and even removing what was left of the llama's torc; the tin it was made out of had been badly mangled by the impact with the floor and the arcane symbols etched into it had gone dark. Bogo was glad for the distraction, because even after a thorough search of every known entrance to the palace and interviews with every mammal who had been near those entrances, no one had seen the llama before he burst into the council chamber. Increasingly ridiculous ideas—perhaps the llama had used a quauhxicalli that had rendered him invisible or allowed him to fly through an upper window, or some sort of alchemy had completely altered his appearance—had begun to fill Bogo's head and even the more sensible suggestions like the llama smuggling himself in with a delivery didn't seem possible.
"However he did it, it wasn't through alchemy," Tomas reported.
Blood had stained the hems of his robes, but he didn't seem to have noticed. Once he had agreed to actually look, he seemed to have done his best, sometimes calling for Jamie to retrieve something from his box or pour a vial. "Otherwise, all I can say is that the alchemical function of his torc looks completely normal. What's left of it, at least."
Bogo frowned, but he wasn't surprised. Torcs were incredibly complicated pieces of magic that relied on a combination of blood magic and alchemy, and tampering with them was supposed to be impossible. At any rate, even if the llama had tried to alter his torc it had obviously failed—his had made him suffer the same wound he had inflicted on Bogo, and from what he could remember the llama hadn't seemed surprised about it. In fact, the llama had seemed to be filled with nothing but hate and anger and he had clearly been willing to try assassinating the princess and die in the process. Even if he had somehow obtained one of the City Guard's torcs, it wasn't as though he would have been able to kill the princess without dying himself; the torc she wore would retaliate against any mammal who hurt her no matter what sort of torc they wore. Besides, the quauhxicalli he must have used had clearly been ripping his body apart from the strain it caused. Bogo had never seen anything like it, but...
"The city appreciates your service," Bogo said, all but automatically, for his thoughts had gone elsewhere.
"Get an expert on quauhxicallis to examine the body," he told Jamie as the jaguar scooped up Tomas and the alchemist's box.
Bogo was barely paying attention as the captain nodded crisply and let himself out of the room, because there was the beginning of an idea forming inside his head.
Whoever had masterminded the attempted assassination, it was clear that they had significant resources and access to powerful magic. The motive was more difficult to guess, but there was a certain former crime lord who had it all—money, quauhxicallis, and what was likely a powerful grudge. True, the Black Paw had never demonstrated access to quauhxicallis quite as potent as the one the llama must have used, but that was no matter. "My queen," Bogo said, "I need to go to the dungeons."
Queen Lana turned her chair around; she had stayed facing the other direction even after Tomas had finished his examination. Princess Isabel turned with her mother, and Bogo saw that the queen was still stroking her daughter's fur with one trembling hoof. "You think you know who tried to kill my daughter?" she asked.
"I have an idea of who had the means to do it," Bogo replied.
"Good," the queen said, and her voice was cold and hard, "You have my permission to do anything you need to do. Anything. Do you understand?"
"I understand," Bogo replied quietly.
It was, Bogo realized, not fear that made the queen's hoof shake. It was anger.
Author's Notes:
The phrase "acta deos numquam mortalia fallunt" is Latin for "mortal actions never deceive the gods" and comes from the letters of Ovid, written sometime around the year 8 CE. I've also used Latin in some other parts of this story, since I think it gives some nice flavor to have a dead language generally used only in older works; I think it helps suggest the history of the setting, particularly in contrast to the occasional word in Nahuatl that suggests that language isn't really spoken any more either.
The reference to quauhxicallis that allow someone to perfectly mimic a voice is inspired by lyrebirds, which are incredible mimics. There are actually a fair number of birds that can imitate human speech, including parrots, but even crows can learn to repeat words.
City Guard member Jaime is a jaguar and comes from the Tecuani Barony, which is named after the Nahuatl word for "jaguar." This has come up a few times before, but not everyone in this setting has a family name per se. Some mammals do, but others use the name of the barony they come from in the place of it. As was the case for Judy, this indicates being a member of the family that rules said barony, although not necessarily any claim to ruling it.
Although eye-rolling has been documented as a gesture in use since the 16th century, its use as a sort of dismissive gesture didn't become common until about the 1950s. Before then, it was most frequently used during flirting to indicate interest. Based on the historical facts that influenced this story, I therefore decided to go with the more specific evil eye, which dates back at least 2000 years.
The creation of the philosopher's stone was the goal of most alchemists; the pursuit of this goal was referred to as the magnum opus (literally the great work). Alchemy was the precursor to modern chemistry, and as such is now a discredited pseudoscience, but alchemists still made a number of advances in chemistry in their efforts to create a substance that could transmute base metals into gold and create an all-healing elixir that could grant eternal life. In fact, the word "elixir" is derived from the Arabic word "al-iksir," which was used by 8th century Muslim alchemists to describe the philosopher's stone.
Although the supposed physical properties of the philosopher's stone vary somewhat depending on the source, I went with some of the more common ones: a philosopher's stone is red in color and quite dense. Some alchemists believed that there were two forms of a philosopher's stone; the incomplete form, which is white in color, could transmute metals into silver, and the complete form, which is red in color, that can transmute metals into gold. I decided to go with this version of the stone, where the creation of complete philosopher's stones is a jealously guarded secret of the Alchemist's Guild. The incomplete form of the stone is, however, responsible for the alchemical torches mentioned in this setting, as one of the uses attributed to the philosopher's stone is its ability to create eternally burning lamps.
As is suggested in this chapter, I imagine incomplete philosopher's stones to allow healing to proceed more quickly than it would unaided, but they can't simply fix any wound or cure any disease the way complete stones can.
This chapter goes into a little more detail on torcs, revealing that they combine blood magic and alchemy in order to function and that the torcs worn by the royal family are a step above the ones worn by the City Guard; a member of the City Guard couldn't simply murder a royal the way they theoretically could murder anyone else.
As always, thanks for reading! I'd love to know what you thought.