Cencerro was all but skipping up the stairs that led to the royal suites in a manner more befitting a lamb than one of the queen's chief advisers, but as Bogo followed along behind her simply trudging up the interminable staircase was the best that he could manage. Why hadn't he seen Jamie's betrayal coming? The question consumed him, and the worst part was that as they made their way up floor after luxurious floor an answer came to him.
It had been weeks, maybe months, since he had really had any sort of conversation with Jamie. It had started off reasonably enough; after Jamie had taken up his post in the palace Bogo hadn't wanted to give the impression of favoritism, and he had kept a conscious and deliberate distance. But it wasn't just the distance he had kept from the jaguar that had cost him the opportunity to notice any sign that he had harbored a murderous loathing for the princess. It was... Bogo prevented himself from heaving a sigh, no matter how unlikely it was that Cencerro would notice with how distracted she seemed by her victory. It was as though he simply hadn't given the jaguar any thought for weeks.
Bogo could have blamed the endless distractions of his job, from overseeing the security on yet another round of renovations to the palace and its grounds to Alfonso's arrest (which at the time had been a welcome distraction from the day-to-day dealings of the palace), but the simple truth was that he should have done more. When the prince consort had died, he had spent more time than was necessary to fulfill the obligations of his job with the grieving family, and that had included Jamie. He had been proud of the young jaguar when he had joined the academy, and even more so when he had graduated at the top of his class. Bogo had followed each and every one of Jamie's career milestones, always impressed by his skill and devotion to duty. Looking back on it now, though, what had he missed? Had the jaguar already been plotting to murder the princess years ago when he had joined the City Guard? Or had it come later? Surely the tipping point must have been at or before he had been posted to the palace, but how much time and effort had Jamie put into his plan?
Bogo knew he could have noticed it, if only he had been paying closer attention. If only he had still been in his prime. When he had been younger he had prided himself on his instinct for trouble; by the time he had made lieutenant he had earned a reputation for spotting criminals before they acted. But those days of walking the streets felt as though they had been eons ago, and he felt as though the focus and attention he had once had were long-since dulled and blunted. He had learned to manage mammals and paperwork, even to extinguish the worst of the temper that had nearly gotten him kicked out of the academy, but he had lost something in the process. Despite himself, Bogo's lips twitched in the ghost of a smile, remembering the time he had challenged a fellow cadet—Raoul Llanuras, the largest and meanest elephant he had ever met—to a fistfight over some slight he couldn't recall. The fight had lasted all of three seconds, not that he could—Bogo shook his head slightly, banishing the memory.
His attention was the other problem, the one he hadn't admitted to anyone. Maybe he was just growing old and sentimental the way his own grandmother had, and not feeble and senile the way his grandfather had, but he couldn't deny to himself that his focus wasn't what it had once been. Jamie had been important to him, once, not quite like a son but perhaps like a nephew, and he had let their relationship simply drift away like a balloon on a windy day. And for what? Lengthy files and reports no one would read, meetings that no one would remember, and security decisions that had done nothing to keep the princess safe. He had failed, and honor demanded that he submit himself to whatever punishment the queen saw fit to order.
It was on that gloomy thought that, for the second time that day, Bogo found himself in front of the massive gilded doors to the royal apartments. As though the gods themselves had taken an interest in making his day as bad as possible, the two mammals Bogo wanted to see least—Cerdo and Corazón—were already there, apparently awkwardly waiting. To Bogo's eye, Cerdo looked mildly interested, the pig's thick brow wrinkled slightly, but Corazón looked as though he was bursting with nervous energy in a way unlike anything Bogo had ever seen him show. The lion's seemingly perpetual charming expression was completely gone, a frown tugging at his lips as he paced back and forth. "Captain General, Lady Cencerro," Corazón said, and Bogo thought he even heard a slightly anxious note in his voice, "What's going on?"
"My soldiers caught the mammal behind the awful attack on the princess," Cencerro said before Bogo could even think of how he would have answered the question, and her voice was very nearly sweet as syrup.
When Corazón was surprised, Bogo thought, he didn't look particularly charming or powerful; the lion's shock was plainly evident, his chin suddenly seeming weak. "You've caught?" he began, his voice uncertainly turning it into a question, but Cerdo quickly interrupted.
"Then I think congratulations are in order," Cerdo beamed; the pig had apparently recovered from his own surprise much more quickly than Corazón, and true to his words he extended one hoof to Cencerro to shake.
"I'm sure the queen will be quite pleased," Cerdo continued, his generous gut wobbling as he firmly shook Cencerro's hoof, "Who was it?"
"I'll explain everything to the queen," Cencerro said, "I'm sure she won't mind either of you being there too."
Bogo thought he caught a flicker of annoyance run across Corazón's face; the lion wasn't stupid and was clearly perfectly aware that he was being patronized. Cencerro was clearly enjoying every minute of her triumph, and Bogo suspected that she even savored the sharp nod she gave the guards outside the door. The two guards went through the ritual of announcing the visitors, and the great golden doors swung open noiselessly on their massive hinges. It was all perfectly mundane, a ritual that Bogo had been through countless times, which made what happened next have the casual impossibility of a nightmare.
The guard on the left of the door, a tall black wolf, suddenly clutched at his throat with a horrible gurgling cough, his fingers sliding around the elaborately ornamented hilt of a dagger that had simply appeared there. Bogo's reaction was automatic, one hoof going for the macuahuitl at his waist, but before his fingers had even closed around the hilt the guard on the right side of the door cried out as well as she collapsed.
It even felt like a nightmare as Bogo spun around, time seeming to stretch out even more than it had when he had taken the colibri quauhxicalli. His arm and weapon seemed impossibly slow and heavy, and Bogo expected to feel a thrown knife in his neck before he even had a chance to see who had killed the guards. There was only one mammal it could be, though, and when Bogo completed his turn, his macuahuitl drawn, he saw he was right.
Jamie was a terrible sight to behold as he raced up the stairs with the same impossible speed as Jorge de Cuvier, moving so fast that Bogo more caught impressions of his appearance than really saw him. The jaguar's tawny fur was stained and clumped with blood that didn't look to be his own. His uniform was torn in places, his polished breastplate with its delicate engravings and his feathered bracelets gone, but the tendons of his arms and neck bulged grotesquely as if stretched by some unseen force. His lips were peeled back from his muzzle in a horrible grimace, his fangs fully visible, and there was nothing but hate visible in his eyes. His torc, the only thing that allowed him to kill guards with impunity, glittered in the light where it wasn't dull and splattered with red droplets.
Bogo was dimly aware of the queen's three advisors reacting, far too slowly, to the mammal who had appeared behind them, none of them having even turned around by the time Jamie had closed nearly twenty feet in the blink of an eye. The knives he had thrown seemed to have been the only weapons Jamie had brought with him, but his legs were a blur as he lunged at Bogo, claws outstretched and face twisted with rage, and—
Bogo woke up and had to repress a groan. When he had still been a cadet, and still able to drink octli, he had drank half-a-dozen bottles with the same elephant who had nearly re-arranged his face the night after their fight. After that night his head had felt like it was full of throbbing, burning needles, a torture he wouldn't have wished or ordered on his worst enemy, and the way he felt as he woke up was nearly as bad. It was odd, he mused, how his thoughts sometimes came full circle in ways he would have never expected. It had been decades since he and Raoul had made up after that one-sided fistfight and— Bogo shook his head and immediately regretted it.
His head suddenly felt as though all of those burning needles were being mercilessly hammered in, and Bogo couldn't help but take in a sharp breath. He looked around, trying to find something to take his mind off the pain, and had a moment's disorientation before realizing he was in the palace's infirmary. It wasn't a part of the palace he spent much time in; the queen and princess received any treatment they needed in the royal suites, and Bogo simply hadn't injured himself very often while on palace duty. Mercifully, however, the normally bright alchemical torches had been shrouded to dim their light, and the cavernous space was full of pooling shadows. As the infirmary had been built for the servants and officers of the palace rather than for the royalty, its layout lacked virtually all of the grandeur that most of the palace had, with walls of plain white stone and a vaulted ceiling without any kind of ornamentation. Even the beds, such as the one he was in, were nothing special, just plain iron frames with stiff mattresses.
It hurt even to move his eyes, but Bogo looked around slowly. He seemed to have the entire infirmary to himself; although there was a metal framework hanging from the ceiling so that curtains could be drawn around any of the beds, which varied dramatically in size to accommodate any species, none of the other beds seemed to be occupied and there weren't any other mammals he could see. Bogo frowned, and felt something stiff on his face wrinkle.
Slowly, trying to do his best to keep his head still, he reached up to touch his face with one hoof, feeling what could only be bandages covering just about the entire lower half of his face, tingling slightly with the healing power of alchemy. He remembered Jamie attacking him, but—"You had a concussion," the queen said, and in his surprise Bogo sat up and then just about keeled over again from the explosion of pain.
Trying not to wince, Bogo turned his head slowly and saw that the queen had been sitting at the head of his bed, outside his line of sight. "Your majesty," he said.
His jaw felt incredibly stiff and his voice wasn't much more than a weak croak. "The princess?" he asked, "Is she—"
"Don't speak," Queen Lana commanded, her voice briefly imperious before it fell to a more conversational tone.
"You saved my daughter," she said, and after a slight pause added, "Again."
She fell silent and just as Bogo was beginning to debate whether he should risk asking a question when she continued. "The traitor escaped," she said, "Bleeding everywhere, the guards said. Do you remember striking him?"
Bogo shook his head from side to side as slowly as he could. Everything that had happened after Jamie had lunged at him with the same terrifying speed that Jorge de Cuvier had possessed simply wasn't there, which he knew was not uncommon for concussions. He still didn't remember any of his decades-ago fight with Raoul, although that might have been a mercy. Bogo was overcome again with that peculiar sensation of his memory looping back on itself, but he managed to avoid the temptation to try shaking his head clear. He could remember drawing his macuahuitl, and even if he couldn't remember using it he had seen what it could do to a mammal when he put all of his strength behind a swing. Jamie might already have bled out—but he might not have. The quauhxicalli that Jorge de Cuvier had used was enough proof that Jamie had outside help, and it seemed unfortunately plausible that there might still be a traitor in the palace.
The queen sighed, interrupting his thoughts. "You're the only one who managed to hit him. He killed six guards on his way to the royal apartments before they could even act," she said, and no matter how she tried to hide it Bogo could see her despair.
Six families had just senselessly lost a son or a daughter, and for some of those families it'd be a wife or a husband, a mother or a father. Six guards had, by the cold chance of their duty rosters, lost their lives, and Bogo hadn't even managed to stop the mammal responsible. He would have his own grief for his lost soldiers, but there was still a job to do and Bogo pushed the emotion aside. "Advisors?" he asked, and the queen seemed to understand the intent behind his question.
"Unharmed, for all the good they did," she said, "I would have expected more out of Corazón, at least."
The queen stood up and Bogo saw, but was not surprised, that she was holding his sabre. She had to carry it with both hooves, it was so large for her, but it was unmistakably his; unlike the officers who had come from the ranks of nobility, Bogo hadn't been able to afford an elaborately ornamented sword when he made the rank of captain. Instead, he had gotten a bluntly functional and unadorned blade, which he had continued to carry even after the point where he could have afforded a nicer-looking sword. On the rare occasions that he thought about it at all, Bogo liked what it told other mammals to see the Captain General of the City Guard carry a sabre that was only a weapon and not an ornament.
He had expected to be stripped of his rank and his position in the royal apartments, his sabre taken away from him at the same time as his torc and its emblems, but he supposed that it was a small act of kindness on the queen's part to wait until he was awake to do so. "You've put me in an awkward spot, Bogo," she said, and he couldn't help but notice that she hadn't used his rank, "The mammal who very nearly managed to arrange the murder of my daughter was your protégé. A mammal who clearly had some additional help, possibly within the palace itself. And you, as the Captain General of my City Guard, completely failed to see either plot coming. Or perhaps you chose not to see either plot. And when the mastermind was caught, based on the work of one of my advisors, he somehow managed to make his way back toward the princess, killing every member of my guard he came across. Until he came across you, who managed to drive him off despite not using a quauhxicalli yourself. "
The queen wasn't yelling, but her voice was all but shaking with anger, her words cold and precise. Bogo opened his mouth to speak, but the queen, somewhat clumsily, pointed his own sword at him and he fell silent. "You understand, I'm sure, that I've been advised to strip you of your rank and throw you in your own dungeons for questioning. If nothing else, I have to appoint someone more suitable to the rank of Captain General. Lady Cencerro even suggested her cousin Diego might make an appropriate candidate, considering his experience managing Phoenix."
If the queen did replace him with Diego Cencerro, there were far worse candidates she could have chosen; although Bogo had not had any input in the sheep's posting as the commander of the Phoenix settlement's branch of the City Guard, the lieutenant commander was at the very least competent if not particularly outstanding in any way. "I do owe her my favor for uncovering a plot you could not, after all. Therefore..."
Although Bogo's bed was low to the ground, the queen was still so short that she had to stretch to reach out with Bogo's sabre and tap him on either shoulder. "I name you Lord Bogo and give you command of the lands the traitor held."
For a moment, Bogo couldn't do anything but look at the queen in dumbfounded amazement at what she had just done. She had just made him a member of the nobility, something he hadn't expected at all, although it did explain in retrospect why she didn't have any guards at her side. He couldn't understand why she had done it until she gave a delicate little laugh, apparently amused at his puzzlement. "You'll be retiring from your post as Captain General once your replacement is trained and ready to take over, but I think you'll be quite busy with your new duties."
"Your majesty?" Bogo managed, his surprise making even his croak of a voice almost completely flat with shock.
"I'm allowed to choose any member of the nobility to be a part of my council. Three is traditional, but four is not unheard of," she said, and instantly Bogo realized what she had done.
She had forced him out without making him go anywhere, making a political play that let her punish him for his failures without really punishing him at all. It was a remarkable display of trust in his abilities despite his failures, although the queen laid it all out as dispassionately as though she had been discussing the weather. "I'll expect you to see your investigation through, Lord Bogo."
"Yes, your majesty," Bogo replied.
"I'm pleased to hear you understand this opportunity, Lord Bogo," she said, and the implication of what would happen if he failed again didn't need to be said for him to understand, "Oh, and one more thing. While you were indisposed, the princess took it upon herself to speak to the reporters. That won't happen again either, will it?"
"No, your majesty," Bogo replied, and the queen inclined her head slightly.
"Now rest up, I hear you have some blood magicians to interrogate," she said, and with that she left his sabre at his side and walked out of the infirmary without another word.
Once she was gone, Bogo allowed his head to gently fall back against his pillow; if anything the throbbing pain was even worse now that he knew what he was in for. He had already failed twice, but Bogo vowed there wouldn't be a third time.
Author's Notes:
As this is the last chapter that I'll post in 2018, I wanted to take some time to reflect on some things before getting to the usual chapter-specific stuff. First and foremost, I want to link to an amazing gift that I received from TheWyvernsWeaver; he drew an incredible piece of cover art for my first story, "Black and White, Red and Blue." It's an incredible honor for me, and the care, skill, and effort that were put into it is truly remarkable!
Go check it out over on DeviantArt; unfortunately I can't link it here.
That's a story that I started in 2016, and as I write this now, nearly two years have passed since it ended. A lot of things have changed in that time. I like to think that I've gotten better as a writer since my first work, and certainly the fandom isn't as active as it was when that story started. But the fandom, and the incredible people in it, is still active. Even almost three years after the movie came out, there are still people writing stories and drawing art and otherwise engaging creatively with the property. That's remarkable to see, and I hope that you find my stories to be a worthy contribution to the body of incredible fan content that's come out.
As for me, I have no intentions of stopping any time soon. I simply have too many stories left that I want to tell, and I am honored to have an audience for them. Thank you so much for reading and for all of the comments, the kudos, the favorites, and the follows! Since the last chapter this story hit the milestones of 200 kudos on A3O and 100 follows on FF, and that's all because of readers like you. Believe me, the support that I've gotten is incredible and it means so much to me to have people interested in seeing what'll happen next in my work. On a related note, I've also finalized my decision on the next story that I post. Once "Ouroboros" ends, my next work will be a 1960s spy AU, set against the backdrop of the Cold War. I hope that you'll enjoy it once it starts!
As for this story, and this chapter, my notes are below:
Raoul Llanuras, the elephant who apparently easily beat a young Bogo in a fistfight, takes his surname from the Spanish word for plains.
Interestingly enough, when Bogo references his relationship with Jamie drifting away like a balloon, that's something that Europeans and Aztecs independently came up with. Aztecs made what were very possibly the first balloon animals, inflating animal intestines and shaping them into effigies that were then sacrificed to the gods. In order for balloons to float, they need to be filled with a lighter than air gas, which in early floating balloons was hydrogen gas. As the Hindenburg disaster in 1937 clearly showed, however, hydrogen is extremely flammable. Although helium, an incombustible noble gas, had been discovered in 1895, at the time of the Hindenburg disaster the US was essentially the sole source of useful quantities of helium, which was found in natural gas fields.
In chapter 8, Bogo remembered the incident that permanently turned his stomach against being able to drink octli, which happened after he became an officer. I imagine Bogo in his youth wasn't quite the same character he is in his middle age, which this chapter gives some hints about.
I actually received a question after the last chapter from Cimar of Turalis WildeHopps about what would happen if a member of the City Guard went rogue. Although I did provide an answer, I hopefully managed to avoid saying that would spoil this one; torcs can't be changed remotely, meaning that a guard that still has their torc can hurt others as Jamie did.
As always, thanks for reading, and I'd love to hear from you if you're so inclined! I also hope you have a wonderful and happy 2019!