Bogo squeezed one thick finger in the narrow gap between his torc and his neck and grimaced, watching his reflection in the mirror do the same. The platinum torc he was wearing, a symbol of his new-found position as a member of the high nobility, just didn't seem to fit as comfortably as his old golden one. Maybe it was that it was lighter; after so many years with his old torc's familiar weight around his neck it didn't feel right to be so unburdened. Even his old gold and obsidian rank insignias, with their constellations of five stars that marked him as a captain general, were gone, replaced with identical insignia of platinum and ruby. Bogo didn't know how long he would wear the new insignias before even those were gone; how long he had to train his replacement was entirely at the queen's discretion. What he would keep, even after his retirement, was the change to his torc that made him the most uncomfortable; for the first time in his life he had a sigil, marking the new noble house the queen had created for him.
Bogo grunted as he pulled his finger away from his neck, doing his best to ignore the new ornament, a platinum disc engraved with a blocky image of a buffalo's head with opalescent inserts for the eyes and horns. Perhaps it was supposed to be him, but he certainly didn't see the resemblance; he'd have to ask his wife what she thought. What Maria would think of the story he would tell, from the attempts on the princess's life to his forced retirement and elevation to nobility, was something he couldn't even guess at. It would, however, likely be a few hours before he had the opportunity to find out, considering the task before him, and Bogo set his thoughts of his wife aside.
He took one last glance in the mirror and pulled down on his uniform top—that, at least, was the same as it had ever been—to smooth it before turning away to leave the palace's infirmary. He still had a bit of an ache in his head, somewhere behind his eyes, but the alchemy-infused bandages had been removed and the lump on his head from Jamie's attack was almost entirely gone. Bogo had dozed off again after the queen had left him, and the hour or so extra that he had slept still hadn't been enough to refresh him. It had been an extremely long day, and Bogo once again had to push aside thoughts of Maria—as the unfamiliar sigil jostled against his throat he had wondered again what she would think—as he set off once again for Oztoyehuatl's Jail. The soldiers who had brought in the pair of blood magicians he was determined to question had been possessed of enough foresight, at least, to know not to bring them directly to the palace. Jorge de Cuvier and Jamie had both shown just how dangerous a quauhxicalli user could be, and the thought made Bogo come to a stop as he approached the grand exit of the palace.
Jamie had been in the custody of Cencerro's personal soldiers when he had made his escape. Both of the sheep had been killed, but was it really such a stretch to imagine that Cencerro would sacrifice two of her own mammals? If she had deliberately planned to release Jamie, though, what had her plan been? Had it really been as simple as making another attempt at killing the princess, or had there been another goal? She could have been ensuring that no one would be able to question Jamie, but if that had been the case it would have been far better to have him die in custody. As things stood, all it did was call Cencerro's loyalties into question. It was always possible, though, that someone else was simply trying to throw suspicion upon Cencerro.
Bogo repressed a sigh, and realized that the two guards on either side of the door had been waiting, with no small amount of awkward fidgeting, for him to either make it clear he intended on going through the door or to turn and go down one of the hallways that led off the enormous entrance hall. He strode forward as purposefully as he could, and the relief in the guards' eyes was palpable as they snapped crisply into action and opened the doors for him. Bogo knew he would have to be more careful; it wasn't just the citizens of Zootopia who needed to see a strong front from their leadership. The City Guard, for however much longer they were his to command, deserved nothing less than his best effort, and Bogo nodded at the guards as he passed them.
From the main entrance, it was a short walk to a carriage waiting for him, and in a matter of minutes he was on his way to the jail. Although the ride was relatively short, Bogo had not left the palace unprepared; in addition to leaving him his new torc, the queen had also saw fit to have the latest reports taken from his office and dropped off in the infirmary. There still hadn't been any word back from Phoenix, which was to be expected, but the mammals of the City Guard had successfully found and brought in the weasel and the bear that Alfonso had named as possible candidates for creating the quauhxicalli that Jorge de Cuvier—and, Bogo supposed, Jamie—had used.
What had been added to the files for the two blood magicians wasn't of much interest; Bogo's eyes slid quickly over and past the information, not seeing anything that jumped out at him compared to what the first hasty reports had described. Of far more interest to him was the report that had been written by the court's own blood magician. Unlike the court's alchemist, who seemed to delight in attending every possible court function he could, the court's blood magician tended to keep to herself. Considering the headaches Tomas had caused him, Bogo didn't mind Rosa's less social attitude at all, and it wasn't as though the royal family had many occasions to call on her services. Still, it was a morbid sort of coincidence that Rosa was a cheetah and her report—once Bogo had plowed his way through the dense technical parts he didn't understand—agreed with Alfonso's assessment. The quauhxicalli Cuvier used had, in Rosa's opinion, been created from the life of a cheetah, and the three pages of dense justifications for how she had reached that conclusion were entirely beside the point.
For the first time since he had boarded the carriage, Bogo looked up and out one of the windows at the city. He had passed the grand estates of the oldest and most powerful nobles a while back, and the street the carriage was rattling down was a perfect example of Zootopia's upper middle class. The most prosperous merchants and the highest-paid professionals lived in houses and apartments that approached, but never dared to match or exceed, the grandeur of what the nobles lived in. They were, to Bogo's eye, gaudy monstrosities more concerned with showing off how wealthy the inhabitants were rather than anything else; there was no other way to explain the eyesore of a giant stepped pyramid, so completely covered in elaborately engraved silver that it burned red in the rising sun, that was considered the most exclusive apartment building in all of the Inner Baronies for anyone without a noble title. It was one of the safest parts of Zootopia; even crimes like pick-pocketing were incredibly rare, and if a cheetah had gone missing from one of the lofty buildings the City Guard would have known right away.
There were other neighborhoods, though, where the City Guard would never be contacted about a missing mammal. Neighborhoods where there were some mammals—not many, but some—who had managed to make it to adulthood without ever getting a torc. Neighborhoods like the one Bogo had grown up in. He realized he had been touching his torc, and the cold reality of the smooth platinum made his youth seem almost impossible, like a bad dream, and he relaxed his grip. Rosa's report had theorized that the cheetah used to make the quauhxicalli had come from Phoenix, but it occurred to Bogo that it wasn't the only option. There were some neighborhoods, near the border between the Inner Baronies and the Middle Baronies where the buildings and the Wall blotted out the sky, where a young cheetah might slip through the cracks of the being assigned a torc as a cub. It was a crime not to have one, of course, but the city was too large to enforce it on every single mammal, and if a blood magician needed a sacrifice a mammal no one would miss it seemed the perfect choice.
Bogo's frown turned thoughtful as he considered the idea. In contrast to the dense jargon that made up most of Rosa's report, she had been rather straightforward on one point. In her mind, it had taken an extremely skilled blood magician to make the quauhxicalli, and she had claimed that it would take her at least a week if she had been the one to manufacture it. She had, however, conceded the possibility that the blood magician who had actually done so might have been able to do so more quickly. Bogo thought that he would have to make a point of talking to Rosa when he got back to the palace; in that little self-contained world it was incredibly rare for someone to so blandly suggest that they could be responsible for even a trivial misdeed, let alone a monstrous crime. He doubted that Rosa would have any reason to actually help either Jorge de Cuvier or Jamie, but Jamie had proven that his judgement wasn't perfect.
Bogo had just finished writing himself a note to have the City Guard prod more deeply into Rosa's affairs than they already had when the carriage came to a stop in front of Oztoyehuatl's Jail. It looked much the same as it had on his last visit, or on any of his previous ones; Bogo had long since lost count of how many times he had visited the jail. The security was as good as ever, and soon Bogo found himself in front of the first suspect he wanted to talk to.
The weasel's cell didn't have quite the same setup as Alfonso's, as the weasel was much larger, but it was close enough. The walls were thick and made of diamond, the only openings far too small for the prisoner to get so much as a claw through, let alone his entire body. Outside the ring of the alchemical array that prevented the use of alchemy within the cell more than a dozen alchemical torches blazed, completely banishing any shadows and throwing the pitiful prisoner into sharp focus.
The weasel, sitting on a cot at the center of the cell, still wore obnoxious finery of the sort that made him look like he was clumsily imitating a noble, but his torc had been replaced with one of lead that marked him as a prisoner. This, Bogo couldn't help but note, seemed particularly concerning to the weasel; he jerked one paw away from it as Bogo entered and turned to look at him. The weasel was long and lean, with brown fur that stuck out in all directions, and his eyes were large and fearful as he took Bogo in.
In response, Bogo simply folded his arms across his chest and silently took stock of the prisoner through the diamond wall that separated them. One of the advantages of his size was that it took very little effort to be intimidating; as he knew would happen the weasel was the first to talk. "How can I help the City Guard?" the weasel asked at last in a voice that was more of a whine, and then after his eyes flickered to Bogo's neck, he hastily stood, bowed, and added, "Milord?"
Bogo had to resist grimacing at the use of the title; he wasn't sure he would ever get used to mammals calling him "lord" but he couldn't resist the opportunity the weasel had given him. Immediately before going to the weasel's cell, Bogo had stopped at the guard station long enough to grab the torc the weasel had been wearing when he had been brought in. The torc was made out of bronze but was so covered in platinum beads that almost none of the metal was visible, and Bogo wordlessly held it out and dropped it. Once the jangling thud of the torc hitting the cold stones outside the cell had faded into a silence that had to be increasingly uncomfortable for the weasel, Bogo leaned forward slightly and spoke. "I hear you're a lord too. Duke, was it?" he said.
The weasel's laugh was satisfyingly nervous, and Bogo couldn't help but notice his eyes darting about the room looking for an exit that didn't exist. "Just a little nickname, milord. I'm the Duke of Quauhxicallis, you see, that's what customers call me, but your lordship can call me—"
"I know your name," Bogo interrupted, "I know a lot about you, Wilfrido. You've had run ins with the City Guard before."
Wilfrido chuckled, and the nervous edge to his laughter was more pronounced. "Those were all misunderstandings, milord," he said, spreading his arms out and favoring Bogo with a smile that revealed a number of teeth gaudily set with gems, "My quauhxicallis are of the finest quality."
"You've been arrested before for quauhxicallis that didn't match their labels," Bogo replied, doing his best to sound bored and uninterested as he opened the file he had on Wilfrido and flipped through it, "Nearly a year in jail for that. We can add more time, of course."
It was all for show, of course—without his glasses on, the text was too small for him to read at arm's length—but it had the desired effect. Wilfrido seemed to blanch beneath his fur, his pupils constricting to pinpricks. "That was—" Wilfrido began, his voice suddenly shrill and trembling; when he started over he sounded somewhat more normal.
"My old business partner was a crook, milord, I won't deny that," he said, "But I had no idea he was doing it, I swear by all the gods. I'm honest and straight as an arrow now. If you can't take my word, ask my guild representative. I've been in good standing for years now."
Wilfrido was gesticulating a bit wildly as he spoke, hitting his narrow chest for emphasis, and his breathing was shallow and rapid. In response, Bogo simply grunted as dismissively as he could. He thought he had Wilfrido exactly where he wanted him, but he knew he'd have to be careful about how he applied pressure to him. Too little and the weasel would regain his footing, and too much and the weasel might make things up wildly in an attempt to please him. "You've got some skill with making quauhxicallis, then?" Bogo asked, and he thought the weasel's response would indicate perfectly how well he was being pressured.
Wilfrido nodded vigorously, his head bobbling as though it was about to come off. "Oh, yes, milord, yes," and for a brief instant Bogo felt a stab of disappointment, thinking he had overdone it.
However, when Wilfrido continued, Bogo had to repress a smile. "I'm not the best, of course, never did master the complicated ones, but there's something to be said for the simple ones, isn't there?" Wilfrido said, his words seeming to gain confidence as he kept speaking, "I can do those faster and cheaper than anyone else, milord."
Bogo frowned and nodded as thoughtfully as he could. He got the sense that Wilfrido was being honest—or at least, as honest as a charlatan could be—and it was time to push for what he really wanted. "So you wouldn't know how to create a quauhxicalli that would take a life to make?" Bogo asked, trying to make the question sound as bland as possible.
The effect on Wilfrido was immediate. He stumbled, nearly falling backwards over his cot. "A life?" he repeated, his voice even shriller than it had been the first time Bogo had challenged him, "No one could do that!"
"Someone did," Bogo replied evenly.
The horror on Wilfrido's face was so obvious that Bogo doubted that it could be an act. He didn't think that the weasel had the skill to make such a quauhxicalli himself, but that didn't mean that he had no involvement. Whether the cheetah that had been sacrificed had come from Phoenix or from one of the worst neighborhoods of the Inner or Middle Baronies, the blood magician who had made the sacrifice might have needed help. "Someone murdered a cheetah to make a quauhxicalli," Bogo continued, his eyes never leaving Wilfrido's, "Do you know anything about that?"
The weasel seemed to hesitate a moment. "Nothing, milord," he said at last, and Bogo pushed down his interest, keeping his face as stoic as possible.
Wilfrido was, he was almost positive, lying. He knew something, perhaps something that he hadn't realized was important until Bogo had started asking questions. Perhaps the weasel had simply overheard something; no matter what Wilfrido said about being an honest business mammal Bogo didn't buy it. "Very well," Bogo said, "If you can't help me find a blood magician who could do that, I'm afraid we'll have to hold you here until we find the culprit."
"You can't do that!" Wilfrido protested, and Bogo took a single step forward, allowing his anger and frustration with the case to bubble to the surface until his face.
"Are you trying to tell the captain general of the City Guard what he can and cannot do?" Bogo asked, putting as much menace into his voice as possible.
Wilfrido shook his head, and Bogo felt a thin smile to cross his face. "I'll be back in ten minutes or so," Bogo said, "That should give you some time to think."
Without giving Wilfrido so much as the opportunity to react, Bogo turned around and left to visit the next suspect.
Author's Notes:
In the real Spanish army, the rank insignia for a captain general is five four-pointed stars arranged in a diamond, crossed by a pair of sabres, and with a crown above them. Judy's rank insignia were previously mentioned to be obsidian and gold, as were Bogo's prior to his elevation to the ranks of nobility.
A sigil is a somewhat archaic word for a seal, and I thought it made sense that a new noble house would accordingly require a symbol.
Since torcs are, naturally, something that needs to be put onto a mammal after they're born, I figured it made sense that this would be an actual law in the city, and it'd be a crime not to have one. Similarly, I think it only follows that, for some portion of the population, they would manage to avoid getting a torc.
The court blood magician has been mentioned a few times in previous chapters, but this is the first one to establish her name and species. In chapter 10, Bogo didn't have her report on Jorge de Cuvier's quauhxicalli yet, which in her opinion aligns with Alfonso's theory from chapter 8.
Wilfrido is this story's version of Duke Weaselton, and I found it a lot of fun to consider how Bogo would interrogate him given the opportunity.
As always, thanks for reading! I'd love to know what you thought if you're so inclined to leave a comment.