The moment of time between Bogo demanding that the mammal on the other side of the door give their pass phrase and actually hearing it in return felt endless. It was as though time had frozen at a tipping point, between what could be an attack on the queen and what was simply a report of an attack on the princess. When the answer did finally come, it took Bogo a moment to assure himself that it was correct, that under pressure he wasn't about to make a dreadful mistake.

He opened the door, already beginning to bark out orders. "All stop!" he shouted; the carriage was moving, as it had been for the last several hours, at what would have been a brisk walking pace for himself, and the last thing he wanted was to stray too far from the princess's carriage, "Everything stops!"

To their credit, the horses pulling the queen's carriage didn't hesitate so much as a moment, and Bogo had to brace himself against the door frame as the carriage creaked and rattled to a stop. "Get an alchemist and a doctor and have Cerdo seen to," he snapped at one of the guards outside the door, who had managed to stay right by the carriage as it slowed.

"And you," Bogo said, turning to face the more wide-eyed of the pair, "Get more guards for the queen, and then—"

"No," the queen's voice suddenly interrupted him from behind his back.

Bogo turned and faced her; she was standing immediately behind him. "Lord Bogo and I are going to my daughter's carriage now, and you will report on the way."

Bogo could have made any of a number of protests—it was too dangerous for the queen to walk into an unknown situation, the safest place for her was in her own carriage, it still might be a trap—but they all died in his throat as he considered the queen, whose face and voice were both harder than he had ever known her to be. Instead, he jumped out of the carriage, offering the queen one hoof which she accepted in her far daintier one as she scrambled after him.

The guard, a thickly built rhinoceros whose gleaming breastplate could have almost made a dining table for the queen, hadn't spoken again since saying the pass phrase, but the anxiety written across his face was plainly visible. He swallowed hard, and began setting off in the direction of the princess's carriage at a pace so fast that the queen could barely keep up. But keep up she did, her face twisted in concentration as she soaked up the details, ignoring the chaos of the army and the shouts and orders rippling away from her carriage as the full stop came about.

"It was a sheep, Captain General," the rhino began, his voice deep and resonant, "I've never seen anything like it. He was just a blur, he moved so fast, and he cut through the guards like they were nothing. He knocked the carriage over all by himself."

As the rhino spoke, the evidence of the truth of his words began to become apparent. The princess's carriage came into view, and it was indeed on its side. The horses who had been pulling it were scattered about nearby; it didn't look as though any of them had survived. The carriage itself had kicked up a furrow in the alkaline grit of the wastelands, the path it had taken as it tumbled quite obvious. But what made it different from any other carriage accident Bogo had ever seen—and especially in his younger days, he had seen many—was what must have happened afterwards. The bottom of the carriage was almost entirely gone, caved inward from what must have been incredible force. "Then he blew a hole in the carriage somehow," the rhino continued, "He was inside before anyone could do anything."

"And the princess?" the queen asked.

Her words were surprisingly calm, so carefully neutral that there seemed to be almost no emotion in them. The rhino shook his massive head. "No one's gotten close enough to tell, your majesty," he said, "We didn't want to let another assassin have another shot at her."

The queen nodded, and then her pace increased until she was running, all semblance of dignity forgotten. "Isabel!" she shouted, "Isabel!"

She was moving with the intensity unique to a worried parent, but she was still a sheep. Bogo easily caught up to the queen, positioning himself in front of her. "It might be a trap," he said, quietly, trying to prevent anyone else from hearing.

"I don't care," the queen snapped, and Bogo saw the anguish in her eyes.

She had decided that gambling with her daughter's life was worth the risk, and now she was about to find out if she had been right. What would happen if the princess hadn't survived? What would the queen do with herself then?

Mercifully, a voice that was undeniably the princess's called "Mother!"

Princess Isabel staggered into view, appearing in the opening blown through the bottom of the carriage, which had become a wall, immediately before Totchli could put herself in front of the princess. Both of them looked to be quite a mess; one of the princess's arms was in a crude-looking sling and Totchli was visibly splattered with blood that stained her gleaming breastplate. But they, at least, had survived, even if Bogo could see no sign of the fox.

The queen put on another burst of speed, moving remarkably fast for a sheep of her age in a dress, and an instant later had reached the carriage and pulled the princess into a gentle hug, mindful of what must have been a broken arm. Both mother and daughter were crying, each sobbing out words that Bogo couldn't make out. He looked over their heads into the carriage, which was just as shaken about as the mammals inside it.

Broken glass was spread across the wall that had become the floor, and some of the bits of finery had broken off furniture or walls either as the carriage tumbled or when the bottom had been blown in. Chunks of metal from the carriage axles and suspension were embedded in the wall across from the opening. One of the pieces of metal had a curiously melted and stretched look to it, surrounded by an array of what Bogo recognized as alchemical symbols, but Captain Nicholas was crouched over the corpse of a sheep.

Totchli recognized where he was looking and said, in a low voice, "I... killed the attacker, sir. I didn't mean to."

"I'm sure you had no choice, Commandant," Bogo said, as gently as he could.

He would have greatly preferred that the attacker be taken alive; no one could interrogate a dead mammal. And even leaving that aside, killing a mammal was no easy thing. Some of the officers he had gone to the academy with, even some of the meanest and toughest mammals he had ever known, hadn't been able to stay in the City Guard after killing a mammal. Even when everyone agreed that the world was better without the deceased mammal in it, it was a terrible burden for an officer to carry. He wondered if Totchli had it in her to continue, but from the way she squared her shoulders he thought she did. She would regret it, he was sure, and would mourn what she had done, but it wouldn't break her.

"You did very well, saving the princess," Bogo continued, and he felt a warring flicker between pride and shame.

She had acted in the best spirit of an officer of the City Guard, not for the first time, and all that after he had been completely set against Corazón's mad plan to increase the diversity of the City Guard. Perhaps, leaving his own age, failures, and fading focus aside, it was time for someone new to head up the City Guard. Someone who wouldn't be so bound by tradition that they would overlook obvious opportunities. But his successor was a thought for another day, and Bogo pulled his focus back to the present. "What happened?" he asked, doing his best to pay careful attention to Totchli's words.

She laid out how the dead sheep had claimed that something had happened to the queen, and then when asked the pass phrase had flipped the carriage over. She described how, as Nicholas had seen to the princess's broken arm, the sheep had created his own opening, pinning the fox under a piece of metal debris and leaving her to fight him alone. Her voice caught a little when she described how, at Nicholas's warning she had spun around and killed the attacker an instant before he could throw a knife at the princess—and as she spoke, Nicholas looked up sharply, appearing to pay intense focus to her words—and then had done her best to stand watch while waiting for backup.

"What about the sheep?" Bogo asked, turning his attention to Nicholas.

The fox had clearly been rifling through the corpse's pockets, but he simply shook his head. "Nothing on him but weapons and some empty quauhxicalli vials," he said, "Not so much as a colored piece of string on his torc. Looks like he didn't have a spare for whatever he used to get in, but I'd bet it was alchemical."

Bogo frowned, ignoring the rather casual way Nicholas had addressed him. It was the exact same means of attack as the two previous ones on the princess. A mammal using quauhxicallis for incredible speed had headed directly for the princess, apparently planning on reaching her before anyone could react. The dead sheep himself seemed fairly unremarkable; he had a somewhat bulky build and an impressive set of curling horns, but his clothes were simple and he had nothing in the way of ornamentation except his plain torc.

He was, however, a sheep.

Bogo couldn't help but wonder if he had at long last caught the break he had been so desperately searching for. As most of the mammals in Lady Cencerro's home territory were sheep, most of her personal guard was also composed of sheep. He didn't recognize the ram on the floor, but...

"It was Lady Cencerro you were baiting at the time of the attack," the queen said, interrupting his thoughts.

Bogo had been vaguely aware of her finally letting her daughter go and profusely thanking Totchli and Nicholas for keeping her daughter safe, but he had become so lost in his thoughts he hadn't heard her approach. Still, her statement—it hadn't been a question—mirrored his own thoughts. "It was, your majesty," Bogo agreed.

He still didn't know precisely why the sheep would have betrayed her oldest friend, but it wasn't looking good for Lady Cencerro. Her cousin had been behind the attack on Phoenix, and now when the princess had been attacked, it had been in one of the careful windows of opportunity left for her to think she could exploit. "Then I think it's time we have a talk with her," the queen said.

Bogo had previously thought he had heard the queen's voice as hard as it could possibly get. But now he knew he was wrong; there was a wealth of menace and coldness in her words that would have made any smart mammal yield to her. "As you command, your majesty," Bogo said, bowing his head.

They hadn't left the wreckage of the princess's carriage immediately, of course. The queen had insisted on having not just the princess's arm seen to, but also the injuries of Totchli and Nicholas. Of the two, the rabbit was in worse shape; she had a horrible bloody lump on the back of her head with the possibility of a mild concussion, while the fox had nothing worse than half a dozen shallow cuts to his face and about twenty tiny shards of glass embedded in his arms and legs. Neither one of the princess's guards nor the princess herself had anything in the way of life-threatening injuries, but Bogo could understand both the queen's concern for her own daughter and to seeing after the mammals who had saved her.

Bogo hadn't minded, either; it gave him the chance to marshal his thoughts as the injured mammals were seen to and transferred to the queen's carriage. Bogo had ordered the army to begin moving again; Phoenix was drawing ever nearer at the same brisk pace it had moved before the attack. Cerdo, Bogo learned while he waited, would survive his poisoning; he had received medical treatment quickly enough, although the pig was still too feeble to rise from his bed. His bed in a carriage that was under guard; even with so promising a lead on Cencerro Bogo wasn't going to assume that she had worked alone or that she might not lash out at her fellow council members if she was only given the chance to. When the guard who had come from Cerdo's carriage finished his update, Bogo ordered her to check on the condition of Cencerro before he and the queen visited her; the last thing he wanted was yet another deadly surprise.

When the report came back as all clear, Bogo followed after as he and the queen were brought to the carriage Cencerro had been locked in alone. It was, truth be told, rather dismal compared to either of the royal carriages or Cencerro's own carriage; Bogo hadn't trusted any of the council members enough to put them under effective house arrest in their own carriages. Perhaps it was paranoia, but he hated the idea that they might have something hidden away that he wouldn't know about and couldn't anticipate. Instead, supplies had been re-arranged to make enough space to imprison each of them in individual carriages that had been meant for the heaviest of the City Guard's supplies. It had meant that some of the guardsmammals marching to keep pace had to carry supplies themselves, but if anyone had complained about the burden no one had dared to do so within his earshot.

The nature of the carriage Cencerro had been placed into meant that it had the somewhat incongruous sweet smell of molasses and rough but sturdily built walls of thick wooden boards reinforced with metal strips. Inside, Alba Cencerro looked pathetically small, the space meant for transporting a significant number of barrels much too large for a lone sheep. Cencerro herself was simply sitting in one corner of the carriage, her arms folded around her knees, and when she looked at Bogo and the queen upon their entrance there was no defiance or confusion in her eyes.

Only resignation.

"Lady Cencerro," Bogo began, but the sheep interrupted him before he could get any further.

"I did it," she said, her resignation just as evident in her voice as it had been in her eyes, "That's what you want, isn't it? A confession? There you have it. I did it. I tried to have the princess killed."

Bogo blinked in surprise; he hadn't expected something so easy. Emotional manipulation from the sheep as she tried to make him feel guilty for suspecting her seemed more likely. Even pleading her innocence would have fit the Cencerro that he knew. But there was none of that on display, and it stunned him into motionlessness. The queen, however, was not so affected, and before Bogo could do so much as lift a hoof to stop her she had run up to Cencerro and slapped her across the face with enough force to knock the ewe's head to the side. "How could you, Alba?" the queen spat, rage evident in her voice, "How could you?"

Bogo was thankful that he had made sure that Cencerro didn't have anything on her that could have been used as a weapon, but he wasn't going to rely on the guards having caught everything. He pulled Cencerro away from the queen, placing himself between the two sheep. "She might be a danger to you, your majesty," he said, as firmly and yet politely as he could manage.

The queen's nostrils flared and he could see her entire body tremble with suppressed anger, but at last she nodded. "As you say, Lord Bogo," she managed at last.

"I did it for power," Cencerro continued blandly, apparently answering the queen's furious questioning, "I thought if the princess died, you'd name me your heir and my family would take over following your death."

For the first time, Cencerro looked up to address the queen directly, and Bogo didn't like the look in her eyes. It was something he hadn't seen very often, even after many years as a beat officer, but it was always a sign of trouble. It was the look of a mammal who had been touched by madness, cursed by the gods for whatever reason; it was a fanatical pureness that bordered on ecstasy. "I never would have hurt you, your majesty," Cencerro said, a ghastly smile touching her face, "You mean—"

"And killing my daughter wouldn't?" the queen interrupted, her incredulity obvious, "You could really try killing my daughter and think it wouldn't hurt me?"

Cencerro paused, but that horrible smile didn't leave her face. "It would have been better for the kingdom, if only Diego and I had succeeded. You've always wanted what's best for the kingdom, and so have I. We just disagreed on the means."

Bogo couldn't quite believe what he was hearing. "Why are you confessing now?" he asked.

Cencerro shrugged expansively. "It's over, isn't it? If my last attempt had succeeded, I could have salvaged everything. Pinned the blame on Corazón, or maybe Cerdo. But you'll find the code book among my belongings if you haven't already. Alfonso will give me up, I'm sure, and you probably have a message on the way to that effect. There's nothing I can do now."

The fatalism evident in her words fit Cencerro as poorly as her turn toward fanatical madness. But the ewe continued, looking Bogo dead in the eye. "That llama and Jaime were both working for me. I betrayed both of them, of course—did you really think it was a coincidence that my mammals arrested Jaime? Or that he somehow got free? He hated half-breed freaks like the princess, and I used that. I convinced him it'd be better for a sheep—a pure sheep—to lead the kingdom again, and he was only too happy to help. Can you believe I got him to be willing to sacrifice his life for it?"

Cencerro laughed, and that creeping madness was in her eyes again. The sound was high-pitched and terrible, sending a deep quiver of unease into Bogo's gut. She had played him for a fool, dancing circles around him and his investigation. He had suspected her, of course, but he hadn't seen the truth of what she was, hadn't gotten to the bottom of the matter. Would someone else have done a better job? Someone who wasn't getting old and prone to distraction might have been able to see something he had been blind to.

"I can sign a confession, if you'd like," Cencerro continued, "Put this matter to rest."

"What about Phoenix?" Bogo asked, "What happened there?"

His mind was still reeling from how badly he had failed to spot something that should have been obvious—how had Cencerro fooled him so badly?—but if his army was marching into a trap he wanted to know sooner rather than later.

"Nothing more than mercenaries," Cencerro said, "It'll be abandoned by the time we get there. It was Diego's condition for helping."

"And you acted alone?" the queen asked, her voice calmer, but still with rage simmering in it.

"Myself and Diego and Jaime," Cencerro replied, "Everyone else was only brought in for exactly what we needed. Too large a conspiracy and someone will talk."

There was a long silence, Bogo and the queen both considering Cencerro's words. "I'll want that confession," Bogo said, "Every detail, every mammal you talked to as part of your plan."

Cencerro nodded, apparently unperturbed. "How did you hide this so long, Alba?" the queen asked, and despite her previous anger Bogo thought that there was genuine disappointment in her voice.

"You never noticed how I always resented you," Cencerro said, "Why would you notice anything else?"

Bogo and the queen had left Cencerro with a thick stack of paper, a pen, and a guard given strict instructions to watch over the ewe and make sure she didn't try to escape or kill herself as she wrote out her confession. They had reentered the royal carriage, now shared with the princess and her two guards she seemed to have become somewhat attached to. "We'll still investigate Phoenix, of course," the queen had said after Bogo had finished giving a condensed version of events.

So far as he was concerned, simply telling them that Cencerro had confessed to her guilt was enough; a full version could follow once he had her written confession and had thoroughly followed up on everything. "There's no telling if Diego Cencerro had plans of his own. Or if Alba Cencerro was lying to us about that," Bogo agreed, nodding.

The princess sighed. "It'd be nice to think it's all over," she said, "But I suppose you must follow up."

She had seemed more disappointed than anything else to learn that Alba Cencerro, one of her mother's oldest friends, had plotted to kill her simply to get a full-blooded sheep on the throne. "But you did very well, Lord Bogo," the princess said, favoring him with a small smile.

"I've failed more than I've succeeded," Bogo replied, shaking his head, "She never should have gotten so far in her plans."

"One of the hazards of growing old," the queen said, and while her face remained neutral Bogo thought he heard a smile in her voice, "You can't blame yourself for missing clues no one else saw either."

Something about her words triggered something in his mind, some kind of sense that he was still missing a clue. They bit at him, and Bogo tried remembering what it had been. There was something that seemed important, something dancing just outside his ability to recall. But what could it possibly be? He frowned. You're growing old and forgetful, Lord Bogo, a memory seemed to surface from the hazy recesses of his mind, What is it to forget one more thing?

Bogo's frown deepened, and he missed whatever it was that the princess said in response to the queen's words. Who had said that to him? Certainly he hadn't been open about his growing tendency for his focus to wander, but maybe that wasn't the important part. Maybe that was just his own doubts and uncertainties giving themselves a voice, but there was something he was missing, some critical clue he had seen but hadn't recognized the importance of.

But what was it?

Cencerro's explanation, brief though it had been, had fit all the details perfectly. And she had confessed, too, which greatly limited her ability to do anything else. She was now securely locked away under heavy guard, her own personal guard similarly monitored, and until Bogo had a chance to thoroughly review and investigate her confession Cerdo and Corazón would not have their freedom either. It should have felt perfectly safe, but some paranoid twinge in his gut refused to ease.

What was he missing?

The edges of Bogo's vision seemed to dwindle as he considered the matter, turning everything he could over in his head. There was something about Cencerro's confession that refused to sit right with him, but was that really so odd? Mammals confessed to their crimes all the time, after all. Sometimes there was just nothing else that they could do, and rather than delay the inevitable they simply gave up. He'd have to accept it, give in to the idea that as his ability to focus had dwindled he had missed something.

You're growing old and forgetful, Lord Bogo. What is it to forget one more thing?

The words repeated themselves in Bogo's mind and he stood without realizing he was going to do so as something clicked into place. "Commandant Totchli and Captain Nicholas," he said abruptly, ignoring the looks of mild surprise he had received, "There's something I need your help investigating."

"Now, sir?" Totchli asked, looking moderately puzzled at his sudden decision.

"Now," Bogo said.

Perhaps he was wrong. It was a mad idea, and if he was wrong it'd be the smart thing to step down from his position as captain general immediately. But if he was right, the danger wasn't even close to over.

Author's Notes:

Molasses is a fairly stable and calorie-rich product that has been made for hundreds of years, explaining why an army would have bothered to take it along; one of the last things you want is for your army to be so undernourished that it can't effectively fight.

Bogo pulls Cencerro away from the queen, rather than the other way around, as it is common protocol that members of the royal family are not to be touched beyond a handshake. This is becoming less of a rule of protocol in the modern world; while British tabloids in particular have tried making a furor out of recent incidents in which Queen Elizabeth was touched, spokespeople for the palace have made it clear that she did not take offense.

As always, thanks for reading! If you're so inclined as to leave a comment, I'd love to know what you thought!