But it turned out Blue Jay hadn’t shared the whole plan with any of them. Part one of their mission didn’t have a thing to do with getting Oliver out of the dungeon. A bit of espionage was the first order of business.
The Mazikeen had lined them up-not just Grin, Cheval, and the burning Li, but a bunch of local Borderkind the sorcerers had organized in secret in Palenque. There was a bloke with a massive mouth in his belly, and half a dozen Pihuechenyi-tall, winged, serpent-men with wicked fangs.
Yucatazca didn’t seem to have a lot of cute, furry Borderkind, or even a lot of pretty tricksters. Not a happy lot.
But they needed allies, and the old saw about beggars not being choosers was never far from Grin’s mind as he spent time with the group the Mazikeen had gathered.
One by one, the Mazikeen had taken them and cast a glamour over them. They called it something else, but Grin had learned a bit about magic over his long life, and he knew a glamour when he saw one. The sorcerers disguised each and every one of them as humans, Lost Ones. They could see through one another’s glamours, but no one else could. If a magician grew suspicious, she might be able to use magic to get a glimpse of their inner selves, but otherwise, they were completely hidden.
Ever since, they’d been out in the city of Palenque, mixing with the people. Listening. And talking.
“You don’t really believe that,” said the bartender now, a woman slightly older but no less beautiful than the waitresses who served the fashionable young people on the patio. Perhaps her extra years meant the managers of the bar thought her only fit to deal with the grim drinkers in the gloomy interior.
“I certainly do,” replied a nattily dressed man with wispy white hair and a thin mustache. The others called him Professor, though Grin didn’t know what had earned him the title.
A portly fellow with several days’ growth of beard slapped one hand on the bar. “That is shit. Traitors talk like that, Professor.”
The professor’s eyes narrowed and he stared at the man. “So I am a traitor, now, Enrique? On the contrary. I am a patriot. I have taught the children of kings. Government is never perfect, and there are things they do in secret that we are all better off not knowing. I understand this. It isn’t our king or our government I’m speaking against, but our enemies. Our true enemies.”
“Atlantis,” Grin said.
All eyes in the bar turned on him. For a moment, he felt sure they could see the northern Borderkind that they would all call enemy, but then the professor just nodded.
“Precisely.” He gestured around the room, first toward Paola, the bartender, and then to some of the other men and women gathered there. They were no longer quite so interested in their drinks. “You have all seen them. I know that you have. The Atlanteans were here in Palenque before good King Mahacuhta was slain. On the day of his murder, some of you were in the plaza. There were giants on the palace steps, fighting the northern intruders. Atlantean giants.
“Why? What were they doing here?”
Enrique grunted. “Guarding the diplomats. Don’t you read the newspaper, Professor? The giants and the others were guarding the diplomats from Atlantis. They were already working to forge an alliance with us-that is why the dog Hunyadi sent his assassins to murder Mahacuhta.”
From a small table in the back, a woman spoke up. She might have been fifty and her face was weathered. She sat with a younger man whose face bore the scars of battle, yet who sat up straight and had about him the air of a soldier.
“Don’t believe everything you read, sir,” the woman said.
Eyes narrowed again, and this time they were focused on the woman and her son.
“My son was a captain in the King’s Guard. When Ty’Lis began to put Atlantean soldiers into their ranks, he questioned the order. They whipped him, beat him, and cut out his tongue. They stripped him of his rank and threw him in the dungeon for thirty days.”
Even the professor blanched at these words. “Atlanteans in the King’s Guard?”
After a moment, Enrique cleared his throat. When he continued, some of his confidence was gone. “So, what are you suggesting?”
The professor sighed. “You know what she’s suggesting, Enrique. Don’t be obtuse. We’ve spoken of the rumors before. Why did the entire city of Palenque stand by and let the northern Borderkind pass when they came to challenge the king? Hunters had been sent out to exterminate the Borderkind all over Euphrasia, and some in Yucatazca as well. But they left Palenque alone. Why? So that the Borderkind here would not rise up and fight beside their kin against the Hunters until it was too late.”
“Conspiracy shit,” Enrique muttered.
“Hush,” said the bartender. She looked troubled, almost sick, but she nodded to the professor to continue.
“He’s right,” said the woman. Her son looked as though he would have spoken, had his tongue not been cut from his mouth.
“The whole city let it happen, that terrible day,” the woman went on. “Some of us hid in our houses and pulled the shutters. Others lined the streets and cheered them on, thinking that Mahacuhta had betrayed the truce and sent the Hunters north. But we should have known better. The Atlanteans had been infiltrating for months. Ty’Lis is behind it all.”
Enrique stood up and took two steps toward her, glancing at the door that led to the patio. “Watch yourself, woman. Talk like that could cost your life.”
The professor smiled, but there was no humor in it. “There. You’ve said it yourself. If she speaks against Ty’Lis, an advisor to the king, she is doomed? Is that the kind of kingdom this has become?”
“That’s enough,” said another-a disheveled, bearded man who’d been drinking with Enrique. “You are all traitors. Prince Tzajin is going to be crowned soon enough, but already he rules in his father’s place. He has declared war against Euphrasia. He has issued edicts calling the legendary and many Lost Ones to enlist in his army. Tzajin leads us, now, and to question his rule is treason.”
A chill went through the bar. Waitresses hurried from the kitchen out onto the patio with drinks and trays of food. The woman tending bar stared at Enrique, but he did not meet her eyes. Even the professor seemed frightened by the prospect.
Leicester Grindylow turned on his stool. He tipped his beer glass back and took a long sip, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“How can it be treason,” he asked, “when the throne is here in Palenque, and Prince Tzajin is issuing his edicts from Atlantis? The boy is the guest of the High Council of Atlantis, surrounded only by the scholars who have been teaching him. The edicts are released here in Palenque by Ty’Lis, who has been behaving like a regent instead of an advisor. Only a blind fool would not at least ask the question, my friends. How do we know that Tzajin declared war, or issued those edicts? How can we be sure the prince even knows that his father is dead?”
They stared at him in horror. Some shifted uncomfortably and looked away, but the mute soldier only nodded in dark approval.
“There’s a more horrible question,” the professor said. “How do we know Tzajin is still alive?”
The soldier knocked on the table to get everyone’s attention.
“He wants you to consider another question,” the mute man’s mother said. “Who really killed King Mahacuhta?”
“Now that is enough!” cried the bearded man who’d lectured them about treason.
Enrique shook his head. “So now you want me to believe the Atlanteans murdered the king?”