* * *
After a hurried conversation outside the Old Man’s wigwam, Chantico was dispatched to spread the word that a meeting would take place in the caves within the half hour. A year ago, their gatherings had attracted only half a dozen people; now those who stole away from the camp to make their way to the place of power numbered twenty; Chantico could only imagine the puzzled expressions on the faces of his parents as they scratched their heads and wondered where all the young people had gone. Soon the time would be right for the Old Man to assume his rightful position as chief of the tribe, and then Ecatzin and all those who had died at Texan hands would be properly avenged.
The cave was lit with torches and a large fire in front of the altar stone. Beneath, in a natural bowl, the Yaqui gathered in silence; the Old Man stood between the fire and the altar, swaying, his eyes rolled back in his head, feathers and beads dangling from his jet-black hair. He had a sense of the dramatic, did the Old Man. He liked to play to the crowd. He muttered in Nahuatl, splaying his bony fingers and extending his hands over the crowd. He played them like that music box with ivory keys the traveling carny man had once shown Chantico when the carnival had passed close to the Yaqui camp.
Chantico stood to one side of the front row. He had been with the secret group since the Old Man had started it up, since he had first brought them to this spirit-haunted place of power. Chantico liked to think of himself as part of the inner circle. Had not the Old Man immediately called this meeting after he’d imparted his news? With consummate showmanship, the Old Man cast a handful of dust and seeds into the fire, making it leap and sparkle and eliciting gasps from the gathering in the cavern. His eyes snapped open.
“You know him, eh, the Lord of the Star of the Dawn?” said the Old Man, his voice strong, his eyes black and twinkling in a face as brown and ridged as the canyon-scored landscape. “The one who draws the line between the world and the sky, the plumed serpent, eh?”
The crowd nodded and murmured. The Old Man said, “Quetzalcoatl, that’s who I’m talking about, eh? You seen him, Chaske, am I not right, eh? You watched him swooping out of the sun, as bold as you like. And you, Chetan, with your eyes of a hawk, you watched him looping over the desert. We all saw him, eh? We all knew him. I heard him called by a hundred different names in my time, heard him called Kukulcan and Gukumatz, Ce Acatl and Naxcitl, Topiltzin, too. But we all know him as Quetzalcoatl, eh?”
“What does it mean?” called a voice from the crowd. Someone else shouted, “And where has Quetzalcoatl been since then? It’s been weeks!”
The Old Man beckoned for Chantico to join him at the altar. Burning with pride, Chantico stepped to his side. The Old Man said, “The boy here, he’s heard something about Quetzalcoatl.”
Someone laughed. “Chantico? What can he have heard?”
Chantico’s face burned. The Old Man said, “Tell them who you heard it off, boy, eh?”
“Chichijal,” said Chantico quietly, then again, more loudly. “Chichijal. The one they call the Nameless. He told me himself.”
There was more than one gasp from the assembly. The Old Man said, “Tell them what he told you, eh?”
Chantico nodded. “The Nameless, he spoke of a dragon. He said it had crashed in the desert. He said the dragon was made of brass.”
Someone shouted, “Brass? So it could just be one of the machines they put in the sky, not Quetzalcoatl at all?”
The Old Man waved his arms. “Was it not Quetzalcoatl who created the world? Is he not the god of intelligence? Of self-reflection? Does he not hold up a mirror to the world he created, eh, with his own blood? You do not know. You have not traveled in ania as I have. You have not seen the world beyond. The white man, he takes the fruit of the bowels of the earth and he burns it and he creates steam and fuss and noise, and he drives forth his engines across the face of the earth and through the thin, cold sky. The white man, he has lost touch with nature. He has lost his link with the Earth. That is what Quetzalcoatl is trying to tell us.
“He appears to us in brass and cogs, pistons and steel, belching fire as gears grind against gears. He is telling us that what the white man does is an affront to nature, to the entire five worlds! The white man has taken the earth and wrung it dry to fuel his endless death machine. That is why Quetzalcoatl has appeared to us now. It is a test. To see if we are worthy.”
Chantico coughed. He didn’t know how much he was meant to tell the Old Man, whether he was to mention the clockwork woman at all. But there was something important the Nameless had told him that he hadn’t yet imparted to the crowd. The Old Man looked at him. “Chantico?”
“The Texans … the place they call Steamtown. The Nameless said … he said they have Quetzalcoatl.”
There was a collective gasp. The Old Man’s words had galvanized and awed the group. Now they were affronted and incensed. It would take but a word, thought Chantico, and they would go and grasp their axes and bows and fall upon Steamtown, even if it meant every one of them was slaughtered.
The Old Man was nodding enthusiastically. “The message is clear. Quetzalcoatl has delivered himself unto the mercy of the white man, eh? He awaits to see if our actions will free him.”
“But what must we do?” asked Chantico. “They have guns … cannons … surely Quetzalcoatl would not expect us to throw ourselves to our deaths.”
“Just as Quetzalcoatl gave his blood to create the world, so he demands blood to replenish himself, eh?” said the Old Man. “But perhaps not ours.” He paused, stroking his chin with his long fingers, staring into the fire. “Perhaps the conquistadores who murdered the Yaqui sons today ought to pay, eh?”
There was a murmur of general agreement. Chantico began to feel uncomfortable, as though he had not thought this through very well. The Old Man turned to him. “Perhaps … perhaps that little daughter of Cortes you have been meeting with in secret, Chantico?”
“W-what do you mean?” whispered Chantico, the blood draining from his face. “What do you mean?”
The Old Man closed his eyes. “Inez Batiste Palomo. The daughter of the Governor of Uvalde. You and her, you are waata, eh, Chantico? In love.”
Someone called, “A Spanish girl?” Chantico could not tell whether the voice was dripping with disgust or envy.
The Old Man placed a gnarled hand on Chantico’s head; he flinched away. “It is all right. Quetzalcoatl has brought you together, to test you. To test all of us. She must be brought here, to our place of power. She must be sacrificed to empower Quetzalcoatl, to allow him to shed the carapace of brass and steel in which the modern world has imprisoned him, so that the plumed serpent can fly once more and wreak vengeance on behalf of the Yaqui and all the peoples of the Americas.”
Chantico reeled away from the Old Man and the fire, which fizzed and sparkled with his poisonous words. No. No, no, no. How could it all have gone so very badly wrong? He had condemned Inez to death at the hands of these … these madmen. His impulse was to flee, to warn her. But they would only follow him, overpower Inez, and bring her back here to the most horrible of fates. Chantico looked to the Yaqui, but the Old Man’s hold over them was complete; they were swaying and holding out their arms to him in supplication as he stood with the flames of the sparkling fire licking at his robes. He mimed putting his fist to his chest and tearing his ribs away, holding up an imaginary dripping heart to the chanting crowd. And soon it would be no imaginary heart, but that of his true love. When Inez said she had given her heart to him, he did not think she intended it so literally. His head swam. What would the Nameless say? What of …
Wait.
Chantico’s crazy, rambling mind had been about to ask what would become of the clockwork girl whom the Nameless had tasked them with protecting. But there, of course, lay Inez’s salvation, and Chantico’s redemption.
“Wait,” he said, this time aloud. He took the Old Man by the sleeve and shook him violently. “Wait. There is another way. A better way.”
The Old Man inv
ited him to continue, holding a hand out to silence the chanting assembly. Chantico cleared his throat and said, “Chichijal, the Nameless, spirit of the prairies, he brought someone to me. A girl … alive but not alive.”
The Old Man frowned. “How can this be?”
Chantico shook his head. “I don’t know. But clockwork drives her, and pistons power her heart. She is somehow of Quetzalcoatl. She was with the great plumed god when he committed himself to the embrace of the desert and was captured by the Texans.”
The Old Man squinted at him. “And you know where to find this girl who is alive but not alive?”
After but a moment’s hesitation, Chantico nodded.
The Old Man clapped his hands together. “Then bring her to us, eh? Let us see if the girl who is alive yet not alive can give her clockwork heart in sacrifice to the rebirth of great Quetzalcoatl and avenge the Yaqui people. Bring her to us by tomorrow.”
Chantico nodded. The Old Man placed a hand on his shoulder. “And Chantico? If you fail, or if this does not work … then it’s back to what the white man calls plan A, eh?”
Chantico swallowed and stole away from the hot darkness of the cave.
15
ALIAS SMITH AND JONES
Gideon Smith felt like anything but a hero as he rode down the dusty main street of San Antonio, flanked by Jeb Hart and Aloysius Bent. All eyes were on them, staring from the verandas of the clapboard buildings and the shadowy doorways of the white stone and redbrick structures that together created a jumbled, haphazard township of no discernible style. The night was illuminated by oil lamps swinging from the stoops, strings of fizzing electrical bulbs, and ornate columns of gas-powered lights. The buildings seemed to stretch off in tight warrens beyond the main street, and tall pit towers worked dully against the darkening sky, their ever-present hum and clank a counterpoint to the shouts, piano music, and occasional distant gunshot.
Gideon felt farther from home than he ever had before, even when he was in the deserts of Egypt, even in the lost world where they had rescued Rubicon and Darwin. Something sick and heavy thudded in his stomach, a nausea that made him long for the bustle of Mayfair, the warmth of Grosvenor Square, and the smells wafting in from Mrs. Cadwallader’s kitchen. Even more so, he pined for the gentle wash of the tide on the Sandsend shore and the cozy lights from the fishermen’s cottages. Perhaps that was it. Perhaps he had never been so far from the sea before. Perhaps he was landlocked and dusty, desperate for the currents of air and water to chime with the thudding of the blood in his head, quieting it.
Or perhaps he was just deathly afraid. There was a ruckus to their left, coming from a brightly lit wooden building with a hand-painted sign that said CASINO over the door. A fat man came tumbling through the swinging doors, pursued by two others who set about him with fists and the handles of their pistols. No one stopped to help. A thin, rangy dog yelped at the melee and an onlooker gave it a casual kick, so it skidded away as though scalded. From a dark alley, a woman screamed and screamed, then sobbed.
Gideon felt Jeb Hart’s hand on his forearm, reaching over from his horse. “I know what you’re thinking, Smith,” he murmured. “Don’t. Leave it, if you want to walk out of here alive.”
Gideon gestured helplessly toward the alley as they passed. Hart shook his head. “You’ve got a job to do, Smith. Don’t get distracted.”
Yes, Gideon Smith, the Hero of the Empire, was afraid. On all his previous escapades, he’d had someone else to rely on: Captain Trigger, Rowena Fanshawe, Bram Stoker, or Countess Bathory. Even Louis Cockayne. Now it was just himself and Bent. And the journalist, for all his bluster, was well out of his depth; he looked even more terrified than Gideon felt. Hart was just a guide, leading them, it felt like, into the lion’s den. Hart’s words came back to him. So you’re the best the Empire has, then?
He knew, in his heart, that he wasn’t.
He also knew that, somehow, he would have to be.
“We’re here,” said Hart. They pulled up outside a large, two-story wooden building. A sign proclaimed it to be MADAME CHOO-CHOO’S. The accompanying painted image of a lady of the night, her vastly overexaggerated attributes falling out of her dress, left no doubt as to what the place was.
“A whorehouse,” said Bent with forced jollity. “Things are looking up.”
“I’m going to stable our horses, maybe get us some rooms at the hotel,” said Hart, sliding off his mount.
Gideon raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you coming in with us? And a hotel? How long do you think we’ll be here?”
Hart shrugged. “That’s up to you, Smith. It’s your mission, not mine. I said I’d get you here, and that I’ve done.”
Bent raised his hand. “Erm, wasn’t there something about getting us effing out of here, as well?”
Hart smiled. “Again, that’s up to you. Good luck in there. You’ll need it.”
Gideon dismounted and helped Bent do the same, with less grace and more swearing. “Jesus effing Christ, I’m going to be walking like I’ve got a barrel up my arse for the next week.”
They stood before the frosted glass windows of Madame Choo-Choo’s and glanced at each other. Bent said softly, “You know what you’re doing here, Gideon? Tell me you do. I don’t want to spent the rest of my days down one of these bastard mines.”
Gideon touched his arm. “Trust me,” he said, though without conviction. “I’m a hero.”
* * *
Madame Choo-Choo turned out to be a mannequin, like the ones they had in the expensive frock shops in Mayfair, with grotesquely made-up features and a blond wig. She sat behind a desk, shuddering and shaking from the hidden pumps and pistons that powered her, making her head turn jerkily from one side to the other and causing her stiff hands to move up and down in a manner that managed to be lascivious and rather unpleasant at the same time. Beyond the small entrance hall, through thick, heavy drapes, could be heard tinkling laughter, low voices, and the occasional slap of flesh upon flesh.
“Good evening, sir,” the mannequin hissed. “Come and take the weight off, kick off your boots, and find a little loving at Madame Choo-Choo’s.”
Her voice was a sickening parody of what someone—some man—imagined a French lady’s voice to be like, high-pitched and giggly, evidently recorded on a wax cylinder that rotated within the dummy’s breast. Gideon jumped as Madame Choo-Choo suddenly spewed a little paper chit from her over-rouged lips. Gideon caught it. There was a number printed on it, eight. As he glanced at it she started up again, the scratchy recording welcoming Bent to the brothel and spitting out his ticket.
“Twenty-three,” he read. “My lucky number.”
“You boys go right through,” said Madame Choo-Choo. “Please don’t be abusing the girlsgirlsgirlsgirlsgirlsgirlsgi—”
The dummy fell silent as a meaty hand slapped it around the back of its head. Gideon looked up at the man who stood there, his other hand resting on his gun belt. He had rotten teeth in a fat face, a tarnished sheriff’s badge pinned to his leather waistcoat.
“She talks too much,” said the man. “Needs a slap now’n again.” He bared his stumpy teeth. “Like all women. You’ll be the gentlemen from London?”
Gideon held out his hand. “Mr.… Smith.”
Bent was glaring at him. Perhaps he should have been more creative. The journalist stepped forward, standing deliberately on Gideon’s foot, and held out his own hand. “Mr. Jones.”
“Smith and Jones,” said the sheriff. “Okay. I’m Inkerman, the law around these parts. Mr. Pinch is expecting you. Come on in.”
Inkerman pushed aside the thick drapes and nodded for Gideon and Bent to go through. When his eyes became accustomed to the dark, Gideon found himself in a wide room with a long bar on one wall and a shadowed staircase heading up. There were half a dozen tables and couches arranged along the other walls. Arranged on them were half-dressed women, some of them in clinches with men, some moaning, some whispering. At least one was weeping.
&n
bsp; The only light came from an oil lamp on the biggest table, around which three or four men sat. Inkerman pointed to it and Gideon nodded, heading forward. Then he saw the figure that could only be Thaddeus Pinch. Even in Hermann Einstein’s madcap house, where he had found Maria, Gideon had never seen anything as grotesque as Pinch. The King of Steamtown seemed to revel in the pain his modifications caused him, bearing the suppurating sores where metal met flesh as though they were medals. Pinch looked like a man whose body was a weak inconvenience that needed to be improved, replaced. He looked like a man whose humanity was something to be cut away, excised. He looked like a man whom Gideon Smith was right to fear.
“This is Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones, from London,” said Inkerman, pointing to two chairs facing Pinch. As Gideon and Bent sat down Inkerman took his place by Pinch, remaining standing, his hands resting on the butts of his guns.
“Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones,” said Pinch, his voice hissing through his metal jaw, saliva dribbling from his teeth in stringy webs. “You’re a long way from home, sirs. What brings you to Steamtown?”
“Nice place you got here, Pinch,” said Bent, looking around. He brandished his ticket. “What’s this all about, though?”
Pinch’s jaw wobbled alarmingly, pulsing blood from the bolts at his neck. Gideon realized he was smiling, or trying to. He said, “Choo-Choo’s is a popular spot, gentlemen. Sometimes it gets oversubscribed. Impatient, horny men don’t make for peaceful times. To make things fair, we give out chits. The number you get equals the girl you get. Saves arguments.” He twisted his head to look at the tickets. “Twenty-three. That’s Consuela. Fiery little Spanish thing. You’ll enjoy her. And Mr. Smith has … number eight. Ah, I think that’s a fresh little filly we got, still needs a bit of breaking in. You’ll have to be firm with her, Mr. Smith. She needs showing who’s boss. Still going on about her rights, how we got no call holding her here.” He sat back, lifting up his steam-powered arm to reach for his glass of whisky. “She’ll learn. They always do, eventually.”
Gideon Smith and the Brass Dragon Page 15