The driver in front turned and his eyes went saucer wide. He scrabbled to push the throttle forward, and his train started to speed up.
Their train was still zeroing in on his, though, and fast. Reston didn’t dare ease off, not with the Serpents breathing down their necks. A shunt was unavoidable.
“Brace yourself,” he told Mal.
Their train rear-ended the one in front. At that point, Newtonian physics took over. The front train, boosted from behind, jetted forward at even greater speed. The driver let out a squawk of terror, clinging to his control console for dear life.
Mal and Reston’s train, meanwhile, its nose now a crumpled mess, was brought almost to a standstill by the impact. The Serpent train continued rocketing towards it as rapidly as ever. The driver of the latter hit the brakes, but there wasn’t enough time.
“Jump for it,” said Reston.
Mal was already jumping for it.
Both she and Reston threw themselves clear of the train a heartbeat before the Serpent train ploughed into it. The Serpent train rose off the track and mounted theirs, with a godawful cacophony of metal crunching and men screaming in panic. The two vehicles, conjoined, went scraping on down the track, parts flying off, sparks shooting everywhere like a firework display. One of the Serpent Warriors was jettisoned from his seat and flung like a ragdoll headfirst to the track bed, breaking his neck. The others, and the driver, just hung on helplessly as the violent, slewing ride ran its course. Friction and inertia eventually brought the locked-together trains to a halt some five hundred yards further down the line. They settled at an ungainly angle on the rail, silent and spent, like a pair of old drunkards after an uproarious bender. Everyone still aboard was too shaken up to do much but groan and give thanks that they were alive. The antigrav-particle exciters on these trains were well-reinforced, but even so it was a small miracle that neither one of them had been breached.
By the time Colonel Tlanextic got himself together to clamber out and head back along the track to look for the two English fugitives, they were long gone.
His wrath was terrible to behold. And exceptionally loud. Proceeding on the assumption that Mal and Reston were still within earshot, which they were, he informed them that this was his island, his domain. It was swarming with Serpent Warriors. They could run but they wouldn’t get far.
“You’re mine,” he roared. “I’ll find you. I’ll find you and fucking slaughter you. It’s only a matter of time.”
TWENTY-SIX
Same Day
Stuart was feeling more like his old self than he had in weeks. Since leaving England, in fact. He was in desperate trouble, he knew. He and Vaughn were on the run in Tenochtitlan. Tenochtitlan! They were fugitives marked for death in the Great Speaker’s own redoubt, a city teeming with highly trained, dedicated and ruthless soldiers. Colonel Tlanextic’s next move would surely be to put out an all-points bulletin with their descriptions. Every Serpent Warrior under his command would be on the lookout for a white male and white female, both in their early to mid-thirties, one armed with a macuahitl. As things stood, their chances of reaching the harbour without being spotted, challenged, shot at and captured were next to nil. And in the unlikely event that they did make it, it was far from guaranteed that they’d be able to get themselves a ride on a boat. All in all, their prospects were bleak.
But even as he and Vaughn raced to put distance between them and the monorail track, Stuart felt positive. Alive. Hopeful, even. The more so as Tlanextic’s bellowed threats reached his ears.
This, it seemed, was who he was meant to be: a man facing insuperable odds, beset by enemies, with nothing to fall back on but his wits and skills. He was a born desperado, a natural underdog. The Stuart Reston he had been for most of his life — rich kid, socialite, plutocrat, top of the heap — was a guise he’d worn so long that he’d ceased to realise it wasn’t really him. Only after he’d lost everything was he able to break free from the shell he’d built around himself and become something truer to himself.
It helped, too, that the indomitable Malinalli Vaughn was running with him now. It made a very pleasant change from having her running after him.
They crossed concourses and traversed raised walkways. Stuart kept the trend of their progress as southward as he could, but it wasn’t easy. Tenochtitlan was a maze. There hadn’t been any overarching design behind its layout. The ziggurats and towers had simply accumulated over time, one rising up in the space beside another until the entire island was covered. The train network made sense of the muddle and was obviously the most practical and straightforward way of getting around, but the monorail was no longer safe for him and Vaughn to use. On foot, sticking close to walls, skulking, steering clear of passersby, they could maintain a lower profile and, hopefully, evade detection.
He explained his choice of tactic to Vaughn.
“If you say so,” was her reply. “You’ve done more fleeing from the authorities than I have.”
“Yes, and I’m alive to tell the tale. So I must know a thing or two about it.”
“That or you’ve been phenomenally lucky.”
“Comes down to the same thing, doesn’t it? Who cares how I get there, as long as the end-result’s in my favour?”
“I liked you more when you weren’t so smug,” Vaughn said.
“No, you didn’t.”
“No, you’re right. I’ve never liked you.”
They came to a blind alley, and Stuart proposed a pause to rest and take stock. Vaughn, short of breath, agreed it was a good idea.
In the alley, they hunkered downwind from a set of bins. Tenochtitlan, for all its majesty, had its grubby areas, as any city did. You couldn’t have thousands of humans crammed together in a confined space, with their effluent and their detritus, and expect absolute cleanliness everywhere. Waste water trickled down the alley’s central gutter. A rat poked its head out from a downpipe, didn’t like the look of the two humans, and withdrew. The contents of the bins, as garbage was wont to in this climate, reeked.
“Aaronson,” murmured Vaughn. She was staring broodingly at her palms, which were badly grazed from when she’d leapt clear of the train. “That poor bastard. Why? It’s not fair. He didn’t have to die.”
“The Great Speaker thought he did. And Tlanextic.”
“But Aaronson never did anything wrong. He was a cheeky sod, and sometimes his tongue was a bit too sharp for his own good, but…” Her eyes were red-rimmed. “Those fuckers. Those pieces of dogshit.”
“These are the people you’ve been working for all this time, Vaughn.”
“Don’t you start.”
“I’m just saying, you shouldn’t be surprised how the powers-that-be have turned on you. They can do that. It doesn’t bother them. We’re all of us expendable, as far as they’re concerned.”
“I’m not in the mood for a lecture. Stop it or I’ll use this fucking sword on you.”
“Okay.” Stuart relented. Right now Vaughn was his only ally, and it wouldn’t do him any good to make her more upset than she already was.
A few moments later she said, “Were those really…?”
“The Four? Not so long ago I’d have said no, don’t be so daft. Now? I’m pretty sure they are. I don’t see what else they can be.”
“Fuck. And the Speaker is Tezcatlipoca. I never saw that coming. If there’d been a choice of which of the gods, out of all of them, had to be left in sole charge of earth, he’s the one I’d least want it to be. Even Xipe Totec would have been preferable. Even Mictlantecuhtli.”
“Mictlantecuhtli? I wouldn’t go that far. Xipe Totec, although he’s not a pretty sight when his skin’s transparent, you still sort of know where you are with. Mictlantecuhtli, on the other hand…” He mimed a shudder.
“How come you met them?” Vaughn asked. “Why did they reveal themselves to you, of all people?”
“Believe me, it wasn’t my doing. I’d give anything not to have been the one. They may be gods, but th
ey’re far from benevolent. Even Quetzalcoatl’s got a mean streak. Azcatl’s pretty hardcore, too. You should see him in action.”
“Azcatl? The Red Ant?” Vaughn almost laughed.
“I know. The myths don’t make much of him. All I know is the one about Quetzalcoatl bullying him to reveal where his grain store is. In real life, though, Azcatl’s not someone you want to mess with. All of them are like that. You just feel so inferior when they’re around. Particularly when it’s someone like Tzitzimitl, who couldn’t disguise her scorn for me.”
“You don’t think that’s just you? Your sparkling personality?”
“Could be,” said Stuart. “And in answer to your earlier question, they revealed themselves to me because I happened to be there and it was convenient. No other reason. I wasn’t specially selected or anything like that. Quetzalcoatl injured me and had a fit of guilt about that, and then saw a way I could be useful to him. I’m not useful to him any more, apparently, judging by the way he almost completely blanked me when we were up on the Great Speaker’s palace.”
“He had other things on his mind.”
“Maybe. I think…” Stuart hesitated. “I think, to them, humans are playthings, not much more. ‘As flies to wanton boys,’ et cetera.”
“Don’t recognise the quotation, but then I didn’t have a posh education like you.”
“Shakespeare. And we didn’t study him at ‘posh’ school, either. Too Christian. I sought out his work for myself when I was older. Complete, unexpurgated editions of the plays are hard to track down. I found one of the last ever Victorian ones, got it from a black-market dealer in Hull. Set me back a pretty penny, I can tell you.”
“We’re the gods’ pets, then, is that what you’re saying?”
“At best. We intrigue them, the way a strange species of animal — I don’t know, the duck-billed platypus for instance — intrigues zoologists. All said and done, it turns out we’re nothing more than a worthy project to them, a charity case. That’s how this whole Empire nonsense got started. The gods saw us, thought we were cute, adopted us and tried to make us better, more like them. And then it all went belly up, and this is the mess we’re left with, the aftermath of Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca’s big spat.”
“I don’t understand. So are the myths true or aren’t they?”
“I think they are, sort of, and also not. I think they’re versions of the truth which explain the gods’ behaviour, and the Great Speaker — Tezcatlipoca — has allowed them to become religious currency because it suits his ends. The creation story, for instance. It’s a way of telling us, reinforcing to us, that the gods made everything. They’re the ones responsible for the world and we owe them an unrepayable debt of gratitude for that. Of course, what they actually did was take a race at a pre-existing level of civilisation and develop it, mould it in their own image. They didn’t make the world, they remade it. And us with it.”
“It’s…” Vaughn moved her hands as though she were literally groping for words. “It’s hard to take in.”
“Tell me about it. Why do you think I was so spaced out when you first saw me in that cell? And I wasn’t even a believer in the first place, so I can’t begin to imagine the sort of effect this must be having on one of the faithful.”
“I’ve never completely been one of the faithful,” Vaughn protested. “I’ve had my doubts, now and then. The Empire just seemed… logical, and belief in the gods was an integral part of it. But now that I know what the gods are actually like, I’m not so sure about them.”
“Proof of faith has destroyed your faith.”
“Yeah, hilarious irony, right? It’s like that thing about how you should never meet your heroes. You’ll only be disappointed.”
“Idols with feet of clay,” said Stuart.
“So,” said Vaughn, after a pause, “next, I suppose, there’s going to be an attack on this place. The good gods versus the bad one.”
“‘Good’ is relative in this context, but yes, that sounds about right. They won’t do it by halves, either. Whatever Tezcatlipoca has up his sleeve by way of a defence, it had better be a decent one, for his sake.”
“Any idea how long before it all kicks off?”
“How would I know?”
“You’re the god expert.”
“Am not. But if pushed I’d say it won’t be long. Quetzalcoatl’s not one to hang about. Sometime today, for certain.”
“All the more reason for us to get out of here, and sharpish.”
“Quite. Getting caught up in the middle of a war between gods is not something any sane person would want.”
Something caught Vaughn’s eye — something passing by the alley’s mouth. She got to her feet and padded stealthily to peer out. Then she beckoned to Stuart and pointed.
He saw what she had seen, understood her meaning, and gave her a grinning thumbs-up.
They shadowed the priest and the acolyte for a couple of hundred yards until the perfect spot for an ambush presented itself. It was a garden of contemplation, a small oasis of tropical greenery amid the urban labyrinth, where a fountain tinkled and a colony of chattering capuchin monkeys fed on berries in the treetops. Moments after the priest and the acolyte entered the garden’s lush verdant haze, Stuart and Vaughn followed them in.
It was over quickly, with scarcely a sound. The acolyte put up more of a struggle than the priest, but then he was younger and fitter. Stuart had to subdue him with a chokehold. Vaughn made short work of the priest, coshing him with the pommel of her macuahitl.
They dragged the two unconscious bodies into the shrubbery and stripped them of their ceremonial garb. Then they changed out of their own clothes, Vaughn ordering Stuart not to peek at her in her underwear, on pain of death.
“Long as you promise not to do the same to me.”
“Like I give a shit.”
“You realise we’re committing hieratic fraud? A capital offence?”
“Again, like I give a shit.”
“Vaughn, you’re a changed woman.”
“Maybe. Now turn your back.”
When they had finished donning the priest’s and acolyte’s vestments, Stuart tore his shirt into strips, which they used to truss and gag the near-naked holy men. He reckoned, what with everything else that was going on, no one would miss these two for several hours.
“Still wish you’d agreed to killing them, though.”
“My plan, my rules,” said Vaughn. “I don’t hate the priesthood like you do. Besides, however careful we were, we might have got blood on the vestments. This way’s neater.”
Stuart adjusted the priestly headdress until it sat straight on his head. “Now, remember. Three paces behind me at all times. Mustn’t arouse suspicion, must we?”
“I’m a female acolyte. Of course I’m going to arouse suspicion.”
“Then try and walk more like a man.”
“I will if you do.”
“Oh, ha ha.”
They strode out from the garden, one behind the other, robes swishing behind them, and for a time it seemed as though it would be plain sailing. Nobody they came across ventured them a second glance. Priests and acolytes were a common sight in Tenochtitlan, even Caucasian ones, and besides, the city was now in a state of alert and had become a hive of frenetic activity. People were rushing to and fro on errands and urgent missions. Serpent Warriors were on the march, quickstepping in phalanxes towards various destinations. Some were making for the airfield, where a fleet of aerodisc gunships awaited. Others were on their way to man strategic positions on the outer walls, carrying with them lightning guns of a kind Stuart had never seen before, large-barrelled and bulkier than the average l-gun, closer in size to a conventional bazooka. Still others disappeared down stairwells that led to entrances to what must be underground bunkers. All of them were too intent on their business to spare a thought for much else.
Nevertheless, Stuart and Vaughn made sure to stay as inconspicuous as possible. They walked at a sedate
priestly pace, even though they would rather have been hurrying. Their lack of ritual tattooing was another giveaway, so they kept their faces hidden by bending their heads low, in attitudes of pure piety.
When the huge trapezoid gateway came into view, Stuart dared to think they were going to make it after all. The gate was shut, of course, and guarded, but surely no Serpent Warrior would refuse a demand from a priest to open it. Freedom was just moments away.
“My good man,” Stuart said, gesturing loftily at the leader of the team of Serpents overseeing incomings and outgoings at the city’s sole public access point. “Captain…?”
“Ueman.”
“Captain Ueman. My associate and I wish to go outside. Kindly let us through.”
“Through to what, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“The harbour.”
“Again if you don’t mind my asking, why?”
“I’ll thank you to use my proper title when addressing me,” Stuart said with all the hieratic haughtiness he could muster.
“Your Holiness,” said Captain Ueman, “I mean no disrespect, but it’s an, ahem, unusual request. There’s nothing out there but boats and water. If you want to leave the city, surely a disc would be more convenient.”
“Such impertinence!” Stuart snapped. He was beginning to wonder whether he could pull this off. A couple of the other Serpents were looking with intense curiosity at Vaughn, who lowered her head even further and kept her robe gathered tight around her to disguise her figure. Her short choppy hair was at least vaguely masculine, even if the rest of her was distinctly not.
“How dare you presume to question me?” Stuart continued. Cowing the captain was perhaps his only hope. “I’ll have you know I’m here at the behest of the Great Speaker himself. You’re aware that we’re facing imminent enemy assault? I’ve been assigned the task of inspecting the harbour and seeing to it that all civilian personnel who’ve come by boat evacuate the area immediately.”
“That order’s already gone out. They’re all starting to head for the shore.”
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