“Hold on, men,” Tlanextic said to his lieutenants. “This won’t take a second. Listen, Miss British Jaguar.” He crossed back over to Mal. “Maybe your Nahuatl isn’t what it ought to be, so I’ll keep this as simple as I can. Me Serpent Warrior, you not. Get it? Me very big man round these parts, you silly little white policewoman with funny accent. Me told what to do by Great Speaker himself. In pecking order, me up here.” He raised a hand level with his eyes. “You down here.” He lowered the hand to his crotch. “In more ways than one.”
“With all due respect, colonel,” said Mal, “go screw yourself.”
There was a gasp from behind her – Aaronson. At the same moment, Tlanextic punched her again, this time in the solar plexus. It was a mighty wallop, carrying all his weight behind it, and Mal collapsed to her knees, winded and in agony. She fought for breath. The world wavered darkly around her. As if from a great distance, his voice booming and echoing, she heard Tlanextic say, “All right. You’ve made your point. Enough’s enough. Next time, it’ll be my macuahitl rather than my fist. This is over.”
She fought the tide of blackness that was threatening to engulf her. Do not pass out, do not pass out. She clutched the wall, hauling herself upright inch by trembling inch. Bile burned in the back of her throat and she felt close to throwing up. Aaronson was desperately urging her, “No, boss, don’t. It’s not worth it. Stay down.” Even Necalli, who hardly knew her, was offering the same advice.
“Is that...” she said hoarsely to Tlanextic. “Is that... all you’ve got... you big pussy?”
Aaronson clawed his face in anguish.
Tlanextic’s expression turned to one of pure spite and fury. He snatched the stun gun off the belt of his junior officer and sprang at Mal with the device humming in his hand. He touched it to her chest – her left breast, to be exact – and pain like she’d never known before coursed through her. Her whole body seemed all of a sudden not to belong to her. It was a convulsing, juddering bag of meat that she just happened to be connected with. She felt her bladder let go and warm wetness spreading between her legs. She heard sounds coming out of her throat that she didn’t think any human being could make. Tlanextic kept the stun gun pressed to her, his thumb hard on the trigger. His eyes were alive with sadistic pleasure.
Eventually the stun gun’s charge ran out. The pain subsided, but Mal’s body still kept twitching spastically. Had she not been leaning against the wall, she would be sprawled in a heap on the floor by now. She tasted blood from where her teeth had clamped down involuntarily on her tongue. She could smell singed cotton and skin, and her own urine.
The effort it took to lift her head was almost superhuman. Harder still was finding the muscular control necessary to peel back her lips in a grin.
“I’ve used... vibrators... with more power... than that,” she gasped.
Colonel Tlanextic stared at her in open disbelief. What does it take to put this woman down? How can anyone be so obstinate, so insanely stubborn?
“Please, colonel,” Aaronson implored. “Don’t do anything more. She’s had enough. She didn’t mean to be disrespectful. She’s passionate about her job, that’s all. Takes it very seriously indeed. That’s no crime, eh? I mean, we’re all basically on the same side, aren’t we?”
Tlanextic raised a hand: shut up. He peered closely and quizzically at Mal – her wan face, her striving-to-focus eyes – as though she were some kind of zoo animal he’d never seen before. He was trying with all his might to fathom her. Both Aaronson and Necalli fully expected that within the next few seconds he would draw his macuahitl and run her through.
Instead, he laughed. It was a laugh that was utterly devoid of warmth, but it came from the belly and it went on and on.
Tlanextic found her amusing.
More than that, he grudgingly admired her. The laughter was congratulation.
“Fuck me rigid,” he said. “You’ve got a serious hard-on for this man, haven’t you? What’s your name anyway?”
“Vaughn,” Mal said feebly. “Chief Inspector Malinalli Vaughn of Scotland Yard.”
“Well, Chief Inspector Malinalli Vaughn of Scotland Yard, I’ll tell you what. I like you, and you might even come in useful as a translator if Reston gets uncooperative and insists on using your own gibberish language again. You’ve just earned yourself the right to accompany us to Tenochtitlan. How about that?”
Accompany them to Tenochtitlan? It wasn’t what Mal wanted. Not at all. But it was the best she was going to get, she knew, and it would keep Reston within her sight. The alternative? She didn’t think she had one.
“Sounds... fine,” she said.
“Good,” said Tlanextic. “You know, I could do with a dozen like you under my command. Men? Take note. You think you’re tough?” He wagged a finger at Mal. “This bitch – this is tough.”
“My sergeant comes too,” Mal added, gesturing vaguely in Aaronson’s direction.
“Whatever. No skin off my nose. Long as you both keep up. Time’s wasting.” Tlanextic set off along the corridor at a firm and forthright pace.
Mal, with Aaronson propping her up, followed.
TWENTY-THREE
Same Day
THEY FLEW OUT over Lake Texcoco, skimming above the wavelets that turned the expanse of freshwater into a vast sheet of crepe paper. The Serpent disc was a small, short-range craft with a spartanly furnished interior, and Mal and Aaronson perched at the rear of the cabin on a narrow bench adjacent to the armoury and uniform lockers. With Colonel Tlanextic’s permission, Mal had helped herself to a spare pair of Serpent Warrior trousers which just about fit, changing out of her own soiled trousers and underwear while Aaronson acted as a human curtain, shielding her from sight of everyone else on board. Tlanextic hadn’t even been tempted to laugh when she’d made her request. To him it had seemed simply a practical solution to an unfortunate sartorial mishap.
“Why are we doing this, boss?” Aaronson whispered. He nodded over at Reston, who was slumped inside the disc’s prisoner transport cage, wrists and ankles chained together. The one-time Conquistador looked despondent, utterly defeated. Cage and restraints seemed superfluous. Reston was going nowhere. “We’re never getting him back. Even if the Serpents let him live, there’ll be nothing left once they’ve finished with him. Nothing worth anything.”
“If they kill him, at least we’ll get to see justice done,” Mal replied. “But as long as there’s a chance I can still bring him home, however slim it is and whatever condition he’s in, I’m going to keep hanging on for it.”
“I swear, if you didn’t hate the bloke so much, anyone would think you were in love with him.”
“Don’t be a twat.”
“I’m just saying. It’s a thin line. You’ve been hounding him so hard. Cops and villains sometimes get this attachment for one another, don’t they? It’s a, whatchemacall... Symbiotic relationship. Mutual thing. Can’t live with each other, can’t live without.”
“When you’re quite done with the cheap psychoanalysis...”
“Myself, some of the young roughs I’ve arrested – they’re quite beautiful, in that scrawny, surly way of theirs. A few of them know it and they’ve made offers. You know, ‘Let me go free. I’ll do anything you ask.’ Can’t say I haven’t been tempted.”
“I trust you haven’t given in.”
“No, never. But I’m not blind. He’s a looker, that Reston. If you like ’em posh and well-spoken, that is. And he flirts with you.”
“He does not.”
“Hello? Back of the paddy wagon? What was that if it wasn’t flirting?”
“Sergeant, please shut the fuck up.”
“The more you deny it...”
“...the likelier I am to plant my fist in your face,” Mal said. “Listen. Right now I’m feeling like refried shit. I know you’re only taking the piss and that’s just how you are, but I really can’t be arsed with it. Enough.”
“Okay, boss. If you say so.”
�
��Believe me, I do.”
Soon the bulwarked bulk of Tenochtitlan filled the windshield. The aerodisc rose and banked left, smartly circumnavigating the island city, and made its approach from the far side. It decelerated to a hover above a landing pad painted distinctively with a snake’s head motif. As it touched down an honour guard of six Serpents appeared, forming lines either side of the gangplank. They had lightning guns slung across their backs and macuahitls at their waists as well as the traditional ceremonial Serpent halberds, which were tipped with outcurving obsidian blades. They snapped to attention and saluted as Colonel Tlanextic exited the disc. His two lieutenants followed, with Reston shuffling between them as best his foot manacles would allow. Mal and Aaronson took the rear. The Serpent guards eyed them with curiosity but, since they were obviously with Tlanextic, nobody made a move to challenge them.
“What now?” Aaronson said out of the side of his mouth.
“Unless or until Tlanextic tells us to bugger off, we stick with him.”
“I can’t believe I’m here.” Aaronson gazed with wonder at the buildings around them, the towers and close-clustering ziggurats, their angled planes gilded by the mid-morning sun. “I mean, actual Tenochtitlan. Can’t wait to tell my mum. She’ll be so envious.”
“We’ll buy postcards later. Keep walking.”
Tlanextic led his party to a lift and they descended to ground level, where transportation was waiting for them in the form of an open-topped train. Tenochtitlan boasted a neg-mass passenger monorail for the use of Serpents and the numerous bureaucrats, functionaries and servants who tended to the Great Speaker’s needs. It criss-crossed the city in an intricate narrow-gauge system that was raised up, straddle-beam style, on squat pylons a couple of metres above the ground. Single-carriage trains glided along looping, intersecting routes with stops at the foot of every building on the island.
A driver ushered them on board, bowing so low to Tlanextic that his forehead nearly scraped the floor of the platform. Like the guards, he was puzzled by the presence of Mal and Aaronson but, also like the guards, he knew it wasn’t his place to query. When everyone had taken a seat, he grasped the train’s controls and guided it away from the platform.
A short while later they pulled in at the foot of the largest ziggurat on the island. Mal’s breath caught. If she didn’t miss her guess, this was none other than the Great Speaker’s palace. Surely they weren’t about to...
They were. Tlanextic disembarked, beckoning the others to follow. “Word of warning.” This was directed at Mal and Aaronson. “If His Imperial Holiness consents to allow you to enter his presence – and it’s a huge if – you do not look directly at him, you do not meet his eye, and above all else you do not speak to him unless he speaks to you first. Should you fail to abide by any of these stipulations, you die, simple as that. I’ll make sure of it myself. Are we clear?”
Mal and Aaronson nodded. As soon as Tlanextic looked the other way, Aaronson turned to Mal, eyes agog, and mouthed the word “Fuuuuck!” She nodded to him in return, no less incredulous than he, but able to mask it better.
A funicular lift took them up the ziggurat’s slanted flank. With every storey it rose Mal felt a mounting sense of unreality. She’d never in her life expected she would even set eyes on the Great Speaker, let alone be in the same room as him. Now, that possibility loomed. Within minutes she could be standing before the emperor of an entire planet, the most powerful man who had ever existed. An immortal, no less, gifted with prolonged life by the gods themselves. Moctezuma II, in the half-a-millennium-old flesh.
Mal Vaughn was not a vain woman, but at that moment she found herself wishing she looked better than she currently did, with her borrowed trousers and her practical travelling clothes. Not forgetting the bruise she could feel growing on the side of her face, courtesy of Tlanextic’s roundhouse right. She fingered the puffy, stretched patch of skin delicately.
“Don’t worry, boss,” Aaronson confided. “You still look fine. Every inch the plainclothes Jaguar. So what if you’re a bit ragged round the edges? It’s good for the image. Adds a touch of authenticity.”
“Thanks,” said Mal. “I think. How’s the acrophobia?”
Aaronson was standing with his back turned to the lift’s three outer sides, which were all glass. “Long as I don’t think about it, I’m fine.”
The lift deposited them a couple of floors shy of the ziggurat’s summit. Tlanextic went ahead while the rest of them cooled their heels in a reception area. In order to distract herself from the nerves fizzing in her stomach, Mal tried to engage one of the Serpent lieutenants in conversation. He was having none of it.
Eventually Tlanextic reappeared. “The Great Speaker will see us now.”
“All of us?” said Mal.
“Yes, that does fucking include you. Get over it. Let’s go.”
A short trapezoid passageway led to an antechamber dominated by a massive circular door. The entire surface of the door was covered by a mosaic of jewels taking the form of the four-quadrants symbol that represented the interrelatedness and universality of the Four Who Rule Supreme. It was an outlandishly lavish and opulent thing. The north quadrant, the cardinal direction associated with Huitzilopochtli, consisted of slivers of white opal across which rainbow glints of iridescence chased one another. The south, which belonged to Tezcatlipoca, was a jigsaw of flakes of purest midnight jet. The east, Xipe Totec’s province, was a scintillating mass of deep yellow citrine, while the west quadrant, Quetzalcoatl’s, was nothing but rubies.
There was scant opportunity for Mal to marvel, however. No sooner had they arrived at the door than it began to slide open. The quadrants parted, each withdrawing separately into the frame, and X-shaped gap expanding to reveal a round aperture. Tlanextic went through, inviting everyone with him to do the same.
The room on the other side was large and richly furnished but not as much as Mal had been anticipating. She’d expected a throne room, gold everywhere, more precious metal on show than the mind could take in, and a ceiling so high you could hardly see it. Instead, it was a single-storey space whose floors and walls were an expanse of plain black marble, buffed to a mirror shine. There were oblong onyx columns carved with sacred emblems. There were suites of sofas and armchairs upholstered in dark leather. It was more like a very swanky open-plan living room than anything else, Aztec-themed but ultramodern.
A row of windows occupied the far wall, and beyond them lay a terrace the size of a tlachtli court, dotted with parasols and outdoor furniture. At the parapet, a very tall robed figure stood with his hands clasped behind his back, admiring the view. He didn’t look round as Tlanextic ushered everyone out onto the terrace, but a slight shift in the position of his shoulders indicated that he was aware of their presence.
For a long time, nobody moved or spoke. Tlanextic, Mal, Aaronson, Reston and the Serpent lieutenants waited. The tall figure continued to enjoy the prospect over Tenochtitlan, across the wave-wrinkled lake, all the way to the skein of shoreline. The sun beat down but a cooling breeze mitigated its heat. The parasols fluttered.
At last the Great Speaker turned. His enveloping golden mask flashed dazzlingly, so bright it hurt to look at. It was a smooth, almost featureless blister of polished metal, with two tiny eyeholes and a grille-like slit for a mouth. It was beautiful and inhuman, like the face of a sculpture or an automaton, something manmade and empty of emotion. Yet there was a gracefulness about it too, and likewise about the Great Speaker himself as he raised a hand in greeting, the fingers fanned like a dancer’s.
Mal was mesmerised. Enthralled. Nothing she had read about the Great Speaker, none of the clips she had watched on TV, had prepared her for the experience of seeing him in the actual living flesh. He had a stillness and physicality that seemed to radiate outwards and fill the air around him. It was almost as if he was touching her – touching all of them – even at a distance of several yards. This, she realised, was the aura of true power. This was a man who rig
htfully inspired awe.
Tlanextic fell to one knee and dropped his head, and Mal and the others took their cue and followed suit, all apart from Reston, who remained standing with a bland, indifferent expression on his face.
The Great Speaker acknowledged the show of obeisance with the slightest of nods. When he spoke, his voice resonated deep and clear like a gong. The mask did not muffle it at all.
“You may rise,” he said, adding, “Those of you who had the good manners to bend the knee.”
“Your Imperial Holiness,” said Tlanextic, “I bring you Stuart Reston, as instructed.”
“Yes,” said the Great Speaker, studying Tlanextic’s prisoner. “Yes, indeed. The man who donned Conquistador armour and thumbed his nose at the Empire for many months. Quite the nuisance you were, Mr Reston, at least to your own countrymen and your High Priest. But the Empire is huge and thick-skinned, like a rhinoceros, and your little provocations were like the bites of a gnat. You scarcely penetrated its hide.”
Reston mumbled something.
“What was that?” The Great Speaker cupped a hand to his ear in a dumbshow of deafness. “Didn’t quite catch it.”
“I said, ‘But I’m here, aren’t I?’”
“The implication being...?”
“Well, despite your protestations, the Empire must have felt something, mustn’t it? I must have stung. Otherwise why the volcanic eruptions? And why has my sorry arse been hauled all the way over to your palace? Stands to reason. Oh, and by the way, while I have you, and because I’m never going to get an opportunity like this again... You’re a big fat phoney. Immortal? Ptah!” He spat at the Great Speaker’s feet. “Just the latest in a long line of anonymous dictators. Tell me, does it get stuffy in that mask? Does it stink of the sweat from all the others who’ve worn it before you?”
Mal couldn’t control herself. She delivered a knuckle strike to Reston’s waist, just where his left kidney was, so that he doubled over, grimacing in pain. “Don’t you behave like that before the Great Speaker. Don’t you dare.”
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