They found a seat near the front of the tavern, far from its few patrons who preferred the dank coolness of its backmost corners. Afternoon sunlight slanted through its windows, years of which had bleached the wooden tables a ghostly, ashen white. Selena slid into a chair and set the candle down on its base. It wobbled a little but kept its feet. She handed the girl one tortilla and kept the other. The tortilla cracked on her first bite, spilling juice down her chin.
“So, you know where my brother is,” said Selena, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “Why should I believe you?”
Emily shrugged. “Why would I lie?”
“That’s the problem. I have no idea. Just like I have no idea why you’d be helping him contact me in the first place.”
“Your brother helped my dad and I when we were in big trouble. I’m just returning the favor.”
“Helped how?”
Selena listened to Emily’s story. It matched what she knew about Simon’s situation—his heading south alone, his lack of supplies—and his disposition. She wouldn’t put it past him to fix a centuries-old irrigator he’d never seen before. The boy had his gifts, just as she had hers. The story could be true, or it could be a tangle of lies trussed to a few supporting facts.
“Okay. So Simon’s alright. I’m glad to hear it. But what is it you want from me, exactly?”
The girl blinked, confused. “I don’t want anything. I’m just here to deliver a message. Hang tight. Your brother’s coming to rescue you.”
Selena nearly spit out a mouthful of carnitas. Rescue? Emily had said it before, she recalled, but it had been so absurd she’d ignored it. Simon, rescue her? He had enough trouble rescuing himself.
He did okay when the Mayor had a gun to your head, scolded a voice. Her smile withered at the sound of it.
“You brought a message to me today. Are you able to bring one back?”
‘Sure.”
“Tell him to forget about me. The two of us have a very important job to do, and now it’s up to him to do it. He’s got the … he has everything he needs. I’ll figure all this out on my own and meet up with him where we’re going.”
Emily didn’t ask what the very important job might be, whether out of respect for their privacy or because Simon had told her already, Selena couldn’t say. “I can deliver the message, but I’ll tell you right now he’s not gonna listen to it. He’s got a plan to get you, and he’s going through with it.”
“Then you’ll have to convince him not to.”
“How am I supposed to do that? And even more, why would I want to? That’s his decision to make, not mine. Not yours.”
“You don’t understand. The two of us have something very important to do, and we need to do it soon. I’m caught, so the task has fallen to him. I get that he wants to help me, I do. But he needs to think of the bigger picture.”
Emily’s nose wrinkled. “The bigger picture? You’re his sister. If you guys were swapped around, would you really leave him to rot as a marcado?”
“I’m hardly rotting,” Selena spat. She tinted the words with an anger she didn’t feel, hoping to throw Emily on the defensive. It didn’t work; the girl didn’t budge.
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
Selena drummed her fingers on the table. This kid’s good. She thought back to that moment in the tall grass, her eyes stinging with rage, the wound on her head still fresh-voiced and screaming. To Bernard’s cackling threats against her brother, caught in the Mayor’s web. To the data stick’s terrible weight on her leg, the competing forces pulling west and south until she thought they might tear her in two.
“If it was absolutely necessary, then yes. I would.”
Liar.
Emily seemed to hear Selena’s internal reply, for she didn’t bother refuting it. Selena rubbed her face.
“Okay, new plan. You’re gonna have to tell him you couldn’t find me. Or better yet, tell him I’m dead.”
Emily recoiled at the suggestion. “I’m not doing that.”
“Look, you think I like suggesting this stuff? You think I want my brother to think I’m dead? That I’d get a kick out of the pain it’d cause him? I hate it. But there’s no other way.”
“Sure there is. Let him rescue you.”
A sound escaped Selena’s lips, a bedraggled chimera somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “It’s not that easy. This place isn’t some prison. I could run off today if I wanted to. But I’m branded, and that means I’d be hunted everywhere I turned. We’d be hunted. If I fled with him, I’d be as good as tattooing this mark on his face too. I love my brother, but you don’t know him—”
“I’m starting to think you’re the one who doesn’t know him,” said Emily.
Selena swallowed. Something hard and bitter dropped into her belly.
Emily lowered her gaze to the table. “Look, lady, I don’t know how well you know your brother. And I haven’t known him that long, that’s true. But I can tell you one thing for sure: he’s coming to get you. Whether you cooperate or not, he’ll be here. And if you hide from him or try to stop him, he’ll come anyway, and he’ll die. But if you work with him, who knows? Maybe you’ll both make it.”
Selena found herself giggling. A sense of detached amusement came over her, snipping her tethers and leaving her mind to float about the room. Sure, she thought. Let Simon come. Let him bring a whole damn army. We’ll burn this shithole to the ground and trample every cazadore foolish enough to stand in our way!
The feeling receded, and she floated gently back to her seat. As she did, she thought of the crowds cheering her in the Iron Circle, of the townsfolk’s reaction when she stood up to the esbirros trashing the statue of La Santa, of the look on the old woman’s face when she presented her with the candle. The idea, first planted in the alcove of the coliseum, began to sprout.
Simon didn’t have an army, of course. Neither did she, and she sure as hell wasn’t about to raise one—it’s hard to fire up the troops when you don’t even speak the same language. As long as Thorin held firm to power, escape would be all but impossible. The engine of Juarez’s vast slave market ran too smoothly, and the response to a runaway would be quick and coordinated. But throw a little sand in the tank, and the engine might backfire. Maybe not enough to break it all together, but she didn’t need it broken. Just a little hiccup would do.
“Okay,” Selena said, leaning forward. “I’ll wait for my hero. But if he’s coming, there’s a few things I need him to know.”
“I’m listening,” said Emily.
25: The Sludge of Simple Murder
Marcus slid the epee home. It dimpled the flesh of the man’s breast for the briefest moment before piercing skin and sinew, gliding neatly between the third and fourth rib, and taking momentary residence in the left ventricle of the man’s heart. The conquered organ shuddered, a desperate pounding that resonated up the blade and into Marcus’s knuckles, while the man he’d stabbed fixed him with a look of uncomprehending hurt. Behind the well-trained muscles of his face, Marcus recoiled at the man’s silent plea. Do you think I chose this? Do you really think I wish you dead? You’re nothing to me.
None of these thoughts showed on his face. Even his eyes were impassive, flakes of obsidian laid atop a corpse’s eyelids. His wrist performed the slightest lateral twitch to quicken bleed-out and he withdrew the blade. The prisoner collapsed. Marcus could tell by the way his body hit the ground that he was already dead.
He wiped the flat of the epee along a rag cupped in his upturned palm, first one side then the other, moving in slow, deliberate strokes. He folded the cloth to mask the blood and used an unstained corner to buff away a bit of dirt near the hilt. The sword was not his, but he felt for it the kinship he held with all blades and did not want to see it mistreated. He bent it along a beam of sunlight, studying the path of the gleam as it crept up the blade. It glided true, finding no nicks to divert it or tarnish to diffuse it.
A pair of burly marcados dragged the body from the stone grate, where the last of its fluids dribbled into a reservoir. Water trickled through a channel beneath the grate, washing the ichor from the abattoir. It made a burbling sound that filled Marcus’s ears in the silence between executions.
Thorin rose from his throne, hands spread exultantly. “Expertly done, Marcus. If execution is an art, then surely you are its greatest practitioner.”
“Thank you, Jefe,” Marcus muttered.
“No, I mean this truly.” Thorin wandered as he spoke, his hands grasping in front of him as if in search of some nascent thought. “Any dog can butcher a man. Indeed, I have many such animals at my disposal. They serve their purpose. But it takes an artist to kill with grace, with elegance, to hone the line between life and death to a razor’s breadth and puncture it neatly. Such work is necessary for a city-state to function. Such elegance must be seen.”
Then why are we in your abbatoir, Jefe? Where only you, the dead, and a few marcados can bear witness to my craft? Marcus nodded noncommittally.
Finished with his wanderings, Thorin came to rest atop the stone grate where ten lives had ended since the sun rose that morning. Every one of them died by Marcus’s hand, pierced by the silver-pommeled epee he still held in one hand.
It was obvious to everyone present that Marcus’s new assignment was his punishment for refusing to fight in Thorin’s name. Not just to stand in the Iron Circle against his will, but to serve as private executioner. Thorin sought to pervert his gift, to dip his talented hands in the sludge of simple murder, to make him beg for a place as Thorin’s fighter. He had succeeded in items one and two, Marcus had to admit—but he would never succeed in the third.
On instinct, Marcus’s eyes swept the room and marked the men in it, who they were and where they stood. The marcados stood at attention next to the throne. The nearest was over twenty feet away. Marcus could kill a dozen men before the swiftest guard would be upon him. His fingers tightened around the hilt, squeezing furrows into its leather grip. Thorin stood his ground, arms outstretched.
“This position doesn’t demean you, does it, Marcus? It is not intended to do so. It is just that I need your services. And since you chose not to fight… well, you can still kill, can you not? That is still within your power?”
Blood pounded a galloping beat in Marcus’s ears, driven by the audacity of Thorin’s phony concern. His tongue circled the inside of his lips—an invisible gesture, as decades of practice kept his mouth a tight line and his tell hidden from view. He saw his arm raise the blade parallel to the floor, felt his toes curl en pointe, heard the whicker of air as he snapped forward, viper quick, his single fang screeching for Thorin’s heart.
But atop this image, he saw the aftermath. Subdued by a thousand marcados. His fingers promptly severed, the better to avoid any tricky escapes or suicides. The mutilation, the gelding. The procession of everyone he’d ever known and loved into the Iron Circle. The cackling innovation of tortures old and new. Death drawn out beyond any hope of endurance.
“Yes, Jefe,” Marcus mumbled. “My hand is yours to command.” His voice, though far from jubilant, bore none of the interior strain that had nearly ripped his heart in two. Yet somehow Marcus guessed Thorin had seen it all the same. It showed in his smile, the grin of a boy who’d torn the tail from a scorpion and watched, amused, as it struggled hopelessly to sting him.
A pair of esbirros dragged a woman into the chamber. She wore a black robe that hung down to her ankles. Its shirt cuffs clattered with bones and teeth sewn into the fabric with silvery thread. A dozen skulls hung around her neck, strung through their eye sockets on a rawhide braid. Blood dribbled from her nose, and a bruise darkened the baggy flesh around her right eye, but she seemed unafraid. She locked eyes with Thorin as the esbirros denounced her.
“We’ve got one for you, Jefe. A sacerdotisa. She was preaching before an altar. In public.”
Thorin shook his head. “Foolish woman. Must you sully my courtyards with your squawking? I allow you your little shrines in your homes, and make no quarrel with those who practice in private.”
“Your time is coming, Thorin False-King. La Santa knows the blasphemy in your heart, and she is angry. Her signs are waxing.”
Thorin pursed his lips. “You do yourself no favors, hag. But I admire your conviction, stupid as it may be. I sentence you to death. Marcus, you may carry out your duty.”
The old woman shook free of her captors. They braced, ready for her to try and run, but instead, she stepped onto the stone dais, clasped her hands behind her back, and stuck out her chest. She eyed Marcus without pleading or anger or fright.
“Do your work, child. La Santa bears you no ill will, for you give me her ultimate blessing. It’s his hands that shall taste my blood, even though you swing the blade.”
Marcus did as instructed. It was a clean strike, and the woman didn’t even shudder. She simply closed her eyes and fell limp as the blade split her heart. Thorin glowered at her corpse as if she were a stain on an otherwise pristine piece of furniture.
“They’re growing bolder. My men work overtime clearing their filthy shrines from the plaza, and now we have a sacerdotisa preaching her nonsense in public. In public. Are they such fools, these death cultists? Are they really so keen to be martyrs for their little ash bin goddess?”
“It’s that luchadora, Jefe,” explained one of the esbirros. “The rabble say she is an envoy.”
Marcus’s ear perked up. The luchadora? Selena? He fiddled with the sword’s pommel, hiding his interest behind gestures of boredom.
“Those imbeciles really will believe anything,” Thorin scoffed. His voice sounded disinterested, even amused, but his face betrayed a deeper concern. He dismissed Marcus with a wave of his hand.
“You’ve done all I need of you for today. Enjoy your afternoon.”
“Thank you, Jefe.” Marcus turned to the door. He took a few steps before Thorin’s voice snared his ear.
“Oh, Marcus,” he said, pointing. “The sword.”
“Right. Apologies, Jefe.” Marcus swung the epee, his finger a fulcrum against the flat of its blade, and presented it hilt-first to Thorin, who brandished it with a few clumsy flourishes and slid it back into its scabbard. Marcus suppressed a smile at the man’s incompetence. You may own Juarez, Jefe, but I’ve met children who could best you with a blade.
The sun slashed him with its frigid brightness, stinging his eyes while laying no warmth on his face. He shrugged his serape higher up his shoulders and walked into a dusty wind. The air tasted dry and sour, laced with alkali scratched from the salt pans to the city’s north.
Marcus thought about the esbirro’s words, his reference to a luchadora. Was Selena fighting in the Iron Circle? Last he’d heard Todd had snapped her up in an auction, made her part of his little sexless harem. There were worse places to wind up in this town, god knows, though that did little to assuage the guilt he felt whenever his thoughts turned to her. And what was all that about her being an envoy? Selena never struck him as a santanista. The good lady was all but unknown north of Mejica. If she’d converted, she’d certainly made a quick job of it…
A half-dozen marcados, all of them stripped to the waist despite the chill, hauled a wagon along the road. A blanco laborer traded coins with a vendor on the boardwalk, who scooped a pupusa from a sizzling iron pan, wrapped it in corn husks, and handed it to his customer. The blanco walked briskly across the road, nibbling at the pupusa as he went. Marcus caught his eye by chance as he passed and nodded minutely, the closed eyes and slight bowing of the head that was basic courtesy among blancos in Juarez. The laborer made a snorting sound and mumbled something. Marcus caught only one word, but it was barbed: perro.
Moving with unconscious speed, he matched pace with the man and grabbed him by the bicep. His grip stopped short of being painful, but it leveraged the steel cables that long training had wound into his fingers and the labo
rer couldn’t break it without a serious struggle.
“Did you call me a dog?” Marcus asked.
The laborer swallowed. It seemed to take some effort. “No.”
“You didn’t call me Thorin’s dog?”
The laborer shook his head.
“So, you’re saying there is something wrong with my ears. Because you spoke clearly, even with a gob full of pupusa.”
The laborer shifted his feet. His free hand held the pupusa at chest height. He seemed to decide denial was getting him nowhere, for he changed tactics. “Forgive me, Marcus. I misspoke.”
“So you know who I am?” Marcus let go of the man’s arm.
The laborer smiled. He rubbed his bicep with the pinky of his opposite hand, his remaining fingers clutching awkwardly at the pupusa. “Of course I do. I saw you in the Iron Circle many times. There is no one better with a blade in Juarez, I’ve often told folks that myself.”
“So you know I’m no dog.”
“Yes, yes, of course not.”
“Good, that’s good.” Marcus’s hand knew its business. At no point did the growing crowd notice it vanish beneath his serape. One instant it was empty, the next his switchblade flashed against his palm. He thumbed the trigger, freeing the blade with its sibilant schwick!
“Perhaps we should make it clear to these good people as well, hmm?”
Though the blade kissed only air as it left its hilt, it may as well have nicked a major artery, for the laborer’s blood fled his face in an instant. He stepped back, his one hand still pointlessly holding the pupusa.
“No, Marcus, please …”
“A good start,” cooed Marcus. “But it would be more convincing if you knelt.”
The man dropped to the road as if his ankles had been yanked out from under him. He clutched his hands in front of his face, fingers knit in supplication.
“Please, Marcus. I have a wife and children. I meant no disrespect. Have mercy.”
As he spoke, the man’s voice rose in pitch until it resembled a mosquito’s whine. Revulsion filled Marcus’s belly. What in god’s name was he doing? He snapped the switchblade shut, mumbled something conciliatory—he wasn’t sure exactly what—and slipped into the crowd.
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