“Thanks, Selena,” he whispered.
And as he drifted asleep, he could almost believe that she heard him.
36: ¡La Santa Viene!
Mary put a hand on Selena’s arm and squeezed.
“You okay?”
Selena nodded. She spat onto the hardpan and scuffed a bit of dirt over the damp spot. Strings of mucus formed a shifting lattice between the roof of her mouth and her tongue. The surge of anxiety troubled her. She’d never felt nervous before a fight in the past, and indeed it wasn’t the fight itself that made her nervous now, but rather the tasks that went along with it. Her fingers crawled to the small of her back, where a narrow tube was secreted beneath the billowing hem of her shirt. She touched it, still half-surprised to find it was actually there.
Since her meeting with Emily several weeks before, her every action suggested a bedrock presumption that the girl would live up to her end of their plan. They’d hashed it out over half a dozen cups of te de poleo, sketching phantom maps with their fingers and debating strategy as if they were wizened mercenaries on a job and not a couple of kids playing at war, and Selena had carried the role on her shoulders ever since.
But that didn’t change the fact that her partner in all this was a girl no older than her brother, and that her story was all but unverifiable in its details. She trusted that the girl had met Simon and won his confidence—how else could she know what she knew?—but everything beyond that had to be taken on faith.
So when the girl reappeared that morning outside the barracks, her face drawn and lined with a poor night’s sleep, her presence seemed almost otherworldly. The feeling passed quickly, flushed away by a flood of relief. Muscles she didn’t even know she’d been tensing suddenly relaxed, tingling with reprieve. A thousand things could still go wrong—she’d be astounded if nothing did—but the way forward remained clear to its first step.
Selena slipped out as discreetly as she could manage. She led Emily to a quiet spot nearby, forcing herself to remain silent until she was out of earshot from the street. When she allowed herself to speak, the words burst out of her in a hoarse bark.
“Did it work? Is he here?”
“It worked,” she answered, her voice pitched twenty decibels below Selena’s. “We’re just outside town. There’s an arroyo we’re using for cover. When’s the fight?”
“They start at noon. I’d give it an hour from there before I’m on. I can’t be more exact than that.”
“That’s fine. Here.” She handed Selena the metal tube. “Simon’s idea. Smoke signal. Turn the base ‘til it clicks, point the other end up and wait three seconds. We’ll get as close as we can beforehand so you’re not stuck waiting long.”
“Right.” Selena tapped the tube against her thigh. There were so many things she wanted to ask, but wasn’t sure how. Fists clenched, she inhaled deeply and took a stab at it.
“I just wondered … Simon. He’s okay?”
“He’s fine. He wanted to come see you. We told him it was too risky.”
“You were right. It is.” She swallowed. “Thanks.”
Shaking the recollection aside, Selena took out the signal tube and handed it to Mary.
“I need you to do something for me.”
Mary looked at the tube skeptically. “What is it, a bomb?
“No, nothing like that. It’s a signal. Once I’ve won the fight and started my announcement, find a clear spot outside, turn the knob, and drop it.”
“What if you don’t win the fight?”
Selena considered the question. “Use your judgment.”
“Great. Really banking on my strong suit.” She motioned to the alcove. “I think you’re on.”
“Right. I’ll see you once it’s over.”
“Yeah, let’s hope.”
Selena stepped into the Iron Circle. Her eyes skimmed the crowd, tallying rows of spectators. They easily numbered in the hundreds, maybe even thousands. Their myriad voices slurred into a single meaningless burble, low and constant as the sound of a distant waterfall. She knew the acoustics of the amphitheater favored her position over theirs, but even so, could such a heaving mass be swayed by a single voice? She rolled her opening words around in her mouth, prodding their alien contours and shaping their syllables with her lips and tongue. She had no need of them yet, but when the time came, she wanted them to be ready.
She spotted Grace Delgado, who sat near the center of the arena’s longest row. It was a spot chosen deliberately, for it was easy for many spectators to see but hard to reach from the aisles. Grace met her gaze and gave her the tiniest of nods. Though the gesture was meaningless to anyone but the two of them, Selena dropped her eyes from it anyway, flushed with anxiety at their conspiracy being uncovered. She cast her eyes about randomly for several seconds, miming a casual survey of the crowd, before allowing herself a glance at the alcove where the Brothers of the Iron Circle congregated during fights. They were out in force this afternoon, which Selena took for a good sign. Her conversation with them had been terse, and they made no formal plans, but their presence comforted her all the same. She couldn’t’ say to what extent they were for her, but after seeing their reaction when presented with Paulo’s head and the terrible desecration enacted on its cheek—for a Hermano, a sacrilege almost worse than the beheading itself—she knew without a doubt that they were very against Thorin.
Her opponent arrived, cutting her contemplation short. He leaped over the Iron Circle and approached with long, cocky strides. A compact man with a narrow waist and wide shoulders, he moved with a leonine bearing that was more hunter than fighter. An ornate pattern darkened his cheeks in blue-black arabesques, fanning down to his neck and curling in two symmetrical tendrils around his eyes. It was the most expansive tattoo Selena had ever seen on a marcado. He looked to Selena like a revenant dredged from some purgatorial abyss, an uneasy spirit seeking atonement through combat. She shook these thoughts from her mind and made herself see him as a man. No good ever came from mythologizing your opponent.
As he closed the final fifty feet between them, his motions tightened, and he shifted from his easy gait into a fighter’s stance. It was an unusual one, the fingers of his right hand hanging loose, as if reluctant to make a fist.
The fight began. Selena tested him with a few jabs and crosses and found him more cautious than she’d expected. He made no effort to fire back, merely bobbed away from the heavier blows and rolled the lighter ones across his raised wrists. Such caution in attack would usually be matched by the fighter’ footwork, but her opponent made no effort to shy back. In fact, he seemed eager to carve away the distance between them, inching past her outer range and into the field of heavier blows.
What is this guy doing? sneered a voice in Selena’s head. But while his strategy seemed amateurish in its inconsistency, his fundamentals were solid: he could take a punch without flinching, and his feint and parries were deft.
Overhead a momentary flash of sunlight broke through the yellow-grey haze, its fleeting glow reflected in the polished bend of the Iron Circle. A sister ember flickered in the hollow of her opponent’s loose left hand. A klaxon in her head sounded a warning. She dismissed it as jitters—the shine could’ve been anything—but the klaxon blared on.
Selena kept pushing, raising a few welts and blackening an eye, and finally, the man looked poised to strike. He chambered a cross with his left hand and swatted with his right. It was a superficially obvious ploy, an attempted hijacking of the reflexes—trick your opponent into deflecting the tap while the heavy punch soars through unopposed. A seasoned fighter would simply absorb the tepid blow and throw his effort into blocking the real attack. Selena had done it hundreds of times. But the klaxon still rang in her ears, and before she knew what she was even doing, she snatched his right arm by the wrist and twisted it until it presented palm up.
The device was so small it could be easily mistaken for a bit of jewelry: a steel band with a rais
ed segment along its length. The tip of a needle peeked from a tiny hole in its center. Though barely wider than a hair, it stood out in the frenzy of Selena’s seeing as if magnified a hundredfold.
The man’s arm went rigid. It snapped down, open-palmed, and made to slap against Selena’s wrist. She let go at the last second, and the hand swiped only air. It continued down, driven by an outsized force robbed of its expected resistance. Selena guided it along its arc and drove it, palm-first, into the man’s thigh.
She heard the tight snap of a triggered spring. The man gasped as if stung. He recoiled, eyes bulging, and stared at Selena in horror and incredulity. His face turned first pale, then blue. Foam poured from his mouth. A high wheeze whistled through his sputtering lips, ascending in pitch until it disappeared. He grabbed his throat and scratched at it, dragging deep gashes in his skin in his desperate tunneling for air. Black stains dappled his fingers. For a moment Selena thought this to be another symptom of the poison, but she soon realized that what she’d taken for a tattoo was actually a charcoal ink applied before the fight. Behind it lay the hairless cheeks of a young and frightened man, unmarked save for a green star beneath his right eye.
Thorin’s mark.
A hush settled over the crowd. In its wake Selena heard the long low sigh of wind coming over the amphitheater walls, carrying with it the mingled odors of the streets beyond. She went to speak and found her jaw immobile. Her words, so carefully aligned, tumbled backward down her throat, choking her. In the front rows, onlookers began glancing at one another, confused by the inaction.
Selena looked past her opponent to a spot in the crowd. Her eyes locked on a woman not much older than her. She had a long face with a thin nose and a smooth, rounded chin. A fringe of black hair lay over her forehead at a slight slant. Selena didn’t know the woman, but her words needed a target, so she opened her mouth and spoke to her.
Her voice rang through the arena. The word’s she’d prepared lined up neatly at her lips, leaping from their perch like a platoon of paratroopers. Taken one by one, Selena could only guess their meaning, but she’d rehearsed them well with Mary’s coaching and understood their overall message as if she were a native speaker of Mejise:
“Citizens of Juarez! I have come as a messenger of Santa Muerte, who has found disfavor in the sacrilege of your leader! Our lady demands you right this wrong, or she will exact a terrible vengeance. I forswear my allegiance to her chosen sovereign, and will fight only at her pleasure.”
As her words diffused outward to the distant seats on a current of incredulous whispers, Selena snapped her heels and straightened her back. Moving with the stiff-limbed precision of a military drill, she swiveled counterclockwise, dropped to one knee, and raised her right fist in salute.
“To Grace Delgado, emissary of Santa Muerte!”
The murmuring increased. The name of Delgado rang in their memory, causing heads to turn instinctively in Grace’s direction before the former Senador’s sister had even fully stood.
She did so slowly, her narrow shoulders covered by a simple black serape. Her hair sat at the nape of her neck, long strands woven into a spiraling braid. Unarmed and unadorned, she nevertheless exuded a regal bearing that the marks of her ownership couldn’t deface. She was a queen laid low, but unquestionably a queen, and the crowd fell all but silent the moment she first spoke.
Her voice thrummed with authority, each syllable crisp and magnified. Selena caught only a scant few words but knew the overall message by heart: that Thorin had overreached, that his presence was a humiliation of the men and women who’d served Delgado and Evangelista, that he sullied La Santa Meurte with his cowardice and broke her altars out of fear. That La Santa was displeased and would wreak a terrible vengeance on those who did not rise up in her name, and that her blessings would guide the hands of those who did.
The crowd’s reaction gave Selena no reason to doubt the accuracy of her interpretation. Eyes widened. Mouths hung agape. Citizens hid their faces or raised their fists and cheered.
Sensing the growing disquiet, a group of Thorin’s esbirros spilled into the arena, burly men with cudgels clutched in their meaty fists. They made their way into the stands and waded through the crowd. Some stood aside for them, but others blocked their path, moving with deliberate sluggishness or thrusting out their chests to act as shields.
Six of them stepped into the Iron Circle and headed for Selena. She rose from her knees but held her ground. The men raised their clubs. Behind them a pillar of green-grey smoke threaded its way skyward, listing west on the prevailing winds. How high did it need to get before Simon saw it? And how long would it take him to act when he did? Seconds passed, Grace kept speaking, and the enforcers inched their way toward her.
One of the esbirros lunged forward, swinging his club like a broadsword. Selena ducked under it and delivered a haymaker to his liver. A second man closed in and brought his club straight down. Selena had no time to dodge and parried instead, sweeping the blow aside with the back of one wrist. The club skidded along her forearm with enough force to rattle bone, slid past her elbow, and thudded into the dirt by her feet. Selena loosened the man’s teeth with a few rabbit punches but lacked the stance for a knockout blow. He clenched his jaw through the onslaught and rammed the butt of his club into Selena’s belly.
Selena tensed for the strike at the last second but was knocked back all the same, giving the man time to wind up another swing. Blood ran from his nose, dying the lower half of his face red. A savage grin split his jaw, bearing twin rows of red-flecked teeth. Selena raised her arms in a last-ditch effort to block a blow that never came. Instead one of the Brothers of the Iron Circle slammed his fist into the esbirro’s temple. The club flew from his hand mid-swing and stuck into the dry earth like a javelin. The fighter spat on the fallen esbirro and kicked him twice in the side.
By then, the first esbirro was finding his feet. Selena chambered her leg and kicked him in the side of the knee, sending him sprawling back to earth. She jumped on his back and slammed his head into the ground until his body went slack. The Brothers charged past her, driving the remaining esbirros from the field.
In the stands, Grace’s oration continued. The esbirros had nearly reached her. A clutch of partisans stood firm, but in their frustration Thorin’s men had taken harsher measures, their efforts to brush past or sidestep replaced by punches and shoving. She carried on undaunted, her voice straining to cut through the noise of the struggle inching ever closer. Selena looked over her head to the column of smoke. Where the hell was Simon?
One of the esbirros fought past the last of Grace’s defenders and seized her by the shoulders. Grace slammed an elbow into his mouth and kept speaking. Hands closed around her arms, grabbed her hair, wormed their way toward her neck. Her head snapped back. Words rasped from her throat, their meaning lost in the growing chaos.
A distant rumble shook the arena. A few heads in the crowd turned in search of its source, but most ignored it in favor of the more immediate action unfurling before them. Smoke plumed over the arena wall, drawing more gazes away from the melee. Worried chatter swirled atop the tumult, its spin rising to cyclone force as the stadium’s northern wall exploded.
The crowd erupted into a flurry of fists and feet and screams. The esbirros, blindsided, turned their attention from Grace long enough for her to slip away and several of her compatriots to bludgeon them senseless. A tsunami of smoke and rubble washed over the Iron Circle. The stink of ash and cordite filled Selena’s nostrils. Through smoke-stinging eyes she saw Grace leap onto the banister dividing audience and theater, arms raised in exultation. The churning chaos seemed to part as she opened her mouth, clearing a path for her words.
“¡La Santa! ¡La Santa viene!”
37: Mask of Dust and Dirt
The vehicle’s cab was too big for Simon. The seat was nearly as long as his legs, forcing his ankles to cantilever over the edge if he tried to sit flush against the back
rest. His other option was to perch on the lip of the seat, but then the steering wheel eclipsed the lower half of his vision. In the end, he tucked his feet beneath his bottom and knelt, a position that boosted his head sufficiently far above the dashboard to see. It left the pedals totally inaccessible, but he wasn’t driving anyway.
A gust of wind blew through the vehicle’s open windows. Dust stung Simon’s eyes and lined his nostrils with a desiccating coating that itched and ached by turns. He scratched a spot on his septum. The brittle membrane tore. A thread of blood trickled over his philtrum and beaded on his upper lip. He wiped it away and pinched the bridge of his nose until the bleeding stopped.
A haze of sand and grit collected on the vehicle’s windshield, leading the outside world a sepia tinge. Simon thought about cleaning it but decided not to bother. Even with the dirt, his sightline was plenty clear. Emily had scouted the location days before the arrival of their tiny convoy, and he had to admit she’d chosen well. The mesa formed a slanted table atop the plains, its southern end cresting a cliff face some thirty feet high while its northern flank receded at a gentle angle the vehicle’s chunky puncture-proof wheels could easily navigate. A frieze of tarwort and yucca provided ample cover, allowing them to creep the truck to the very edge with only minimal risk of being seen. Juarez sprawled across the valley below, a cluster of hub-and-spoke neighborhoods centered around a large earthwork structure. The city was too tightly-packed and tangled to offer much enticement for bandits in search of an easy raid, but it arose in a primitive era and had made no provisions for an attack from above. Why would it? Nothing with that sort of capability existed within a thousand miles of this place. Or so they likely thought.
Emily had been the first person in a very long time to stumble upon the cache in the mountains. But others had found it at some point between her discovery and the moment it was first abandoned. Simon could never know for sure who those people were, but he’d pored over every inch of the place and seen what they’d taken and what they hadn’t, and it gave him a pretty good idea. They were fierce but frightened, a band of thieves or partisans who’d watched the world crumble around them, denizens of a sandcastle half-swallowed by the tide. The wares they unearthed had sat untouched long enough for the fuel cells and batteries to die, and they lacked the arcane knowledge necessary to oversee their resurrection. They were scavengers on a fresh corpse, and it made them cagey but not totally desperate—there’d been no effort to strip the place bare, and Simon even found the rusted shells of unopened canned goods in some forgotten cubbies, their insides long since moldered to inedible mush.
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