“It’s been three,” Simon countered. “At least.”
“Maybe the roads out of town are all clogged,” Emily offered. “It’s bound to be pretty messy in there right now.”
Simon shook his head. They’d seen others fleeing the city. They poured out of the main roads or dribbled through the outer fringe of houses, fanning out across the plains. A few had even passed within a dozen feet of Simon, their possessions wrapped in ratty blankets and clutched to their chests. The youngest of them, a girl no older than Simon, regarded him with a solemn look. The parents paid him no attention at all. Otis had stowed the truck in a nearby gulley and the two-wheeled vehicle in a tuft of cactus and scrub grass, and so the three of them probably seemed like no more than a trio of refugees resting before resuming their exodus.
If these people—many of them old or infirm or stunned by calamity into a lumbering, aimless flight into the wilderness—could make the trek, why hadn’t Selena managed it yet?
Because she’s dead, that’s why. Dead or dying.
Simon closed his eyes against the statement, as if his eyelids could bar the words from entering his skull. They hacked their way in regardless.
Or maybe she’s just captured. They take slaves there, don’t they? What better opportunity than a riot to bump up your stock a little. They probably pay people to do just that sort of thing. Sister catchers! Fifty pesos a pop! Half price if they’re damaged, but don’t stress too much about it. A couple fingers or toes missing, what’s the harm?
Simon felt as if his body were in the process of demolishing itself. His teeth ground through enamel with hacksaw steadiness, his every breath raked talons up his windpipe, a gallon of acid burbled in his belly. He wanted to move, to storm the town, to scour its streets until he found his sister, but a voice inside him sneered at the suggestion. Yeah, and what are you gonna do? If someone really has done something to Selena, and she couldn’t stop them, what chance on earth do you have?
The answer was none. No chance whatsoever.
The sob he swallowed tasted of bile. He held it down as best he could, choked, and spewed a cord of stringy yellow vomit over the desert hardpan. He hunkered on the balls of his feet, hands pressed to the ground, and retched out a final teaspoon of sour fluid. A line of fire singed him from chin to belly. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand and, with a convulsion of disgust at the chunky film that clung to it, dragged his knuckles through the dirt until they came away dry.
A hand came to rest on his shoulder. Emily’s face dropped into the periphery of his vision, her mouth pinched into a thin line. She rubbed his back gently until his breath no longer hitched.
“It’s gonna be okay,” she said. “It’s bound to be pretty messy down there right now. But we can wait. We’ll stay here as long as we have to until she comes out.”
“She’s not gonna come out,” he hissed, startled at the venom in his voice. He chewed his lower lip and drew a few slow breaths. “I know you’re trying to help. But something’s wrong. And unless I go in there and do something, it’s not gonna get any better.”
Emily glanced over at Otis. He stood a dozen feet back, his eyes resting on the city in the distance. He seemed deep in thought, though Simon guessed he might be simply doing his best to give him and Emily a moment’s privacy. Emily leaned closer to Simon.
“Then we go in there and do something,” she said.
Simon smiled. It was a weak one, but sincere. “That’s exactly what she’d tell me not to do. How are we supposed to find her? Where would we look? And even if we stumbled across her by some miracle, what are we going to do about it? It’s not like she’s just napping. She’s either badly hurt or being held prisoner somehow.” Or dead, chimed the voice in his head. Don’t forget that one.
“That’s why we’ve got to try.”
“Your dad’ll never let you go. And he’s right not to. We’ll just have to wait.”
Emily withdrew. Simon let her go, not looking, not listening. His eyes saw only the patch of dirt in front of him, his ears heard only the distant hiss and rumble of Juarez in the throes of a riot. It was a hushed, sibilant sound, almost peaceful in its way, undulating in volume like the swell and crash of waves on an empty beach. He listened to it until another sound peaked over the din. It was a higher-pitched tone, constant against the city’s flux. It swelled in volume but not pitch, cresting as the sleek vehicle zipped between Simon and Otis. He had little more than a second to mark the familiar flutter of her black hair before she was gone, bouncing down the hillside toward the town.
Otis reacted first, but his response was just as ineffectual as Simon’s. He ran after her, his voicing cracking with strain as he called at her to come back.
“Emily! Emily!”
A clod of loose earth crumbled beneath his foot and spilled him down the hillside. He fell to one knee and skidded to a halt, scraping the skin from his shin and the heels of both hands. He hurled himself upright and kept running, but Emily had already cleared the hill and crossed the valley’s rocky basin. She rounded onto the northern trader’s road and zipped past the huts and out of sight.
Though momentarily stunned by Emily’s sudden departure, Simon shook free of his stupor and ran down the hill after Otis. He moved quickly but without the fevered desperation of a frightened parent, and managed to keep his footing even when the gravel-shod hardpan slipped and crunched beneath him.
He caught up to Otis a few hundred feet later. The older man bent forward, hands resting on thighs, breath heaving. He watched Emily’s disappearing form with a look of utter despair.
“What do we do now?” Simon cried.
Otis muscled the look of anguish from his features like a man shifting a heavy burden. The look that replaced it was stronger but no less worrying: a stony-browed resolve that would brook no excuses.
“We go after her.”
“But how? We’ll never catch up to her.”
“Not on foot, no.”
He jogged back the way they’d come, feet slipping on loose gravel, until he reached the mortar truck. He leaped inside, and Simon followed.
“Do you know how to drive this thing?”
“I got us out here, didn’t I?”
Simon didn’t reply. It was true, Otis had driven the truck onto the mesa, and from there to the arroyo where they bivouacked. But there was a difference between driving a vehicle along an empty plane and racing it through crowded streets in the middle of a riot. Simon would have preferred a driver who’d done more than the former before lunging head-first into the latter.
If you’ve got another driver on hand, you let us know, said the ever-familiar voice. For now, it’s Otis or nothing, so unless you plan on leaving Selena and Emily to their fates, you’d best just deal with it.
For once, Simon and the voice agreed. He fastened the strap around his waist and grabbed onto the seat as the transmission screamed into gear, flinging them forward like a slug from a slingshot.
40: Twelve
Before the blasts, before the fires, before the refugees and rioters surged with white-water fury through the streets, Marcus knew something was about to change.
His foresight wasn’t perfect, for Selena had told him of her plan the week before, and he’d dismissed it as the fantasies of a strong but beaten girl. He knew from firsthand experience that she was not to be underestimated, but Thorin’s rise to power had jarred the peculiar mechanism that had always allowed him to sense the rising and falling fortunes of those around him. Her plan was farfetched, yes—but the Battle of Fallowfield had been farfetched too, and he’d had sense enough to peek beneath its superficially poor odds at the iron core of the girl driving it. Under Thorin’s yoke, cowed and beaten, such an assessment was beyond his powers. He lacked the strength for hope, and so indulged in cynicism—a heady drug despite its bitter taste.
He stood as he did every day lately, hands folded behind his back, awaiting the arrival of his first client—a term Thorin often
used, its true meaning evident not in the name itself, but in the smirk that accompanied it.
Some days a dozen men would die by his hand, other days none at all. Some would be acquaintances, others strangers. They were young and old, men and women, marcado and blanco, field serfs in rags and merchants in silken finery. Marcus dispatched them all with cold efficiency, adjusting his technique only to the disposition of the subjects—the merchants quivered and begged and struggled, necessitating a quick jab to the belly, while the peasants and marcado usually met their deaths stoically, allowing Marcus to aim for the heart, a neater and more honorable end.
A few of those he had killed were friends, though whether Thorin knew them to be such was an open question. Perhaps they were a test of Marcus’s loyalty, or an unspoken punishment for his initial insubordination. Or maybe they were just unlucky saps who’d met with Thorin’s displeasure for one reason or another. Marcus said nothing to any of them, and none tried to dissuade him, though he looked every one of them in the eyes as he delivered the blow.
The morning had been quiet so far, without a client in sight. The usual gaggle of courtiers and sycophants milled about, their numbers bolstered by a few esbirros acting as bodyguards. Manuel was among them, but the others were strangers, more or less—he knew their faces and had caught a few names over the weeks, but had spoken with none of them.
Marcus counted them, an instinctive act he hadn’t bothered with for some time. This alone should have alerted him to the change in the air, but his mind was elsewhere, and he tallied thirteen, including Thorin, and logged the number without even realizing it. The sum rose unbidden a few minutes later, supplemented with the positions of each man and the weapons at their disposal.
Thorin shifted in his throne. He spun his rings one by one, tugged at the silver brooch that held his cloak in place. A stout carving knife rested on a table eighteen inches from his right hand. He slouched, forcing his elbow to bear some of his weight, slowing a potential draw by at least half a second. Next to him stood two esbirros with clubs hanging from their belts. The taller of the two had a pistol in a holster on his left hip, and one of the courtiers wore a rifle on a strap around his back—an affectation more than a practical tool, judging by its antiquity and the way it hung, which favored visibility over draw time. There were no other firearms in sight, though three men wore robes that could obscure small arms. He watched the shift and rustle of their garments as they walked and deemed two certainly unarmed and the third unlikely.
These details and a thousand others flashed through his mind in the span of a single breath, cross-checked and filed for future use. They receded only to make room for appraisal of the fthoom-crash of heavy impact somewhere in the distance.
Thorin sat up and turned his head in the direction of the sound. “What was that?”
Without further instruction, a pair of lackeys scuttled to the door, racing each other for the honor of being first to report. In their brief absence, Thorin seemed to forget the sound altogether, returning to his idle amusements. Following this unspoken directive, the room returned to its chatter as if nothing had happened. On the surface, Marcus did likewise, but beneath his placid mask, his brain scrawled frantic calculations on the walls of his skull. The time for action was now—unless it wasn’t, in which case a hasty twitch of the wrist could paint a trail of blood from his feet to the farthest outposts of his lineage. His heart, which even in the heat of battle rarely roused itself above fifty beats a minute, rattled like a timpani in a swelling crescendo. Sweat prickled his forehead.
Yes or no? Yes or no?
The messengers returned. Their former haste was gone; neither seemed keen to be the first in the room. They engaged in a silent struggle for as long as they dared until the loser stepped forward and, tongue circling dry lips, spoke.
“There’s been a fire, Jefe.”
“A fire? Where?”
The boy’s tongue made another circuit of his lips, leaving them no damper than it found them. “Many places, Jefe. It seems they’ve come from the sky.”
“From the sky? Have we offended any gods you’d care to mention? Talk sense, boy!”
“It’s La Santa. That’s what they’re saying. La Santa has come. And she’s angry.”
Thorin brooded over this remark, his frustration at these opaque announcements tempered by uncertainty. Marcus faced no such dilemma. He locked eyes with Manuel, who seemed likewise to sense the tectonic shift occurring beneath their feet, and motioned to the far corner of the room.
“Go,” he mouthed.
Manuel’s face went pale. He tiptoed back from the crowd and made his way in the direction Marcus had indicated. Marcus recalibrated for his absence, charting the position of the room’s remaining bodies. A single word rose to the forefront of his mind, and it told him exactly what he needed to do.
Twelve.
No one noticed him as he shuffled from his post. The boy’s pronouncement caused enough confusion that the wanderings of a lowly verdugo were easy to ignore. Moving with deliberate nonchalance, he drifted sideways in a wide arc, putting himself between Thorin and the door. The two messengers hovered ten feet behind his left shoulder and could be glanced in his periphery. The room’s other occupants were clear in his line of sight. Time to begin.
The sword was in the esbirro’s chest before anyone, but Marcus had seen it move. It struck at a forty-five-degree angle, cleaving muscle and collarbone before catching on a nexus of rib and spine.
Eleven.
He’d picked the unarmed esbirro for his target, allowing the second man time to draw his pistol, which he did the instant he realized what was happening. Marcus smiled gratefully. Strapped to a dead man’s leg, such a weapon could be plundered at any moment and used when his back was turned. Better to have it out in the open and accounted for. A backhand strike severed the gunman’s hand before the finger had a chance to fire. It cartwheeled upward, still clutching the gun.
Marcus left the man to contemplate his diminished stature and plunged the sword through the belly of the courtier with the rifle, who seemed in his panic to have entirely forgotten that he was armed. A stew of blood and shit burbled from the wound. Marcus kicked him backward, hoping his corpse would be heavy enough to make retrieving the gun cumbersome.
Ten.
The pistol landed with a plop. Two men went for it at once. Marcus worked the sword in a figure-eight motion, severing first one head—
Nine.
—then another.
Eight.
He stomped on the hand until its grip gave way and kicked the pistol into the abattoir’s gutter. It clattered down the grate and out of reach.
By now even the room’s less battle-seasoned occupants had registered the attack and shaken free of panic’s paralysis. The messengers turned on their heels, tripping over one another in their effort to flee.
Marcus disliked killing men with their backs turned, but he had no desire to see them crying murder in the streets. Twelve was enough for him. He ducked beneath a wooden club swung by a shirtless marcado, kicked a courtier in the side of the knee hard enough to crack the bone, and whirled to the door. The first messenger died when the sword stabbed through his neck.
Seven.
The second died slower from a slash to the belly, a fact Marcus lamented but couldn’t afford to brood over.
Six.
With the runners dead and the gun out of play, the melee found a moment’s pause. Marcus sized up his opponents. He was halfway done by raw numbers, but knew the second round would be harder than the first. He’d hacked through the chaff, now it was time to crack the wheat.
Thorin remained on his throne, back rigid, face pale and expressionless. The knife on the table beside him had been knocked to the floor in the tumult, and Thorin had made no move to grab it. The esbirro rolled on the ground at his feet, clutching the trunk of gore where his hand had been.
The remaining four men stood around them
in a protective semi-circle. Two were esbirros, one young and gangly with a knife in each hand, the other stout and middle-aged, meaty fist wrapped around a hatchet. The next was a merchant by the look of him, with fine clothes and skin unruddied by labor, who wielded a curved blade the length of his forearm in a stance that implied surprising competence. Tension pulled the expression from their faces, but Marcus sensed in them only modest fear and no panic.
Last was the shirtless marcado. An indentured Iron Circle fighter, he was hairless from head to toe, his bald head spackled with tattoos. A line of silver rings pierced the flesh beneath each eye, pulling his cheeks into a permanent smile. His muscular chest glittered in ornate patterns sewn into his skin with golden thread. While no less collected than the others, his demeanor suggested none of their reluctance. If anything, it radiated glee. He twirled his narrow club with a juggler’s economic grace, hands betraying no unnecessary movement.
Marcus shifted his grip on the sword and tried it one-handed. It felt steady enough, though his swings would have less power. In a slow, fluid motion, he reached his free hand into his serape and drew his switchblade. His thumb settled on the trigger. It pressed down, and the blade sprung from the handle. Schwick! Thus armed, he closed on the foursome, moving in a bishop’s diagonal, face flush with his opponents.
Part of him hoped that the bravest among them would strike out solo, but no such luck. They came at him as one, a wall of steel and iron and polished hardwood. He feinted backward, coiled his calves, and charged. His switchblade sank into the merchant’s thigh while his sword ran through the younger esbirro’s belly and tore its way through his side. Steel rasped against bone. Blood misted the air, rank and humid.
Five.
A twinge of pain alit on Marcus’s shoulder. Ignoring it, he twirled and brought the sword down. The blade cleaved the merchant’s face in two from the nose up before stopping against the thick ridge of his sinus. He tried to tug the blade free, found it caught, and abandoned it.
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