Four.
The marcado aimed a two-handed blow at Marcus’s head. Marcus dodged it by inches, shoved the esbirro off-balance before he could strike out with his hatchet, and closed in for a killing blow. The effort nearly earned him a broken leg; the marcado, seemingly over-balanced from his swing, dropped the illusion and delivered a sharp backhanded strike toward Marcus’s knees. Marcus caught the deception too late to dodge and chose instead to close on the blow, letting the club hit his thigh a few inches above its grip and robbing the swing of most of its power. Most was not all, though—he winced at the damp thwack of bursting blood vessels and the ripple of impact up his leg. He retaliated with a jab that found only air. The marcado slithered to his side and worked the club like a lance, stabbing his chest and belly with remarkable force.
Aware of his overreach, Marcus sprung back. His injured leg had gone numb below the knee, and the lack of sensation nearly caused him to topple. He righted himself at the last instant and swiveled out of range of the marcado’s merciless club.
The esbirro, emboldened by his partner’s success, charged in from the left with hatchet raised as the marcado pounced from the right. Marcus caught his wrist and pulled him in close as if to dance. They performed a quick pivot, making the esbirro an unwitting shield against the marcado, who pulled his strike before it rendered the esbirro’s skull into so much broken crockery. The save was artful but scarcely mattered—Marcus had already bisected the man’s heart with a single surgical stroke.
Three.
Marcus nudged the esbirro forward, toppling him against the marcado. The marcado wriggled free of the dead man’s weight, but not before Marcus carved a shallow red culvert up his side, the tip of his blade jouncing over ribs. Most men pulled back from such strikes, but the marcado leaned into the cut, worsening his injury but also catching Marcus off-guard. He rammed an elbow into Marcus’s nose.
The blow dyed the room a blurry red. Biting down on the pain, Marcus followed his adversary’s example and fought the need to recoil. It was a prescient move, for the marcado’s club hammered down through the space where Marcus’s head would have been. It struck the ground hard enough to chip stone. Marcus stomped on the club, knocking it from the marcado’s grip. He jabbed downward, expecting the marcado to reach for his weapon. Instead, the man wrapped his hands around Marcus’s neck and squeezed.
In his many years as a fighter, Marcus had suffered nearly every bodily injury he could name. He’d been shot, stabbed, slashed, and bludgeoned. He’d been kicked, punched, bitten, and clawed. He’d taken bottles to the head and rocks to the belly, dodged missiles of every size and weight, parried swords and axes and shovels with edges honed to deadly keenness. He’d wriggled free of every possible hold and tackle. But as the marcado’s fingers closed like steel cables around his windpipe, it occurred to him that he’d never been choked. Not truly, anyway—there’d been moments in melees where he found it hard to breathe, forearms pressed to his neck or knees weighing on his chest, but he could always gulp in a lungful of air after a few uncomfortable seconds.
The marcado’s attack was different. His thumbs bypassed muscle and sinew and rammed hard against his larynx. Marcus’s lungs spasmed, his diaphragm heaved, but not the faintest wisp of air got through. Drawing breath was like trying to slip coarse thread through a needle’s eye.
With a grunt of effort, Marcus steadied his feet and jabbed his knife into the marcado’s belly. He twisted the blade; sure the man’s grip would slacken. It tightened instead. He stabbed again, aiming higher this time. Still, the marcado squeezed. His cheeks rose higher, revealing acres of yellow-black teeth.
Shadows whorled across the edges of Marcus’s vision. A distant roar filled his ears. Numbness chilled his fingertips, creeping from knuckle to knuckle until it had conquered his hands. He could feel the switchblade slipping through his sweat-greased fingers. Leaden shackles dragged his arms to his sides. Fighting their weight with his last frisson of energy, he windmilled his arm and stabbed the blade hilt-deep into the marcado’s eye.
The marcado’s hands clenched tighter, and for a moment Marcus wondered if they would retain their grip in death, paying out posthumous retribution like a bee’s stinger. The fingers loosened, and the marcado fell, his dead face frozen in a rictus of lunatic glee.
Two.
Marcus gasped with relief. His first breath seemed full of ash and splinters, but the cool air soon worked its way into the battered tissues of his throat. He fought the urge to double over and simply breathe, aware that his task was not yet complete.
During the chaos, the one-handed esbirro had wormed his way over to the courtier’s corpse and was frantically trying to unstrap the rifle from the dead man. He continued his struggle as Marcus stood over him, drew his chin upward with his index and middle fingers, and cut his throat.
He looked up at Manuel. Delgado’s former teniente was familiar with violence—even among Juarezians, who were rumored among outsiders to bathe in the blood of their enemies, Manuel was a seasoned veteran—but the slaughter in Thorin’s abattoir had been something else altogether. He stared like a child witnessing his first public execution, arms hanging limp, eyes wide and blank, as if in attempting to see too much they saw nothing at all.
“Manuel,” said Marcus. “Go.”
Marcus didn’t watch to see if Manuel followed his direction. The patter of footsteps followed by a slamming door told him as much. He turned to Thorin, still seated on his throne.
One.
41: A Razor’s Edge
Mary-Katherine Montenegro was well acquainted with pain. She’d spent many years with palms red from scouring and purple-black stripes up her legs and back, an ever-shifting map of her many disobediences as a plantation ward. A different sort of pain followed, punishments unlinked to any crimes and enacted far from the parlor-room stage of her public reprimands, in closets and cellars, fingers that squeezed too tight and wormed into unwelcome places. And through it all, the aches of household labor: overtaxed muscles, slivers from rotting rake handles, fingertips nicked by the slip of a paring knife. Juarez was a rough town from top to bottom, and Mary had started in a low place and, with an inexorable downward trajectory usually reserved for liquids, managed to seep her way through the narrowest cracks into one even lower.
But her hurts, though plentiful, had been invariably shallow—the kind her body could manage on its own with no more assistance than a bandage and a bit of antiseptic. The wound Krell dealt her was something different. It was deep and puckered, idiot lips disgorging a stream of blood. She pressed against it with the heel of her hand, slowing the flood but not stopping it. Blood leaked through her fingers and out the seam where her palm met her belly. She held her fingers up to her face to get a better look at the stuff leaking out of her, decided she’d just as soon not know more about it, and let them drop again.
With herculean effort, she dragged herself from the alley and into the main road, her brain flicking frantically through plans for rescue and vengeance. But now that she’d arrived, her energy spent, it seemed like no better a place to die than the alley had been. She took a final staggering step and collapsed against a wall. The adobe felt warm and pleasant against her skin.
Her legs outstretched, she gazed between her feet at a swath of Calle Roya. Her eyes, losing focus, drifted upward until all they saw was the sky, an unblemished canvas of grey. She was dimly aware of voices and a nearby frenzy of motion, but the details were sketchy, and she found herself unconcerned by them. Better to let the chaos, exhaustion, and pain wash over her, to stop fighting the current and float instead, hoping it would carry her somewhere better. She closed her eyes and set herself adrift.
Hands seized her beneath the armpits and hoisted her upright. Annoyed, she made her limbs go slack, hoping to slide from her interloper’s grip. But the hands only tightened, hoisting her up and scooting her back until her tailbone lay flush with the wall. Petulantly, she kept her eyes shut, refusing to give whoever w
as accosting her the satisfaction of acknowledgment. Let them rob her if they wanted. It’s not like she had anything worth taking.
An arc of cool ceramic pressed against her lower lip. The container tipped forward, pouring water into her mouth. She drank reflexively, her thirst too deep to be overridden by petty defiance.
“Where is she?”
It was the voice, familiar yet changed, that got her eyes open. It rang with effortless authority, the sort that carried without shouting across a crowded room. Grace Delgado stood over her, the afternoon sun at her back, wreathing her face in a reddish silhouette. Several men stood to her either side, imperfect eclipses dividing their faces into hemispheres of light and shadow.
Mary blinked several times. The figures remained, so she figured she wasn’t hallucinating. “Where is who?” she asked.
“Selena. She left the Iron Circle with you, didn’t she?”
Mary looked from Grace to the men surrounding her. She could see enough of them to tell they were marcados. Tough ones, too, by the look of them. She noted the common pattern on their cheeks: a green star, Thorin’s mark, its emerald brand unfaded by time. Understanding clicked into place. These were Delgado’s men, held in thrall after Thorin pissed all over la paz inquieta. Blancos made marcados, throwing off their shackles and marching under a marcada queen.
It was at that moment that she realized the scope of what Selena had done—what she, Mary, had helped do. The act itself had been fairly minor—more a nudge than a hammer-blow, given the scale of violence Juarez was accustomed to—but it only takes a slight shove to get a boulder rolling, if said boulder is balanced precariously enough. And Juarez had teetered on a razor’s edge since Thorin took power. Now it was in free fall, and who could say where it would land, or who would be crushed when it did?
Pain sank deeper into Mary’s belly. She bit down on a scream, grinding it between molars until it lay still. Grace may be her ally, but she wasn’t her friend, and she had no intention of showing this haughty woman the depths of her current suffering. She drew a long but shallow breath, holding her diaphragm steady to avoid the agonizing extension of her stomach muscles.
“Yeah,” she answered. The effort needed to talk was immense, greater than she could have imagined. Each word felt like another drop of life ruthlessly squeezed out of her—and given how she felt, it wouldn’t take more than a few sentences to wring her dry. “Krell got her. Me too. They took off.” She flapped her hand in the direction of the alley.
Grace turned to the man on her right, his angular chin darkened with stubble. Though by the look of him only a few years her senior, he bore the scars of a long and hard-fought lifetime. A particularly gruesome mark bisected his face in a swooping diagonal. It ran from just below his left eye to the right corner of his mouth, swallowing on its path most of his left nostril.
“Do you know this Krell, Andrio?”
“Yes, Jefe. But we haven’t time to track him down. The esbirros are regrouping. They want to put a lid on this thing, and if we don’t act fast, they’re gonna manage it. We can’t let ourselves get distracted, chasing through the alleys after some girl.”
“She is not just some girl,” called a voice from outside their huddle. Mary looked past the marcados to an old woman, her wrinkled face peering out from beneath the broad brim of a straw sunhat. “You’re speaking of the emissary, are you not? The one sent by La Santa?”
Others entered the crowd, drawn by the invocation of La Santa’s envoy. They murmured one to another, a susurrus of rumor spreading outward in a wave. Grace put truth to the old woman’s words.
“We are. She has been taken by a pandillero in Thorin’s employ. We fear it is his intention to harm her.”
The crowd’s voice swelled with anger. It distilled itself through the prism of the old woman, who glowered beneath her straw hat.
“Lead us to this man.”
Grace looked to her lieutenant. “Tell me where to find him. Then take the others and check Thorin’s men.”
“I am not a Delgado, Jefe. When the people see you, they also see your brother and remember the kind and sure hand of his leadership. When they see me, all they see is a marcado.”
“You’re not the only one who bears a brand, Andrio. You will speak with my voice in this matter. The others here know it and will vouchsafe. I am needed elsewhere.” She glanced down at Mary. “Is there anyone here who can tend to my sister? She has been badly hurt.”
Mary looked around, wondering what sister Grace was talking about, before realizing the ex-Senador’s sister was referring to her.
A woman tottered from the crowd. She made the lady in the sunhat seem young. A squat, wizened stump of a woman, nearly as wide as she was tall, she scuttled over to Mary and lowered herself onto her haunches—an act that Mary feared might cause the woman to topple over, but which she handled with a dancer’s ease—and ran a hand along her forehead. Her fingers were bent and brown as tree roots, but her touch was soft.
“Stay fearless, child. I’ve some fieldcraft in my day, and know a few girls nearby with more. We’ll set you to rights and get something for the pain.”
Mary mumbled her thanks, but her attention was on Grace, who stood at the alley’s mouth. Despite her brand and tattered clothes, she didn’t look the least bit like a marcada, or even a cozened Senador’s sister. She looked like a field marshal surveying enemy troops, aware of but undeterred by their greater numbers.
“Grace,” she wheezed. The effort of it nearly split her in two.
Grace returned and hunkered down next to her. Their eyes met. Mary searched them for anger, contempt, sour joy at her predicament—feelings that Mary, to her shame, thought she might experience if their situations were reversed. She found none of these. Her eyes dropped to her lap.
“I’m sorry. For how we treated you. For how I treated you. You just had so much once, and we had so little…”
Grace touched her arm. “I understand. I’m sorry too. Sorry I couldn’t see your hurt until I felt it myself.”
For want of a response, Mary nodded. “Good luck, Jefe.”
Grace smiled.
42: Heroic Acts
For one awful moment, Simon felt as if he’d been yanked backward through time. A fishhook pierced his belly and reeled him across the weeks and miles to Fallowfield at the moment of its battle, dropped him flopping amongst its smoke and gunfire and cordite stink. Could he die in a moment he’d previously survived, or was he inoculated against such an occurrence, doomed instead to trudge once more through the southern wastes, to lose his sister a second time? He wasn’t sure which case scared him more.
Before he could decide, the world righted itself, and he realized with a bitter sort of relief that he was still in the present, and the conflagration into which he charged was different from the one he’d endured before. This wasn’t Fallowfield, and there were no Shepherds to flee or sympathetic farmers to seek out for aid. In fact, the situation seemed less a battle than a riot. There was fighting, yes, but of an aimless, desultory sort, as private scuffles flared up and sputtered out with the dazzling speed of fireworks. If there were factions at war, Simon struggled to tell them apart.
Juarez was a much bigger city than Fallowfield, and as such, there was a lot more of it to wreck. The townsfolk shouldered this challenge gamely. While most of them seemed intent on fleeing above all else, there were plenty left who spotted a brief window of opportunity and wasted no time in smashing through the glass and grabbing everything they could from the other side.
Simon watched the chaos unfold with a curious detachment—born, he assumed, by the fact he was viewing it from a raised perch behind half an inch of shatterproof glass. The sounds that filtered into the truck’s cab were muted, robbed of the shrill urgency that would raise his hackles under normal circumstances. It was easy to pretend that the events occurring on the other side of the glass were happening somewhere else, to a different set of people.
The illusion held until the first flaming bottle struck the vehicle’s hood. Blue flames skated over the green-brown metal, blazing a trail of blackened, bubbling paint. Other missiles followed, rocks and cobblestones pelting the doors and rattling across the roof. The windshield juddered in its frame with every blow, but the glass, true to its name, refused to crack.
The cluster of people outside thinned into a line, fanning out in a V shape to bar the vehicle’s progress down the city’s north-south thoroughfare. Otis swerved around people as best he could, but they were spaced too close together for the bulky vehicle to slip through. With a huff of frustration, Otis cut the speed and nosed to the right, muscling past the crowd. He could’ve plowed through them easily, but Simon could see he didn’t want to do that, and was glad. He didn’t relish the thought of what a truck this big would do to a body at speed.
The crowd converged around the vehicle, but as Otis predicted, none were quite insane enough to stand in its direct path. They broke to either side, clinging to the doors and hammering on the windows with sticks and fists and rocks. Otis gunned the engine the moment they passed the human barricade. Many of the assailants dove for cover or tumbled from their perches, but several latched onto the side of the truck, shrieking faces pressed to the glass.
“What do they want?” Simon cried.
“What we’re drivin’,” replied Otis, teeth bared. He worked the wheel back and forth, trying to shake off the last few climbers. His eyes roved about the street as he drove, sweeping for signs of Emily. Simon forced down his fear and looked as well. The sooner they found her, the sooner they could end this lunatic tour of Juarez’s combusting core.
The crowds passed by in a blur of beige and brown and red. How could he possibly make out any one person amid this tumult? It was like trying to spot one pebble among thousands at the bottom of a murky river.
The vehicle’s tires jounced over a boardwalk, tilting the cab at a dizzy angle. Otis apparently shared some of his daughter’s innate dexterity and talent for vehicles—he’d picked up the basics of maneuvering this behemoth easily enough, as Emily had with the two-wheeler—but he still struggled with corners and occasionally fishtailed in a queasy slalom before wrenching the wheels back to true.
Iron Circle Page 24