The Conquistador peered imperiously around the amphitheatre. He had the stage, and an audience that was too startled and intimidated to move. He was going to make the most of it while he could.
“As for the Great Speaker,” he said, “he’s no more Moctezuma than I am. He isn’t immortal. Beneath that ridiculous mask there has been a succession of men — ordinary mortal men — who have played the role just as these actors here play theirs. One after another they assume the mantle of Great Speaker and give out orders and edicts from the Lake Palace at Tenochtitlan, and when each dies the next in line replaces him, and it is all done behind closed doors, amid a conspiracy of silence, and we are none the wiser. You know in your heart of hearts that I’m right. Nothing you’ve seen here tonight is real. What you’ve been watching is a lie. Artful propaganda. Stage managed in every sense. A myth masquerading as legend. And it’s all to help keep that lot” — he jabbed a finger at the priests — “in power. Reinforce their tyranny. Tighten their stranglehold still further.”
He unsheathed his rapier, to gasps and squeals.
“Well, you’re looking at a man who will not be strangled. A man who’s sick and tired of living under this regime and wants rid of it. They call me a terrorist. Maybe I am. But the only people who should be terrified of me are the hieratic caste and anyone who supports them.”
With that, he bounded over the footlights and off the front of the stage, making for the priests’ platform. Panicking audience members leapt from their seats and ran shrieking. Their Holinesses themselves seemed rooted to the spot, paralysed by fear. They exchanged looks, as if to ask how this could have happened, how it could be that so many of them at once were about to become the Conquistador’s next victims.
The Conquistador sprang up onto the platform.
“Should’ve thought this through a bit better, shouldn’t you?” he crowed. “You arrogant bastards. Not one Jaguar Warrior bodyguard? Talk about sitting ducks.”
“Actually,” said one of the priests, the tallest of them, “I think you’ll find you’re the sitting duck.”
The Conquistador cocked his head. “Oh, yes? And how do you work that out?”
“Well…” The priest reached beneath his chair and snatched out the macuahitl concealed there.
All the others did exactly the same thing.
Behind his mask, the Conquistador’s face fell. His eyes gave it away. A moment of pure, uncomprehending shock.
The priests, as one, rose.
“No Jaguar Warriors, mate?” sneered the tall one. “Try twenty of them!”
In her seat, five rows back from the platform, Chief Inspector Mal Vaughn watched with satisfaction as her trap was sprung.
Really, it was a surprise the Conquistador had fallen for it. Mal had had her doubts he would. Surely he’d be too smart. Surely he’d think that it was just too blatant. Twenty priests unexpectedly attending a show at an open- air theatre in the middle of a park? A venue where watertight security was virtually impossible? It must have been screaming STAY AWAY! to him.
But no, he hadn’t stayed away. He’d come charging in, unable to resist the bait.
That fitted with the psychological impression Mal had built up of him. He was a narcissist. He enjoyed the big gesture, the grandstanding performance. He liked to make an impact.
All the same, she was vaguely disappointed. Somehow she’d felt he was cannier than this.
The bogus priests moved in on the Conquistador, swords aloft. He backed away a couple of steps.
Mal’s masterstroke was that there was no way the Conquistador could have suspected the priests were not what they appeared to be. To impersonate a priest — hieratic fraud — was one of the most heinous offences on the statute books. The punishment was a litany of hideous tortures. You would have skewers driven through your most sensitive parts. You would be flayed alive. Your skinned body would be roasted over hot coals. You would then, if not already dead, be disembowelled and, for good measure, beheaded. And the same treatment would be visited on every single member of your immediate family. Even your cousins, even your pets, would not be immune. It was something only a lunatic would consider doing.
Chief Superintendent Kellaway had laughed at Mal when she’d suggested disguising a squad of Jaguars as priests. Then he’d realised she was deadly serious, and he’d laughed again, this time scornfully. It would never happen, he’d said. The High Priest would never allow it.
But he might, Mal had insisted. He might make a special dispensation, in this one instance, if he could be convinced that it was the best, the only way of drawing out the Conquistador and catching him unawares. Could the chief super just try? Ask him? Plead?
In the event, the High Priest had gone for the idea and granted permission. Twenty Jaguar Warriors had had their heads shaved and their skin adorned with non-permanent tattoo designs, the customary assortment of iguanas and quetzals and hieroglyphs. They had spent hours practising how to sit, stand and behave in a priestly manner. Few of them had been able to resist the temptation to walk with a mincing gait and make lisping demands for peeled grapes and depilated virgins, and Mal had let them have their fun, even though by rights she should have reported them for gross impertinence. Mocking a priest was nearly as bad as impersonating one, and the penalty might not be as severe but you and your kin would still regret it — at least a dozen of your relatives would have a hand lopped off, and you yourself would lose both hands and a foot as well. Like the old joke went: I called a priest an idiot then hopped it.
And it had paid off. The Conquistador was now surrounded and heavily outnumbered by some of the best swordsmen on the force.
He managed to recover from his dumbstruck stupor in time. As the first of the Jaguars attacked, up came his rapier. Blades clashed. The fight was on.
Mal turned to Aaronson, seated beside her.
“Come on. Let’s get in there.”
“What?” said her DS. “Have you gone mad? Twenty of them, one of him. They don’t need our help.”
“Maybe not, but he’s my fucking collar. I’m not letting someone else hog the glory. Whoever kills him, the body is still mine and I’ll gut the man who tries to take it off me.”
“You know, boss,” Aaronson said, getting to his feet, “you scare me sometimes.”
“Good.”
The one advantage the Conquistador had over his opponents was that he was fully armoured and they were not. Their garb was the standard plainclothes wear for a priest, a light alpaca wool suit over a multicoloured brocade waistcoat which echoed the much fancier garment used for ceremonies. Underneath their shirts, many of the Jaguar Warriors had taken the precaution of donning stab-proof vests, but that still left their heads and limbs unprotected. It was a vulnerability the Conquistador was quick to exploit.
The tall Jaguar, Constable Carey, died first. The Conquistador ducked inside his guard and ran him through the groin. He yanked the rapier out just in time to counter a macuahitl slash from the left. Grabbing the Jaguar’s sword arm, he opened his neck from ear to ear. As the man went down, he twisted the macuahitl out of his grasp.
Now, armed on both sides, he met the onslaught of the next two Jaguars, matching them blow for blow. The two of them flanked him at the platform’s edge. The Conquistador feinted forwards, then leapt backwards, off the platform. Both Jaguars lunged at him at the same time and were wrongfooted. They stared down in astonishment to find each other’s swords embedded in their thighs, and collapsed against each other like a pair of broken bookends.
Down in the area between the seating and the stage front, the Conquistador discarded the borrowed macuahitl and drew his pistol. With three shots he eviscerated the nearest three Jaguar Warriors. Even a stab-proof vest was no protection against a high-velocity cluster of flechettes.
Another Jaguar, however, got close enough to knock the pistol out of his hand before he could inflict any more damage with it. In retaliation, the Conquistador sliced through the man’s arm with his rapier, severing the limb at the elbow.
At that point it became clear that the Conquistador was cornered. His back was against the stage. Several very angry and determined Jaguars were closing in on him.
All at once they rushed him. Obsidian blades hammered at his armour from all directions, seeking chinks. Someone with a sense of irony might have seen the very image of what he had described onstage a moment ago,
