Stuart was silent for a full minute.
Then, shaking his head, he whistled softly and said, “You’re crazy.”
“Am I?”
“It’s not possible. Can’t be done. Tenochtitlan, the guards, the levels of security around him, not to mention his palace is stuck in the middle of a fucking great lake… Out of the question.”
“But if it could be done, would you join us?”
“No.”
“You’re not even tempted? You’ve been a gadfly to the Empire, and that’s all well and good, but what if you could help be its executioner? Kill the Great Speaker, cut off the Empire’s head, and the Empire itself will surely wither and collapse.”
“Still no. It sounds like a recipe for suicide. Pointless suicide. You’d never get anywhere near the Great Speaker. Certainly never get within striking range.”
Chel sighed with heavy emphasis. “Then, alas, it seems I’ve had a wasted journey. Well, not entirely wasted. I’ve met the Conquistador in person, and managed to ensure that he can continue his dissidence a little while longer. That’s something.”
He rose and held out his hand.
“It’s been a pleasure, Mr Reston,” he said as they shook. “I can’t say I’m not disappointed by the outcome of our chat, but” — he shrugged — “win some, lose some. Oh, we still have your armour, don’t we? I know you have those other suits, but would you like it back?”
“Yes. They don’t come cheap.”
“Let us arrange its return. We’ll be discreet, I assure you. In the meantime, please give further consideration to what I’m suggesting. Perhaps you’ll change your mind.”
“I won’t,” said Stuart.
“You might just,” said Chel. “I’ll see myself out.”
SIX
Same Day
Mal awoke with a clanging hangover, her head throbbing as though there was a chainmailed fist inside trying to punch its way out. She made it to the bathroom just in time. Bent double over the toilet, she vomited until there seemed to be nothing left to come up but stomach lining.
A whole bottle of pulque would do that to you.
Trembling, her entire skeleton feeling as brittle as chalk, she fixed herself a mug of coca tea. She sat at the kitchen table, staring out of the window at the glow of yet another furnace-hot day. When the phone rang, she refused to answer it. It would be work calling. Probably Kellaway himself, full of spite and spittle. Where the hell are you, chief inspector? Drag your sorry arse down to the Yard immediately!
Twice more in the next half hour the phone rang. The sound bored into her ears like an electric drill. She nearly picked up the receiver just to stop the pain.
She was tempted to go back to bed, haul the covers over her head, and sleep for as long as she could. But her troubles weren’t going to magically disappear, however hard she ignored them. The fiasco at Regent’s Park had happened, and wishing it hadn’t couldn’t un happen it.
She showered, turning the water as cold as it would go. By means of this chilly dousing and more coca tea, she wrestled the hangover into submission. By the time she was dressed, Mal had regained some semblance of normality.
The phone rang yet again, and now she picked up. Bracing herself for the chief super at full blast, she was relieved to hear Aaronson’s voice instead.
“Boss? Finally. It’s gone ten. Why aren’t you at work yet?”
“Why are you? You’re supposed to be in hospital recovering.”
“Aah, I discharged myself. It was fucking boring. Not a decent-looking doctor in sight, not like on the TV shows.”
“But they said something about running more tests. On all of you who got poison-darted.”
“For what? It was heavily-diluted curare. Enough of a dose to turn your muscles to noodles, but that’s all, nothing worse. It wasn’t much fun lying there unable to move, and I feel like shit now, but hey, I’m not dead. How about you?”
“Aftereffects of mild concussion. I’ve got a couple of goose-egg bruises on my skull, but I spent most of the night self-medicating. I’ll be fine.”
“Paying your respects to Mayahuel?”
“The goddess of the fermented agave plant did get a good deal of worshipping, yes,” said Mal. “What’s the mood like over there? Dare I show my face?”
“Everyone’s still a bit staggered. Can’t quite figure out how it all went so wrong, just when it looked like we were about to pull it off. Nobody’s blaming you, but… Permission to speak freely?”
“Granted,” Mal sighed.
“You need to be here. You need to put on a brave face and bluff it out. Better that than skulking at home, hiding. It’ll look bad if you don’t show, however much you’d like not to.”
“Okay, Aaronson. Thanks for that. And thanks again for what you did at the theatre. Taking the dart for me. I… I really appreciate it.”
“Too bad the Conquistador still got away. Who were those people, boss? Why did they save him?”
“Not the foggiest. But I aim to find out, and when I do, the bastards are dead meat.”
“That’s the spirit, boss. That’s the Mal Vaughn I know and fear.”
Mal couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t dreamed of becoming a Jaguar Warrior. As a child, she had loved the formal uniform, especially the cat-head helmet that gleamed and snarled, with jade-like eyes that flashed in the sun.
Her brother Ix used to laugh at her whenever she admitted her ambition to join the force. At first, when they were little, he laughed because she was a girl, and a puny one at that, and he couldn’t believe she would ever grow tall enough or brawny enough to look like the Jaguars they saw out patrolling the streets.
Later, when they were in their teens, Ix’s laughter became more cynical. “Yeah, sis, great idea,” he would say. “Be a paid thug. Carry a macuahitl and an l-gun. Beat up innocents and enforce the status quo. You go right ahead.” By then Ix was running with a gang, petty crooks committing petty crimes, and his anti-establishment posturing was a self-justifying rationale for his delinquent behaviour. The Empire, the hieratic caste, the Jaguars, they were all parts of a machine designed to suppress the freedom of the individual — by which Ix meant the freedom of the individual to shoplift, vandalise, drink underage, and mug pensioners. He believed, although perhaps not as wholeheartedly as he might have liked, that by hanging out with his cronies and causing trouble he was somehow striking a blow against the system.
Whereas to Mal, and other right-thinking types, he was simply being a mindless twat.
They stopped talking, the two of them, the day Mal sent in her Jaguar Warrior application form. She had just turned eighteen, the minimum required age. She had filled out, too, no longer the stick insect she had been when little, now a sturdy young woman who had captained the school’s senior girls tlachtli team and gained a reputation as the toughest player in the south London education authority leagues, with a string of broken opponents’ noses and ankles to her credit.
“You disgust me,” were Ix’s last words to her before he turned his back on her for good. “Go be the Empire’s whore. See if I care. You’re fucking scum, that’s what you are.”
Brother and sister weren’t to see each other again until a year after Mal finished her training and made constable. She knew from her parents that Ix had gone completely off the rails. He would turn up at their house now and then, usually after dark, looking wretched and demanding cash. He would become abusive if they didn’t cough up, and there was that time he threatened their father with a knife. The old man was whisked to hospital the next day with a suspected heart attack. He recovered, but from then on was never the same. Weakened and sad. A
