“Jump for it,” said Reston.
Mal was already jumping for it.
Both she and Reston threw themselves clear of the train a heartbeat before the Serpent train ploughed into it. The Serpent train rose off the track and mounted theirs, with a godawful cacophony of metal crunching and men screaming in panic. The two vehicles, conjoined, went scraping on down the track, parts flying off, sparks shooting everywhere like a firework display. One of the Serpent Warriors was jettisoned from his seat and flung like a ragdoll headfirst to the track bed, breaking his neck. The others, and the driver, just hung on helplessly as the violent, slewing ride ran its course. Friction and inertia eventually brought the locked-together trains to a halt some five hundred yards further down the line. They settled at an ungainly angle on the rail, silent and spent, like a pair of old drunkards after an uproarious bender. Everyone still aboard was too shaken up to do much but groan and give thanks that they were alive. The antigrav-particle exciters on these trains were well-reinforced, but even so it was a small miracle that neither one of them had been breached.
By the time Colonel Tlanextic got himself together to clamber out and head back along the track to look for the two English fugitives, they were long gone.
His wrath was terrible to behold. And exceptionally loud. Proceeding on the assumption that Mal and Reston were still within earshot, which they were, he informed them that this was his island, his domain. It was swarming with Serpent Warriors. They could run but they wouldn’t get far.
“You’re mine,” he roared. “I’ll find you. I’ll find you and fucking slaughter you. It’s only a matter of time.”
TWENTY-SIX
Same Day
Stuart was feeling more like his old self than he had in weeks. Since leaving England, in fact. He was in desperate trouble, he knew. He and Vaughn were on the run in Tenochtitlan. Tenochtitlan! They were fugitives marked for death in the Great Speaker’s own redoubt, a city teeming with highly trained, dedicated and ruthless soldiers. Colonel Tlanextic’s next move would surely be to put out an all-points bulletin with their descriptions. Every Serpent Warrior under his command would be on the lookout for a white male and white female, both in their early to mid-thirties, one armed with a macuahitl. As things stood, their chances of reaching the harbour without being spotted, challenged, shot at and captured were next to nil. And in the unlikely event that they did make it, it was far from guaranteed that they’d be able to get themselves a ride on a boat. All in all, their prospects were bleak.
But even as he and Vaughn raced to put distance between them and the monorail track, Stuart felt positive. Alive. Hopeful, even. The more so as Tlanextic’s bellowed threats reached his ears.
This, it seemed, was who he was meant to be: a man facing insuperable odds, beset by enemies, with nothing to fall back on but his wits and skills. He was a born desperado, a natural underdog. The Stuart Reston he had been for most of his life — rich kid, socialite, plutocrat, top of the heap — was a guise he’d worn so long that he’d ceased to realise it wasn’t really him. Only after he’d lost everything was he able to break free from the shell he’d built around himself and become something truer to himself.
It helped, too, that the indomitable Malinalli Vaughn was running with him now. It made a very pleasant change from having her running after him.
They crossed concourses and traversed raised walkways. Stuart kept the trend of their progress as southward as he could, but it wasn’t easy. Tenochtitlan was a maze. There hadn’t been any overarching design behind its layout. The ziggurats and towers had simply accumulated over time, one rising up in the space beside another until the entire island was covered. The train network made sense of the muddle and was obviously the most practical and straightforward way of getting around, but the monorail was no longer safe for him and Vaughn to use. On foot, sticking close to walls, skulking, steering clear of passersby, they could maintain a lower profile and, hopefully, evade detection.
He explained his choice of tactic to Vaughn.
“If you say so,” was her reply. “You’ve done more fleeing from the authorities than I have.”
“Yes, and I’m alive to tell the tale. So I must know a thing or two about it.”
“That or you’ve been phenomenally lucky.”
“Comes down to the same thing, doesn’t it? Who cares how I get there, as long as the end-result’s in my favour?”
“I liked you more when you weren’t so smug,” Vaughn said.
“No, you didn’t.”
“No, you’re right. I’ve never liked you.”
They came to a blind alley, and Stuart proposed a pause to rest and take stock. Vaughn, short of breath, agreed it was a good idea.
In the alley, they hunkered downwind from a set of bins. Tenochtitlan, for all its majesty, had its grubby areas, as any city did. You couldn’t have thousands of humans crammed together in a confined space, with their effluent and their detritus, and expect absolute cleanliness everywhere. Waste water trickled down the alley’s central gutter. A rat poked its head out from a downpipe, didn’t like the look of the two humans, and withdrew. The contents of the bins, as garbage was wont to in this climate, reeked.
“Aaronson,” murmured Vaughn. She was staring broodingly at her palms, which were badly grazed from when she’d leapt clear of the train. “That poor bastard. Why? It’s not fair. He didn’t have to die.”
“The Great Speaker thought he did. And Tlanextic.”
“But Aaronson never did anything wrong. He was a cheeky sod, and sometimes his tongue was a bit too sharp for his own good, but…” Her eyes were red-rimmed. “Those fuckers. Those pieces of dogshit.”
“These are the people you’ve been working for all this time, Vaughn.”
“Don’t you start.”
“I’m just saying, you shouldn’t be surprised how the powers-that-be have turned on you. They can do that. It doesn’t bother them. We’re all of us expendable, as far as they’re concerned.”
“I’m not in the mood for a lecture. Stop it or I’ll use this fucking sword on you.”
“Okay.” Stuart relented. Right now Vaughn was his only ally, and it wouldn’t do him any good to make her more upset than she already was.
A few moments later she said, “Were those really…?”
“The Four? Not so long ago I’d have said no, don’t be so daft. Now? I’m pretty sure they are. I don’t see what else they can be.”
“Fuck. And the Speaker is Tezcatlipoca. I never saw that coming. If there’d been a choice of which of the gods, out of all of them, had to be left in sole charge of earth, he’s the one I’d least want it to be. Even Xipe Totec would have been preferable. Even Mictlantecuhtli.”
“Mictlantecuhtli? I wouldn’t go that far. Xipe Totec, although he’s not a pretty sight when his skin’s transparent, you still sort of know where you are with. Mictlantecuhtli, on the other hand…” He mimed a shudder.
“How come you met them?” Vaughn asked. “Why did they reveal themselves to you, of all people?”
“Believe me, it wasn’t my doing. I’d give anything not to have been the one. They may be gods, but they’re far from benevolent. Even Quetzalcoatl’s got a mean streak. Azcatl’s pretty hardcore, too. You should see him in action.”
“Azcatl? The Red Ant?” Vaughn almost laughed.
“I know. The myths don’t make much of him. All I know is the one about Quetzalcoatl bullying him to reveal where his grain store is. In real life, though, Azcatl’s not someone you want to mess with. All of them are like that. You just feel so inferior when they’re around. Particularly when it’s someone like Tzitzimitl, who couldn’t disguise her scorn for me.”
“You don’t think that’s just you? Your sparkling personality?”
“Could be,” said Stuart. “And in answer to your earlier question, they revealed themselves to me because I happened to be there and it was convenient. No other reason. I wasn’t specially selected or anything like that. Quetzalcoatl injured me and had a fit of guilt about that, and then saw a way I could be useful to him. I’m not useful to him any more, apparently, judging by the way he almost completely blanked me when we were up on the
