Age of Aztec

TWENTY-THREE

Same Day

They flew out over Lake Texcoco, skimming above the wavelets that turned the expanse of freshwater into a vast sheet of crepe paper. The Serpent disc was a small, short-range craft with a spartanly furnished interior, and Mal and Aaronson perched at the rear of the cabin on a narrow bench adjacent to the armoury and uniform lockers. With Colonel Tlanextic’s permission, Mal had helped herself to a spare pair of Serpent Warrior trousers which just about fit, changing out of her own soiled trousers and underwear while Aaronson acted as a human curtain, shielding her from sight of everyone else on board. Tlanextic hadn’t even been tempted to laugh when she’d made her request. To him it had seemed simply a practical solution to an unfortunate sartorial mishap.

“Why are we doing this, boss?” Aaronson whispered. He nodded over at Reston, who was slumped inside the disc’s prisoner transport cage, wrists and ankles chained together. The one-time Conquistador looked despondent, utterly defeated. Cage and restraints seemed superfluous. Reston was going nowhere. “We’re never getting him back. Even if the Serpents let him live, there’ll be nothing left once they’ve finished with him. Nothing worth anything.”

“If they kill him, at least we’ll get to see justice done,” Mal replied. “But as long as there’s a chance I can still bring him home, however slim it is and whatever condition he’s in, I’m going to keep hanging on for it.”

“I swear, if you didn’t hate the bloke so much, anyone would think you were in love with him.”

“Don’t be a twat.”

“I’m just saying. It’s a thin line. You’ve been hounding him so hard. Cops and villains sometimes get this attachment for one another, don’t they? It’s a, whatchemacall… Symbiotic relationship. Mutual thing. Can’t live with each other, can’t live without.”

“When you’re quite done with the cheap psychoanalysis…”

“Myself, some of the young roughs I’ve arrested — they’re quite beautiful, in that scrawny, surly way of theirs. A few of them know it and they’ve made offers. You know, ‘Let me go free. I’ll do anything you ask.’ Can’t say I haven’t been tempted.”

“I trust you haven’t given in.”

“No, never. But I’m not blind. He’s a looker, that Reston. If you like ’em posh and well-spoken, that is. And he flirts with you.”

“He does not.”

“Hello? Back of the paddy wagon? What was that if it wasn’t flirting?”

“Sergeant, please shut the fuck up.”

“The more you deny it…”

“…the likelier I am to plant my fist in your face,” Mal said. “Listen. Right now I’m feeling like refried shit. I know you’re only taking the piss and that’s just how you are, but I really can’t be arsed with it. Enough.”

“Okay, boss. If you say so.”

“Believe me, I do.”

Soon the bulwarked bulk of Tenochtitlan filled the windshield. The aerodisc rose and banked left, smartly circumnavigating the island city, and made its approach from the far side. It decelerated to a hover above a landing pad painted distinctively with a snake’s head motif. As it touched down an honour guard of six Serpents appeared, forming lines either side of the gangplank. They had lightning guns slung across their backs and macuahitl s at their waists as well as the traditional ceremonial Serpent halberds, which were tipped with outcurving obsidian blades. They snapped to attention and saluted as Colonel Tlanextic exited the disc. His two lieutenants followed, with Reston shuffling between them as best his foot manacles would allow. Mal and Aaronson took the rear. The Serpent guards eyed them with curiosity but, since they were obviously with Tlanextic, nobody made a move to challenge them.

“What now?” Aaronson said out of the side of his mouth.

“Unless or until Tlanextic tells us to bugger off, we stick with him.”

“I can’t believe I’m here.” Aaronson gazed with wonder at the buildings around them, the towers and close-clustering ziggurats, their angled planes gilded by the mid-morning sun. “I mean, actual Tenochtitlan. Can’t wait to tell my mum. She’ll be so envious.”

“We’ll buy postcards later. Keep walking.”

Tlanextic led his party to a lift and they descended to ground level, where transportation was waiting for them in the form of an open-topped train. Tenochtitlan boasted a neg-mass passenger monorail for the use of Serpents and the numerous bureaucrats, functionaries and servants who tended to the Great Speaker’s needs. It criss-crossed the city in an intricate narrow-gauge system that was raised up, straddle-beam style, on squat pylons a couple of metres above the ground. Single-carriage trains glided along looping, intersecting routes with stops at the foot of every building on the island.

A driver ushered them on board, bowing so low to Tlanextic that his forehead nearly scraped the floor of the platform. Like the guards, he was puzzled by the presence of Mal and Aaronson but, also like the guards, he knew it wasn’t his place to query. When everyone had taken a seat, he grasped the train’s controls and guided it away from the platform.

A short while later they pulled in at the foot of the largest ziggurat on the island. Mal’s breath caught. If she didn’t miss her guess, this was none other than the Great Speaker’s palace. Surely they weren’t about to…

They were. Tlanextic disembarked, beckoning the others to follow. “Word of warning.” This was directed at Mal and Aaronson. “If His Imperial Holiness consents to allow you to enter his presence — and it’s a huge if — you do not look directly at him, you do not meet his eye, and above all else you do not speak to him unless he speaks to you first. Should you fail to abide by any of these stipulations, you die, simple as that. I’ll make sure of it myself. Are we clear?”

Mal and Aaronson nodded. As soon as Tlanextic looked the other way, Aaronson turned to Mal, eyes agog, and mouthed the word “ Fuuuuck! ” She nodded to him in return, no less incredulous than he, but able to mask it better.

A funicular lift took them up the ziggurat’s slanted flank. With every storey it rose Mal felt a mounting sense of unreality. She’d never in her life expected she would even set eyes on the Great Speaker, let alone be in the same room as him. Now, that possibility loomed. Within minutes she could be standing before the emperor of an entire planet, the most powerful man who had ever existed. An immortal, no less, gifted with prolonged life by the gods themselves. Moctezuma II, in the half-a-millennium-old flesh.

Mal Vaughn was not a vain woman, but at that moment she found herself wishing she looked better than she currently did, with her borrowed trousers and her practical travelling clothes. Not forgetting the bruise she could feel growing on the side of her face, courtesy of Tlanextic’s roundhouse right. She fingered the puffy, stretched patch of skin delicately.

“Don’t worry, boss,” Aaronson confided. “You still look fine. Every inch the plainclothes Jaguar. So what if you’re a bit ragged round the edges? It’s good for the image. Adds a touch of authenticity.”

“Thanks,” said Mal. “I think. How’s the acrophobia?”

Aaronson was standing with his back turned to the lift’s three outer sides, which were all glass. “Long as I don’t think about it, I’m fine.”

The lift deposited them a couple of floors shy of the ziggurat’s summit. Tlanextic went ahead while the rest of them cooled their heels in a reception area. In order to distract herself from the nerves fizzing in her stomach, Mal tried to engage one of the Serpent lieutenants in conversation. He was having none of it.

Eventually Tlanextic reappeared. “The Great Speaker will see us now.”

“All of us?” said Mal.

“Yes, that does fucking include you. Get over it. Let’s go.”

A short trapezoid passageway led to an antechamber dominated by a massive circular door. The entire surface of the door was covered by a mosaic of jewels taking the form of the four-quadrants symbol that represented the interrelatedness and universality of the Four Who Rule Supreme. It was an outlandishly lavish and opulent thing. The north quadrant, the cardinal direction associated with Huitzilopochtli, consisted of slivers of white opal across which rainbow glints of iridescence chased one another. The south, which belonged to Tezcatlipoca, was a jigsaw of flakes of purest midnight jet. The east, Xipe Totec’s province, was a scintillating mass of deep yellow citrine, while the west quadrant, Quetzalcoatl’s, was nothing but rubies.

There was scant opportunity for Mal to marvel, however. No sooner had they arrived at the door than it began to slide open. The quadrants parted, each withdrawing separately into the frame, and X-shaped gap expanding to reveal a round aperture. Tlanextic went through, inviting everyone with him to do the same.

The room on the other side was large and richly furnished but not as much as Mal had been anticipating. She’d expected a throne room, gold everywhere, more precious metal on show than the mind could take in, and a ceiling so high you could hardly see it. Instead, it was a single-storey space whose floors and walls were an expanse of plain black marble, buffed to a mirror shine. There were oblong onyx columns carved with sacred emblems. There were suites of sofas and armchairs upholstered in dark leather. It was more like a very swanky open-plan living room than anything else, Aztec-themed but ultramodern.

A row of windows occupied the far wall, and beyond them lay a terrace the size of a tlachtli court, dotted with parasols and outdoor furniture. At the parapet, a very tall robed figure stood with his hands clasped behind his back, admiring the view. He didn’t look round as Tlanextic ushered everyone out onto the terrace, but a slight shift in the position of his shoulders indicated that he was aware of their presence.

For a long time, nobody moved or spoke. Tlanextic, Mal, Aaronson, Reston and the Serpent lieutenants waited. The tall figure continued to enjoy the prospect over Tenochtitlan, across the wave-wrinkled lake, all the way to the skein of shoreline. The sun beat down but a cooling breeze mitigated its heat. The parasols fluttered.

At last the Great Speaker turned. His enveloping golden mask flashed dazzlingly, so bright it hurt to look at. It was a smooth, almost featureless blister of polished metal, with two tiny eyeholes and a grille-like slit for a mouth. It was beautiful and inhuman, like the face of a sculpture or an automaton, something manmade and empty of emotion. Yet there was a gracefulness about it too, and likewise about the Great Speaker himself as he raised a hand in greeting, the fingers fanned like a dancer’s.

Mal was mesmerised. Enthralled. Nothing she had read about the Great Speaker, none of the clips she had watched on TV, had prepared her for the experience of seeing him in the actual living flesh. He had a stillness and physicality that seemed to radiate outwards and fill the air around him. It was almost as if he was touching her — touching all of them — even at a distance of several yards. This, she realised, was the aura of true power. This was a man who rightfully inspired awe.

Tlanextic fell to one knee and dropped his head, and Mal and the others took their cue and followed suit, all apart from Reston, who remained standing with a bland, indifferent expression on his face.

The Great Speaker acknowledged the show of obeisance with the slightest of nods. When he spoke, his voice resonated deep and clear like a gong. The mask did not muffle it at all.

“You may rise,” he said, adding, “Those of you who had the good manners to bend the knee.”

“Your Imperial Holiness,” said Tlanextic, “I bring you Stuart Reston, as instructed.”

“Yes,” said the Great Speaker, studying Tlanextic’s prisoner. “Yes, indeed. The man who donned Conquistador armour and thumbed his nose at the Empire for many months. Quite the nuisance you were, Mr Reston, at least to your own countrymen and your High Priest. But the Empire is huge and thick-skinned, like a rhinoceros, and your little provocations were like the bites of a gnat. You scarcely penetrated its hide.”

Reston mumbled something.

“What was that?” The Great Speaker cupped a hand to his ear in a dumbshow of deafness. “Didn’t quite catch it.”

“I said, ‘But I’m here, aren’t I?’”

“The implication being…?”

“Well, despite your protestations, the Empire must have felt something, mustn’t it? I must have stung. Otherwise why the volcanic eruptions? And why has my sorry arse been hauled all the way over to your palace? Stands to reason. Oh, and by the way, while I have you, and because I’m never going to get an opportunity like this again… You’re a big fat phoney. Immortal? Ptah!” He spat at the Great Speaker’s feet. “Just the latest in a long line of anonymous dictators. Tell me, does it get stuffy in that mask? Does it stink of the sweat from all the others who’ve worn it before you?”

Mal couldn’t control herself. She delivered a knuckle strike to Reston’s waist, just where his left kidney was, so that he doubled over, grimacing in pain. “Don’t you behave like that before the Great Speaker. Don’t you dare.”

The Great Speaker cocked his head, as if amused. “Ah yes, the British policewoman. Vaughn. Am I right in thinking, Miss Vaughn, that you’re the one who headed up the Conquistador investigation?”

“I did, Your Imperial Holiness. It was my job to end his terror campaign. And I suppose you could say I achieved that.”

The Great Speaker inclined his head to examine Mal. Through the mask’s eyeholes she glimpsed a pair of irises so dark brown they were almost black. There seemed to be a vast depth of intelligence in those eyes, and a cold aloofness too. These, surely, were the eyes of someone who had lived for over five hundred solar years.

“How fascinating,” he said. “Such fire and tenacity, yet such insecurity too, buried away inside. I think you sometimes feel you’re doing the right things for the wrong reason, Inspector Vaughn, or else the wrong things for the right reason. You punish yourself, and yet to live with such inner turmoil must, I would have thought, be sufficient punishment in itself.”

Mal was dumbfounded. He had read her — comprehended her — at a glance.

“As for you…” The Great Speaker returned his attention to Reston, who was still smarting from Mal’s blow. “Your insolence doesn’t perturb me in the least. You are nothing to me. Once, for a very brief while, you seemed a cause for concern. But that time is gone. I have you before me, and you are a small and pathetic individual indeed. Your opinion of me is of no consequence, and neither are you, in and of yourself.”

“Then how about letting me go,” said Reston, “if I’m so insignificant?”

“Because you might still have your uses. Colonel?”

Tlanextic straightened. “Sir.”

“First of all, you can dismiss your subordinates. We shan’t be needing them.”

“You heard him, men.” Tlanextic jerked a thumb. “Take a hike.” As the lieutenants departed, he gestured at Mal and Aaronson. “And these two, Your Imperial Holiness?”

“They may stay. It would seem churlish to dismiss them, in light of how far they’ve travelled to be here. I wouldn’t like them to go home thinking the Great Speaker ungracious or niggardly with his hospitality.” He said this with a sly lilt to his voice, the tone of someone who enjoyed his whims and his freedom to indulge them. “Besides, who knows? Inspector Vaughn may yet be leaving with her prize.”

Yes! thought Mal.

“It all depends on how helpful he is. Oh, and these things, colonel.” The Great Speaker waved at Reston’s bonds. “Not called for. Take them off.”

“If you insist, sir.”

“I do. I’m not frightened of Mr Reston. While he’s shackled, it implies that he is a danger to me. Untying him will dispel that illusion. Losing the chains will weaken his position, not strengthen it.”

Producing a key, Tlanextic unlocked and removed the manacles. “One step out of line,” he hissed at Reston, “and you’re dead meat. You so much as sneeze suspiciously, you’ll find a sword through your heart before you’ve even wiped your nose.”

“Now then, Mr Reston,” said the Great Speaker. “Let’s all relax and talk in a civilised fashion. I want information. I’m curious to know about events that occurred in the rainforest. I have reason to believe you’ve recently been in contact with certain parties who may bear a certain animosity towards me.”

“Xibalba?”

“Come now, don’t be facetious. You know I don’t mean them. Poorly equipped separatist guerrillas with their foolish dreams of a Mayan state? I couldn’t care less about them. If the Conquistador is a gnat, they are smaller still. Microbes, perhaps. No, I’m talking about beings of considerable power. You’ve met them. I know you have.”

“I have no idea what you’re — ”

Quicker than the eye could follow, quicker than seemed humanly possible, the Great Speaker shot out a hand and seized Reston by the neck. Then, exerting no apparent effort, he raised him off the floor, using only the one arm. Reston clawed at the hand with both of his, trying to unpick the gloved fingers, straining and gurgling. His face reddened. His eyes bulged. His legs kicked violently but uselessly. He hung there, suspended, choking, for nearly a minute before the Great Speaker relented and set him back down.

“There, now,” he said as Reston, bent over, wheezed for breath. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to resort to those sorts of cheap bullyboy tactics. I’m not barbaric by nature, not in my day-to-day affairs. When it comes to getting results, I far prefer words to the fist. So let’s try again. Three days ago, out in the rainforest, certain energies were released.”

“The aerodisc blowing up,” said Reston hoarsely, gulping out each word.

“No. Other energies. Of a kind the world has not known in many a year. I detected them. I am, you might say, a spider, and the world is my web. I sit at the centre of it, feeling the hum and quiver of every strand. When there is an anomaly — anything that might upset the precise, orderly running of my domain — I am aware of it. There is a presence out there in the forest, just a few miles away. I sense that you have met it. The moment you stepped out onto this terrace, I knew. It has left its mark on you. You are redolent of it. I can see it on you. Smell it on you. Smell him.”

“Him,” Reston echoed.

“Yes. And where he goes, can the others be far behind?”

“You’re referring to — ”

“Who do you think I’m referring to?” the Great Speaker snapped. Then he composed himself, his voice resuming its serene purr. “So tell me. How is he? What sort of a mood is he in? What does he want? What are his plans?”

Very quietly, almost in a whisper, Reston said, “Quetzalcoatl.”

“Yes. Quetzalcoatl. Of course, Quetzalcoatl. Who else?”

Mal scowled. What the hell were these two talking about? Quetzalcoatl? What did he have to do with anything? She saw similar perplexity on Aaronson’s face. Tlanextic, by contrast, looked only mildly fascinated, as though the mention of the god’s name came as no surprise. It was evident that she and Aaronson were the odd ones out here, ignorant of some vital facts known to everyone else present.

“He…” Reston paused. “He told me nothing. Nothing about any plans. Just demonstrated what he and the rest of them can do. It wasn’t even a fraction of what they’re capable of, I don’t think. They barely broke a sweat.”

“And what was it? What did they do?”

“They killed — they swatted — Xibalba.”

“How interesting. Why the Mayans? What did they do to deserve it?”

“Nothing, just failed to listen.”

“You don’t suppose this indicates Quetzalcoatl is on my side?”

“You’d have to ask him. Like I said, he told me nothing.”

“Come on,” the Great Speaker pressed him, “he must have given some hint of his goals. What game is he playing? Why has he returned? Why now?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t.”

“But it seems as though he confided in you to some extent. Favoured you. After all, he killed those others but let you live. Why?”

“Beats me. I think he had a soft spot for me. Or felt sorry for me. One or the other.”

The answer seemed to jibe with the Great Speaker’s own view. “Yes, that sounds about right. He does like his pets, does old Quetzalcoatl. Fond of the lesser beings and the afflicted. Like Xolotl. And that disgusting syphilitic old cripple Nanahuatzin. So he didn’t mention me at all?”

Reston searched his memory. “Maybe. Sort of. Indirectly. In passing. He talked about not doing what Xibalba was hoping to do, not resorting to drastic measures. A nonviolent resolution. And there was something about ‘unfinished business.’ I suppose that might apply to you, the Empire, all of that.”

“Nonviolent,” said the Great Speaker, musing. “That would be just like him. Always thinking he’s above such things, always trying to plant his flag on the moral high ground, when really he’s no better than anyone else.”

“But he isn’t the actual, genuine…” Reston began. Then his voice dropped, taking on a note of numb resignation. “He is, isn’t he? There’s no point trying to fight it any more.”

“Yes.”

“But then that would mean…”

“I, Mr Reston, am what I appear to be, and so much more.”

By now Mal was beyond confused. It seemed the two of them had lapsed into talking in riddles. She was seized by the urge to butt in and demand they speak straight, stop being so damn cryptic…

All at once, the Great Speaker tensed. His whole body went rigid, right to the fingertips, every inch of him alert.

“Your Imperial Holiness?” said Tlanextic, partway unsheathing his macuahitl. “What is it?”

“Quiet!” The Great Speaker turned his head, fixing his attention on the eastern horizon. “Oh yes,” he said slowly. “There you are. Peekaboo. I see you.”

Mal followed the line of his gaze but could see nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that hadn’t been there a moment earlier. It was the exact same view as before: the lake, the far-off shore, the folds of hill beyond.

“Come on, then,” the Great Speaker said. “It’s time we had this reunion. Long overdue, I’d say.”

“Sir,” said Tlanextic, “is there trouble? Perhaps we should get you inside, down to one of the command bunkers. You’ll be safe there.”

“No, it’s not trouble, colonel. At least, nothing I can’t handle. I think what’s coming could be called an official delegation.”

Reston was looking eastward too, and Mal could tell he was anxious, even though there was no obvious threat.

Then she spotted them — a trio of tiny dots in midair, dark against the shimmering hazy blue of the sky.

Some kind of aircraft?

They came closer, growing in size. They were moving fast, quicker even than an aerodisc could travel.

They were…

People?

Three of them.

Winged.

Flying.

The hairs on the back of Mal’s neck stood on end.

“Colonel Tlanextic?” said the Great Speaker. “I’d recommend you don’t do anything rash or precipitous. You’ll regret it. Just stay where you are. That applies to all of you. Be calm. Show due deference.”

He spread out his arms.

“Gods are coming.”