Age of Aztec

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 shell of himself.

Eventually Ix’s and Mal’s paths crossed again, as she had somehow known they would. Ix had started working for a mob boss, Davey Furman, whose gang, the Battersea Batterers, ran most of the rackets south of the Thames, from Putney to Camberwell. Ix made himself useful shaking down shopkeepers for protection money, intimidating would-be grasses, and defending Batterers turf against incursions from rival gangs. At least he was earning a decent wage now, so that he didn’t have to go terrorising their parents for handouts any more.

Furman had several people high up in the Jaguar Warrior ranks in his back pocket, and it was informal policy to turn a blind eye to his gangster activities unless they were unusually egregious. Then the incumbent High Priest died and a new man was elevated to that position, the current holder of the office, His Very Holiness Seldon Whitaker. Whitaker fancied himself a hardliner, with zero tolerance for criminality of any description. One of his first edicts, issued with new-broom zeal, was that organised racketeering in Britain’s cities must come to an end.

Even corrupt police officials could not soft-pedal a direct and unequivocal order like that, so a clampdown got under way. In London that meant Battersea Batterer haunts were raided and ransacked. Known associates of Furman were brought in for interrogation, which many of them did not survive. Underlings were snatched off the streets, never to be seen again, except for those who ended up doing hard time in one of the Empire’s notorious subterranean jails, and they were broken ghosts of themselves when they finally returned home. The gang was dismantled piecemeal, and its worst, most notorious felons were convicted of offences ranging from GBH to first degree murder, all of which carried the death penalty. The months after Whitaker took charge were not good ones for the urban mob fraternity, and the Batterers bore the brunt.

Which was why Mal was less than shocked when her brother appeared on her doorstep in the small hours one night. She had been expecting it. That or finding his name on the list of death row inmates, awaiting execution.

“Help me,” Ix begged. “Please. Only you can.”

He looked a mess, grubby and unshaven, his expensive suit wrinkled and creased. He had been on the run for several days, he told Mal, sleeping rough or on friends’ floors. The net was closing in around him. He’d gone to visit Furman but the Batterers’ leader was nowhere to be found; word on the street was that he’d fled the country. The whole enterprise was falling down around the gang’s ears. It had all turned to shit. There were Jaguars on every corner, hunting. Nowhere to hide.

“But you’ll do right for me, won’t you, Mal? I mean, I know we’ve had our differences in the past, but we’re still brother and sister, still blood, beneath it all. And blood helps blood, yeah? If I’m caught, I’m dead, simple as that. But you can see that that doesn’t happen, can’t you?”

“How, Ix? What am I supposed to do? Put in a good word for you somewhere? Ask my colleagues to just sort of step around you? How exactly can I help? You got yourself up shit creek. I don’t have the paddle.”

He looked so crestfallen then that it nearly broke her heart. He became the little boy she remembered, two years older than her and often cruelly dismissive of her, but sensitive, too, at times, easily hurt if she rejected him. She recalled how he could be her mortal enemy at home but was ever ready to leap to her defence at school if she got bullied or was in trouble. She hated to see him crushed in this way. He regarded her as his last and only hope.

“Look,” she said, “come in. I’ll put you up for the night. I’ll do right for you.”

“Oh, thank you, Mal! By all the Four, thank you! I don’t know what to say. You’re the best,” and he hugged her, hard, as he had never hugged her before. Mal made up a bed for him on the sofa, and Ix dropped straight off, snoring soundly in what was probably the deepest, sweetest sleep he had had in ages. She stayed up watching him for a long while, and then she did what was right for him. And for her.

Jaguar Warriors came at dawn. Mal let them in. Ix awoke to find himself surrounded by drawn macuahitl s. The Jaguars handcuffed him. He went quietly, too overwhelmed by her betrayal to resist or even to speak. At the last moment, as he was being manhandled out through the door to the waiting squad car, he turned and shot his sister a fulminous look. His eyes seethed with rage and outrage and, beneath that, sheer despairing agony.

Mal was invited to attend his beheading. She chose not to. Likewise their parents. Ix Vaughn was consigned to Mictlan alone, unwitnessed, sobbing his eyes out.

In return for having done her duty, Mal was promoted to acting sergeant, transferred to the CID and put on the fast track to an inspectorship. Loyalty to the Jaguars had outweighed loyalty to family, and that was truly laudable and deserving of reward.

Mal of course had not shopped her brother for personal gain. Her motive had simply been a desire not to see bad deeds go unpunished. That, to her, mattered more, far more than kinship.

She would never again feel the same way about being a Jaguar Warrior, however. Like her father after the heart attack, she had lost something vital. There was a taint on her life. Where before she’d had the courage of her convictions and an ability to keep the shadows of doubt at bay, now all that was gone. A single decision — a taking of sides — had changed her utterly and irrevocably.

In the years that followed, Mal advanced professionally in leaps and bounds, fully repaying the force’s faith in her abilities. She was not quite the youngest person ever to be appointed detective, but close. She set about racking up an enviable tally of arrests and commendations. She earned a reputation as a harsh but fair taskmaster. She had the kind of career that parents would boast about, especially parents who were staunch Empire loyalists and showed it by giving their children Nahuatl forenames such as Ixtli and Malinalli, and even more especially parents whose other child had proved such a disappointment.

Where Mal’s private life was concerned, things were less rosy. A lot of alcohol abuse went on, and the closest she got to a committed relationship was a short run of assignations with the same person, although that was rare. Usually she preferred the anonymous, no-strings drunken fuck, at the other participant’s place not hers, followed by a bad-breathed but guiltless departure before breakfast. One-night stands with men, ideally much younger men, whom she would never have to meet again. Those and the booze stopped her thinking too hard about anything much. Her conscience was quietened. The shadows shrank.

Shrank but returned. Constantly returned, denser and darker. For almost a full solar year, Mal had felt she was losing the battle with her misgivings. Ix’s words from all that time ago kept recurring to her. Be a paid thug. Enforce the status quo. Empire’s whore. Was that all she was? Was that all any Jaguar Warrior was?

She wanted to do good. She wanted to help those who needed helping. And if somebody broke the law, they needed to be caught and made to face the consequences, however drastic. Morally, it was that straightforward.

Wasn’t it?

Why, then, had it become so difficult to face going into work each morning? Why had she written that letter of resignation in her head, and refined and rewritten it, over and over until she had it by heart? Why did almost every punishment the Jaguars meted out, in the Empire’s name, sicken her these days?

While a bus ferried her to Scotland Yard, Mal ran over these questions in her mind, as she often did. By journey’s end she was no nearer answers than before.

The only positive she could glean from the previous night’s spectacular cock-up was that if she carried on handling the Conquistador case as badly as this, the future wouldn’t hold much more worrying for her. A macuahitl would soon be putting her out of her misery, and that would be that.

It was always good to look on the bright side.

Kellaway harangued her publicly, in front of the whole department, and she took it on the chin, drawing solace from two thoughts. One: the chief super needed to be seen to be yelling at someone, otherwise people might assume he was going soft. Two: as long as he was tearing a strip off her, he wasn’t going to execute her. The latter was the more significant. It meant she still had breathing space. She was in the last chance saloon but the bartender hadn’t called time yet.

An hour later Kellaway summoned her to his office. He was a whole lot more sanguine, and less red-faced, now, in private.

“Last night was a damn good shot, Vaughn,” he said. “Best anyone’s made to date. The shittest of luck that it didn’t come off. Anything on those fellows with the blowpipes?”

“My guess is Anahuac, sir. Mayan separatists.”

“That would make sense. Recruited by the Conquistador, or maybe employed. Hired muscle.”

“Or possibly sympathisers to his cause. Fellow travellers. He seemed to have no idea who they were when they first appeared. Could be they’re over here and on his side because they’re… well, fans.”

Kellaway rolled his eyes. “That’s just what we need — more of the buggers. Think we can root this lot out somehow? Check the immigration records, for instance?”

“I can have Aaronson look to see if a bunch of Anahuac nationals have passed through customs lately, but we get people arriving from there all the time, and if our guys are on tourist visas, as is likely, they won’t have to have specified a place of residence in Britain.”

“How about shaking a few cheap hotels, see what falls out?”

“Could do.”

“You don’t sound too enthusiastic.”

“With respect, sir, I think the Mayans are a red herring. A sideshow, not the main event. I should really be focusing on the Conquistador.”

“If you say so,” said Kellaway.

“I’m not against exploring other avenues, but it’s the Conquistador who’s at the centre of all this, and catching him might just lead us to the Mayans, too. If I could only figure out who he really is… I mean, he’s a civilian when he’s not playing sociopath dress-up. He has another, discrete existence. It shouldn’t be impossible, based on what we know about him, to narrow down a shortlist of suspects and interview all of them.”

“Interview as in ‘interview’?” The emphasis Kellaway placed on the word was unmistakable. What went on in the basement of Scotland Yard wasn’t pleasant, but it had been proven to work.

“It needn’t be that drastic,” said Mal. “Under duress or not, whichever one’s the Conquistador is bound to give himself away. There’s a vanity about the man. Up on that stage yesterday, he wouldn’t bloody shut up. We prey on that, goad him, prompt him, he’ll reveal his true colours soon enough. Plus, I’ll recognise his voice.”

“How? The mask distorts it.”

“Not so much the voice itself — the speech patterns, the syntax, the choice of words. Some one-on-one time with him, that’s all it’ll take. Me and him in a room together. I’ll know.”

“How many would there be on this shortlist?”

“I don’t know, sir. A dozen. Two dozen. A hundred. Depends on what my researches turn up. Why?”

“Why do you think?” Kellaway smoothed a hand compulsively through his thinning hair. So few strands left, all the more important to keep them in line. “The commissioner’s leaning even more heavily on me. Wants results, and now. The news people have been asked to go easy on reporting the Conquistador’s exploits, play it down, not sensationalise, and mostly they’re falling into line. But you can’t avoid the bare facts getting out there. Skew them how you will, they spread, the public takes note, and the Conquistador gets the attention he craves. My theory is that’s what’s behind the murder of Priest Marquand. Someone’s been reading the headlines and decided to get in on the action. And we can’t have that, Vaughn. We can’t have Conquistador wannabes. One’s bad enough. And now these Mayans… If this should turn into some kind of contagion, which is what the commissioner’s afraid of, then where will we be?”

“How about instituting a blanket ban on all media coverage of the Conquistador? High Priest Whitaker could issue a formal decree. That might help limit the, as you put it, contagion.”

“The commissioner and I discussed the possibility. Partly the trouble is, we’re too late. The cat is well out of the bag. If the Conquistador suddenly vanished from the airwaves and the front pages, it would smack of government interference. And above all else the freedom of the press is sacrosanct.”

“The illusion of the freedom of the press, don’t you mean?”

“Yes, well.” Kellaway waved airily: same difference. “His Very Holiness would have no problem with the idea of depriving the Conquistador of the oxygen of publicity, but all said and done, he’d rather deprive him of oxygen full stop. In fact, as I understand it from the commissioner, the only thing that’ll make the High Priest truly happy is the Conquistador’s head on a railing spike outside Westminster. Which brings us back to you.”

Mal nodded sombrely. “Yes, it does.”

“The one surefire means of undoing everything the Conquistador’s done, rectifying the damage he’s caused, is capturing him and making an example of him. All the very worst punishments available have to be visited on him, and his suffering has to be photographed and written about and filmed and broadcast, every minute of it, every single excruciating second. So that people know. So that they won’t forget. So that they’ll be discouraged from trying anything like it, ever again. I like this shortlist idea of yours, chief inspector. It shows I was right to give you the job. You’ve got flair and imagination, something all your predecessors lacked, including that plodder Nyman.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You have carte blanche to carry on the investigation in whatever way you see fit. You have an unlimited budget at your disposal. What you don’t have is time. Get cracking. We need resolution on this. We need a result. For the good of the nation, find the fucking Conquistador!”

“You. You. And you. You as well. And you, the one trying to hide — yes, you.”

Mal swept through the department, pulling junior officers from their desks.

“Drop what you’re doing. Whatever it is, it’s not important right now. As of this moment, you’re on my detail. You answer to me. And if you want to whinge about it, take it up with the chief super. Then watch him wrench off some vital part of your anatomy along with your badge.”

She commandeered a situation room, and addressed her small task force of new recruits.

“Here’s how it is,” she said. “By tonight I want you to have compiled a list of potential Conquistadors. We don’t have a lot to go on, but we do know this about him. He’s male. About six one, solidly built, thirteen, fourteen stone, something like that. In his late twenties, early thirties. Military background. I know, I know, that could describe thousands of people, but we can whittle it down further. He’s local, that’s almost certain. Almost all of his attacks have occurred in and around the capital. It’d be reasonable to assume he’s a Londoner. Also, he has a fair bit of dosh. Not rich, necessarily, but he abandoned a suit of armour the other day and turned up in another one yesterday evening. Those things must cost a bob or two, so we can assume he’s not penniless. Finally, he’s nursing some sort of deep-felt grudge against the Empire. Don’t know what, don’t know why, but it’ll flag itself up when combined with all the other criteria. Questions?”

There was a way of asking “Questions?” that indicated you weren’t actually interested in hearing any. Mal used it.

“Then what are you waiting for, ladies and gentlemen? Quetzalcoatl to return? Move your arses.”

It was a long day, and it stretched well into the evening. Mal coaxed, chivvied and cajoled throughout, fuelled by the cups of coca Aaronson fetched for her, every hour, on the hour. Her team went through criminal records, military records, financial records, sifting, sorting, cross-referencing. When she saw their energy levels begin to wane, she pushed them to redouble their efforts. She led by example, refusing to show an ounce of the bone-deep tiredness she was feeling. The bruises left by the bolas balls ached. Just to hold her head up required superhuman stamina. But she could not flag, could not fail. There was so much at stake here, not least her own life. She was thirty-two. Not ready for Tamoanchan yet, or even the other place. And the chief super was depending on her, the commissioner too, the High Priest himself. She wasn’t going to let anyone down.

Finally, verging on midnight, she sent everyone home, Aaronson included. They’d all put in a good day’s work, and plenty of overtime, and between them they’d managed to rustle up a list of thirty-odd candidates each of whom fit the profile for the Conquistador.

Mal herself would gladly have gone home too. She was so exhausted she could barely see straight. Her coca buzz was fading and she knew that if she drank any more of the stuff she could pass out and maybe even end up in hospital with cardiac arrhythmia. It was down to just her now, her and her own inner resources.

She arranged the candidate dossiers on a table. Some had mugshots clipped to them, others not. She read through each one carefully. In many instances, the sum total of knowledge about the man amounted to no more than a few lines of text. With others, particularly those who had spent time being detained at His Very Holiness’s pleasure, there was a great deal of information, none of it painting them in a flattering light. Her gut instinct told her that the Conquistador wasn’t likely to be part of this parade of model citizens — stalkers, pub brawlers, wife beaters, flashers, kiddie fiddlers. They all of them used to be lower-ranked Eagle Warriors, non-coms, cannon fodder. Given his cunning and his articulacy, the Conquistador would have been higher up the pecking order, officer class.

By this process of elimination she was able to cut the number of suspects by half. That still left nigh-on twenty possibles, however, and no amount of filtering or compare-and-contrasting could seem to get that total any lower. Each man was as much Conquistador material as the next. The business executive? The blueblood? The publishing tycoon? The tlachtli team manager? Which?

There was nothing else for it. Mal jotted down the remaining candidates’ names on a sheet of paper, then left the building. She went out into Campbell-Bannerman Street, the broad thoroughfare formerly known as Victoria Street, renamed after the prime minister who signed the peace accord with the Empire, embraced the faith and became Britain’s first ever High Priest — all on the same day. A few blocks down from the Yard, there was a twenty-four-hour pharmacy. Mal approached the counter and asked for a vision quest package. The pharmacist demanded to be shown ID. The sight of Mal’s Jaguar Warrior badge knocked some of the snootiness out of him.

“That seems to be in order, madam,” he said. “One has to be careful. One doesn’t sell vision quest packages to just anybody. The law prohibits… but then you already know what the law prohibits.” He was flustered.

“Don’t panic, I’m not here to bust you. Unless you’ve been selling drug tinctures to people who aren’t certified sane enough to use, which I’m sure you haven’t.”

“Indeed not! Never!”

“Then we’re fine. I really am here to buy a package, that’s all.”

“Then let me be of service. Any particular preference? What sort of vision are you hoping to achieve? Prognostication? Communion with the gods? Self-realisation? Recreation? We have tinctures to suit all sorts, all of them naturally sourced and prepared according to time-honoured recipes.”

“I’m looking for answers. I need to make a choice.”

“Any specific choice?”

“Between men.”

The pharmacist interpreted this in a certain way and raised an eyebrow. “You’re after a husband?”

“No, I’m not. And I hope you’re not volunteering.”

He wanted to snipe back at her, but couldn’t. It didn’t pay to get lippy with a Jaguar. “I misunderstood. I beg your pardon.”

“I’m just after… clarity, I suppose. Insight into a dilemma.”

“Ah. Might I recommend, then, a draught of psilocybin mixed with honey? It’s traditional, highly palatable, goes down a treat, and the effects are gentle but potent. I prepare it specially myself, from mushrooms grown by reputable wholesalers, and my customers report back that the results are always satisfactory and that — ahem — ‘bad trips’ are rare.”

“Okay. If that fits the bill. I’ll take one dose.”

“Might I enquire whether you’ve had experience with hallucinogens before, madam?”

“A little. I used to dabble. Nowadays, not so much.”

“Are you on any medication?”

“No.”

“Do you have any underlying chronic health problems?”

“No.”

“Any ailments or diseases you’re presently suffering from?”

“Only premature mortality syndrome,” Mal muttered under her breath.

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing. No diseases.”

“Splendid. I’ve just mixed up a fresh batch of ‘magic honey,’ as it happens. It’s in the cold store. Back in a jiffy.”

Mal took the psilocybin-honey draught home. The pharmacist recommended using it in a familiar, comfortable environment. That would help anchor her, in the event of “problems” occurring. He also suggested she void bladder and bowels beforehand, wear a loose-fitting garment, keep the telephone to hand just in case, and light a single candle but place it well out of reach where it couldn’t be accidentally knocked over. He wished her luck on her vision quest and handed her a receipt so that she could claim back the cost of the trip on expenses.

Mal set everything up as suggested. She sat herself cross-legged on the floor in a cotton kimono. The candle flickered on the mantelshelf. She held up the little phial of amber-yellow liquid, studying it by the dim flame light. At last she unstoppered it, raised it to her lips, took a deep breath, then swigged the tincture down in one gulp.

This was it. No going back now.

She placed the sheet of paper with the suspects’ names on it in front of her, propping it up against a cushion. She ran her gaze over the list countless times until she had memorised them all. Then she closed her eyes.

The sickly-sweet taste of the tincture clogged the back of her throat. She listened to the sounds in the flat — the whir of the air conditioning in the bedroom, the churn of the refrigerator in the kitchen, the occasional moth’s wingbeat of the candle as it guttered. She listened to the city noises outside too, and the floorboard-creaking footfalls of the young couple in the flat above as they prepared for bed. She hoped they weren’t about to indulge in one of their marathon sex sessions. That could definitely mess with her trip, hearing the accelerating thudding of bedstead against wall and the rising moans and groans that seemed to last forever.

The names, Mal told herself. Fix your focus on the names, nothing else.

She felt odd. She felt light-headed. It passed. Then it returned, and her consciousness seemed to narrow inside her brain, becoming attenuated, like a wisp of smoke. There was herself and another self. She was Mal Vaughn, the physical entity, and a separate Mal Vaughn, a traveller in her body, a driver, a woman at the wheel who was gradually taking her hands off the controls. The car was coasting to a halt. It was on a night road somewhere, at a clifftop, far above a crashing sea. The cliff was extraordinarily tall, so high she couldn’t hear the sea any more. There were only stars. She was up among constellations, where the gods flew. The stars were points of ice, not suns. They had no heat. If you touched them they could cut like diamonds. You could pluck them out of the earth, if you wished to, like a miner in a mine. With your rock hammer and chisel you could dig pure raw starstuff out of the ground, the elements of creation, brilliant glints in the darkness. Mal was down below and up above at once, at the same time, in a confined space and surrounded by infinite space. Two things simultaneously. Opposites. Oneness in duality.

Almost as if on instinct, she latched on to that. Oneness in duality. A basic tenet of faith. One of the fundamentals of the Aztec religion. But also the Conquistador. What was he but two people in one, one person acting as two? He was contradiction. He had his real face and his public face. He had the face he saw in the mirror every day and his other face, his masked face, his not-face, the one he was famed for. He was a known unknown. He was a presence who was an absence. He was a celebrity whose identity was a secret. His truth was a falsehood. His pretence was a fact. His existence was nonexistent.

Who are you?

The names cycled through Mal’s mind. The names had colours. No, the names were colours. Each came with its own particular shade, its own suite of emotions and resonances. Some were brighter, brasher than others. They flared and swirled. Some came to the fore, others retreated into the background. They were like a painting she could walk through. Some were hot to the touch, others cool. They formed arches, corridors, labyrinthine crystalline structures.

Who are you? Tell me.

The names blurred and sharpened as though a camera was pulling focus, trying to zoom in on distant objects, fathoming depth of field. They echoed, speaking themselves. They became a jumble of syllables, overlapping, fusing together in new and unintelligible amalgamations. She was losing hold. Her grip on the vision was slipping. The names were melting, growing meaningless, the blabbering idiolect of a pre-speech infant.

Come on!

One of them must be her man. One of them, she was sure, had to be the key to the Conquistador.

Remember them. Remember the names.

There was Charles Wooding. There was Christopher Martin. There was Christopher Wooding. No. Martin Christopher. Christin Martopher. Inopher Chrismart.

No. Try again. Try harder.

Will Wood. No. Will Wilson. No. Wilson Willing.

Concentrate.

There was Mick Land. No, no such person. She was thinking of Mictlan. There was Stuart Land. No, not Land. But Stuart someone, definitely. There was Chal Wooding. Yes. Chal. Full forename Chalchiuhtotolin, after an aspect of Quetzalcoatl.

Him?

No. Cold blue. Hazy. Like a far-off view of mountains. Not him.

Keep trying. Go on.

She fought to keep the names orderly, in shape. She forced herself to pay attention only to the hot ones, the clear ones, that ones that proclaimed themselves more loudly than the rest. She beckoned them towards her like cats, charmed them like snakes, banana-bribed them like monkeys.

One of you. It’s one of you.

And now she could feel the honeyed psilocybin wearing off. The magic mushrooms were losing their abracadabra. Gross physicality was setting in, the blood rush and lung heave and wet digestiveness of the body. Her kimono’s cotton grated coarsely on her skin. The sounds around her — and yes, the couple upstairs were in the throes of full-throttle nookie — were deafening. Could a humble candle really shine as brilliantly as the sun?

One of you.

It hovered close. The name. Oh, that name. She must make a grab for it, snatch it now, otherwise it would recede, fade, be gone for good.

One of…

A desperate mental lunge. A clawing at a thing that was almost vanished. A grasping at vapour.

…you.

She had it. She had it!

The name in her mind’s hand.

Mal snapped back into the world, fully awake.

Gotcha.