City of the Snakes (42 page)

“Yes.” Stooping, I grab Wami by the elbows and hoist him up. His eyes are cloudy but otherwise he appears unharmed. “Are you OK?”

“I feel like I’ve been kicked by a horse,” he growls, rubbing his neck. Gazing at the soldiers and dead Incas in the cavern, he smiles. Then he realizes the bed’s no longer where it was and his smile vanishes. “The fat bitch—where is she?”

“Some of her subjects spirited her away. Don’t worry, I can’t see them getting very far. We’ll set after them shortly and finish them off.”

“My doll! If she pierces its heart…”

I start to tell him I’ve retrieved the doll, then stop, fixing on an image of Bill Casey weeping as he told me about his sister. I think for a moment, then mutter, “She’s too frantic to reason clearly. You’ve nothing to fear. We will track her down presently.”

While my father fidgets, Raimi hobbles forward and confronts Eugene Davern. The leader of the Kluxers flinches when he spots the bloody, barely recognizable figure stumbling toward him, then realizes who it is and smiles shakily. “Capac,” he greets him nervously.

Raimi runs his eye over Davern, then looks to me. “What the hell’s going on?”

“An alliance,” I explain, nodding at the Troops, Kluxers and Snakes, who are gazing uneasily at one another, branching off into their respective groups now that the fighting’s over. “The
villacs
pushed your Troops and Davern’s Kluxers to the brink of war, using the Snakes—the guys with the bald heads and tattoos—to spark it off. I cut a deal with Tasso and Davern. They staged an invasion of the east, giving the priests the idea that they
were going to battle for real. To avoid the chaos, the
villacs
retreated underground. Once I gave the word, the Troops and Kluxers linked up and surged down the tunnels with the Snakes. The three forces cut all the priests they could find to ribbons, while a combined spearhead raced here, tracking a trail of poker chips we left for them to follow.”

Raimi thinks that over, his battered face creased with doubt. “Tasso and Davern working together? The Kluxers in league with a gang of blacks? A lot’s changed while I’ve been away.”

“It was time for change. The
villacs
had arranged it. I simply stepped in and readjusted their plans, turning the new deal to our advantage instead of theirs.”

“And what exactly does this ‘new deal’ entail?” Raimi asks.

“The finer details haven’t been thrashed out yet. You can take care of that when you’re back in charge. The way I sold it to Tasso and Davern, the Troops, Kluxers and Snakes get to carve up the city between them. There’s enough to go around, especially now that the priests have been taken care of. The final say is yours, of course, but I think you’d be crazy not to take advantage of the peace now that it’s been established.”

Raimi nods thoughtfully, then cocks an eyebrow at Davern. “I thought you wanted to run me out of town and take over the show.”

“I did,” Davern smiles, “but that was then, this is now. Our dark-skinned friend has shown me the light. I’ll settle for a third of the city—if it’s the
right
third.”

Raimi laughs hollowly. “There’s a lot of negotiating to be done. But we can do that another time. There are a few loose strings I want to see to first.”

“Leave that to us,” I tell him. “You’re in no fit shape to go chasing after—”

“I’ll slit the throat of any man who tries to stop me,” he vows.

“We won’t go slow on your account,” I warn him.

“I’ll keep up, even if it kills me.” He grins. “Which it probably will.”

Nodding, I ask Davern to fetch arms for us. “There are more of the bastards?” he asks.

“A couple dozen or so. They’re ours. Don’t follow. Finish your job here, scour the tunnels above in case you missed any priests, then return to the
surface with your men and wait for The Cardinal to contact you.” I face Sard. “I’m placing you in temporary control of the Snakes. If I don’t make it back, the promotion’s permanent. Work with Davern and Raimi. Make sure they cut us a good deal. Use your power to build and improve.”

“Why this talk of not coming back?” Sard frowns. “You’re the Sapa Inca—you always come back.”

“Maybe not this time. Be prepared if I don’t, and deal with it. That’s an order, soldier.”

His heels click together and he salutes. “Yes, sir!”

Sard and Eugene Davern stare suspiciously at each other, but don’t draw guns. It’s a start, not of a beautiful friendship, but hopefully a working relationship.

I face Capac Raimi, my father and Ama. All have armed themselves and Raimi has borrowed a dead
villac
’s robes. They’re ready for action.

“Let’s go finish this,” I snap, and we set off in pursuit of the fleeing
Coya
and her consorts.

There are several tunnels leading out of the cavern, but only one is large enough to accommodate the
Coya
’s bed. There are no lights, but we take torches from the floor. The tunnel runs straight for three hundred feet, then divides in two, each passage the same height and width. We pause at the junction, searching for signs of our quarry, but they’ve left none.

“We will split into pairs,” Wami decides. “Ama and her beau can take—”

“No,” Raimi interrupts, stepping forward. His left leg drags, but he’s kept the pace so far, running on sheer determination and hatred. “They went left.”

“You are certain?” my father asks.

Raimi nods. “I’ve spent my time here chained to that foul bitch. I could sniff her out from the other side of the city. Left.”

Wami looks to me for confirmation and I shrug. “I’m happy to go with his call.”

“Very well.” The killer sets off down the tunnel. I hurry after him, Ama and Raimi not far behind.

We come to a number of subsequent junctions, and each time Raimi
chooses the way. If he’s wrong about this we’ve lost them, probably forever.

We scramble over several small cave-ins as we progress, the first time we’ve encountered structural flaws. I mention them to my father and ask what he thinks. Raimi answers before he can. “The other tunnels and caves are kept up, but they haven’t bothered with these. They’ve grown arrogant and lazy. This path was laid many decades ago in case they needed to retreat, but they came to believe they were invulnerable, especially with Dorak and me affording them so much leeway.” He shakes his head, disgusted. “If I’d known they would be this easy to defeat, I’d have come after them years ago.”

“You wouldn’t have found them,” I tell him. “They’d have slipped away into the shadows and struck back at you when you weren’t expecting it. We’ve only rumbled them now because they were so close to victory that they couldn’t see the ruin on the flip side of the coin.”

Finally, as we turn into one of the narrower tunnels—there are marks on a wall where the edges of the bed scratched it, proof we’re on the right track—we hear the sound of voices and digging up ahead. “They must have hit a more serious cave-in,” my father grins, drawing a knife and testing its blade. “They are ours.”

“Wait,” Raimi says, tugging at the assassin’s robes. “I want to do this alone.”

“You are in no fit state to take them on,” Wami snorts.

“I wasn’t planning on a duel,” Raimi smiles, his face twisted with pain and exhaustion—but also triumph. “Lend me your vest.”

“Ah,” Wami purrs. “I see. But I would rather dispose of them the old-fashioned way if it’s all the same to you.”

“It isn’t,” Raimi growls. “I don’t care about the priests and priestesses—you can have them if any escape—but the queen is mine. Don’t push me on this.”

My father cocks an eyebrow. “Be careful whom you threaten, little man. You rule the roost up in Party Central, but down here you are nothing more than a mess of flesh and bones.”

“Can’t we do this together?” I ask. “We’ve come this far as a team. Why not—”

“You’ll all die if you challenge them,” Raimi says softly. “I sense death in the air. I’m as sure of this as I was of how to track the
Coya.
”

“Nonsense,” Wami snorts. “Al is almost as good a fighter as his pappy. We will make short work of them, hmm, Al m’boy?”

I don’t reply. Raimi’s right. Death lies waiting for me—
if
I go to meet it.

“I’m not afraid of dying,” I mutter. “And I won’t regret it, not if I take that lot with me.”

“I believe you,” Raimi smiles. “But you don’t have to. I can do this alone. You can live, Mr. Jeery, or you can sacrifice yourself. Choose.”

“His choice is irrelevant,” Wami snarls. I will not step down under any—”

“Your doll,” Ama interrupts, and he glances at her sharply. “If you attack them, the
Coya
will destroy your doll.”

“Not if I cut her fucking head off first,” he barks.

“Do you want to run such a risk?” Ama asks. “This world’s full of people for you to kill. Are these few worth risking everything for?”

He stares at her, then chuckles grimly. “When you put it that way… Very well, Cardinal, the
coup de grâce
is yours. Enjoy.”

“I will,” Raimi beams, then turns to Ama. “See you in a few days?” The hope in his eye is pathetic.

“I guess,” she sniffs.

He looks at me and winks. “It’s been fun knowing you,
blood brother
.”

“Same here,” I grin.

“Visit me when I return. We have important issues to settle.”

“I’ll come,” I promise. I start to undo the straps of my vest, remember the dolls stashed there, and fake a groan. “Give him yours,” I tell my father. “I pulled a muscle earlier. My shoulder’s killing me.”

Wami wriggles out of his vest, straps it over Raimi’s robes and shows him how to detonate the charges. The Cardinal waves to us, then hobbles down the tunnel after the
Coya,
leaving the rest of us to withdraw and strike for the lights of the world above.

I’m in agony that no ordinary man could endure, but that’s nothing new. I’ve spent the last few months exploring all the stars, planets and moons
in a universe of pain. The
villacs
put me through every kind of torture imaginable, while that she bitch looked on and laughed. And then they put me through it again. And again. What’s different now is that I’m a free agent. I could stop, sit, rest. Any small measure of relief would be a blessing. But if I pause, I won’t be able to rise. I’ll just lie there until I die.

Dragging my left leg behind me, gritting the few teeth I have left, I march onward, enduring the pain, welcoming it—the worse I feel, the sweeter it’ll be when I send those bastards to hell. I gave my flashlight to Jeery, so I’m operating in darkness. That doesn’t worry me. I don’t need to be able to see to find that cow. I could zero in on her if I were deaf, dumb and blind.

I’m not sure what will happen to me when I kill the
Coya
. I was created to last through eternity, immune to death, but that power came from the queen and her priests. Perhaps, when they are no more, I’ll cease to exist as well. If so, so be it. I’ve spent ten years training myself to accept a life without end, but immortality hasn’t been easy to adapt to. Genuine death isn’t an altogether unwelcome prospect.

I’d miss Ama though. Seeing her again almost made all the pain and humiliation worthwhile. I thought the woman the priests sent to lure me underground was an illusion. I’d dismissed her from my thoughts during my long days and nights of suffering. I hadn’t dared believe she could be real.

Now that I know she is, I long to spend time with her, tell her what she meant to me, how much it pained me to sacrifice her. I want to explain that I had no choice, I was a puppet incapable of severing its strings. I want to touch her, even if it’s just one last time, hold her, kiss her, whisper words in her ear that I can whisper to no other because I can love none but her.

But I’m afraid. What if she rejects me? What if she hates me for what I did to her? I’d rather die the one true death than have her spurn me. She fussed over me in the cavern of the
Coya
, but that might have been a sympathetic reaction. Perhaps it will be for the best if my spirit’s set free by the destruction of the Incas.

I’m close now, a turn or two away. Their voices are loud and clear, as are the sounds of their fingers and knives on the rubble they’re frantically
trying to burrow through. The flickering lights of torches make the tunnel seem warm and homey. The priestesses can’t navigate as capably in the dark as the
villacs
, even though they’ve spent their lives out of sight of the moon they worship.

I was supposed to bring them to that moon. If I’d accepted the priests as masters, and worked with Jeery and the other sons of Paucar Wami, they’d have risen from the depths. With the Manco Capac statue dominating the city, the
Coya
would have established herself as queen, the
mamaconas
would have been the most sought-after women, and the
villacs
would have been the most powerful of men. They’d have ruled supreme. That dream kept them going in the miserable gloom. It was all they had to live for. A nobler man might feel pity for them—they were born to their lot, they didn’t ask for it—but I’m a savage son of a bitch and I feel nothing but hateful glee at the thought of wrecking their carefully laid plans.

I’m almost upon them. A brief pause to draw breath and flex my fingers, careful not to touch the buttons nestled in my palms. Then I plaster a smile in place, force a weak whistle, and stumble around the final turn, into view.