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  The sacrificial victim currently on the altar started screaming – not in pain, but in alarm and horror, as the sergeant slumped to the floor. The priest gaped, dagger hanging uselessly from his fingers. The other Jaguar Warrior sergeant sprang into action. It would cost precious seconds to prime his lightning gun, so he drew his macuahitl from its scabbard and lunged at the Conquistador.

  The Conquistador countered the first blow with ease, the macuahitl’s obsidian blade glancing off the rapier’s steel. The sergeant went for the Conquistador’s neck on the back swing, but again the blow was deflected, this time rebounding off the rapier’s hilt guard. The two men thrust and parried. Metal and volcanic glass chimed as they met and met again. The sergeant managed to get a jab past his opponent’s defences, but it glanced off the Conquistador’s cuirass, leaving nothing but a scratch.

  The Conquistador retaliated with a downward slash that cleaved the sergeant’s left arm almost all the way through at the shoulder. The limb dangled, flopping, at the Jaguar Warrior’s side. Shock greyed his face and turned his legs to jelly. He tried to lift his macuahitl for one last swing, but the sword’s weight seemed too much for him and he toppled sideways.

  The Conquistador polished the sergeant off matter-of-factly, plunging the rapier deep into his armpit. Then he turned to the priest.

  The priest’s face was a mask of pure panic. In a quavering voice he shouted at the acolytes, “It’s me he’s after. Don’t let him get me. Stop him! By the Four Who Rule Supreme, that’s an order!”

  The acolytes obeyed, if a little hesitantly. They ran at the Conquistador, throwing themselves at him singly and in pairs. These were not fighting men; they belonged to a caste accustomed to luxury and soft living. Not one of them knew what it was like to land a blow in anger. The Conquistador cut them down like poppies.

  The priest came to the realisation that no one was going to save him. He bounded down the steps, barging aside the blood rite participants who were coming up. Down below, the onlookers milled about uncertainly. Disquiet was growing in the plaza. It wasn’t entirely apparent what was going on up there on top of the ziggurat, but the blood rite had been interrupted, that much was plain; people were getting killed who weren’t meant to be getting killed.

  The Conquistador eyed the fleeing priest and, with something like a shrug, pulled out a pistol. This was no sleek, contoured weapon like a lightning gun but closer in appearance to a flintlock or an blunderbuss, with a flared tip to the barrel. Primitive by modern standards, it fired physical projectiles rather than a bolt of ionised, superheated gas.

  The Conquistador took careful aim. The pistol barked in his hand, spitting out a cluster of flechettes. The tiny brass arrows entered the priest’s back and exited through his chest in an expanding burst. His ribs erupted outwards so that, as he crashed to the steps, his body resembled any of the countless hundreds whose deaths he had presided over in the course of his career – hollowed, heartless.

  Terror now gripped the people in the plaza. There would have been a stampede, only there was scant room to move and nowhere to go. The streets that fed into the plaza were crammed. All exits were blocked. The onlookers surged and swirled but stayed in one place. The Jaguar Warriors in their midst tried to reach the ziggurat, but couldn’t forge a path through.

  The Conquistador didn’t have long to survey his handiwork. As the priest’s corpse came to rest halfway down the steps – although his headdress bounced on all the way to the bottom – the Jaguar Warrior patrol disc loomed overhead. Its forward guns fired, left and right alternately, strafing the top of the ziggurat with coruscating, percussive blasts.

  The Conquistador sprang this way and that, dodging the l-gun salvos. Stonework shattered. Sprawled bodies were incinerated. The altar was destroyed. Yet somehow the Conquistador managed to stay alive. He was fast on his feet, and a small target. The patrol disc’s guns were designed for bludgeoning, not sniping. Ground vehicles and other aircraft were its principal quarry, not a lone man who kept scurrying about like a cornered mouse.

  Then, perhaps inevitably, the patrol disc’s gunner scored a hit. The Conquistador had taken refuge in the temple doorway. The gunner let loose with both forward guns at once, and the temple more or less evaporated. Roof collapsed, walls crumbled, and when the smoke and dust cleared there was nothing but a heap of broken granite slabs. No sign of the Conquistador.

  Whoops of joy echoed through the disc’s interior. Pilot and gunner yelled at each other, grinning from ear to ear.

  “We did it!”

  “The fucking Conquistador!”

  “We’ll get medals for this!”

  “Promotion!”

  “A commendation from the Great Speaker!”

  “Fuck yeah!”

  In the event, they were to be disappointed. None of the above would happen. But their moment of triumph, while it lasted, was sweet.

  JAGUAR WARRIORS TOOK charge in the plaza, restoring calm and arranging an orderly evacuation. The streets emptied. People filed homeward, dazed and disturbed. The plaza was designated an official crime scene. The death toll was totted up. The remains of the ruined temple were combed through.

  What the Jaguar Warriors unearthed among the debris was not, as they’d hoped, a mangled corpse in a suit of armour. They found armour all right. Portions of it were strewn across the apex of the ziggurat, here a gauntlet, there the morion helmet with comb crest and cheek guards. But no body. Nor was any of the armour pieces spattered with blood, as might have been expected.

  The armour, it was obvious, had been discarded. The Conquistador, under cover of the obscuring haze of smoke and dust, had undressed himself and...

  Disappeared.

  But where to? Where had he gone?

  Into the crowd? But he wouldn’t have had time to unbuckle his armour and get down to the plaza.

  Where, then?

  A COUPLE OF hours after the blood rite came to its premature end, a flatbed truck arrived at the plaza to cart away the bodies of the sacrificial victims.

  The Jaguar Warriors refused it access, and the workmen in the truck said that that was no problem with them, but... A pyre was already alight over at the burning grounds in Leamouth, building up heat. The clock was ticking. In this weather, the corpses would soon start to putrefy. Swift removal and immolation was standard procedure, as mandated by tradition. If the Jaguar Warriors wished that not to happen, then fine. But they would have to explain to the High Priest himself why they had interfered with proper religious observance. Good luck with that.

  The Jaguar Warriors saw sense and allowed the truck through. Parking behind the ziggurat, the workmen donned filter masks and rubber gloves and aprons. Then they got busy scooping up the corpses in the enclosure and stacking them onto the back of the truck. They’d been expecting a hundred bodies but, in the event, it was a couple of dozen. Still, never mind. They were on a flat rate. Less work, same pay, and it meant a single trip from Leamouth and back rather than three or four.

  The truck trundled out of the plaza with its gory load. The corpses in the back jogged and jiggled with every sharp turn and pothole.

  The drivers were blithely oblivious when, while the truck stood stationary at traffic lights, one of the corpses got up, shinned over the tailgate, and sprinted off down a nearby alleyway.

  TWO

  5 Eagle 1 Monkey 1 House

  (Monday 26th November 2012)

  THE LAST THING Mal wanted to hear when she reported for work at Scotland Yard that morning was the first thing her DS, Aaronson, said to her.

  “Kellaway’s looking for you.”

  The groan inside Mal was so loud it was almost a shout. Outwardly she confined herself to a soft oath.

  “Where is he? His office?”

  Aaronson glanced down the corridor. “If he was, you’d be able to hear him.”

  “On the warpath?”

  “Seriously. It’s been stamping and ranting ever since he got in. I know he usually has a tarantula up hi
s arse but never one this big. He could teach Tezcatlipoca himself a thing or two about anger.”

  “Well, wherever he is, he can wait a few more minutes. Here.” She handed Aaronson one of the two paper cups she was carrying.

  Her DS frowned at the logo on the side. “Koka Klub? I thought you hated the big chains. You said they water it down too much.”

  “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “What about the street stand outside Victoria Station? You usually get your –” Aaronson’s expression turned sly. “Ah. We didn’t come in that way today, did we? We weren’t home last night, were we?”

  “You’ll make an inspector yet, Aaronson.”

  “Come on, who was it?”

  “No one.”

  “That means he was young.”

  “I can’t even remember his name, to be honest.”

  “Bad girl! Bet he was handsome.”

  “Gorgeous,” Mal said with feeling.

  “Where did you find him?”

  “The pub, lunchtime. We played a few games of patillo. I let him win the first. Wiped the floor with him for the rest.”

  “Would I have liked him?”

  “If he swung your way, definitely.”

  “They all swing my way,” said Aaronson. “When persuaded.”

  The two of them uncapped their cups, blew off the steam, and took a sip. The coca-leaf tea hit the spot simultaneously.

  “You hear about the blood rite yesterday?” Aaronson asked. He was lisping slightly, his tongue coca-numbed.

  “Of course. Why shouldn’t I have?”

  “I don’t know, because you were having rampant monkey sex with a casual pickup maybe?”

  “I caught the newspaper headlines on the way here.”

  “Conquistador made us look like a bunch of fucking idiots.”

  “Which’ll be the reason for the chief super’s mood,” said Mal. “What I want to know is why’s he after me?” She had a hunch she knew the answer. She prayed she was wrong. She took another slug of her tea. “Better go find him, I suppose. Face the music.”

  “Good luck, boss. I’ll bring flowers to your funeral.”

  “Detective Sergeant Aaronson, sincerely, fuck off.”

  SHE TRACKED DOWN Kellaway in the central quadrangle.

  Normally you could count on there being a scratch game of tlachtli under way here, off-duty personnel running around, jostling to put the ball through the wall-mounted hoop with a shoulder nudge or thigh kick. Now, however, the quadrangle was deserted, except for the chief superintendent, two constables, and a man Mal recognised as Chief Inspector Stephen Nyman.

  From everyone’s body language she could tell exactly what the situation was and what was about to occur. She started to backtrack out of the quadrangle, but too late. Kellaway spotted her.

  “Inspector Vaughn. Just in time. Come on over.”

  The chief superintendent was calm, no longer raging. Punishment was about to be doled out. He had something to assuage his wrath.

  Mal crossed to his side, trying not to catch Nyman’s eye. The detective looked defeated, exhausted, his face pinched and fraught. He was doing his very best not to tremble. Nyman had always struck her as one of the most phlegmatic, self-effacing Jaguar Warriors on the force, efficient without being flashy, a doer, not a show-off. It was painful watching him struggle to keep his composure now.

  “Chief Inspector Nyman, as you’re aware, has been the senior investigating officer heading up the Conquistador enquiry,” said Kellaway. “He was in charge of security arrangements at yesterday’s blood rite. Responsibility for the safety of His Holiness Priest Sanderson lay with him and him alone. He fell short in that duty – dismally. The entire event was a shambles. The Conquistador remains at large, having notched up another eleven murders, including those of Sergeants Gravett and Fielding. I want you to witness this, Vaughn. I want you to see what happens when someone lets the whole division down, and lets the priesthood down, too.”

  Vaughn already knew the penalty for failure at such a level, and Kellaway knew she knew. This wasn’t just a display of Jaguar Warrior internal policy. This was a warning. A threat. And, also, an overture.

  “Gentlemen?”

  The two constables took hold of Nyman’s arms and forced him to his knees. One of them grasped a handful of hair and yanked the detective’s head back, exposing his gulping Adam’s apple. Nyman’s face reddened. The fight-or-flight instinct was powerful in him, and he desperately tried to control it.

  Kellaway unsheathed his macuahitl, something he had not had to do in years other than for this purpose.

  “Inspector Nyman.” His voice took on a mollifying tone, stern but kind. “You have, up to this point, been an exemplary Jaguar Warrior, and I regret the solemn duty I must now perform. Make your peace with the gods and beg their forgiveness. May the Four Who Rule Supreme – Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca, Huitzilopochtli, and dread Xipe Totec – welcome your soul into their arms and absolve you of all wrongdoing, so that you may live eternal in their company, as pure and blessed as they.”

  Like a final punctuation mark, the sword flickered across Nyman’s throat. A crosswise thread of blood appeared, oozing into tiny beads. Nyman gurgled. His eyes rolled back and a deep red fissure suddenly split his neck. Blood gushed in fountains. His severed windpipe frothed. The constables lowered him to the ground, dancing back to avoid their boots getting splashed. Chief Inspector Nyman lay curled in his death throes. In all, from the sword cut to the last shuddering spasm, it took a minute and a half. Mal forced herself to watch the whole time, because she knew Kellaway expected her to and his scorn would be terrible if she didn’t. She would have given anything to be permitted to turn away, even just for a second.

  “There.” Kellaway fastidiously wiped off the flecks of blood from his macuahitl with a handkerchief. As a mark of rank, the obsidian from which his sword blade was made was not sheer black but bore a golden sheen. Mal’s, similarly, bore a rainbow iridescence and had seemed to her, when she first took possession of it, the most beautiful thing she had ever laid eyes on. It was still beautiful, although she was not sure she felt so proud of it any more. The discolouration, after all, was caused by microscopic bubbles in the mineral – imperfections, impurities.

  “Deal with that,” Kellaway said to the constables, indicating the body. And to Mal, “Walk with me.”

  They circled the quadrangle in a silence that Mal found increasingly unnerving. Come on, out with it, get it over with. Kellaway just scowled to himself.

  Finally he said, “I’m afraid, Vaughn, it’s a good news, bad news scenario. The good news is, you’re promoted. You’re a chief inspector now. The bad news... The Conquistador case is yours.”

  It was strangely a relief, to hear the worst.

  “The bastard has been making a mockery of us for months,” Kellaway went on. “He’s killed five priests, a few dozen acolytes, several civilians, and eighteen Jaguar Warriors. He’s disrupted nine major religious ceremonies and left behind a trail of carnage each time. He’s a blasphemer, an insurgent, an affront to the Empire, and the fact that he dresses up like one of the would-be conquerors of Anahuac is the final insult. He’s saying that where Cortés, Pizarro and de Alvarado failed, he will succeed. The arrogance of it is quite breathtaking. His campaign of terror cannot be allowed to go on. Do you hear me? He needs to be stopped, as soon as possible, by whatever means necessary.”

  “Yes, sir.” Mal couldn’t trust herself to say anything more than that.

  “The High Priest is absolutely livid. Commissioner Brockenhurst had to go and see him in person last night. Old chums they may be, but by all accounts it was no fun, and Brockenhurst made his feelings about that known to me in no uncertain terms. His Very Holiness, in turn, has been hauled over the coals by the Great Speaker himself, so we’re passing the pissed-off-ness down through the ranks, one to the next. It’s the trickle-down effect in all its glory. You understand, then, that you have to get this right, Vaughn?
We’re clear on that? You can’t – mustn’t – screw up the way Nyman did.”

  Just at that moment they were passing the congealing puddle of blood that marked the site of Nyman’s execution. His heels had left two parallel smeared lines where the constables had dragged his body away.

  “Yes, sir,” Mal said again. She wanted to run. She wanted to scream. She wanted to kick Kellaway to the ground and stamp on his balding sunburned head, stamp on it until it was pancake flat.

  “Otherwise that’ll be your blood there,” Kellaway added, unnecessarily. “You’ll be the one bringing disgrace on the Jaguar Warriors. And neither of us would wish that, would we?”

  The chief superintendent’s smile was never convincing. Nor, with the tumbledown, caries-clogged teeth it revealed, was it pretty.

  “I think you can do this,” he said. “I think you’re the woman for the job... chief inspector.”

  Now he was trying to be consoling, ingratiating.

  Both he and Mal knew he had just handed her a poisoned chalice and it was very likely that, sooner or later, she would have to drink from it.

  “SHIT,” BREATHED AARONSON. “Oh, shit. Oh, fucking shit.”

  “Yes, marvellous, isn’t it?” said Mal.

  “I mean, congrats on the bump-up. Richly deserved and all that. And a handsome raise, too.”

  “I was just thinking I could do with a new pair of curtains in the flat.”

  “I’ve got a better idea. Buy us a few rounds at the nearest pub. Because that’s what we really need to do – go out and get totally rat-arsed. This minute. Because our lives have just become about ten times harder.”

  “No. No, we do not need to get rat-arsed. That is exactly the opposite of what we need to do.”

  “But –”

  “Maybe later, another day, but right now we’ve been given an assignment. We have a crook to catch. We work for the criminal investigation department of the Jaguars, so we’re going to do what they pay us to do and investigate. The Conquistador is just a man. He pulls off audacious terrorist outrages and gets away with it every time, but he’s still just a man.” Mal thumped the desk. She wasn’t sure why, except that it made a loud noise and she felt better for it. “The more we know about him, the easier he’ll be to take down. So we have to figure out how he does what he does. How he chooses when and where to strike. How he gets in and out. Above all, who the fuck he is, behind that mask. Let’s get cracking.”