City of the Snakes (40 page)

“Capac?” she moans, shoving the chains away from his face. He stares at her with his right eye—his left has been poked out and dangles down his cheek, making him look like a waxwork dummy on a ghost train. “Capac?” she says again, the word breaking into a sob on her lips.

The Cardinal’s eye widens. “
Ama?
” he croaks, and as his mouth opens I see that most of his teeth have been extracted. He raises a hand, stops, lets it drop away. “No,” he groans. “Just a vision. A trap. Can’t be. You’re dead.”

“No, Capac, it’s me!” she cries, grasping his hand and kissing the
bloody fingers. “They brought me back. They used me to tempt you down here, but they’re not using me now. We’ve come to—”

“Ama,” I interrupt hastily. “You’d better leave him. Talking can’t be easy in his condition.”

“It’s easier than it was a couple of weeks ago,” the
villac
laughs. “We cut out his tongue. It has only recently grown back.” The priest walks over to where Ama is weeping and gazes cynically at the battered Cardinal. “He thought he was more powerful than us. He assumed, since he could not be killed, that we could not harm him.” He stoops, grabs a chain and tugs. Raimi grunts with pain and his single eye snaps shut. “He was wrong.”

“Leave him alone!” Ama screams, thrusting her nails at the priest’s face. But he anticipates the move and slaps her hands aside, then releases the chain.

“He forgot that if he’s taken to the verge of death, but not beyond, his body will heal, even to the extent of regenerating parts that have been removed.” The priest faces me proudly. “We have kept him here since abducting him, subjecting him to torture and mutilation. We focus on a different part of the body each day. After a while, when that part has healed, we return to it and start over.”

“Mother… fuckers,” Raimi wheezes, glaring at his tormentor.

“Be careful, Blood of Dreams,” the priest retorts. “We can take your right eye as simply as we took your left.”

“I’ll kill you,” Ama hisses, pointing at the priest with a shaking finger.

“Please,” he yawns, “let us dispense with threats. We did what had to be done. He needed to learn the price of disobedience. If he doesn’t do as we command, we can keep him here forever. There is no escape unless we grant it.”

“I killed myself… a couple of times,” Raimi sighs. “They were waiting for me on… the train. Took me before… consciousness returned. Drugged and brought… me back. Made me watch as they… castrated me.”

“The cruellest cut of all,” Wami murmurs, stepping forward to study the work of the priests. Raimi’s eye fills with fear at sight of the killer, but he doesn’t cringe from his touch. “A professional job. I could do better, but my standards are higher than anyone’s.” There’s an almost melancholic
gleam to his green eyes. “A victim with self-healing powers, who lives forever… What a time I could have with him! If there is an afterlife, and I am to be rewarded in it by a god or devil, I can think of no greater treasure than this.”

“You’re real, aren’t you?” Raimi says, glancing from my father to me and back again. “The other’s Al Jeery. But you’re the real Paucar Wami.”

“The original and best,” my father grins.

“Have you come to make good on your promise?”

Wami frowns. “What promise?”

“You swore, if you survived… Dorak’s passing, you’d see me suffer… for making him jump.”

The assassin shrugs. “I never thought I would hear myself say this, but I think you have suffered enough. Besides, I have new enemies. You are nothing next to them.”

“Where are the keys?” Ama asks, sifting through the locks.

“He will not be freed until he agrees to work with Flesh of Dreams,” the
villac
says. “When he is ready to commit himself to our cause, we will cast the chains aside and all shall be as it was. If he persists in defying us…”

“Go fuck yourself,” Raimi splutters. “I can take as much of this… as you can dish out.”

“Perhaps,” the priest sneers. “But can you take more from my son? And his? Our line is endless, Blood of Dreams, as your suffering will be if—”

He’s interrupted by the
Coya
, who says something while waving at the captive on the floor. The priest frowns and replies uncertainly. She repeats herself, sharply this time. He nods and fiddles with the chains, unlocking them with a set of keys that he’s been carrying in a pouch.

“Our
Coya
says that there is no further need for violence,” he says, freeing the wary-looking Cardinal. “Your closest mortal ally, Flesh of Dreams, has come of his own free will, bringing the woman you loved and lost ten years ago, who has now been restored—by us. Once you talk with your companions, and dwell upon this in the safety of Party Central, you will see that it does not benefit you to defy us. We want the same thing—a peaceful, strong, independent city. Why not work together to build it?”

“Fuck you,” Raimi growls, hobbling to his feet, wincing, pausing to
snap his loose eye free of the strands attaching it to its socket. He throws it away with a curse, then faces the
Coya
, ignoring the blood dripping down his left cheek. “One thing kept me going these long years.” I don’t correct him—this isn’t the time to tell him he’s only been down here a matter of weeks. “The thought of wrapping my hands around your filthy fucking throat and throttling you. Now that I’m free, I’m going to…” He’s about to mount the bed when he stops and squints at the grinning
Coya
and priest.

“Blood of Dreams,” the
villac
laughs, “do you really think I would have freed you if there was the slightest chance that you could harm our queen? You may attempt it if you wish, but in your present state I would not advise it. Her sleeping place is sacred, as the
inti watana
is, and you would be repelled the instant you made contact.”

“Bullshit,” he snarls.

“It’s true,” I tell him. His head turns slowly. “I don’t know about the bed, but the
inti watana
stone is charged with some kind of magic. You can’t set foot on it unless you’ve been cleared. The jolt’s savage at the best of times.”

Raimi holds my gaze until I look away—I don’t like staring into the bloody maw where his nose should be—then takes a step back. “What brings you here, Jeery?” he asks, brushing some of the dried blood from his cheeks. “I thought you knew better than to get into bed with these fuckers.”

“The city’s gone to hell since you were taken. This is the only way to restore order.”

“You’re a fool. This city’s all they have. They won’t irreparably damage it.”

“Maybe not, but they’ve killed plenty of my neighbors and friends.”

Raimi shakes his head and spits blood onto the bed, splattering the
Coya
’s legs. She only grins. “I always suspected you had a soft side. Even when you killed, you only went for scum, never the babes or innocents.”

“You and my father have an advantage over me,” I respond. “You’re inhuman. I have a conscience.”

“I used to think I had one too,” Raimi sighs, scratching the spot where his right ear should be. He looks around the sheeted room at the
Coya
,
Ama, Paucar Wami, me, the
villac
. “What now? We all go home, play happy families and jump when you say?”

“More or less,” the priest smiles. “I would hold you here if it were up to me, but our queen thinks differently. She says you will come around to our way of thinking when you have time to weigh up the pros and cons. If you do not, we will haul you down here again. It’s not like you can flee the city and hide from us, is it?”

Raimi mutters something dark and terrible, but he knows he’s beaten. I don’t think for a second that he means to take his defeat lying down—as soon as he’s back in Party Central, his thoughts will turn to revenge—but for the moment he’s prepared to throw in the towel.

Not me. This is the only chance I’ll get to hit back at the
villacs
. If all is going as it should, the first blows have already been struck. Now I have to play for time to ensure the queen and her
mamaconas
don’t slip away to hatch fresh schemes and renew their grip on the city.

“We’re going nowhere until our questions have been answered,” I say, grasping Raimi’s elbow and forcing him to sit. “We’re not as lost as we seem,” I hiss in his ear cavity.
“We need to keep them talking.” The Cardinal shows no sign of having heard, but lets me lower him to the floor, where he starts to shake and moan.

“Capac!” Ama reacts instantly, rushing to his side.

“It would be easier to kill him,” the priest says. “That way he can re-form on the train, physically whole. Otherwise he faces a slow, painful recovery.”

“Later,” I say. “He’s got a right to the answers too. Give us a few minutes to clean his wounds.”

The priest looks to his queen, who shrugs lazily. “Very well. But be quick. I wish to take word of this momentous occasion to my brothers. We have waited so long for the bloodlines to merge. There will be much celebrating tonight.”

“We’ll do the best we can,” I lie blithely, and step aside to let Ama tend to her lover’s wounds. She works slowly, wiping away blood with her robes, fetching water from a barrel near the foot of the bed. There’s not much she can do about his nose and ears, but she fusses over the gaps, stretching out the minutes, as aware as I am of the need to procrastinate.

“We need to stitch these,” Ama says, examining gashes on his skull and chest.

“That won’t be necessary,” the priest replies. “We have wasted enough time.”

“But it will only take—”

“No,” he snaps. “Our
Coya
is tiring of your company. Put your questions to her now or take them with you.”

I can’t think of an excuse to delay further, so I settle into my role of inquisitor. “Let’s start with the Ayuamarcans. As I understand it, Ferdinand Dorak created them with your assistance, and when he died, they died as well. So how come this lot”—I wave at my back-from-the-dead companions—“are up and walking?”

The
Coya
answers slowly, the priest translating as she speaks.

“There was much Ferdinand Dorak didn’t know about our powers. He saw what we wished him to see, no more. Where there were gaps, he overlooked them or filled them in with logic of his own. We never corrected him when he was wrong. We never even spoke to him in words he could comprehend—we had not bothered at that time to learn the language of your people.

“The generation of the Ayuamarcans was not as straightforward as he believed. When he wished to create a person, he chose a face from his dreams, then came to our
villacs
. Having shared his dream, they had constructed a doll in advance, which they daubed with their blood and his, then cast a spell on. He thought that was the end of the process.”

The
Coya
shakes her head and chuckles. “It was not so simple. Every act of creation requires a mother and a father. That was why Viracocha split himself in two when he wished to create the first humans. As a single entity he could only replicate himself. Divided, he was able to give life to new creatures, to Inti Maimi and Mama Ocllo.”

“Wait a minute,” I interrupt. “You’re not trying to tell us that thing on the bed is the same Mama Ocllo of your legends, are you?”

“No,” the priest answers directly, “but she is a direct descendant. Each of our
Coyas
lives for more than a hundred years, giving birth to thirty or more children. When her body withers, her spirit finds a home in one of her children and lives again, carrying on with only the briefest of interruptions.”

“These children,” Paucar Wami says to the queen, then stops and addresses his question to me. “Do they breed with one another, or with outside stock?”

“The
villacs
and
mamaconas
are of pure blood,” the priest replies huffily. “Our Incan followers—those who helped escort us here—bred with the Indians who were indigenous to this region, and later with the Europeans, but we have always remained apart.”

“That explains a lot,” Wami murmurs. “The pale skin, the thin hair, the various genetic oddities.”

“Don’t mock us,” the priest growls. “We are not cursed with the weaknesses of inbreeding. Our people long ago discovered ways to combat such defects. We are as strong of constitution as any race.”

“Let’s get back to the creating business,” Raimi mutters. “I want to know what they held back from Dorak.”

The
Coya
recommences. “Creation requires a man and a woman. Our
Watanas
have traditionally served the function of the father. Our priests could have adopted that role, but we chose to include members of the communities which we ruled, partly to strengthen the ties between us, mostly to prevent internal conflict—a
villac
who possessed the powers of a
Watana
would have been a threat.

“Ferdinand Dorak was the last
Watana
. With your creation”—she points to Raimi—“we abandoned the practice. This world has changed faster than our forefathers ever imagined. We needed a new breed of representative to face it. Thus we had our
Watana
create an immortal being, one with the power of—”

“We know this part,” Raimi snarls. “Get back to how we were created and how you reanimated Ama and Paucar Wami.”

The priest glares at Raimi, then looks to his queen. She ponders the request, then nods. Walking to one of the hanging sheets, he parts the folds and calls to the
mamaconas
. There’s a scuffling sound, then two naked priestesses enter with wooden trays, upon which lie a number of dolls. They lay the trays on the bed, bow low to the
Coya
and depart.