The House of the Scorpion (45 page)

Matt followed a winding path through the gardens. His job was to confront the Alacráns and end the lockdown. He could disable the lockdown system himself—when he found it. Tam Lin or Daft Donald would know its location. Then Esperanza and top officials from both countries on the border would descend on Opium and try to install Matt as leader.

I had better odds for survival in the boneyard
, he thought. He saw a peacock strut across a lawn. A mob of red-winged blackbirds shrieked at one another from a crowded tree. A winged baby watched him from atop a fountain.

Matt's nerves were raw. Any minute now Mr. Alacrán would stride out of the house and shout,
Take this creature away! Dispose of it at once!
Memories threatened to overwhelm him. He didn't know what he'd do if he saw Celia.

Matt went up the broad steps leading to the salon. It was there that El Patrón had introduced him to the family so long ago. It was there that El Viejo had lain like a starved bird in his coffin and Emilia, surrounded by eejit flower girls, had married Steven. It was as though the great hall thronged with ghosts. They hovered behind the white, marble pillars. They breathed over the dark pond covered with water lilies. Matt saw an ancient fish rise from the depths to look at him with a round, yellow eye.

Matt froze. Someone was playing a piano. The person was certainly skilled, but he—or she—was attacking the music with such ferocity that it bordered on madness. Matt raced toward the sound. The noise rolled like a tidal wave out of the music room, and he had to cover his ears.

“Stop!” he yelled. But the person didn't react. Matt crossed the room and grabbed the man's arm.

Mr. Ortega spun around. He took one look and fled. Matt heard his footsteps disappear down the hall. “I wasn't
that
bad a student,” Matt murmured. But of course Mr. Ortega had thought he was dead. He was probably crying alarm from one end of the house to the other. Now it was only a matter of time before someone showed up.

Matt sat down. His hands were callused from the work he'd done at the salt factory, and he was afraid the hard labor had made his fingers clumsy. But as he began the Adagio from Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5, the awkwardness fell away. The music swelled through his body, transporting him from the
horrors of the past few months. He felt as light as a hawk coasting the upper air over the oasis. He played until he felt a hand on his shoulder.

Matt turned, still in a daze of music, and saw Celia dressed in the flowered dress he remembered so well. “
Mi hijo!
” she cried, gathering him into a ferocious bear hug. “Oh, my darling, you're so thin! What happened to you in all this time? How did you get back? What's wrong with your face? It's so thin and—and—”

“Covered with zits,” said Matt, struggling to catch his breath.

“Ah, well, it's part of growing up,” declared Celia. “They'll go away with the right food.” She held him at arm's length to look at him. “I'm sure you're taller.”

“Are you okay?” said Matt. Her sudden appearance shocked him. He was afraid of bursting into tears.

“Of course. But you took about five years off Mr. Ortega's life.”

“How did you—I mean, Tam Lin said you had to hide . . . ”

Matt couldn't trust his voice enough to say any more.

“Tam Lin. Oh, my.” Celia suddenly looked very tired. “We've been in lockdown for months and couldn't send out a message.”

“Why didn't Mr. Alacrán or Steven do something?” said Matt.

“You'd better come with me.” Celia led Matt through the halls, and once again he was struck by how silent everything was.

They came to the kitchen, and at last Matt saw something reassuringly normal. Two undercooks were kneading bread, and a maid was slicing vegetables. Strings of garlic and chiles hung
from the ceiling. The odor of roast chicken wafted over him from the big, wood-fired oven.

Mr. Ortega and Daft Donald were sitting at a table with cups of coffee and two laptop computers. “See? I wasn't making it up,” said Mr. Ortega. Daft Donald typed something onto his computer. “I was
not
running around like Chicken Little,” said Mr. Ortega, reading his screen. “You'd be upset too if a ghost grabbed your shoulder.”

Daft Donald smiled.

Matt stared at them. He'd never thought of the two men outside their duties as music teacher and bodyguard. He'd never tried to communicate with them, and besides, he'd always assumed Daft Donald wasn't bright.

“I'd better begin,” sighed Celia. She settled Matt between the two men and fetched him a mug of hot cocoa. The odor brought back memories so profound, the room wavered before his eyes. For an instant Matt was in the little house in the poppy fields. A storm raged outside, but in the house it was warm and safe. Then the scene faded, and he was back in the kitchen.

“You remember what I said about El Patrón never letting anything go?” Celia began. Matt nodded. “Tam Lin used to say that things—and people—became part of El Patrón's dragon hoard.”

Used to say
, Matt thought with a chill. What did that mean?

“That's why he wouldn't let Felicia run away and why he kept Tom close to him, although he hated the boy. We all belonged to him—the Alacráns, the bodyguards, the doctors, me, Tam Lin, and you. Most of all, you.”

M
att saw that last evening in his mind's eye as Celia and the others told the story. When she faltered, Daft Donald would take up the narrative on his computer. Sometimes Mr. Ortega would burst in with an opinion.

While he, Matt, was lying under the stars at the oasis, Tam Lin and everyone else had been called to the wake. Celia was missing because she was supposed to be an eejit. Mr. Ortega was missing because he hadn't heard about it. Besides, he'd lived such a quiet existence for so many years that everyone had forgotten about him.

The Farm Patrol stood at attention in the gathering dusk. Six bodyguards, including Tam Lin and Daft Donald, carried the coffin from the hospital to the desert beyond the mausoleum. One man alone could have carried El Patrón, but the coffin was so encrusted with gold that six could barely lift it.

They walked slowly as a choir of eejit children sang the “Humming Chorus” from the opera
Madama Butterfly.
It was one of El Patrón's favorite pieces, and the eejits' voices were high and sweet.

“I heard it from the stables,” said Celia, wiping her eyes. “He was an evil man, but the music would have broken your heart.”

A door had been opened in the ground. A ramp led deep down into a vast underground chamber lit by candles. It was only the first of many chambers leading off under the earth. Daft Donald said he didn't know how many there were.

The coffin was a wonder
, Daft Donald wrote on his computer. It had an image of El Patrón on the lid, like the portrait of an Egyptian pharaoh. El Patrón looked about twenty-five. You couldn't recognize him, except—and here Daft Donald glanced up—that he looked a great deal like Matt.

Matt felt cold.

Everyone went down into the chamber
, the bodyguard continued typing,
which was filled with drifts of gold coins. You had to wade through them like sand on a beach.
Daft Donald saw some of the bodyguards scoop some up and hide them in their pockets. The priest performed the funeral rites. Then the eejits and Farm Patrol were sent away. It was time for the wake.

“Which is just another name for a party,” interrupted Mr. Ortega. “You celebrate the dead man's life—or in this case, his eight lives. You were supposed to be the ninth, Matt.”

Matt felt even colder.

Everyone was in a fine mood, what with the food and wine
, wrote Daft Donald.
Everyone talked about what an old beast El Patrón was and how they were glad he was dead.

It had gone on for hours when Tam Lin brought out a special wine that had been bottled the year El Patrón was born. It
was in a musty crate covered with cobwebs and sealed with the Alacrán scorpion mark. “This is what El Patrón was saving for his one-hundred-fiftieth birthday,” announced Mr. Alacrán. “If he didn't make it, it was supposed to be served at his funeral. I propose we drink it to celebrate the old buzzard's death!”

“Hear! Hear!” everyone cried.

Steven opened the first bottle and sniffed it. “It smells like someone opened a window in heaven,” he said.

“Then it doesn't belong with this crowd!” Tom yelled. Everyone roared with laughter. They passed around fine crystal glasses. Mr. Alacrán said they were all supposed to toast El Patrón at the same time and then smash their glasses on his coffin.

I had a glass
, wrote Daft Donald,
but Tam Lin came up to me and said, “Don't drink it, laddie. I've got a strange feeling about this wine.” And so I didn't.

We raised our glasses for the toast. Mr. Alacrán said, “Tomorrow we'll send a truck down here and haul this stuff away! Here's to greed!” Everyone cheered and then they drank—except for me. Before the next minute had passed, they had all fallen to the ground. Just like that. As though someone had reached inside and turned off a switch.

“What happened?” Matt asked, gasping.

I went from one person to the next, trying to wake them up, but they were all dead
, wrote Daft Donald.

“Dead?” cried Matt.

“I'm so terribly, terribly sorry,” said Celia.

“Not Tam Lin!”

“The poison was very quick. I don't think he felt it.”

“But he knew something was wrong with the wine,” shouted Matt. “Why did he drink it?”

“Listen to me,” said Celia. “El Patrón had ruled his empire for
one hundred years. All that time he was adding to his dragon hoard, and he wanted to be buried with it. Unfortunately”—Celia stopped and wiped her eyes—“Unfortunately, the dragon hoard included people.”

Matt remembered with a chill how often the old man had spoken of the Chaldean kings. Not only were they buried with clothes and food, but their horses were slaughtered to provide transport in the shadowy world of the dead. In one tomb archaeologists had discovered soldiers, servants, and even dancing girls laid out as though they were sleeping. One girl had been in such a hurry, the blue ribbon she was meant to wear in her hair was still rolled up in her pocket.

The plan must have been in El Patrón's mind all along. He'd never intended to let Mr. Alacrán or Steven inherit his kingdom. Their education was as hollow as Matt's. None of them was meant to survive.

“Tam Lin knew what was going to happen,” said Celia. “El Patrón told him everything. He was closer to the old man than anyone, except, perhaps, you.”

I laid out the bodies
, wrote Daft Donald,
as many as I could manage. I was crying. I don't mind admitting it. It happened so fast. It was so awful. I went outside and got dynamite from a storage shed. I wired it to the entrance passage and set it off.

“I didn't hear the explosion, but I felt it,” said Mr. Ortega.

“Everyone ran out to see what had happened,” said Celia. “We found the passageway buried and Donald lying stunned on the ground.”

“I felt the explosion too,” Matt murmured. “Just before dawn the ground trembled, and it woke me up.”

“Tam Lin saw it as his chance to free the eejits,” said Celia. “That's why he didn't warn anyone except Donald about the
wine. I know it sounds terrible, but how else was he to break the power of the Alacráns? El Patrón had ruled this country for one hundred years. His children might rule for another hundred.”

Matt could see the buried tomb in his mind's eye—the broken wineglasses, El Patrón's portrait staring up from the coffin, the bodyguards laid out in their dark suits. Only instead of ribbons, they had gold coins in their pockets.

Tom was there too, his lying, oh-so-believable voice stilled forever. How many times had Matt entertained himself with thoughts of Tom's downfall? Now that it had happened, Matt felt numb. Tom had been no more in charge of his fate than the dullest eejit.

“Tam Lin did what he wanted to do,” Celia said. “He was guilty of a terrible crime when he was young, and he could never forgive himself for it. He believed this last act would make up for everything.”

“Well, it didn't!” shouted Matt. “He was an idiot! A stupid,
crotting
idiot!” He jumped up. Mr. Ortega tried to stop him, but Celia shook her head.

Matt ran through the gardens until he came to the stables. “Get me a horse!” he yelled.

After a moment Rosa shuffled out. “A Safe Horse, Master?” she said. For a moment Matt was tempted to ask for Tam Lin's steed, but he wasn't skilled enough to ride it.