“I’ve used… vibrators… with more power… than that,” she gasped.
Colonel Tlanextic stared at her in open disbelief. What does it take to put this woman down? How can anyone be so obstinate, so insanely stubborn?
“Please, colonel,” Aaronson implored. “Don’t do anything more. She’s had enough. She didn’t mean to be disrespectful. She’s passionate about her job, that’s all. Takes it very seriously indeed. That’s no crime, eh? I mean, we’re all basically on the same side, aren’t we?”
Tlanextic raised a hand: shut up. He peered closely and quizzically at Mal — her wan face, her striving-to-focus eyes — as though she were some kind of zoo animal he’d never seen before. He was trying with all his might to fathom her. Both Aaronson and Necalli fully expected that within the next few seconds he would draw his macuahitl and run her through.
Instead, he laughed. It was a laugh that was utterly devoid of warmth, but it came from the belly and it went on and on.
Tlanextic found her amusing.
More than that, he grudgingly admired her. The laughter was congratulation.
“Fuck me rigid,” he said. “You’ve got a serious hard-on for this man, haven’t you? What’s your name anyway?”
“Vaughn,” Mal said feebly. “Chief Inspector Malinalli Vaughn of Scotland Yard.”
“Well, Chief Inspector Malinalli Vaughn of Scotland Yard, I’ll tell you what. I like you, and you might even come in useful as a translator if Reston gets uncooperative and insists on using your own gibberish language again. You’ve just earned yourself the right to accompany us to Tenochtitlan. How about that?”
Accompany them to Tenochtitlan? It wasn’t what Mal wanted. Not at all. But it was the best she was going to get, she knew, and it would keep Reston within her sight. The alternative? She didn’t think she had one.
“Sounds… fine,” she said.
“Good,” said Tlanextic. “You know, I could do with a dozen like you under my command. Men? Take note. You think you’re tough?” He wagged a finger at Mal. “This bitch — this is tough.”
“My sergeant comes too,” Mal added, gesturing vaguely in Aaronson’s direction.
“Whatever. No skin off my nose. Long as you both keep up. Time’s wasting.” Tlanextic set off along the corridor at a firm and forthright pace.
Mal, with Aaronson propping her up, followed.
TWENTY-THREE
Same Day
They flew out over Lake Texcoco, skimming above the wavelets that turned the expanse of freshwater into a vast sheet of crepe paper. The Serpent disc was a small, short-range craft with a spartanly furnished interior, and Mal and Aaronson perched at the rear of the cabin on a narrow bench adjacent to the armoury and uniform lockers. With Colonel Tlanextic’s permission, Mal had helped herself to a spare pair of Serpent Warrior trousers which just about fit, changing out of her own soiled trousers and underwear while Aaronson acted as a human curtain, shielding her from sight of everyone else on board. Tlanextic hadn’t even been tempted to laugh when she’d made her request. To him it had seemed simply a practical solution to an unfortunate sartorial mishap.
“Why are we doing this, boss?” Aaronson whispered. He nodded over at Reston, who was slumped inside the disc’s prisoner transport cage, wrists and ankles chained together. The one-time Conquistador looked despondent, utterly defeated. Cage and restraints seemed superfluous. Reston was going nowhere. “We’re never getting him back. Even if the Serpents let him live, there’ll be nothing left once they’ve finished with him. Nothing worth anything.”
“If they kill him, at least we’ll get to see justice done,” Mal replied. “But as long as there’s a chance I can still bring him home, however slim it is and whatever condition he’s in, I’m going to keep hanging on for it.”
“I swear, if you didn’t hate the bloke so much, anyone would think you were in love with him.”
“Don’t be a twat.”
“I’m just saying. It’s a thin line. You’ve been hounding him so hard. Cops and villains sometimes get this attachment for one another, don’t they? It’s a, whatchemacall… Symbiotic relationship. Mutual thing. Can’t live with each other, can’t live without.”
“When you’re quite done with the cheap psychoanalysis…”
“Myself, some of the young roughs I’ve arrested — they’re quite beautiful, in that scrawny, surly way of theirs. A few of them know it and they’ve made offers. You know, ‘Let me go free. I’ll do anything you ask.’ Can’t say I haven’t been tempted.”
“I trust you haven’t given in.”
“No, never. But I’m not blind. He’s a looker, that Reston. If you like ’em posh and well-spoken, that is. And he flirts with you.”
“He does not.”
“Hello? Back of the paddy wagon? What was that if it wasn’t flirting?”
“Sergeant, please shut the fuck up.”
“The more you deny it…”
“…the likelier I am to plant my fist in your face,” Mal said. “Listen. Right now I’m feeling like refried shit. I know you’re only taking the piss and that’s just how you are, but I really can’t be arsed with it. Enough.”
“Okay, boss. If you say so.”
“Believe me, I do.”
Soon the bulwarked bulk of Tenochtitlan filled the windshield. The aerodisc rose and banked left, smartly circumnavigating the island city, and made its approach from the far side. It decelerated to a hover above a landing pad painted distinctively with a snake’s head motif. As it touched down an honour guard of six Serpents appeared, forming lines either side of the gangplank. They had lightning guns slung across their backs and macuahitl s at their waists as well as the traditional ceremonial Serpent halberds, which were tipped with outcurving obsidian blades. They snapped to attention and saluted as Colonel Tlanextic exited the disc. His two lieutenants followed, with Reston shuffling between them as best his foot manacles would allow. Mal and Aaronson took the rear. The Serpent guards eyed them with curiosity but, since they were obviously with Tlanextic, nobody made a move to challenge them.
“What now?” Aaronson said out of the side of his mouth.
“Unless or until Tlanextic tells us to bugger off, we stick with him.”
“I can’t believe I’m here.” Aaronson gazed with wonder at the buildings around them, the towers and close-clustering ziggurats, their angled planes gilded by the mid-morning sun. “I mean, actual Tenochtitlan. Can’t wait to tell my mum. She’ll be so envious.”
“We’ll buy postcards later. Keep walking.”
Tlanextic led his party to a lift and they descended to ground level, where transportation was waiting for them in the form of an open-topped train. Tenochtitlan boasted a neg-mass passenger monorail for the use of Serpents and the numerous bureaucrats, functionaries and servants who tended to the Great Speaker’s needs. It criss-crossed the city in an intricate narrow-gauge system that was raised up, straddle-beam style, on squat pylons a couple of metres above the ground. Single-carriage trains glided along looping, intersecting routes with stops at the foot of every building on the island.
A driver ushered them on board, bowing so low to Tlanextic that his forehead nearly scraped the floor of the platform. Like the guards, he was puzzled by the presence of Mal and Aaronson but, also like the guards, he knew it wasn’t his place to query. When everyone had taken a seat, he grasped the train’s controls and guided it away from the platform.
A short while later they pulled in at the foot of the largest ziggurat on the island. Mal’s breath caught. If she didn’t miss her guess, this was none other than the Great Speaker’s palace. Surely they weren’t about to…
They were. Tlanextic disembarked, beckoning the others to follow. “Word of warning.” This was directed at Mal and Aaronson. “If His Imperial Holiness consents to allow you to enter his presence — and it’s a huge if — you do not look directly at him, you do not meet his eye, and above all else you do not speak to him unless he speaks to you first. Should you fail to abide by any of these stipulations, you die, simple as that. I’ll make sure of it myself. Are we clear?”