Yet here, on Calle Capiango, it seemed the laughter had never stopped. Perhaps this was the place where Palenqueians came to hide from their fears, or perhaps those who dined in the calle’s restaurants and tavernas simply had no reason to fear.
A man stood on a street corner playing a guitar. His long hair was slick and his features dark and smoldering. Women who passed him let their eyes linger, hoping to get his attention, but he saw only his guitar.
Until Cheval walked by.
Damn it, Blue Jay thought.
He took her by the hand and hurried along the street. He bumped into a large man and apologized, but the man cursed at him. Blue Jay swore under his breath, scanning the street and the mouths of the small alleys around them.
At last, he saw what he’d been searching for. The alley seemed indistinct save for the small blue birds painted on the shutters of an apartment on the third, uppermost floor. He led Cheval to the corner as casually as possible, then ducked into the alley.
She grabbed his arm and spun him to face her. Her eyes seemed as silver as her hair. Cheval stared at him, her lips and cheeks flushed pink from the rushing of her pulse.
“What are we doing, exactly?”
“Meeting some old friends.”
Cheval narrowed her eyes. “Old friends? I do not understand. We are supposed to infiltrate and recruit some assistance. If we had old friends here, surely we would begin with them.”
“That’s exactly the plan.”
“But Smith said nothing about old friends.”
Blue Jay smiled and pointed at himself. “Trickster, remember? I’ve been in contact with allies here in Palenque for weeks. The underground Smith wanted us to build-I started long before he asked. The Wayfarer may have my respect, but he does not have my trust. I don’t think he’s loyal to anyone but himself. That’s fine, if we have the same goals. And maybe we do. But I didn’t tell him all my secrets, and I’m damned sure he didn’t tell me all of his.”
“What secrets?” Cheval asked. Her eyes grew stormy. “Perhaps you do not trust Smith, but you had better trust me, monsieur. What old friends are we meeting?”
Blue Jay hesitated. He had kept secrets, certainly. Tricksters always did. But he remembered that Frost had kept secrets from Oliver and the trouble that had caused. Cheval might be volatile, but she had proven her loyalty as a friend.
“Sorry. I should’ve said-”
Above them, something scratched against the side of the building. Metal clanked softly. Out on the main street, Blue Jay would never have heard the sound, despite his acute senses. But there in the alley it was all too loud. He and Cheval turned as one to look up. In the moonlight, they saw a creature hanging from a windowsill by its tail. The thing had a body like a monkey but a canine head and snout with damp nose and bared teeth. The tip of its tail split into digits like fingers and it clung to the windowsill as though it had a hand there.
Cheval uttered a breathy French curse.
Blue Jay tensed, prepared for an attack.
The thing growled, but it didn’t look at them. It stared back down the alley toward Calle Capiango. Blue Jay forced himself to tear his gaze from the little fiend to see what had caught its attention.
Two men stood in the mouth of the alley, even as a third stepped in behind them. They moved slowly toward him and Cheval, staring at her with hungry eyes. One carried a crude blade etched with arcane symbols. He gestured with it and snarled orders in a language that Blue Jay had heard before but did not understand. Mayan, he thought.
“What did he say?” the trickster asked.
Cheval moved nearer to him. She had been friends with Chorti for many years and had spoken his language.
“Do you really need me to translate? You were right-I draw the wrong attention.”
Above them, the creature had gone silent, but Blue Jay could hear it shifting against the alley wall, perhaps preparing to spring. The three men formed a blockade and began to move nearer, cautious, glancing at Blue Jay.
“Tell them they should know better than to challenge a legend.”
Cheval said something in Mayan and the man with the ceremonial dagger laughed and replied in a burst of staccato syllables.
“They like legends best of all, he says,” Cheval translated, her voice tight. “The king is dead and the eyes of the authorities are all turned toward war. No one will notice what happens here.”
Blue Jay smiled thinly, and without humor. That made it easier. He did not have to worry about whether or not these men survived to emerge from the alley. The trickster spread his arms and began the stiff, ritual steps of an ancient dance. The air at his sides blurred, tinting the darkness blue.
Cheval sniffed in disdain, glaring at the man with the dagger. The three Lost Ones did not even have the sense to be frightened. Blue Jay felt the presence of the creature above them keenly, wondering when it would attack, and why it would be aiding these men.
As if in answer, the creature growled and leaped from the wall. But it lunged not toward him or Cheval. The creature dropped down onto the ugly, unwashed Mayan. It barked loudly and growled, and the man screamed as it clutched at his head. He drew his dagger, but the creature lashed out with its tail, and the three fingers at its tip gripped his wrist, stopping the weapon. The man cried out at the strength of that strange hand, but he could do nothing. With a low growl, the thing forced the man’s hand down until the dagger stabbed into the killer’s own throat, twisting and tearing.
The man dropped to the ground, blood gouting. The creature leaped from his head, still brandishing the dagger at the end of its tail.
Cheval and Blue Jay could only stare.
The other two men cried out in fury and rushed at the Borderkind and their bizarre ally. Even as they did, crackling tendrils of mystic energy wrapped around them, lifted them off of their feet, and slammed them against opposite walls of the alley. The sickening sounds of bones breaking echoed around them.
At the mouth of the alley there stood a pair of familiar, cloaked figures whose gray skin and long knotted beards were almost identical to each other. Golden light still crackled around their fingers. When they moved deeper into the alley, the shadows seemed to slide away from them. They did not walk so much as glide.
“Mazikeen,” Cheval said.
The brotherhood of Hebrew sorcerers had joined with them in the fight. Several of their number had lost their lives to the Myth Hunters, but each of them seemed to know everything the others had experienced. Blue Jay presumed they shared an extraordinary rapport, almost a kind of hive mind-a group telepathy that made them each part of a greater whole.
“These are the friends I mentioned,” Blue Jay replied. “Like I said, the insurgence is already beginning.”
The creature capered across the alley to the two Mazikeen. It leaped from the ground into a sorcerer’s arms and then ran up to perch on its shoulder, uttering two soft happy barks. With its tail, it handed over the dagger. The Mazikeen slipped the blade up inside one of its sleeves.
“What the hell is that thing, anyway?” Blue Jay asked.
“Ahuizotl,” the Mazikeen answered, two voices in unison. “He is Borderkind, like you.”
Cheval shook her head in amazement. “That creature is Borderkind?”
Ahuizotl growled at her. Cheval hissed in return and the creature ducked its head behind the Mazikeen.
“We should get moving,” Blue Jay said. “We have a lot of work to do.”
“The work has already begun,” one of the Mazikeen said. “We have allies amongst the people and the legends. They are prepared to spread the word.”