‘Keep out of this!’ Jefe said.
‘This is how leaders treat their friends.’ She pried at his fingers again. ‘Presidents, generals, kings. Whatever title they give themselves, they’re pigs. Villains. You have to be better than that.’
So much fury was concentrated in Jefe’s face, Snow thought it might explode.
Yara’s words took on a blathering tone, as if she were counseling a disobedient child while straightening his collar. ‘You swore you’d pay attention to my advice. Well, I’m advising you now. You mustn’t lash out every time someone does something that doesn’t please you. You have to use some discretion.’
Jefe backhanded her, striking her side, releasing Chuy at the same moment. She reeled back against the table, shrieked and clutched her hip, and sagged to the floor. Yet after the briefest of intervals she sat up and continued her scolding, as though the shove had been but a trivial interruption. Jefe went toward her and Snow, thinking he was going to hit her again, came out of his chair and said, ‘Well done! A man has to maintain order in his house.’
Jefe’s head snapped toward him.
‘Without discipline at home,’ said Snow, ‘you can have no discipline. Who are these people to think they can rule you while you rule their country? It’s absurd!’
‘You should act from the standpoint of reason, not emotion.’ Yara managed to get to her knees. ‘You can’t simply react to events.’
Jefe turned back to her.
‘Reason, yes. But you can’t tolerate an insult to your authority.’ Snow began to understand where this byplay might lead. ‘There has to be a price.’
Helped by his friend, Bazan hauled the semi-conscious Chuy erect – his feet scrabbled for purchase on the carpet and he groaned. Hearing the commotion, Jefe whirled about, but was distracted once again by the dialogue between Yara and Snow.
Yara: ‘It’s important you keep things in balance . . .’
Snow: ‘Showing you have a temper has a certain value.’
Yara: ‘. . . or else you’ll lose control of the situation.’
Snow: ‘You can’t govern effectively unless people are afraid of you.’
An indecisive expression stole over Jefe’s face as they continued in this vein, and he became agitated when Bazan asked for permission to leave.
‘First and foremost, you have to learn self-control,’ said Yara. ‘You can’t expect people to respect someone who constantly yields to impulse.’
‘Chuy needs a doctor,’ said Bazan.
‘I agree with her,’ Snow said. ‘But the idea that you might be erratic, that you pose a threat, the iron fist in the velvet glove, that sort of thing . . .’
Bazan: ‘Please, Jefe!’
‘. . . that’s what’ll keep them in line.’
Jefe nodded in Snow’s direction – it seemed an acknowledgement – and headed for the stairwell, his composure restored.
‘The past is the past,’ said Yara. ‘We can’t afford to repeat it any longer.’
‘Neither should we utterly renounce it,’ said Snow.
‘For the love of God!’ Bazan.
Jefe dropped into a crouch and roared at him, an open-throated scream delivered with such ferocity that Snow feared it was prelude to an assault – but Jefe merely said, ‘Take your garbage and go. And don’t call me for a while.’ He slammed the door behind him.
Chuy’s head lolled back. Thick, dark blood eeled between his lips.
Snow pointed this out, saying to Bazan, ‘Your boy’s leaking.’
Though shaken by Jefe’s outburst, Bazan had recovered enough of his macho to curse Snow.
‘There’s a clinic in Nebaj,’ said Yara. ‘I think it’s open.’
Bazan might not have heard her. ‘I’m going to have your balls, man!’
‘Are you crazy?’ She limped toward Bazan. ‘Get out of here! Go! Before Jefe changes his mind!’
The men started down the tunnel with Chuy in tow. Bazan looked back and Yara flapped her arms at him shouting, ‘Go! Go!’
Once their visitors were on their way to Nebaj, to a roadside ditch or wherever Chuy’s destiny might bring him, Yara sank into a chair.
‘That’s the guy you’re going to put in charge?’ said Snow. ‘Really?’
Yara rubbed her hip, tipped back her head, and closed her eyes – her skin held a waxy pallor.
Scattered, unsteady on his feet, Snow sat down. ‘That prissy little fuck’s going to make Hitler seem like a day at the beach!’
She rubbed her hip again, glanced down at her hand.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Okay.’
He worked to slow his breath, his heart rate, but his anger boiled over.
‘Do you actually fucking think he’ll be an upgrade?’ he asked. ‘A creepy teenager with the morals of Caligula? This sure as hell changes my view of dragons. I mean I figured them for noble beasts, at least to some degree, but they must have been like a gang of kids armed with flamethrowers, torching shit and getting off on it. Of course . . .’ He laughed scornfully. ‘I bet you’re going to sling some crap about how the act of transubstantiation squeezed his soul and it came out all scrunched and malformed like a balloon animal. Once he has his dragon body again, hey it’ll snap right back into shape! He’ll be the fucking lizard version of the Lion King!’
His head fizzed with adrenaline. In quick order he envisioned Chuy’s feet dangling, a tiny figure superimposed against a godlike immensity of clouds, and a vastness hung with silver chains.
‘The place with all the chains,’ he said. ‘Is that the . . .’
‘Can you help me back to my room?’
Rankled, he said, ‘How about answering my question first?’
The grinding noise kicked in upstairs.
Yara held up her right hand, showing the palm and fingers smeared with red.
‘I’m bleeding,’ she said.
Where the edge of the table had impacted Yara’s hip, blood seeped between her skin and one of the dark green lesions. Snow stopped the bleeding with compresses and then sat in a chair by the bed. She rested on her uninjured side, holding his hand, giving it a squeeze each time she experienced a fresh twinge of pain. It felt as though a colloidal weight, a gel compounded of hopelessness and something darker, colder, were shifting about inside his skull, forcing him to lower his head in order to stabilize it. When he looked up he found her watching him. Her color had improved.
‘How you doing?’ he asked.
‘I’m all right.’
There followed an awkward pause – it felt awkward to Snow, at any rate – after which they both spoke at once.
‘You go,’ he said.
‘No . . . you.’
‘I don’t have anything specific to say. I was just going to make comforting noises.’
She wetted her lips. ‘I can help you, I think.’
A match head of bright emotion flared up inside him.
‘The lair . . . the place with the chains,’ she said. ‘It’s where he does the preponderance of his killing. He uses the chains to fly. It’s not flying per se – it’s acrobatics. But it’s amazing to watch. There are ledges on the walls where he . . .’
‘I didn’t see any ledges.’
‘Most of them are high up, too high to see, and the ones lower down blend in with the mural. You wouldn’t notice them unless you were looking for them. They’re where he perches. Where he rests between flights.’
‘This was part of your design, the ledges, the clouds . . . you gave them that kind of detail?’
‘It’s Griaule’s design,’ she said. ‘I only added one thing. In case of a malfunction, the chains can be disengaged from the ceiling tracks. There’s a separate code for each chain that permits them to be replaced. When we moved here, while Jefe was still too weak to fly, we had an engineer and some workmen in to make sure everything was ready to go.’