Brian D'Amato

by In the Courts of the Sun

  Six of our bloods had captured four compoundresses and were holding them down on a pile of broken furniture in the center of the room. I saw two of them were vomiting blood, probably from the critters they’d swallowed. I noticed there was still fighting going on at the other end of the room. But it seemed to be happening soundlessly, and even with a dollop of slow motion. There was another little door in the far wall, an escape hatch. A few of the compoundresses were sneaking out through it.

  “Y okol paxebalob’ ah yan yan tepalob’ ah ten,” 12 Cayman shouted. Basically, “Somebody go block that door or I’ll eat your testicles.” One of the Harpy bloods lurched to the door, grabbed a compoundress who was halfway through, and yanked her back into the room. There was a flash of orange light, and I thought we were on fire for a few seconds until I realized it was just me.

  Damn, I thought vaguely. I’m a mess.

  I sat for ten beats and then twenty beats. Something made me think we were outside again, in a quiet forest, and then I realized it was the night sounds, crickets and fat juicy locusts and cicadas and peepers and chorus frogs. Hell. There were a lot of different critters in here, in a lot of different baskets. What if we couldn’t find the right ones? Would we have time to make one of the compoundresses talk? What if we couldn’t make her talk? Like I say, people around here were dead set on going down with the ship—

  “Hac’ ahau-na-Koh a’an.”

  It was Hun Xoc’s voice, whispering in my ear. A message had been relayed through the tunnel: Lady Koh was on her way.

  And even before he said it, I thought I smelled something, that scent from Koh’s inner court, that seashoreish tang I couldn’t identify, the fragrance of Star Rattler’s breath. It seemed stronger than it had been in her rooms, and harsher. Angrier.

  Two of Koh’s escorts, male acolytes of her order, dressed as warriors and with long maces like hiking staffs, crouched in, looked around, stood on either side of the door, and signaled.

  Koh walked in between them, slowly, in that heavily graceful way, looking left and right. How’d she get here so fast? I wondered. Maybe she had a route, and other confederates, that she hadn’t told me about. Well, it figures. She was dressed as a Swallowtail warrior, in long quilted armor and a full-face mask carved from thin light wood and covered with tiny turquoise scales. All you could see of her were her hands, her ankles—one light, one dark—and maybe a flash of her searching eyes.

  I got on my feet again. We still had cloths over our faces, but she recognized us—that is, Hun Xoc, 12 Cayman, and 1 Gila, and me—from our markings and saluted us. We obeised back. Koh paid special attention to 1 Gila. Have I forgotten to mention that his family was an independent Teotihuacano house that was loyal to Koh? Well, even if I didn’t forget before, let’s just leave it in here. Also, 1 Gila was the stocky one with the broken nose, whom we’d glimpsed before in the Orb Weavers’ courtyard, with I think his son, whose name was—well, now I’ve forgotten his son’s name. Damn, this is confusing. Anyway, I’d thought Koh was keeping him waiting while she and I had our first chat, but either he wasn’t mad about it or he’d been there for something else or it didn’t work that way or whatever, because he was our best ally here. Okay, back to what’s happening.

  Two more epicene escorts walked in behind Lady Koh. They were both dressed as warriors but one of them, I think, was a woman, and instead of a mace she was holding Koh’s dwarf, the Penguin Woman.

  Lady Koh walked down the sort of aisle between metate tables and the south line of pillars. She passed a trio of Gila bloods who were wrapping up one of the Puma adders who was still alive and who kept straining his head forward, trying to choke himself against their hands. They sat on him and saluted her as someone very much superior.

  She acknowledged it and moved on. I followed her, walking behind the dwarf carrier.

  She went to the far wall and selected a large pierced terra-cotta jar in the third niche from the left. Her attendant took it out, lifted off the lid, and held it up to her. Koh reached into it.

  I craned my head over the attendant’s shoulder. Koh pulled out her hand. It was dripping wet and seemed to have suddenly contracted a pustular disease. But when I looked closer I could see that her black skin was crawling with tiny toads. They were like Surinam toads, flat with triangular heads and eyes in the wrong place on the sides of the triangle. But they were smaller, and their skin was a faint gray-blue, almost lilac, and their backs were tuberculed with half-buried orange eggs.

  [59]

  By the time we made it back to the zócalo, the situation had seriously degenerated. 12 Cayman’s men parted to let us out into the center of the turtle, or what was left of it. Javelins came whisking in over my head. One of them hit one of Koh’s people. They’d been aimed high, over the heads of the first rank of bloods, in order to kill in the center of the formation. That meant we were under attack by real warriors and that they had actual weapons, not just the ceremonial spears they were supposed to be carrying for the festival. We got our shields up, but the formation had fallen apart. Another volley of spears came in. Hun Xoc pushed me down and said to stay down. I tried to look back at Koh, but she was surrounded by her own guards. They were tall and instead of shields they had these big squares of quilted blue cloth that they held up over her. To me the quilts looked silly, like some sort of classy throw you’d order from Missoni Home. But I guess they were effective—

  Gkk. My lungs were still having trouble. Am I drugged or just out of breath? What about everybody else? Are they okay? I blinked around.

  Overhead the sky was lighter, and I could even get glimpses of the sun through the smoke. But it didn’t seem to be having any effect on the panic. When people are caught up in a frenzy, nothing deconvinces them. Most of the fiddlers had stopped, or had been stopped, but a few were still going, just sawing away randomly now. There were still people laughing, all over, hundreds of voices, giggling, chuckling, and cackling.

  He’s here, Hun Xoc signed on my arm. 12 Cayman had pushed his way back into the center of the formation.

  He was furious. And he had a right to be. We’d been in there for at least twenty minutes. About nineteen minutes too long. I gathered from his shouting that four vingtaines of Puma bloods had found and surrounded them. And just from the sound of things, we were losing.

  I didn’t even try to justify myself. I was afraid he was going to bite my nose off, something he’d done to others more than a couple times, if half the stories I’d heard were true. Anyway, what was I going to say? That we’d lost three bloods from breathing that powder, and that I’d gotten a whiff of it myself, so don’t expect me to last long either? That it had taken a while to corral the toads? And the snails. And the ducks. And a tree? He’d skin me alive. Which was something he could do in about thirty seconds. I should tell him it was like herding cats down there. Except they didn’t have an expression like that around here.

  The deal—as far as I now understood it—was that the snails had been eating the tree, and then the toads ate the snails and then the ducks ate the toads. It was like something out of Dr. Seuss. So we had to be sure to get all of those things. Koh had said the trees would grow from cuttings. Which was good, but even so I’d made the bloods pull a small one out by the roots and bag it. I also wasn’t sure what was in the soil, so I insisted on two bags of that. Plus we had the captives to deal with, and they weren’t making it easy. So when we trooped out of the door, we had what looked like a whole little Gypsy caravan, porters with baskets and bundles and jars and the rolled-up tree and whatever else Koh had decided she couldn’t live without. And we’d managed to truss up four of the Puma compoundresses and two of their eight-stone adders who oversaw the drug’s production. The rest had killed themselves or were too messed up to bother with. So with six captives and about twenty fully laden porters we weren’t exactly a mobile fighting force.

  And, from what I could tell reading between 12 Cayman’s lines, Koh’s followers weren’t helping much. She’d brought a contingent of at least a hundred guards and acolytes, which wa
s a lot more than I’d expected. No wonder she hadn’t wanted to travel together, I thought. I would have tried to downsize her entourage. She’d said that she’d be sending almost all her retainers and whatever on to the rendezvous point. Maybe she was a bigger deal than I’d realized. Still, most of her people weren’t trained fighters, and they were getting in the way more than they were helping.

  When I used to work on research ships, we’d ship live animals around the world all the time, usually by DHL. I’ve sent and received fish, tarantulas, gastropods, snakes, and more other livestock than I can remember, and I’ve only had a few deaths in transit. With a lot of those sorts of critters, if you pack them with soft stuff and keep them dark, instead of freaking out like a mammal would, they actually calm down and just wait for something better to happen. And we’d done our best packing four bundles, one pack for each of the four-light couriers. So maybe they’d make it.

  The lead courier assured us that he could get back to Ix in under eight days. It sounded impossible, but 12 Cayman had said they knew what they were doing and that they were absolutely reliable. They were from a Harpy-dependent hill clan, so they were loyal. They’d been chosen by competition. They were the best of the best. They were all ready to go, with their introductory petitions tied in their hair and their suicide knives strapped to their forearms. They crowded around me and we went over how to keep the animals calm, how to change the damp rags every half day, and when to throw in a little of this and some of that. Basic pet care tips. If a critter died, they were to put it in a bag of salt immediately. Even if the creatures didn’t live, 2JS would bury them, along with my notes on the Game and the right pattern of lodestones. And that ought to be enough for Marena and the team. I hoped.

  They’d have to pick their way through a lot of cranky Pumas. And they’d have to stay ahead of any vigilantes in the towns who had heard about what happened today through the signal network. They’d have to steal food and sneak water.

  Still, stealth was their second profession, after speed. Maybe they’d make it. And some of the animals might survive the trip. Not impossible.

  I looked into their eyes, trying to act like a leader, trying to gauge their mettle the way a real commander like 12 Cayman would do. They looked back, eager, salty, just wanting to please. They really believed that I was a superior person and were happy to die for me. I felt like a jerk.

  It’s not for you, Jed, I thought. It’s for, like, the future.

  Remember the future?

  It sounded hollow.

  The four-lighters ran off through the crowded alley, east toward the upriver road into the foothills.

  Break a leg, I thought.

  Damn.

  12 Cayman gave the order to move out. We trooped west, toward the main axis. Eighty steps on, we were out of the alley and moving into the southeast corner of the Puma’s plaza. Our Plan A was to head north, up the main axis, and then strike west just before we reached the Jade Hag’s mul. On the northwest side we’d be among Auras, who were friendlier to Koh and the Gilas. And we’d be able to get on the wide trade road to the lake.

  Fifty steps on I knew we couldn’t go any farther. The pagoda bonfire ahead of us was just too hot. Its top three stories had collapsed and there were coals and brands flaming all over the flagstones. Beyond the bonfire there was more trouble. Out in the barrios on the western side of the main axis, the fire had progressed a lot faster than we’d thought it could. There was no way we were getting out in that direction. And we couldn’t go the way the four-lighters had, either, at least not without leaving all our cargo and most of our people behind. The four-lighters were like parkourists, climbing on top of bodies and bouncing from people’s heads and ramadas and awnings and up onto rooftops and back again. We were an army, a little one, but still an army, and an army has to use streets and roads. We slowed to a near stop. A couple of scouts came back from a lookout mission. Actually, it was only one scout, since the other one, who he had over his shoulders, was almost dead from a poisoned blowgun dart. They’d climbed up onto the wall, and from there onto one of the big offering scaffolds. What they’d seen was crushing. The alley to the east, which was our Plan B escape route, was choked with bodies. Some were alive and a lot were dead on their feet between the live ones. There was no way all our people were going to get out that way. The rooftops in the eastern quarters were already on fire and some of the catwalks had collapsed. Our shield men on the outside of the formation wouldn’t hold out much longer. Basically, we were trapped. There was simply no way to get out of the city. We’d have to wait out the fire here. And if we did that, we’d burn to death, if the Pumas didn’t kill us first.

  Like an acrobat Hun Xoc jumped onto 4 Sunshower’s shoulders to look around. I started to try to do the same with Armadillo Shit, but 12 Cayman had come back through the ranks and ordered me to stay down. Evidently 2 Jeweled Skull really didn’t want to get rid of me and had told 12 Cayman to keep me alive. Well, it’s nice to be wanted. Hun Xoc jumped down onto me and I caught him, automatically. He gave me a we’re-fucked look.

  1 Gila and Lady Koh pushed through to me and we joined arms and pressed back and made a little circle of open space. Clockwise from north the council was made up of Hun Xoc, me, 12 Cayman, 1 Gila, and Lady Koh.

  There was an embarrassed pause.

  We looked back and forth. We had to decide on something, at least, and do it.

  “We have to take the Hurricane mul,” Koh said through her mask.

  Everyone looked at her.

  “The fires will not reach the teocalli,” she said. I thought she was going to say more, but she didn’t.

  1 Gila said that was going to be even harder than what we were doing now. It’s not easy to fight your way uphill. Also, the Pumas on the mul were trying to get down. They didn’t think it would protect them from the fire, so why should we? Also, he said, the facing would burn when it got hot enough. And even if we did get up to the Puma’s sanctuary, we’d just die up there instead of down here.

  No one answered.

  Koh’s pretty smart, I thought. She’s got to be right. Right? Right. Better put in your two cents, Jed.

  I said—or rather croaked—that the Hurricane mul was faced with mother-of-pearl, not with painted and oiled plaster like the other mulob. It wouldn’t burn, and in fact it might reflect the heat—although I didn’t really get this idea across—and at this rate we were going to die down here anyway. The Pumas were coming down because they were panicked, not because they’d thought it through. Also, if a lot of them had gotten off the thing, that meant there’d be room at the top for us. There was a chance up there, there was no chance down here, and that was the end of it. Koh was right.

  There was another pause. Maybe everyone was listening to the shouted code from captains at the edges of the formation, hoping that the combat would turn in our favor. It wasn’t going to happen, though. The only shouts we heard were alarms, crow calls from 1 Gila’s men that meant “We can’t hold out much longer.” Another volley of javelins came over and sizzled into the bloods just a little bit east of us.

  Come on, I thought.

  We didn’t vote. Everyone just eye-gestured, “Agreed.”

  12 Cayman, 1 Gila, and Koh gave three versions of the order. It passed through the squad: “Attack the Hurricane mul.”

  First, it meant we had to break right and put everything into heading north. 12 Cayman went back to his command position near the vanguard. He told his men to keep the formation thick. If we got too elongated and the Pumas cut us in two, that would be it for us.

  There was another difficult minute of waiting. I tried to imagine what our formation looked like from overhead. Probably it looked like a lollipop, with a long line of us squeezed into the alley and a rounded portion trying to emerge into the Puma’s plaza. Then there would be a ring of Puma bloods surrounding the candy element and, beyond them, the thickening crowd of pilgrims and citizens pressing into the sunken plaza.

  We’re going, Hun Xoc signed.

  I raised my shield.
>
  Our march snake paused, as though it were coiling, and then, as 12 Cayman gave the order to charge, we shot forward into the plaza. Immediately we turned right and snaked along the plaza’s high eastern wall. At least it protected us on that side. My left side was hot already from the bonfire.

  We marched. Pumas attacked us on our flank, only three people to my left. Some of our bloods fell and no one even picked up their bodies—which was like giving your enemies a free ticket to curse you down to the nth generation and should give you an idea of how desperate things were getting. Damn. Hot. My shoulder was peeling. Too hot. But we were being pushed toward the bonfire. How did the crowd stand moving closer?

  Move. Move. Can’t see anything. What’s going on? Hot. Hell. I could hear signs of a bloody fight on the edge of the turtle. What’s going on? I looked back but couldn’t see Koh’s people. And the critters. Have to move or the critters’ll bake on the shell. Dammit.

  I stopped thinking. At some point we turned right, into the stream of people rushing down the stairs. These weren’t fighters, at least. They were classy people, official people. Old people. We plowed into them. They swirled around us, surprised at our attack but more eager to get away than to fight. We came to the staircase, which was half-covered with bodies on the lower steps. A few of 12 Cayman’s Harpy bloods picked their way up the first few steps, jabbing their javelins at the Puma elders who were still coming down. And the rest of our formation should have charged up after them.