Alexander C. Irvine (25 page)

Might be time to look into a different line of work, Royce mused. Steen might not live through his next encounter with the Old God. Hell, he might not survive his next meeting with the chacmool, as birdy as it was acting. Royce had no desire to go down with Steen, but he also didn’t want to cut himself off in case the whole mad scheme actually worked. If that happened, the difference between living well and not living at all might be how well Royce could feign loyalty.

If the new world, or Sixth Sun or whatever, didn’t happen, then Royce would be needing leverage. Bad things would be coming from the Pathfinders, and a man with the Tammany mark on him would be dodging the executioner’s blade for a long time.

Leverage, at least, he thought he had. If something bad happened to Steen, Royce intended to take the girl and run. Probably he would go north, into Canada. Then when the Pathfinders tracked him down, he could point to saving the girl as evidence that his heart had never been in the whole thing from the beginning.

“Pipe up there, damsel,” he said to the girl. “The accommodations still to your satisfaction?”

She didn’t answer, just sat slumped at the other end of the bench staring straight ahead.

“Look, lass, it’s not so bad,” Royce said, and realized as he did that for the first time in his American life he was feeling guilty. “Steen’ll take care of you.”

She glared at him, then looked back out over the road.

“You’ve been hungry, right? So have I. You’ve been cold; me, too. I’ve got no family, and your old man hasn’t been a prince to you.” Another glare. “I understand a bit more than you think,” Royce went on. “For an Irishman I’m not stupid. We find ways to get along, lass. We do what we can. Steen’ll keep you warm, he’ll feed you. He needs you. Better than begging pennies and stuffing newspaper in your shoes, isn’t it?”

Now Jane sat rock-still, her fierce gaze directed over the just-budding forests.

“Ah, well,” Royce said. For such a young girl, he thought, she’s a sharp, one. Doesn’t want me talking to her, doesn’t want me to get close. Her face and hands were beginning to practically bloom with tiny scabs, each scarcely larger than a fly, but she didn’t scratch at them nearly as much as Royce thought he would have. Yes, she was a tough one. He could see her thinking, probably conjuring escape plans from the spring air.

A girl after his own heart, really. Terrible, it was, what was going to happen to her.

It didn’t seem
fair to Jane that traveling across the country for the second time, they had taken the same road.
I’ve been to Ohio before,
she thought.
I want to see something different.
But then, nothing else was different. She was still a captive, and the Dead Rabbit driving the wagon had used the same threat on her that Riley Steen had when she was a little girl, and she would have bet everything she had that they would leave the wagon in Aberdeen, across the river from Maysville, and take a boat the rest of the way. Why shouldn’t they travel the same road?

She wondered if anyone would believe the Rabbit if he told them that she was mad. Probably; lots of her friends in New York had been locked up in reformatories because people said they were mad. She scratched her scalp, drawing a glance from the Rabbit. Royce was his name. Probably waiting for me to attack him, she thought, scratch out his eyes or something and run away with my feet still bound. That’s why he was talking to her, trying to keep her calm. But she hadn’t tried that with Steen, and she wouldn’t now. It was best just to play passive and wait for the right chance. Jane’s scalp still itched, and she scratched again, feeling the fine new hairs growing through the fading scar tissue. If only her skin wasn’t so
tender.
Every time she touched herself it seemed like another scab appeared.

The Indian had done this to her, the same black Indian who had done something horrible to the other Rabbit, the smelly dwarf. Jane didn’t understand how he could be so cruel when he’d done such a wonderful thing for her. She was still covered in scabs, but the pain from them was good. Scabs healed, while scars just stayed ugly forever. Scabs meant that she was growing new skin again, that someday she wouldn’t draw shocked glances from people in the street. She was starting to feel different, not wanting to disappear every time someone looked at her.

Royce and the other Rabbit, Charlie, had called the Indian
chacmool,
but she didn’t think that was his name. She wondered if he had a name, and why nobody knew it. Maybe he would tell her, the next time they saw each other. Which would be soon—she visualized Kentucky on her maps, like a thumb extended east from the Mississippi with Louisville at the crook of the big knuckle. That’s where she was going, and the chacmool wanted her to do something there. Something important. If he could make her scars go away, Jane thought, she would do anything for him, because with her scars gone, Da would recognize her again.

Thinking of Da, she bit her lip to stop its trembling and turned away from Royce, looking out into the forest. The trees were still naked, but fresh buds were beginning to appear on the sprawling bushes along the roadside. Creeping vines showed bright green against the still-sleeping trees, reminding her of the brake of Da’s train, how it had suddenly sprouted and split apart, derailing the car and tipping it into the ditch. The Indian had done that, too, she was sure, but why? Why would it be so kind to her and at the same time wreck Da’s train?

She watched as the forest gave way to open fields stubbled with last fall’s shorn stalks of corn, spotted here and there by crows pecking at the muddy soil. She didn’t know what to think. Da could have been hurt in the wreck, or even killed, and then …

Again she bit her lip, harder this time, and fought back tears. She didn’t want to cry in front of Royce; she would be passive if she had to, but not weak. Da was alive. He had to be. Because if he wasn’t, he would never see her after her scars had faded away.

“Don’t cry, lass,” Royce said. She looked at him angrily and he reached out to give her shoulder an awkward pat. “Can’t bear to see a young girl cry. Would you like to stop for a bit, have a bite to eat? Chacmool’d have my balls, as dear old Charlie used to say— excuse the language—but it’s three days off at least, and I know I could use a minute to stretch my legs.”

He reined in the swaybacked mule pulling the wagon and hopped to the ground, grunting as he bent to touch his toes. “All this traveling makes me feel older than London Bridge,” he grumbled. “Nice day like this, we ought to take a minute to enjoy it.”

Jane got down from the wagon too, stepping carefully because of the short length of rope binding her ankles. She was happy to be standing still, even for a moment, but mightily confused as well. Two days before, Royce had threatened to cut out her tongue, and now he was worried when she shed a tear. Perhaps he wasn’t the monster she’d thought him to be.

Why was everything so tangled? She couldn’t even count on bad men to be bad. It was frightening because if bad men weren’t always bad, then good men weren’t always good. Her mind raced ahead with that thought before she could stop it, saying—

No. Da would come. He
was
alive, and he
would
come and rescue her.

He had to.

The locks at
the Falls of the Ohio had just been opened two weeks before, and Louisville’s waterfront had taken on the appearance of a motley marina. Vessels were lined up four deep, sitting idle in a cold rain while their captains argued with port authorities over tolls and bills of lading. On shore, rivermen fresh from New Orleans, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis prowled gambling halls and grogshops, shouldering past farmers come down from the hills to sell pork, tobacco, and whiskey. The entire scene was given an otherworldly aspect by the rain and the fog of smoke billowing from the ragged flotilla; Louisville’s streetlamps diffused into a sickly, mummified luminescence that somehow cast no real light.

Riley Steen maneuvered his wagon past a throng of waistcoated Southern gentlemen gathered for a slave auction. Dusk was falling, and with it the temperature. He’d been thoroughly soaked by the rain and hadn’t slept in days, but a steady diet of Traphagen’s Balsamic Extract, taken from the box of nostrums in the back of the wagon, had set his brain singing and he didn’t mind the wet chill. Traphagen’s was a marvelous brew for fending off drowsiness, but Steen hadn’t realized its salutary effects on the temperament. He couldn’t help grinning as he wove through traffic until he found Third Street and turned south, away from the river and toward a house he owned on Broadway. Harman Blennerhassett had quitclaimed the property to Steen thirty-five years before, when he’d fled in disgrace to the Louisiana bayous. Steen had been there perhaps a dozen times since then, usually to transact some sort of business that would be compromised by public scrutiny.

That wasn’t something he would have to worry about if the reenactment of Nanahuatzin’s sacrifice worked. Every failed scheme of the last four decades would be forgotten, or perhaps remembered tolerantly as lessons learned toward the greater goal. No longer would Riley Steen be an itinetant doctor, dentist, purveyor of elixirs and small-town puppeteer; after April the third, he’d have every man, woman and child from Canada to the Isthmus of Panama for a puppet. Alexander had never had such power, nor Genghis Khan nor Motecuhzoma himself. With the chacmool as his high priest, Riley Steen would be absolute ruler of one-quarter of the world.

And that was just the beginning. Steen’s Traphagen-enhanced good humor threatened to start him actually snickering as he halted the wagon in front of his house. A light burned in the third-floor bedroom window, his caretaker’s signal that guests awaited within. Good. Mr. McDougall should have arrived, and if he had the girl with him, the chacmool certainly wouldn’t be long in joining the party. Steen had given up trying to monitor its day-to-day movements, trusting instead that its nature would impel it to behave as he predicted. As far as the girl was concerned, he had confidence in Lupita’s assessment of the situation. In all likelihood she had followed her father and been captured by Royce exactly as planned.

It would have been much easier simply to travel together, Steen thought. But the
huehueteotl
had been especially watchful these past few weeks, its eye like a weight at the base of Steen’s skull. His grin slipped a bit as he looked up into the rain, wishing for clear skies so he could read the signs. The moon would be rising soon.

Steen searched through a ring of keys and let himself in. He lit a lamp on the front table and closed the door on the early-evening din of West Broadway, then stood dripping on the hall carpet until his caretaker Simon appeared from the rear of the house.

“I’ll take care of the horses, Mr. Steen,” Simon said, taking Steen’s coat into the parlor to dry by the fire. “Mr. McDougall and an oddly dressed Negro are waiting for you in the upstairs library.”

“Thank you, Simon, but I may be leaving quickly. Best to leave the horses.”

A flush of pride nearly set Steen to singing out loud. Everything had fallen perfectly into place. He had successfully controlled all of the difficulties that had arisen, all of the intrusions and irrationalities that would have derailed a man of lesser scope than he. Like a chess master, he had weathered his enemies’ forays while consolidating his own attack, had inured himself to the maddening pranks of the
Tochtli,
and all the while he had arranged his own pieces for the mating assault.
Shah mat,
he thought, the king is dead. And that goes for you, President Tyler, and for General Santa Ana as well.

But it wouldn’t do to be overconfident just yet. Steen hadn’t slept in several days, which was why he’d resorted to Traphagen’s in the first place, and he knew that it would take delicate diplomacy to finish what he’d started. He mustn’t let the Balsamic Extract run away with his senses. The chacmool had successfully negotiated the problems it had faced after being reawakened, weak and in a strange society. No doubt it felt capable of handling everything itself. But it had never actually governed, never led the people of a state through the day-to-day rigors of taxes and property disputes. It had served admirably in its capacity as divine intermediary, but secular matters were best left to secular people. The Mexican
tla-tpani,
philosopher-kings, and
cihuacoatl,
the snake-women named for the goddess of childbirth, had filled that role in previous centuries.
Render unto Caesar,
Steen thought; Christ had been right on target. Only in the Sixth Sun, the prophets would say render unto Steen.

He rehearsed this argument as he walked up the stairs, probing it for weaknesses. Everything, he thought again, was falling perfectly into place. He would defeat fatigue just as he had every other opponent.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” Steen said upon entering the library. “And you as well, of course, young lady.” Mr. McDougall slouched in a chair to his left, warily eyeing the chacmool, which sat behind the desk, near the library’s large windows. The girl was curled up on an overstuffed divan, wearing the chacmool’s quetzal-feather cloak. Steen noted this with some surprise, and was even more disconcerted to see that the girl’s scars were all but gone, grown over by blotchy black scabs. New hair had also grown in over the dead tissue that had covered much of her cranium.

Nanahuatzin, of course—the Scabby One. This was no doubt the chacmool’s handiwork. Steen had always looked on the girl’s disfigurement as pure evidence of her destiny (and his), but this rejuvenation put the matter beyond all doubt. She was being healed, made whole in order to meet the god who would take her, and in the process she was being fit literally into the role that she had previously filled only through the strange analogy of reincarnation. No longer could he see her as a little girl born under an auspicious sign. She was becoming divine before his very eyes.

“Good you’re finally here, Steen,” Royce said. He stood and put on his cap. “Means I can leave.”

Surprised, Steen stepped back to block the doorway. “One moment, Mr. McDougall. Your part in this isn’t quite over.”

“Oh, I believe it is. I did what you asked—got the girl and came all the way to bloody Louisville with her. But you and I are finished here. I won’t be party to murdering little girls.”

Steen shot a nervous glance at the girl, but she looked to be in some sort of stupor. “A conscience, my Rabbit friend?” he said, allowing a note of gleeful sarcasm to color the question.

“Call it what you like. I’ve always finished my business for you, and I have this time as well.” A strange haunted expression carved unfamiliar lines around Royce’s eyes and mouth. “But this is where it ends. I might be a killer, Steen, but Christ, she’s eleven years old.”

“Is her life worth more than a world?” Steen asked jovially. He was enjoying this strange sight; imagine Royce McDougall conflicted by a guilty conscience!

Royce cracked a weary smile, but the haunted expression didn’t leave his face. “That’s a question
he
would ask,” he said, thrusting a finger in the chacmool’s direction. “Pardon me,
it.
I don’t know if she’s worth more than a world. But this I’ll tell you: any world built on the blood and bones of little girls is a world I don’t want to live in. Now stand aside. I’ve one more bit of business to finish up, and then I’m out of this madness forever.” He stood directly in front of Steen, a tic working at the corner of his mouth and the fingers of his left hand twitching as if palsied.

Steen considered—would McDougall actually assault him?— and then stood aside with a nod and a smile. Best not to take chances with the Rabbit’s adolescent bravado, not when everything was so nearly complete.

“By all means, Mr. McDougall. I wish you all the best in future endeavors, provided those endeavors do not require your presence in New York.” Steen gestured at the door. “I believe Simon will have your coat.”

McDougall brushed past him without another word. A moment later, the front door opened and shut. Strong will for one so young, Steen thought. With luck he would survive to learn discretion.

But never mind; to events at hand.

“So.” Steen shut the library door. “Always unfortunate how persons of limited scope interfere with history.”

He regarded the chacmool, seeing it hale and hearty for the first time. Extraordinary being—unless one knew what to look for, it would automatically be taken for a normal Negro, just on the threshold of his middle years. Steen was reminded of a story Aaron Burr had told him, of a mysterious black man who appeared periodically to terrorize Mexican tribesmen. They had called it
na-huatti,
sorcerer. And the chacmool did bear a striking resemblance to a strange monolith Blennerhassett had brought from the Mexican jungles and kept in his study: strong squarish features dominated by a heavy brow, with just a hint of epicanthic fold about the eyes. Unfortunately, when Burr’s plans had fallen apart Blennerhassett had destroyed the monolith in a fit of panic. Steen had barely arrived in time to save the mirror and a few other relics.

He realized he’d lost his train of thought. Fatigue and the Balsamic Extract were combining to make his mind wander. “Introductions are in order,” he said, clearing his throat. “I am—”

“Wide Hat,” the chacmool finished for him. “You brought me to the city.”

“Ah, correct.” Steen was slightly put off by its use of the name Lupita had given him, and also by the fact that it had somehow learned English. Its voice, too, had a way of lingering in the mind, disrupting his thoughts. “And you are—?”

“The last name I bore was Nezahualpilli, but it was not mine. Names are of little value here.”

“Very well.” Nezahualpilli? One of Motecuhzoma’s advisers had borne that name and been accused of sorcery. Aztec legend had it that he had foretold the coming of Cortes, then vanished, by some accounts hiding in a cave to avoid the Spaniards’ depredations. Steen had never connected the tale with the chacmool, but perhaps he should have. Nezahualpilli was by all accounts considered an extremely skillful politician. Perhaps I’ve been a bit naive, Steen thought, supposing that a being could live nearly two thousand years without acquiring some insight into human nature.

Nervous, he started to sit in the chair McDougall had recently vacated, but thought better of it. Instead he went through the ritual of replacing his boutonniere, folding the wilted bloom into a handkerchief and dropping it into a wastebasket by the desk. The methodical action calmed him, as it always did; he straightened his tie and took a last moment to prepare his speech.

The chacmool, though, spoke before he could begin. “What are you, Steen?”

Taken aback by the question, Steen paused for several seconds before answering. “I am a man of scope,” he said finally. “A man who makes history happen.”

The chacmool smiled. “Anyone can insert themselves into history. It records petty murderers as well as prophets.”

Was an intellectual discussion what it wanted? Steen supposed it might be; after all, the chacmool hadn’t spoken to another human in more than three hundred years. Then again, it wasn’t exactly human, was it, and who knew what gods spoke of?

“Granted,” he said. “But murders are merely recorded, and commented on. Prophets—visionaries—dictate what will be written.”

“Perhaps. How many visionaries, though, have been passed over and forgotten?”

“Some, to be sure. But greatness persists. Ignorance and mediocrity are obstacles to be overcome.”

“Ah. And will you persist?”

Steen began to feel as if he were taking part in a Socratic dialogue, in the role of Crito or another of Socrates’ willing dupes.
I
have to seize the initiative,
he thought;
show it that I am not to be underestimated.

“I will,” he said. “What we are about to do will make the exploits of Caesar look like schoolyard bullying. To reawaken a god, a real living god born from the blood of its people, a being of the world that at the same time transcends it. That has never been done. No one has even understood that it was possible. And we will do it.”

The chacmool murmured under its breath and flicked its fingers at the rain outside the window. “Before there were men,” it said, “before I was, was Tlaloc. He Who Makes Things Grow needs no worshipers to live. Men need
him.
He is no infant, to be awakened from a nap by the nipple of your belief.”

Anger rose in its whispery voice as it continued. “You think to have power because you feed
yolteotl
to the gods. Power flows to those who believe, Wide Hat, and men, even if they forget for a thousand years, must finally remember that Tlaloc does not live in the smoke from sacrificial fires. He is the wood that burns. He is the earth, he is the water. To know him is to feel the power of earth and water, to cry out for lightning with your feet in the river. Other men have come before you, men who saw power in others’ fear of the gods. Tlaloc watches such men, and Tlaloc acts.”

“Aye, Tlaloc acts,” Steen said hotly. This interrogation was beginning to make him angry. “He was acting when I spent thirty-five years of my life tracking your moldering body to a stinking hole in the ground. He was acting when you reawakened exactly when I’d predicted. He was acting when I chose that girl out of the thousands of girls born the same day. And he was for damned certain acting when we arrived here—again, exactly as I’d planned—with time yet to set fire to the Sixth Sun.”

Steen found himself shaking, both with anger and with frustration at losing control of his demeanor. “Look at her!” he snapped, pointing at the girl. “In another week she’ll have not a mark left on her. Was that an accident?”

The girl made as if to touch her face when Steen pointed in her direction, but she halted the gesture and clasped her hands in her lap. The chacmool smiled at her self-consciousness.

“A little longer, Nanahuatzin,” it said fondly. “Soon, precious jade. Soon you will be whole again, and fit to finish your journey.”

Its gaze lingered on her for another moment, then returned to Steen. “As much as you have said is true. But you are like the man who boasts of his fine clothes while his children shiver naked; your words are
pollocotli,
chaff thrown up to hide the harvest of your deeds. It was you who caused all of the obstacles you take such pride in having surmounted. It was you who allowed Prescott to capture a token from my robe and you who let him live long enough to be marked by the Old One’s Eye. That mark drew him to Tamanend, and now Prescott wears the Old One’s protection like a cloak. And another one, one whom I cannot see, aids him. Why? Out of a desire for revenge on you. Tell me now how majestic, how noble have been your efforts.”

The open scorn in the chacmool’s tone left Steen completely at a loss. “How many others have tried to do this? How many failed? All of them. You
need
me,” he spluttered. “What do you know about government beyond the temple and the fire? What do you know about money? Nothing. You need me to keep the blood flowing on your precious altars. People aren’t going to just line up to have their bloody hearts ripped out.”

“Again, half-truths,” the chacmool said with a dismissive wave. “Someone must govern, yes. But it need not be you.”

“Need not, hell. You
owe
me.” Too bold, Steen realized as the words spilled from his mouth, but he was beyond caring. To have this, this glorified
medicine man
treat him like a goddamned
servant!
“Yes, Prescott is causing problems and yes, the girl escaped. But I marked her for you. Whatever else has gone wrong, she’s still here. And I did that. Without her, you’d have had to crawl back into your hole for another five centuries.”

The chacmool nodded as if to placate him. “And for that you will be rewarded. But do not overreach yourself, Wide Hat. Do not ignore the counsel of those you should heed.”

Overreach
himself? The last fragile strand of Riley Steen’s self-control snapped. A man of his scope, a man who saw and understood the sweeping arc of history, didn’t have to stand for condescension from a creaking artifact given a semblance of life by the blood of street children and drunken sailors. “The girl is mine,” he growled. “I offered her as a gift to you, and you treat me like a dog. Fine. You can shrivel in a hole until the sun burns down to a bloody cinder, and I’ll laugh at you from my grave.” He strode toward the girl.

The chacmool rose easily from its chair and blocked his path. “Finally you speak an entire truth,” it said softly. “The dead do laugh, and the grave is all about us, although most men cannot see it. Now you will. Now you will see.”

With that, it seized Riley Steen by the skull and gouged his eyes from his head.

Steen’s knees buckled and he folded to the study carpet, screaming into his hands. Somewhere he’d read that truly terrible injuries didn’t hurt right away, that the shock was too much for the body to register, but that didn’t seem to be true. This pain left him helpless and howling like a circumcised babe. It was like an earthquake; it absorbed everything else; it was …

Blinding, one might even say.

Why, there’s humor in that,
Steen thought, and his scream modulated into a long, hearty laugh. The sort of laugh he hadn’t enjoyed in years, really; he’d been so consumed with the whole chacmool business. He laughed until his stomach ached and he could feel tears pooling in the sockets recently vacated by his eyeballs. When he paused long enough to draw a long wheezing breath, another sound distracted him.

There was laughter all around him. Someone else must have gotten the joke. But wait, he hadn’t spoken, had he, and it would be just too riotously improbable for all of those other voices to be laughing simultaneously at different jokes.

What were they laughing at?

“Remove your hands and see,” the chacmool said.

Steen did the first and was astounded to discover that he could do the second. The light was odd—the sun seemed to be shining from somewhere in the wall behind the chacmool’s head. Or perhaps it was the chacmool’s head itself that shone—yes, light spilled from its mouth in curdled lumps as it said, “Go now, Wide Hat. Go now, and laugh at what you see.”