We stumble forward blindly until the English-speaking villac snaps, “Stop!” The clouds of steam intensify, warming my damp robes. “We remain here until the cleansing is complete. It may be some time. Keep still and do not speak. Any interruption will necessitate an even longer delay.”
We stand close by one another while the steam envelops us and the mamaconas slither around, whispering, occasionally breathing in our faces or scratching us teasingly with their nails. I don’t like this. It’s surreal. I imagine all sorts of monstrosities circling us. I want to break free of the steam, shove the priestesses away and run. But I hold myself in check and remind myself that every minute wasted is a bonus, as long as they don’t keep us here too long.
Eventually the mamaconas withdraw and the priest says, “Advance.” We stagger through a set of heavy drapes into a candlelit tunnel a hundred feet long, blocked at the far end by more drapes. I pause nervously at the second set of drapes, then rotate my neck left and right, working the tension out of it. When I’m calm, I part the drapes and step through.
I find myself in a cavern with a low roof—no more than seven feet high in places—supported by dozens of thick wooden pillars. The room is lit by many candles, set in the floor, casting their light upward. Women crowd the area close to the entrance, spread in a semicircle, naked like our guides, eyes bright. When they see me, they squeal like groupies at a rock concert and point excitedly with long, curved nails.
“You seem to be a hit with the ladies,” my father grins.
“But do they want to screw me or sacrifice me?”
“Possibly both. But if you are lucky, they will fuck you first.”
Ama moves up beside us and eyes the women critically. “I don’t think it would kill them to buy some clothes.”
The English-speaking villac sniffs. “The mamaconas have been blessed by the goddess of the moon. They are pure, and must exist in a state of purity. They cover the soles of their feet because this earth is not worthy to receive their touch, but otherwise parade as nature intended.” He sighs. “It is because of their purity that we surrender the use of our eyes. We are not fit to gaze upon them.”
“You let yourselves be blinded so you can’t look at your priestesses?” I blink slowly. “Didn’t you ever think of blindfolds?”
“One does not blind oneself to heavenly beauty with a strip of cloth,” he retorts. “It is an honor to give one’s eyes in the service of the mamaconas.”
Ama moves ahead of us and studies the women. They don’t attempt to shield their nakedness. Some pick at her clothes, frowning, as if they’ve never seen such garments. “These are servants of the moon goddess?” Ama asks the priest.
“Yes.”
“I thought you worshipped the sun god, Inti.”
“The creator of all things was Viracocha. When he created the first people, Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo, he split himself in two, becoming the sun and the moon. Our men worship the male form of the god, our women the female. But you will learn more of this soon. Come—the Coya awaits.”
The priest claps and the women part. As I walk, I whisper out of the side of my mouth to my father. “Do you think the pillars support the roof or are they just for show?”
“They look like they are integral,” he replies.
“If we set off our explosives here…”
He smiles bleakly. “If not for the fact that it would mean my destruction too, I would love to bring the house down. But it is better if we wait. Do not be in a hurry to embrace death, Al m’boy.”
I spy a massive red sheet hanging from the roof. It’s maybe sixty feet wide and the hem touches the floor. As I get closer, I see that two more run at ninety-degree angles to it at either end, and I guess they’re connected by a fourth at the back to form a square.
The villacs stop at the red sheet of cloth and the mamaconas drop to their hands and knees. They’re crooning softly. The priests wait until the tune stops, then the English-speaking one faces us. “It is time to meet our Coya. This is a great honor. As I said earlier, you must treat her with respect or suffer the consequences.” This is addressed to Paucar Wami, who adopts as innocent an expression as he can muster. “By rights, I should present only Flesh of Dreams to her, but I assume you wish for your allies to accompany you?”
“Yes,” I answer promptly.
“Very well. But you alone have the privilege of addressing her. The others must speak to her through you or me, and they should do so only if they feel it is imperative. This is not a time for idle questions. One last point.” He pauses, and now his white eyes settle on Ama. “There must be no emotional outbursts. Control yourself, no matter how difficult it may prove.”
“I’m not a child,” Ama huffs.
The priest catches hold of the sheet and lifts. I bend low to pass under it, as do Ama and Paucar Wami. The priest follows us, but his companions remain on the other side of the sheet, along with the mamaconas.
I stand inside the veiled room and allow my eyes to adjust to the light, which is much dimmer here. As objects swim into focus, I realize that much of the room is taken up by an enormous bed—no mattress, just a base—on which rests the largest, most gruesome-looking hag I’ve ever seen. She’s lying on her side, thighs obscured by the hanging folds of her sagging stomach. It’s hard to guess her height, but I’d put it at ten or eleven feet. Layers of fat encircle her like boa constrictors. Her face is double the normal size, her skin grey and mottled, her teeth sharp and uneven, her eyes a dull red color. The nails of her fingers and toes are all but invisible—the flesh of the appendages bulges out over them—and her breasts hang to her pubic mound, her nipples huge and black, leaking a dark liquid. She’s naked, but there’s nothing remotely appealing about her.
The Coya casts an eye over us, then puts a question to the priest, who’s holding his hands up by the sides of his face, lightly touching his temples with his fingers. He answers with a grunt. She looks at me and smiles. Moves her left hand in under the layers of fat to her vagina. Wets the fingers, lifts them to her nose, then speaks to me in words I can’t understand.
“She senses loneliness in you,” the villac translates as I gaze distastefully at the creature on the bed. “She offers to use her juices to create a mate for you, one who will be all that you wish.”
“No thanks,” I mutter, stomach churning at the thought of having anything to do with this foul monster’s juices.
“Al,” Ama says tightly. Her face is rigid and I can see that she’s struggling to hold herself together. “On the floor, near her feet.”
I look down—I haven’t had eyes for anything but the Coya until now—and notice a mass of chains and locks. As I stare, something moves beneath the chains and a face swims into view. It’s a man. His features are bruised and bloodied, and his ears and nose have been cut off, but I place him instantly—Capac Raimi. He looks fit for nothing but death.
I reach out a hand to steady Ama, afraid she’ll disobey the priest’s warning and bring the wrath of this monster down upon us. “I’m OK,” she says, then looks at the Coya and gulps. “Will you ask her if I can go to him?” I raise an eyebrow at the priest. He speaks to his queen, who snorts but waves a hand magnanimously. Ama dashes forward to check on the welfare of the man she was created to love.
“Capac?” she moans, shoving the chains away from his face. He stares at her with his right eye—his left has been poked out and dangles down his cheek, making him look like a waxwork dummy on a ghost train. “Capac?” she says again, the word breaking into a sob on her lips.
The Cardinal’s eye widens. “Ama?” he croaks, and as his mouth opens I see that most of his teeth have been extracted. He raises a hand, stops, lets it drop away. “No,” he groans. “Just a vision. A trap. Can’t be. You’re dead.”
“No, Capac, it’s me!” she cries, grasping his hand and kissing the bloody fingers. “They brought me back. They used me to tempt you down here, but they’re not using me now. We’ve come to—”
“Ama,” I interrupt hastily. “You’d better leave him. Talking can’t be easy in his condition.”
“It’s easier than it was a couple of weeks ago,” the villac laughs. “We cut out his tongue. It has only recently grown back.” The priest walks over to where Ama is weeping and gazes cynically at the battered Cardinal. “He thought he was more powerful than us. He assumed, since he could not be killed, that we could not harm him.” He stoops, grabs a chain and tugs. Raimi grunts with pain and his single eye snaps shut. “He was wrong.”
“Leave him alone!” Ama screams, thrusting her nails at the priest’s face. But he anticipates the move and slaps her hands aside, then releases the chain.
“He forgot that if he’s taken to the verge of death, but not beyond, his body will heal, even to the extent of regenerating parts that have been removed.” The priest faces me proudly. “We have kept him here since abducting him, subjecting him to torture and mutilation. We focus on a different part of the body each day. After a while, when that part has healed, we return to it and start over.”
“Mother… fuckers,” Raimi wheezes, glaring at his tormentor.
“Be careful, Blood of Dreams,” the priest retorts. “We can take your right eye as simply as we took your left.”
“I’ll kill you,” Ama hisses, pointing at the priest with a shaking finger.
“Please,” he yawns, “let us dispense with threats. We did what had to be done. He needed to learn the price of disobedience. If he doesn’t do as we command, we can keep him here forever. There is no escape unless we grant it.”
“I killed myself… a couple of times,” Raimi sighs. “They were waiting for me on… the train. Took me before… consciousness returned. Drugged and brought… me back. Made me watch as they… castrated me.”
“The cruellest cut of all,” Wami murmurs, stepping forward to study the work of the priests. Raimi’s eye fills with fear at sight of the killer, but he doesn’t cringe from his touch. “A professional job. I could do better, but my standards are higher than anyone’s.” There’s an almost melancholic gleam to his green eyes. “A victim with self-healing powers, who lives forever… What a time I could have with him! If there is an afterlife, and I am to be rewarded in it by a god or devil, I can think of no greater treasure than this.”
“You’re real, aren’t you?” Raimi says, glancing from my father to me and back again. “The other’s Al Jeery. But you’re the real Paucar Wami.”
“The original and best,” my father grins.
“Have you come to make good on your promise?”
Wami frowns. “What promise?”
“You swore, if you survived… Dorak’s passing, you’d see me suffer… for making him jump.”
The assassin shrugs. “I never thought I would hear myself say this, but I think you have suffered enough. Besides, I have new enemies. You are nothing next to them.”
“Where are the keys?” Ama asks, sifting through the locks.
“He will not be freed until he agrees to work with Flesh of Dreams,” the villac says. “When he is ready to commit himself to our cause, we will cast the chains aside and all shall be as it was. If he persists in defying us…”
“Go fuck yourself,” Raimi splutters. “I can take as much of this… as you can dish out.”
“Perhaps,” the priest sneers. “But can you take more from my son? And his? Our line is endless, Blood of Dreams, as your suffering will be if—”
He’s interrupted by the Coya, who says something while waving at the captive on the floor. The priest frowns and replies uncertainly. She repeats herself, sharply this time. He nods and fiddles with the chains, unlocking them with a set of keys that he’s been carrying in a pouch.
“Our Coya says that there is no further need for violence,” he says, freeing the wary-looking Cardinal. “Your closest mortal ally, Flesh of Dreams, has come of his own free will, bringing the woman you loved and lost ten years ago, who has now been restored—by us. Once you talk with your companions, and dwell upon this in the safety of Party Central, you will see that it does not benefit you to defy us. We want the same thing—a peaceful, strong, independent city. Why not work together to build it?”
“Fuck you,” Raimi growls, hobbling to his feet, wincing, pausing to snap his loose eye free of the strands attaching it to its socket. He throws it away with a curse, then faces the Coya, ignoring the blood dripping down his left cheek. “One thing kept me going these long years.” I don’t correct him—this isn’t the time to tell him he’s only been down here a matter of weeks. “The thought of wrapping my hands around your filthy fucking throat and throttling you. Now that I’m free, I’m going to…” He’s about to mount the bed when he stops and squints at the grinning Coya and priest.
“Blood of Dreams,” the villac laughs, “do you really think I would have freed you if there was the slightest chance that you could harm our queen? You may attempt it if you wish, but in your present state I would not advise it. Her sleeping place is sacred, as the inti watana is, and you would be repelled the instant you made contact.”
“Bullshit,” he snarls.
“It’s true,” I tell him. His head turns slowly. “I don’t know about the bed, but the inti watana stone is charged with some kind of magic. You can’t set foot on it unless you’ve been cleared. The jolt’s savage at the best of times.”
Raimi holds my gaze until I look away—I don’t like staring into the bloody maw where his nose should be—then takes a step back. “What brings you here, Jeery?” he asks, brushing some of the dried blood from his cheeks. “I thought you knew better than to get into bed with these fuckers.”
“The city’s gone to hell since you were taken. This is the only way to restore order.”
“You’re a fool. This city’s all they have. They won’t irreparably damage it.”
“Maybe not, but they’ve killed plenty of my neighbors and friends.”
Raimi shakes his head and spits blood onto the bed, splattering the Coya’s legs. She only grins. “I always suspected you had a soft side. Even when you killed, you only went for scum, never the babes or innocents.”
“You and my father have an advantage over me,” I respond. “You’re inhuman. I have a conscience.”
“I used to think I had one too,” Raimi sighs, scratching the spot where his right ear should be. He looks around the sheeted room at the Coya, Ama, Paucar Wami, me, the villac. “What now? We all go home, play happy families and jump when you say?”
“More or less,” the priest smiles. “I would hold you here if it were up to me, but our queen thinks differently. She says you will come around to our way of thinking when you have time to weigh up the pros and cons. If you do not, we will haul you down here again. It’s not like you can flee the city and hide from us, is it?”
Raimi mutters something dark and terrible, but he knows he’s beaten. I don’t think for a second that he means to take his defeat lying down—as soon as he’s back in Party Central, his thoughts will turn to revenge—but for the moment he’s prepared to throw in the towel.
Not me. This is the only chance I’ll get to hit back at the villacs. If all is going as it should, the first blows have already been struck. Now I have to play for time to ensure the queen and her mamaconas don’t slip away to hatch fresh schemes and renew their grip on the city.
“We’re going nowhere until our questions have been answered,” I say, grasping Raimi’s elbow and forcing him to sit. “We’re not as lost as we seem,” I hiss in his ear cavity. “We need to keep them talking.” The Cardinal shows no sign of having heard, but lets me lower him to the floor, where he starts to shake and moan.
“Capac!” Ama reacts instantly, rushing to his side.
“It would be easier to kill him,” the priest says. “That way he can re-form on the train, physically whole. Otherwise he faces a slow, painful recovery.”
“Later,” I say. “He’s got a right to the answers too. Give us a few minutes to clean his wounds.”
The priest looks to his queen, who shrugs lazily. “Very well. But be quick. I wish to take word of this momentous occasion to my brothers. We have waited so long for the bloodlines to merge. There will be much celebrating tonight.”
“We’ll do the best we can,” I lie blithely, and step aside to let Ama tend to her lover’s wounds. She works slowly, wiping away blood with her robes, fetching water from a barrel near the foot of the bed. There’s not much she can do about his nose and ears, but she fusses over the gaps, stretching out the minutes, as aware as I am of the need to procrastinate.
“We need to stitch these,” Ama says, examining gashes on his skull and chest.
“That won’t be necessary,” the priest replies. “We have wasted enough time.”
“But it will only take—”
“No,” he snaps. “Our Coya is tiring of your company. Put your questions to her now or take them with you.”
I can’t think of an excuse to delay further, so I settle into my role of inquisitor. “Let’s start with the Ayuamarcans. As I understand it, Ferdinand Dorak created them with your assistance, and when he died, they died as well. So how come this lot”—I wave at my back-from-the-dead companions—“are up and walking?”
The Coya answers slowly, the priest translating as she speaks.
“There was much Ferdinand Dorak didn’t know about our powers. He saw what we wished him to see, no more. Where there were gaps, he overlooked them or filled them in with logic of his own. We never corrected him when he was wrong. We never even spoke to him in words he could comprehend—we had not bothered at that time to learn the language of your people.
“The generation of the Ayuamarcans was not as straightforward as he believed. When he wished to create a person, he chose a face from his dreams, then came to our villacs. Having shared his dream, they had constructed a doll in advance, which they daubed with their blood and his, then cast a spell on. He thought that was the end of the process.”
The Coya shakes her head and chuckles. “It was not so simple. Every act of creation requires a mother and a father. That was why Viracocha split himself in two when he wished to create the first humans. As a single entity he could only replicate himself. Divided, he was able to give life to new creatures, to Inti Maimi and Mama Ocllo.”
“Wait a minute,” I interrupt. “You’re not trying to tell us that thing on the bed is the same Mama Ocllo of your legends, are you?”
“No,” the priest answers directly, “but she is a direct descendant. Each of our Coyas lives for more than a hundred years, giving birth to thirty or more children. When her body withers, her spirit finds a home in one of her children and lives again, carrying on with only the briefest of interruptions.”
“These children,” Paucar Wami says to the queen, then stops and addresses his question to me. “Do they breed with one another, or with outside stock?”
“The villacs and mamaconas are of pure blood,” the priest replies huffily. “Our Incan followers—those who helped escort us here—bred with the Indians who were indigenous to this region, and later with the Europeans, but we have always remained apart.”
“That explains a lot,” Wami murmurs. “The pale skin, the thin hair, the various genetic oddities.”
“Don’t mock us,” the priest growls. “We are not cursed with the weaknesses of inbreeding. Our people long ago discovered ways to combat such defects. We are as strong of constitution as any race.”
“Let’s get back to the creating business,” Raimi mutters. “I want to know what they held back from Dorak.”
The Coya recommences. “Creation requires a man and a woman. Our Watanas have traditionally served the function of the father. Our priests could have adopted that role, but we chose to include members of the communities which we ruled, partly to strengthen the ties between us, mostly to prevent internal conflict—a villac who possessed the powers of a Watana would have been a threat.
“Ferdinand Dorak was the last Watana. With your creation”—she points to Raimi—“we abandoned the practice. This world has changed faster than our forefathers ever imagined. We needed a new breed of representative to face it. Thus we had our Watana create an immortal being, one with the power of—”
“We know this part,” Raimi snarls. “Get back to how we were created and how you reanimated Ama and Paucar Wami.”
The priest glares at Raimi, then looks to his queen. She ponders the request, then nods. Walking to one of the hanging sheets, he parts the folds and calls to the mamaconas. There’s a scuffling sound, then two naked priestesses enter with wooden trays, upon which lie a number of dolls. They lay the trays on the bed, bow low to the Coya and depart.
We study the dolls in silence. A doll of my father is there, and one of Ama. There are others I recognize—Conchita Kubekik and Inti Maimi.
“Leonora Shankar,” Wami murmurs, pointing to the doll of the once-famous restaurateur.
“And Adrian Arne,” Raimi adds, reaching for the doll of a young man, stopping before he touches it, slowly withdrawing his hand. He glances at the Coya but speaks to me. “Ask her if these have been stolen from Party Central.”
“No,” comes the answer. “What Dorak didn’t know was that there were two of each doll. There had to be, just as you need a sperm and an egg to make a baby. The blood he gave to his doll was combined with the blood our Coya gave to hers, and the pair were used to produce the Ayuamarcans.”
The Coya picks up a doll—Ama’s—and runs a cracked nail over the top of its head. Ama shivers violently, then steels herself and stares impassively at the queen of the underworld Incas.
“When Dorak destroyed a doll by piercing its heart,” the Coya continues, “he eliminated its body but not its spirit. For that to happen, the other doll’s heartbeat also needed to be stopped. Until it was, the spirit of the dream person remained at our disposal, to be recalled any time we wish.”
I frown. “But you said a male and female were needed. If Dorak was the last of the Watanas, how can you bring the Ayuamarcans back to life?”
“Restoring life is not the same as creating it,” the Coya says. “We cannot create new beings without the Watana, but we can restore the essence of those who have walked before. Thus we brought back Paucar Wami when we needed a figurehead to front the Snakes. And Ama Situwa when we needed to lure Capac Raimi to us.”
“Care to tell us how you pull that trick off?” Raimi asks sourly.
“Good magicians never reveal their secrets,” the priest chuckles without asking his queen. “And we are the very best magicians.”
“It makes sense,” Raimi mutters, “in its own crazy way. It explains why Dorak always had to wait a day or so for his Ayuamarcans to appear—the Coya had to weave her magic over the other doll. And it accounts for you being here”—this to Ama and Wami—“in your original forms. Your dolls never aged, and since they used those to restore you, you look the same the second or twentieth time around.”
“Couldn’t they have had one doll instead of two?” Ama asks. “I understand that both the blood of the Watana and Coya were needed, but I don’t see the need for the duplicate dolls.”
“We could have used a single doll,” the priest says. “Indeed, we did with Capac Raimi, which is why you don’t see a doll of him on the trays. But by creating twins, we gave our Watanas a degree of control over their creations.”
“You let them think they were running the show,” Raimi says, “while all the time you were really pulling the strings.”
“Of course,” the villac smiles.
“There is another thing I have difficulty understanding,” Paucar Wami says. “Any time I disobeyed your orders, you took my body apart with magic. Did you do that by piercing the heart of my doll?”
“No. There are other ways to disassemble an Ayuamarcan. By removing a doll’s head, we render the human inert. Once the head has been reattached and the proper procedures followed, life can be restored. The heart of the doll continues beating until pierced. As long as it does, the Ayuamarcan may be recalled. Once pierced, that is the end, the spirit can never be summoned again.”
My father stares at his doll, eyes narrowing. I know what he’s thinking—if he gets ahold of it, the priests have no further claim on him. He’d be free to do as he pleased. Unfortunately for him, the Coya has also read his thoughts.
She picks up the doll and holds it close to her grotesque breasts, stroking its bare chest with a sharp nail.
“The removal of the doll’s head also explains how we keep our creations bound to this city,” the villac says smugly. “Dorak thought his Ayuamarcans could not survive beyond these boundaries, but with the exception of Capac Raimi, they can. The reason most never did is that we unpicked the flesh of their bodies every time they left. It was our way of keeping them in check.”
Ama stares at the priest. “You mean I can leave? My body won’t disintegrate?”
“Only Raimi is bound. We knew we could not kill him once Dorak was dead, so we took steps to ensure we could control him by tying him physically to the city. The rest of you were always free to wander if we’d let you.”
While Ama and Raimi mull that over—my father isn’t bothered, having been able to come and go anyway—the villac consults with his queen, then says, “You now know how you came to be and why.” He turns to Raimi. “You also have a further reason to pledge your cause to ours, so we expect no more trouble from you after this.”
“How’s that?” The Cardinal replies skeptically.
“Your woman.” The priest waves at Ama. “You sacrificed her once, when you thought it was necessary. But by uniting with us, you can keep her, and not just for this life. When she reaches the end of her mortal days, we can resurrect her. She will not last unto eternity—her doll will eventually crumble, and her essence with it—but we can promise you a millennium together, maybe longer.”
Raimi’s eye softens and he looks to Ama for her response, which comes more quickly than he anticipated. “If you have any feelings for me at all, you won’t do that.”
“You’d say no to a thousand years of life?” Raimi asks, surprised.
“Don’t subject me to the misery you endure, Capac. I don’t want to come back time and time again. One life’s enough. I don’t crave another.”
“How about you?” Raimi asks my father. “Would you accept their offer?”
“If I could accept it and be free, I would,” Wami answers thoughtfully. “But to be a slave for ten centuries…” He shakes his head. “I could never tire of killing, but I would know I was at their beck and call, and that would sour life for me.”
Raimi faces the villac and grins. “We all agree—go fuck yourselves.”
The villac’s face darkens. “It seems you have not yet learned your lesson, Blood of Dreams. We will have to tie you down again and…” He stops at the sound of commotion. Voices have been raised and the alarmed cries of mamaconas ring around the cavern. In the distance there are the dull thuds of gunfire. The priest strides to the sheet and swipes it aside. Through the parting I see naked priestesses gathered around a small group of shaken villacs.
“What’s going on?” Raimi whispers as the priest hurries to his companions to determine the meaning of the interruption. The Coya is peering over our heads.
“A little surprise Al cooked up,” Ama grins, kissing The Cardinal’s bloody forehead. “Just sit back and enjoy the show. We’ll explain later.”
The English-speaking villac consults with his harried brothers, impatiently at first, then fearfully. He races to the door of the cavern and is almost knocked down by several priests as they surge through. He makes it to the entrance, stands there listening, then pushes ahead out of view. A minute later he returns at full speed, face warped with terror. He cuts through the villacs and mamaconas, ignoring their plaintive cries, and screams at the Coya before he’s even halfway to her bed-cum-throne.
The massive queen bolts upright and snaps something in reply. He falls over a shrieking priestess, rises, kicks her out of his way and answers. The Coya’s gaze settles on me and the hatred in her eyes would floor a lesser man. She points a finger at me, Ama and my father, then roars to the approaching villac. He grabs two of the priests closest to him and barks an order. The three draw daggers and move on me, while the Coya grasps the dolls of Paucar Wami and Ama Situwa and prepares to drive her nails through their hearts.
My father reads the queen’s intentions and hurls himself at her. He gets no farther than the base of the bed. As soon as his foot touches it, he’s propelled backward and he crashes through the red sheets, falling heavily on a circle of candles. The Coya roars maliciously and holds his doll above her head.
“Wait!” I bellow as the priests close in. Grabbing the hem of my robes, I hoist them over my chest, exposing my body to the bloated queen—along with the vest of explosives.
The Coya doesn’t know what the vest means—I imagine she understands little of the world above—but she knows I’m not flashing for the fun of it. She screeches a command to the priests, who stop within striking distance of me. I turn to the one who speaks English. “Come here,” I growl. “Feel what I’m wearing.”
He lowers his knife and stretches out a hand. He frowns when his fingers touch the material of the vest. Then his fingers explore further and his face collapses.
“Make any further moves on me or the others and I’ll blow you all to hell,” I tell him sweetly.
“You would perish too,” he moans.
I laugh. “I came here to die. If you think I’m bluffing, try me. Now, tell her to give me the dolls or I’ll bring this roof down on the whole lot of us.”
The villac gulps, then speaks to his queen. Her flabby jowls quiver indignantly and she starts to berate him. He snaps at her irately, and even though I don’t speak their language, I know what they’re saying. He tells her about the explosives and my demand of her, she questions my sincerity—would I truly take my own life?—and he puts her straight in no uncertain terms.
The Coya snarls at me, but then the sound of gunfire fills the cavern—the invaders must be almost to the doors—and she realizes she has no time for a duel. She hurls the dolls at me, then rattles off a list of orders to the villac. Reacting with admirable coolness, he summons several priests, along with a dozen or more mamaconas, and issues instructions. They obey without question, hurrying to the side of the cavern and returning with two long poles that they slide into grooves along the sides of the Coya’s bed. The Incas group around each of the four protruding handles, then lift at the Coya’s command. Facing the back of the cavern, they set off with surprising speed.
The English-speaking villac squares up to me, his white eyes tinted orange by the flickering lights of the candles. “This is not the end,” he snarls. “We’ve had to flee before and build anew. We shall do so again. This city is ours and we will reclaim it as surely as the sun will rise in the morning.”
I smile and hit him with a sly, stinging retort. “In your dreams.”
The priest’s upper lip curls, but he can think of no suitable comeback, so he races after his Coya and her retinue, quickly disappearing from sight.
“Shouldn’t we go after them?” Ama asks.
“There’s no rush.” Tucking the dolls of Ama and Paucar Wami between my vest and chest, I lower my robes and wink at her, nodding toward the remaining villacs and mamaconas as they face the barbarians spilling into the cavern. “Let’s enjoy the grand finale. I’ve been waiting a long time to see these blind bastards take a good beating. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”