‘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.’
She took a sip of water and replaced the glass on the night-stand.
