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“Of course not!” Torres clapped a hand over his belly, looking at Santiago with the expression one might give a child unfamiliar with the workings of the world.
“But the mascaipacha, the tattoos…” Santiago sputtered.
“Oh, sure.” Torres pursed his lips. “Almost everyone on my team is a Huáscaro. People who believe they’re acting in support of their faith make excellent employees. Much easier to control.”
“You’re tricking these people into committing crimes for you by playing off their cultural beliefs?” Santiago was disgusted.
Torres shrugged. “They are happy to believe it, and I’m happy to let them.”
“That’s terrible!” Santi’s hands found his hips.
“Why?” Torres threw his own up in response. “Did I not deliver? Are they not about to ransack Atahualpa’s tomb?”
Well, shit. Santiago couldn’t argue with that logic, actually. But…ransack? He also couldn’t allow it.
“Money?” Santiago was so outraged that he could barely breathe. “Is that really all this is about? Do you not have enough of it?”
Torres laughed again. Unlike outside, there was something akin to real joy in his smile now. Akin…in the way that a zombie was akin to a man.
“Not just money, it’s what the money represents.” He grinned, eyes sparkling as he made Santiago wait for it… “Winning, Rios.”
Santiago could only stare.
“Now, if you would be so kind, I have waited a long time for this,” Torres said, motioning to the chakana symbol. “I do not care to wait any longer.”
Santiago instinctively reached for the pendant around his neck, only for his fingers to graze bare skin instead. His heart sank.
“Ali has it,” he breathed, reliving the moment when he’d thrown it at her feet on the riverbank.
It had been, in retrospect, a bit melodramatic.
What if she hadn’t taken it? What if she had left it by the wreckage of the boat, and it was now lost forever?
No, of course not. This was Ali. She would have the pendant. Which was almost worse, considering Santiago had just gotten her out of danger.
“Does she now?” Torres asked, curling his lip. “I brought you here alone as a courtesy, Rios. A gesture of good faith. For you and me to witness whatever’s to come next together. But now, I suppose we shall have to have an audience.”
He called out to his zealots, who had—judging by their response time—since clustered just outside the door. Wide as the snake’s mouth was, it struggled to fit them all inside.
“Bring the girl forward,” Torres told Mario, who gripped Ali rougher than Santiago liked.
When she was thrust toward him, he steadied her.
“I need my necklace,” he said. “You didn’t happen to…”
Ali lifted her uninjured arm and pulled the cord from under her shirt. Carefully, she raised it over her head. Santiago helped her. Then the small stone was in his palm once more.
He gripped it tightly, thinking of his abuelo and what might have been different if his father allowed him to know his history. Wasn’t that why Santiago had become a historian in the first place? To find connection to a land and a people he felt excluded from?
Briefly, he considered refusing. Smashing the chakana and protecting the contents of this sacred space with his very life. If it was only his own, he would have.
Santiago lifted the pendant to the stone carving, slotting it into place.
It was, of course, a perfect fit.
The earth shook beneath him.
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