Rogue Angel 46: Treasure of Lima (19 page)

33

The die has been cast,
Annja thought.

Blood had been spilled and it was only a matter of time before the Inca demanded blood in turn. Any chance of their being spared without further injury just went out the window, she realized. They needed to get out of here before the guard was discovered or there would be hell to pay.

In her distress Annja must have made some kind of sound because Claire whirled around and stared directly at her cell door. Very slowly Annja crept backward until she bumped into someone about a yard or so behind her. She would have screamed if the other person hadn’t clamped a hand over her mouth and indicated with his other hand that they should be quiet. Annja kept absolutely still so as to not garner more attention from Claire.

Deciding that she may have heard something after all, Claire strode to the cell door and shone the torch light inside. Annja saw that the rest of the dig team were all sleeping in the same position, with their feet toward the door, which must have made it difficult for Claire to see who was who. Annja and Dr. Knowles crouched just out of sight. Claire moved back and forth, trying to get a better look, but quickly gave up.

As Annja and Dr. Knowles allowed themselves to breathe again, Claire gestured back toward the cell she emerged from and Hugo and Marcos appeared. Both men had knives in their hands. Hugo disappeared down toward the cavern entrance while Marcos stopped beside the dead guard’s body, bent over and wiped the blade of his knife several times on the guard’s tunic to clean the blood off it.

Annja’s heart raged at the sight; unless he’d cut himself with his own knife, which was highly unlikely, there was only one other way he could have gotten blood all over his blade. She felt Knowles stiffen behind her as he came to the same conclusion. Annja had no doubt that when they got into the cell across the way they’d find all of the other prisoners murdered in their sleep.

She almost drew her sword then and there. When Hugo returned he not only had a pistol in hand, but he also had their packs with him. Annja was surprised; she hadn’t known their gear was nearby. Nor that the others had handguns in addition to the rifles they’d been carrying. Seemed she’d missed a lot.

While Hugo stood watch, Claire and Marcos pulled additional handguns and ammunition from inside the packs and then dumped the contents onto the floor of the cave, leaving them with empty packs.

Not that they’d be empty for long.

Using her knife, Claire cut away the ropes of the door to the treasure cave and stepped inside. She moved immediately to one of the sea chests full of gemstones and began shoving handfuls of them into the backpack. Marcos did the same with one of the chests of gold doubloons. When they were finished, they stepped back into the main cavern and let Hugo fill his backpack while Claire stood watch.

Finally, the three of them were ready to go. But they couldn’t do so without having the final word.

Claire sauntered over to the door. “I know you’re awake in there,” she whispered into the semidarkness, apparently having seen more than Annja realized. “Nine of you went to bed and I only see seven of you sleeping the night away.”

Annja stepped out of the darkness and walked to the doorway, her anger hot and fresh.

“Just going to leave us, are you?” she asked, playing the part so the other woman didn’t get suspicious.

“You’re lucky I don’t shoot you all before I go,” Claire said with a sneer. “But don’t worry, we’ll be back with enough mercenaries and packing crates to get the treasure out of here whether they want to give it to us or not.”

Annja shook her head. “You won’t get away with this,” she told Claire. In truth, she hoped they would be able to escape, because that meant that Annja and the rest of them could follow in their wake. But she’d never admit that to Claire.

True to form, Claire laughed. “Watch me.”

They were all so caught up in their conversation that none of them saw Cuzco approaching down the hallway until he was right on top of them. He must have stopped by to check on the prisoners, found the guard missing and then moved deeper into the cavern in an attempt to answer why. By the time he realized that the people in front of him were not his guards, it was too late.

He turned to run, but never made it.

Hugo was the first to react. His hand went to his belt; he drew his knife and flipped it through the air before anyone else had recovered from their surprise. The knife embedded itself in Cuzco’s calf, driving him to the floor.

Annja noted that he rolled over quickly enough, ready to spring to his feet and defend himself, but Hugo was there with his gun before the other man could rise to his feet and that was that.

“Bring him over here,” Claire demanded.

Hugo did so. He also offered a little unsolicited advice in the process. “No witnesses, remember? He’s seen our faces—he’s got to go.”

Claire glared at him. “This isn’t my first rodeo,” she told him. “I’ve got it under control. Go finish up with the rest of the gear.”

She looked over the prisoner for several minutes, trying to decide what to do with him. In the end, she decided that Hugo was right. Better to just get it over with and not drag it all out.

“Goodbye,” Claire said to him, smiling, and started to bring her gun up.

Annja had seen and heard enough. If they killed the king’s son, they were all going to be in terrible trouble. She had to stop them.

She asked Dr. Knowles to go check on the others. As soon as his back was turned, she called for her sword and slashed at the bindings holding the door shut. When she stepped out into the main cavern, Marcos spun around to face her, aiming his weapon in her direction. Annja did her best to ignore both it and him.

“You can’t shoot him, Claire,” Annja told her urgently.

Claire wasn’t listening. “Watch me,” she said.

The gun still hadn’t left the prince’s face.

“Don’t be an idiot, Claire. That’s the king’s son. You kill him and they’ll hunt you across the planet and to the end of time to settle their blood debt.” Annja spoke as rapidly as she could, hoping to get through to Claire before the other woman did something stupid.

Apparently her words had some effect, but not the effect she wanted. Rather than reducing the risk to the prince, she only made it worse.

“He’s the royal heir?” Claire laughed. “Oh, that’s rich. Seriously rich.”

She stalked over to where he stood and pointed her gun at his head from just a foot away. “Killing him before was just a necessity. Now, though, now I’m going to enjoy it.”

Annja didn’t think Cuzco could understand English, but it didn’t take much to understand a gun pointed at your head wasn’t a good sign.

Cuzco apparently wasn’t going to stand for it. He chose that moment to make a break for it. Surging upward, he knocked Claire’s gun out of her hands, sending it spinning across the cavern. He didn’t stick around to see what happened, either, but turned heel and headed down the passageway toward the opening.

Annja reacted as well, rushing forward, trying to put herself between Claire and Cuzco to give him time to escape without being shot in the back.

Marcos moved to intercept her and she slashed at him with the sword, cleaving the front of his handgun right off and only narrowly missed taking his hand with it instead.

She took a few more steps forward, her attention focused on Claire and the gun the other woman was scrambling to recover, and didn’t see Hugo step out of the open cell on her left. In his hand was a heavy, jewel-encrusted crucifix and he swung it savagely at the side of Annja’s head.

The two connected and Annja hit the floor.

Annja knew right away she’d been badly hurt. Her brain was sending signals but her body wasn’t listening to them; no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t move an arm or a leg.

Her senses were fading, as well. She could hear Dr. Knowles shouting her name, but his voice sounded very far away. Her vision was blurry, but she could see Cuzco charging hard for the exit and then Hugo stepping forward, his gun hand coming up.

Annja must have screamed.

Cuzco looked back and Annja thought she heard a gunshot.

Darkness claimed her.

34

When Annja came to, she found herself lying on the floor at the back of a room somewhere. A crowd of people stood in front of her, listening as someone begged someone else for something. She couldn’t understand the words—her head was spinning and she was having trouble sorting her thoughts—but the voice was familiar. Whoever it was didn’t appear to be all that popular, though, if the attitude of the crowd in front of her was any indication. They wanted blood; she could see it in their stance, their body language, even in the angry outbursts that threatened to interrupt the speaker at any moment.

She pushed herself into a sitting position. The room swam before her eyes and then steadied. She couldn’t see much over the heads of the crowd but she recognized the outer edges of the golden fan that spread out from the top of the king’s throne and realized that she must be in the king’s audience chamber.

On the heels of that realization came another. The voice she was hearing was that of Dr. Knowles, and if she was hearing him correctly, he was currently pleading with the king for their lives.

Something to her left caught her attention. She focused and saw a male Incan warrior lying on a mat similar to the one she was on. His arms were crossed over his chest and his eyes were closed.

He looked as if he was sleeping.

Except that his chest was still.

Puzzled, knowing that there was something wrong with her thought processes, that she was not connecting the dots properly or with her usual speed, Annja tried to stand, only to be overcome by a wave of dizziness. She sat back down and waited until the room stopped spinning around her and then slid onto her hands and knees instead.

She crawled toward the sleeping man.

It was less than two yards, but it seemed to take forever.

With each movement forward her thoughts seemed to grow clearer. She started to remember recent events—the initial audience with the king, the move to the gold mine, the confrontation with Claire and the others. Even the blow from Marcos that had rendered her unconscious. By the time she reached the man on the mat before her, her thoughts had returned to their usual order and she knew who she would find lying there.

Cuzco.

She was right. The Incan prince lay unmoving on the mat and she didn’t need to touch his cold flesh to know that he was dead. The bullet hole in the center of his forehead confirmed what she already knew.

When his usefulness had run out, Claire, or one of her mercenaries, had killed him.

Suddenly it was too much.

Tears began to pour down her face, crossing her cheeks to fall wetly on the body in front of her like raindrops from the sky, and great racking sobs burst up from her chest and fell from her lips. She was unable to stop them and could only let it pour out in a flood.

Dimly, in the back of her mind, she told herself,
You’ve got a concussion. Memory loss. Wildly swinging emotions. No ability to think clearly. All signs of injury due to blunt trauma to the head. Hang in there and you should balance out again.

Gradually, she became aware that the room around her had grown silent. She could feel the eyes of others staring at her back, but she couldn’t seem to take her gaze away from Cuzco’s face and that damning bullet hole in the middle of his forehead.

It was her fault, she realized. If she hadn’t agreed to lead Claire and the others here, they might never have found it on their own. She was to blame and she loathed herself for it.

* * *

E
ASY
,
NOW
,
THAT
VOICE
in her head warned.
Remember that you’ve got a concussion...

Tears slipped down her cheeks.

Someone was kneeling next to her and Annja turned slowly to find the dark-haired interpreter watching her from a foot or so away.

“Why do you weep?”

The question caught Annja by surprise and she answered with the first thing that came to mind.

“Because it is my fault.”

The interpreter’s face was carefully blank as she said, “What is your fault?”

Annja gestured toward Cuzco’s body. “This. His death. Everything.”

“Did you pull the—” she struggled with the proper term and, not finding it, was forced to change the sentence “—shoot the weapon that did this?”

Annja shook her head. “No, but I guided them here in the first place. I led them to the island. Without me, they never would have found the dig site. Without me they never would have encountered you. And he would still be alive!”

Annja’s voice rose as she continued to talk and she was practically shouting by the time she finished.

The interpreter stared at her and then did something entirely unexpected. She bent over and kissed Cuzco’s lips.

In that moment Annja understood.

The interpreter was more than just an interpreter. She was the king’s wife, the queen, and the man on the mat in front of her was her son, the king’s heir.

And Annja had just admitted to being responsible for his death.

The queen straightened and then without warning viciously slapped Annja across the face.

The blow sent Annja’s head to reeling again.

Dimly she heard the queen shouting something across the room, but she was too busy trying to understand what was going on.

“Annja! Are you all right?”

Dr. Knowles was bending over her, his face full of concern. It was his fear more than anything else that brought clarity back to her.

“Yes,” she said, weakly at first and then with more strength. “Yes, I’m all right.”

Knowles gently helped her to her feet, but when Annja looked up she found that they were surrounded by guards with very angry looks on their faces. She was convinced the guards would have torn her and Richard limb from limb if the king wasn’t in the room.

Instead, they forced them to kneel in front of the dais, where the king waited, the queen at his side.

The king glowered at them, then tapped his staff of office three times, bringing silence to the room.

Whatever’s next is going to be official,
Annja thought, and indeed she was correct.

It was official.

An official death sentence, in fact.

The king spoke and the queen translated. “Since you have admitted your responsibility in the death of my son, Quehuar Tupac, your blood is forfeit in exchange for his own. You shall serve him as a concubine in the afterlife. Sentence to be carried out immediately. I, Inca Tupac, have spoken.”

The guards stepped forward, intent on dragging her outside and carrying out the sentence, but Annja had other plans. Her thoughts were back in order and she knew she had only one option available to her, one thing that might allow her to live longer than the next five minutes, and that was a card she was eager to play.

“I demand a blood debt,” she called out. And then again, louder this time, “I demand a blood debt!”

For the second time that day the room went silent.

The queen stared at her and said, “She is not one of us. She has no right! Carry out the sentence!”

The guards closed in. Annja was about to call her sword and go down fighting rather than be taken for execution when the king’s voice boomed out.

The guards stopped, looked back toward the throne. The king and queen stood there, arguing vehemently. After several tense minutes the queen bowed her head in acquiescence and accepted whatever it was the king had demanded.

“The prisoner will rise and speak,” she said, refusing to look at Annja.

Annja didn’t care; she’d gotten a chance to speak and that was all she cared about right now. She rose to her feet, shook off the hands of her guards and then stepped forward to face the king.

“The same woman who killed your son killed my people, as well. My life is forfeit to the king to repay the blood debt owed him for his son, but my blood debt is just as valid and must be paid before sentence is carried out. I demand the right to track this killer and return her to justice to satisfy the debt owed to me.”

It was a long shot. Annja knew that. It had been some time since she’d done a focused study on Incan customs and religious beliefs. If she was incorrect about any of the elements she’d just strung together, she’d find out soon enough.

At last, the king nodded.

She had won a reprieve for herself, only a temporary one. But that wasn’t all the king had to say.

Speaking through the translator once more, the king said, “You know our customs. You respect our laws. You weep for my son as if he were your own. And yet...and yet you do not speak our language and it is on you that this killer is in our midst. I do not understand you. Nor do I trust you.”

He paused, considering. “You have four days to track this killer and return her to this place to face justice. If you succeed, your blood debt will have been repaid.

“If you do not succeed, if you fail to return, know that I will slaughter each and every one of the prisoners left in my care, starting with this one.”

The interpreter pointed at Dr. Knowles.

He would be the Incas’ hostage until Annja returned.

Great. No pressure.