Page 244 of Empire of Shadows

“Hey,” he said gently, summoning her attention. “We’re okay. Everyone’s okay.”

Movement caught his eye from beyond her shoulder where the ragged slope of the mountain curved away. In the rising light, Adam picked out a small cluster of figures clinging to the face of the stone above the catastrophic destruction.

It had to be Dawson and Jacobs. Adam supposed it was too much to hope that a temple might’ve fallen on them.

He had a feeling they weren’t the sort to brush off having a prize snatched from under their fingers. There’d be consequences for all of this.

But he could worry about that later.

“Tulan,” Ellie said weakly as she looked out over the falling city. “Adam, what have I done? I…”

She was cut off by the sound of a piercing whistle from behind them. Kuyoc had hopped up onto a rock at the far end of the ledge.

“You,” he said, pointing at Bones, whose lanky form was mostly collapsed against a boulder. The foreman’s clothes were streaked with dirt. “You manage to save any of your supplies?”

Bones let out a short, harsh chuckle. “No.”

“Except the mules,” Aurelio pointed out defensively. Two of the animals nudged at him with their noses, snuffing for comfort.

“Right,” Kuyoc replied with a sigh. “You had all better come with me, then.”

He turned and trudged toward another winding path up the mountainside.

“Come on, Princess,” Adam said. He took Ellie’s hand and tugged her gently from the collapsing remnants of a lost world.

?

Forty-Five

Kuyoc knew ashortcut. He led them across the mountains along an obscure sequence of game trails, ridges, and the short tunnel of another cave. They followed the rushing tracks of newly rain-fed streams until the thick, green lushness of the forest opened onto the neatly organized expanses of newly planted milpas.

Shortly afterwards, two girls of perhaps eight and twelve slipped from the trees and legged it up the path, undoubtedly to give Feliciana and the others word of the ragged horde heading for Santa Dolores Xenacoj at the heels of their iconoclastic priest.

The light over the tidy little cluster of houses was golden and warm as Ellie walked up the path to the village. Kuyoc led the way along with a small army of children who had slipped from doors and fences as they approached. They danced around the priest and peppered him with questions.

She could smell roasting meat and the warm aromas of chili and beans.

Feliciana emerged with the other women, who descended on them like a flock of noisy doves. They fussed over Ellie’s ruined shirt until Feliciana’s granddaughter, Itza, spotted the wound on Ellie’s arm and shouted the news of it.

The mass of busy Mayan grandmothers separated her from Adam. A pounded mess of plants was slapped onto her wound, which was then wrapped in a clean bandage.

A wrinkled, fairy-sized woman whom Ellie didn’t yet know dabbed the rest of the mud from Ellie’s face with a damp cloth. She rattled on in Mopan the entire time, which Héctor helpfully translated.

“She says you need a bath because you smell like rotten plantains,” he declared.

At last, Ellie was deposited on one of the stools in front of Feliciana’s tidy home, and a plate of food was set in her hands. She tore into it with a sigh of relief and satisfaction, stuffing herself with warmly spiced beans, roasted game, fresh herbs, eggs, and a mass of tortillas.

When she was done, she leaned back against the house and considered all the places where her body ached.

Adam dropped down beside her a moment later. His hand and arm both sported fresh bandages with a greenish tinge, which told Ellie that he had also been poulticed.

He still didn’t have a shirt. It clearly wasn’t de rigueur to go around Santa Dolores without one, though at least he wasn’t breaking any actual indecency laws.

Ellie found that she had a greater respect for indecency laws as her eyes dropped involuntarily to Adam’s chest. Even when still slightly filthy and moderately bruised, that torso could cause a riot.

He grinned down at her.

“You look terrible,” he said.

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