Days of the Dead.pdf - Upgrade Systems

"I've never made a graven image in my life! You lie­-monger, you glutton, you troublemaker who tries
to separate a loyal daughter from her father, how dare you... ?"
Rose, who all this time had stood watching in the outer doorway, now closed the door and placed
herself heroically before it. For an instant, January feared Ylario would threaten her with a pistol also, but
he didn't­-though by his expression he clearly wished he could.
He gestured to his guards to thrust her out of the way, and Rose flattened back against the door, her
chill eyes promising the struggle-and the delay-that Ylario clearly wished to avoid.
"Señora," the little man said with steely politeness, "I do not know who you are, but I warn you that
you are in­terfering with the justice of this country. If you and this man whom I assume to be your
husband do not wish to spend the night in the jail yourselves-whatever else may transpire-you will let
justice take its course."
Rose glanced across the room at Don Prospero, who was still shouting at the priest, oblivious to his
closely­guarded guest's imminent departure, and said nothing. Only braced herself and left it to Ylario to
make the first move.
January always wondered later what it would have been, because at that moment the door behind
Rose opened-thrusting her forward into the room-and the gorgeously uniformed man standing framed in it
asked in a voice of aggrieved reasonableness, "Ylario, what the hell is going on?"
The westering sunlight slanting into the corredor flared on the curlicued scrolls of gold braid January's
first wife, Ayasha, had called such designs "chicken guts"-that em­bellished the newcomer's refulgent
scarlet jacket, flashed on boots polished to the inner gleam of the newcomer's grave, dark eyes. Don
Prospero turned from the cornered priest and threw open his arms in greeting.
"There you are!" he cried. "You tell this small-minded and unfaithful servant of the God of Hosts about
being a god, my lord. Tezcatlipoca," he introduced as the priest opened the study door cautiously and
peered around it. The Jaguar-God, the Smoking Mirror. ... You tell him, eh, my liege, that I don't
worship you before this priest's God."
The newcomer inclined his head with the sweet-­tempered tolerance of a martyred philosopher forced
to humor his benighted friend. "Of a certainty I am not wor­shipped before the True God," he told the
priest. "That would be a blasphemous thing." He crossed himself, but his eyes danced with unholy
amusement.
Ylario stood where he had been, ignored by all, pistol in hand, and did not move, but the cold, still fury
in his eyes told January who the newcomer was, in case he hadn't deduced it already from the three
uniformed aides standing in the corredor-with their plumed hats gripped reverently in kid-gloved hands.
Voices in the courtyard were calling out, "El Presidente. . . El Presidente. . ." and there was the
jangle of accoutrements and the rising dust-cloud of many more horses. The priest-and the two European
gentlemen in the corner--goggled in shock.
"Sir," said the priest-unnecessarily, when he finally got his breath-"Don Prospero, that is no god, but a
man: President and Generalissimo Benemerito de la Patria Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna."
And while the attention of everyone in the room was fastened on the handsome, broad-shouldered
dictator whose election the previous year had precipitated so much furor in the country, January and
Rose caught Hannibal by the elbows and silently dragged him from the room.