[Aztec 04] - Tribute of Death

by Simon Levack

  Almost before the boat had coasted to a stop beneath the palace’s stuccoed walls, Ollin and I leaped out and ran past the guards at the entrance. However, the sight that greeted us the moment we were inside made us both skid to a halt.

  There were a lot of people about. This was no surprise in itself. It was a big house. I had expected to see women in the courtyards sweeping or weaving, men whitewashing the walls, messengers in their short formal capes, and enough guards to lend the household the dignity it merited.

  All of these people were present. However nothing else about the house was as it ought to have been.

  The women were not weaving. Their looms lay abandoned on the flagstones while they huddled in little groups in the corners. The men had dropped their pots of whitewash and were hovering by the warriors, trying to look important while avoiding catching the armed men’s eyes. The only messenger stood by himself, apparently with nothing better to do than loiter here after delivering his despatch. The guards, instead of lounging idly by the doorways waiting to be relieved, were fidgeting and glancing nervously about them, the blades of their swords catching the sunlight and glittering as they twitched in their hands.

  All of this I noticed out of the corner of my eye, but my attention was drawn to what I saw directly me in front of me. A small group of people stood or sat in the centre of the courtyard, surrounded by a large, clear space, as though no-one else dared to approach them.

  My brother, the Guardian of the Waterfront, was formally dressed. He wore a long, yellow cotton cloak with a red border, tubular plugs in his ears, white ribbons in his hair, and yellow sandals with long, loose straps. His face and what could be seen of his body were stained black, although the pitch had not been laid on so thickly as to conceal his expression, which was ferocious.

  Beside him stood a short, slightly plump woman of about my age: his wife, Papan, or ‘Banner.’ She was fidgeting, nervously shifting her weight from one foot to the other while two of her women wavered close by, impatient to be allowed to finish dressing her. Her cheeks were still brown because they had yet to apply their customary coat of yellow ochre, and her hair was a tangled mess.

  Lion had made very few mistakes in the course of his career, which had seen him rise smoothly from the humble origins we shared to his present eminence; but he was not perfect, and to my mind, marrying Banner had been his greatest blunder of all. It was understandable, of course: he had been the glamorous young warrior, sporting the finery he had just won by taking two captives single-handed on his first campaign, no doubt feeling very pleased with himself and entitled to the best his grateful city could bestow on him. She had caught his eye during the early summer festival of the Great Vigil, when the girls carried ears of maize to the temple of the goddess Chicome Coatl. Whether it was the glow of the pyrites stuck to her skin or the way she tossed her unbound hair, I never knew, but he had decided that she was the loveliest creature he had ever seen and therefore his by right. Her parents had agreed, partly I suspected to get her off their hands. Their wedding had been a conventional affair, the couple kneeling with their cloaks knotted together as they fed little maize cakes to each other, and the most remarkable thing about it was that she had somehow managed to stop talking for long enough to allow the ceremony to go ahead.

  She was not talking now, although her mouth was open. She was staring with a mixture of astonishment and awe at the figure dominating her courtyard: a very old man, wrapped in a rabbit’s-fur cloak against the morning chill, and huddled in a wicker chair that must have been placed here for him by the litter bearers who now stood behind it. His presence explained my brother’s suppressed anger and my sister-in-law’s nervousness, for he was none other than my former master, lord Feathered in Black.

  If Ollin had not been standing next to me I might have turned around and left the moment I recognised the chief minister. The sight of his steward, Huitztic, skulking behind his master’s chair as though hoping to use it to conceal himself, would only have encouraged me to walk faster. As the big, well armed warrior at my side was likely to object to my going, I stayed.

  ‘It’s a bit crowded in here, Lion,’ I said loudly. ‘Who else have you invited to this party?’

  It was Banner who answered, trilling her way through the ritual greeting: ‘Yaotl! You have expended breath to get here, you are tired, you are hungry. You must rest and have something to eat...’

  ‘Nonsense, woman,’ her husband growled. ‘He’s not exhausted because Ollin brought him in the canoe, and there aren’t any tortillas yet because nobody in your household has done any work since our noble guest arrived.’ The ironic emphasis on the word ‘guest’ reminded me that he and the chief minister had never been friends. Lord Feathered in Black’s father had once been Guardian of the Waterfront and my former master hated the thought of a commoner like my brother holding the rank.

  The old man in the chair had been looking at the ground. Now, when he raised his head, regarding me with hollow eyes sunk deep into his gaunt features, I noticed that he did not look well. Something must have happened in the last few days to age him dramatically.

  ‘Yaotl,’ he said. His voice was unusually hoarse. ‘We’ve been waiting for you.’

  ‘So sorry to have kept you waiting, my lord,’ I said drily. ‘Unfortunately when your steward came to fetch me I was busy. Of course if I were still your slave, it might have been different, but seeing that I’m not...’

  My brother heaved an exasperated sigh. ‘Yaotl, this isn’t helping...’

  Lord Feathered in Black frowned. ‘What do you mean, when my steward came to fetch you?’

  ‘You sent him to Atlixco, the day before yesterday. I presume it was to drag me back here.’ I raised my head to call out to the steward. ‘You managed to get your cloak wrung out all right, did you?’ The man behind the chair stiffened indignantly, but he said nothing. The litter bearers stared at him. My former master’s frown deepened.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he said slowly. ‘I didn’t sent Huitztic to fetch you. He was supposed to give you a message, but he told me he couldn’t find you. What’s this about?’ He half turned his head to glower over his shoulder.

  I almost felt sorry for the Prick then. His adam’s apple bobbed up and down spasmodically. ‘I’m sorry, my lord... I, er, I must have forgotten to mention it...’

  I laughed. ‘Forgotten to mention you were thrown in a canal for insulting one of the locals? The water must have got in through your ears and softened your brains! And for that matter…’

  ‘That will do!’

  Infirm he may have been, but my former master had had many years’ practice at imposing his will on others, and he managed it now by rapping out a few words. ‘I will find out what happened between you and Huitztic later, Yaotl, but for now you might wonder what made me send my steward to Atlixco just to deliver a warning to a creature whose life I’d normally value about as much as a cockroach’s.’ He paused for breath. ‘I take it he did manage to tell you what had happened?’

  Momentarily subdued, I lapsed into silence. This was unfortunate, because I had been about to add that it was odd if Huitztic had been ordered to find me, since he had seemed so surprised to see me when we met. If I had said that it might have cleared up a number of mysteries in one go. It might even have saved a life or two.

  ‘Well?’ the old man said impatiently.

  ‘He didn’t tell me anything.’ I added defiantly: ‘Though I don’t suppose I’d have believed anything he said anyway. After all, you told me you were going to have your men follow me, and that was a lie, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t.’

  ‘Yaotl....’ My brother was about to warn me that I was going too far, but I was more interested in what the chief minister was saying now. There was an odd lack of indignation in his denial, as though he did not much care whether I believed it or not.

  ‘It must have been a lie. If it wasn’t, how come I didn’t see them?’

  ‘Because,�
�� the old man said, as if he were talking to a child, ‘you weren’t supposed to see them. They were two of the most experienced spies in the city. And for all your famous ability to figure things out you obviously weren’t smart enough to notice either of them when they were standing just a few paces away from you!’

  I stared at him for a moment before, inevitably, whirling around to look behind me. ‘So where are they, then?’ I asked, bewildered.

  ‘Dead,’ he replied laconically. ‘Unfortunately they seem to have met someone with better eyesight or more brains than you have.’

  ‘But that must mean... no, wait a moment... when did all this happen?’ An unpleasant suspicion had begun to dawn on me, which I was about to have confirmed.

  ‘One of them vanished three nights ago: the night your friend Handy buried his wife. We lost the other one the night before last, while he was watching your friend’s house. The first of them turned up the day after he disappeared, when the parish authorities in Atlixco fished him out of a canal. I understand you found the second.’

  ‘They were yours?’ I cried, as though we were talking about a missing pair of sandals.

  ‘That’s what I’ve been telling you.’

  ‘But... they didn’t look like warriors!’

  ‘My understanding is that by the time they were found, neither of them even looked like men. What did you expect? They were spies, you idiot. They would have been dressed to pass for locals, commoners or even slaves.’

  My mind reeled as it tried to grapple with what I had heard. It made sense enough: two bodies had turned up in Atlixco, but had not been identified, and even in their mangled state that almost certainly meant they were outsiders. Also, so far as I knew there was only one native of the parish missing: Handy’s brother-in-law, Flower Gatherer. ‘So that’s two mysteries solved, but what happened to Goose’s husband?’

  ‘Who?’ lord Feathered in Black asked sharply. I tried to explain, but it soon became clear that he was not interested. ‘I didn’t come here to talk about some commoner,’ he snapped, ‘Or even my men. What I want to know about is what happened last night.’

  ‘He means your adventures by the lake yesterday,’ my brother added.

  ‘I understand one of the fishermen told you about that,’ I said to him. ‘It’s good to know your network of informers is functioning well.’

  My brother shot a baleful glance at lord Feathered in Black. ‘Mine isn’t the only one, it seems! I sent Ollin there with a couple of men to investigate. They came back here to report, but they didn’t have time to scrape the mud off their boots before his lordship heard about it.’

  The chief minister smiled thinly. ‘I am the emperor’s eyes and ears. He looks to me to protect the city from its enemies.’

  ‘Even if they happen to be your own servants?’ I suggested.

  ‘Even so,’ he said indifferently. ‘Though the otomi was never exactly my servant. More a tool.’

  ‘Then it’s a good job you’re a noble rather than a carpenter!’

  ‘Yaotl, please!’ my brother almost howled. His wife took a step backward, bumping into one of her women. She looked about her in confusion, plainly torn between the desire to stay and listen and be noticed by the chief minister, and the urge to run away and hide.

  Lord Feathered in Black said: ‘Just tell us what happened to you yesterday. And before you’re tempted to utter any more witty remarks, you may care to reflect on how much harder it’ll be to crack jokes after I’ve had your tongue torn out!’

  I mumbled hastily through an account of the expedition I had made with Kite and Spotted Eagle in the afternoon. The only interruption came when I described the policeman’s wound.

  ‘I know Kite,’ Lion said anxiously. ‘He’s a good man. Is he going to be all right?’

  ‘I don’t know. Last I heard he was with a curer.’

  ‘Get on with it,’ the chief minister snapped.

  There was a pause after I had finished.

  Banner asked nervously if anybody would like anything to eat, but was ignored.

  ‘Why don’t you just tell me why I’m here?’ I said at last.

  ‘You know what Ollin found,’ said Lion.

  ‘He didn’t find very much, by the sound of it.’

  ‘Precisely,’ my former master responded. ‘And I know you will have worked out what that means.’

  I had known the answer to that as soon as Ollin had first spoken to me. ‘The otomi’s still around, and probably angrier than ever. He managed to retrieve his uniform. Don’t know why he took the bodies, though.’

  ‘There may be more power in them than we know about,’ lord Feathered in Black said darkly. ‘But in any event, we have to work out how to protect ourselves from this madman. That’s why I had your brother summon you here.’

  ‘“Ourselves”?’ I echoed. ‘Why do you need protecting? It’s me he’s after.’

  My brother said: ‘Don’t pretend to be stupid. Old Bl.... The chief minister is concerned that the otomi may blame him as well as you for his misfortunes.’

  ‘I can’t tell you how distressing I find that!’

  My former master appeared to be examining his fingernails. ‘What your brother means, of course, is that the captain may seek to avenge himself on me after he’s finished stripping the hide off your miserable, writhing, shrieking flesh!’ He ended on a shout that made all the men present flinch and Banner burst into tears. The chief minister ignored them all, leaning towards me while his hands gripped the arms of his chair. ‘Now do you understand?’

  I quailed. ‘My lord, yes, of course, but what do you want me to do?’

  ‘What you were supposed to do at the outset, before you allowed yourself to get distracted over some commoner’s dead wife. Go after him. Get him before he gets you.’

  ‘You must be joking!’

  ‘I never joke,’ growled lord Feathered in Black dangerously. ‘What else will you do, wait for him to attack you again? How long will your luck hold? You will go in search of him. In spite of everything I still think you have a better chance of finding him than anyone else!’

  ‘Thanks. You’re probably right, if he’s looking for me anyway. But if I get killed how is that going to help you?’

  ‘You won’t be killed,’ he said airily, ‘because you’ll have an escort, one of the finest warriors in the city, and he won’t be confined to skulking in the shadows either. I plan to have him stick to you as if you’d been glued together with bat guano. When your enemy comes, he’ll have to take you both on at once.’

  ‘Brilliant!’ I cried. ‘So now I’m going to have to go looking for a deranged otomi accompanied by the kind of rash idiot who thinks he can fight him! So who is this poor lunatic? Is he here?’ I made a show of looking around me until my eyes lighted on my brother’s grim visage and it dawned on me that I had my answer. ‘Oh, no...’

  ‘Oh, yes, brother,’ Lion assured me. ‘It seems I’ve been given the job of saving your skin once again!’

  Banner’s nerve finally broke. She hid her face in her hands and fled.

  Lord Feathered in Black watched her go with a ghastly half-smile on his face. ‘What’s the matter? Does she imagine you won’t come back?’

  ‘Surely not,’ I said drily. If I thought she might have been seized by panic at the thought of organising the catering for her husband’s wake, I was not about to say so.

  ‘It’s not as if you’re going to be entirely alone, anyway.’ lord Feathered in Black’s smile broadened into a quite cheerless grin. ‘I’ll send Huitztic along too – once I’ve made sure he’s recovered his memory of that little incident you were telling me about!’

  3

  Lion and I went back to Atlixco in the canoe that had brought me to his house, although he insisted that I take the pole. It was unthinkable for the Guardian of the Waterfront to do the work while a mere slave lounged about in the bows as his passenger. He had his image to think about.

  ‘Why can’t we bring your bodyguar
ds along?’ I asked, as we set off.

  He sat with this sword propped between his knees and looked morosely down into the bottom of the boat. ‘They’re needed elsewhere. Watching my house, watching our parents’ house.’

  ‘Couldn’t old Black Feathers have spared us some more of his men? Huitztic will be as much use as a wax oven. And he worships the otomi – the captain’s the only man he knows who’s more mindlessly vicious than he is.’

  He laughed bitterly. ‘You don’t get it, do you, Yaotl? The chief minister doesn’t want us to succeed. How likely do you think it is that even the otomi could get near him, secure in his palace – even with a sorcerer on his side? His lordship probably has sorcerers of his own to protect him anyway. You and I, we’ve been set up. If we do kill the captain, I dare say the old bastard will be pleased enough. But remember he’s no love for either of us. He’s probably tired of his steward too. If we all get hacked to pieces in the process I wouldn’t count on him to go into mourning!’

  Standing up in the stern of the canoe, I looked down on his greying head with concern.

  Lion and I had fought continuously as little boys, until fate separated us by sending me to the priest house. We had been parted too young for the furious animosity of our childish squabbles to be tempered by any kind of mutual regard, and had seen little of one another as adults. For many years he had been the overbearing bully and I had been the uppity younger brother with the smart mouth.

  Just a few months previously events had happened to alter our relationship. It had come as a shock to each of us to find anything in the other to respect, let alone like. But what I saw now was even more shocking. One thing I would never have expected, even in the days when he would hold my face under water with the sincere intention of drowning me, was to see him showing fear of any human enemy.