[Aztec 04] - Tribute of Death

by Simon Levack

  He jumped, dropping his sword as he leaped and whirled, and the light of his flaming back-device, the cloth and feathers and reeds blazing like pitch, became a brilliant streak, like the sun’s reflection on the lake, as he ran from it.

  My brother, Handy and Quail ran up. For a moment they could only stand and stare, too astounded to move.

  The otomi pranced about, bellowing and cursing, beating at the flames behind him. Lion jumped out of his way as he blundered blindly towards him.

  ‘The club, Lion!’ I yelled. ‘Get his club!’

  Finally coming to his senses, Lion darted towards the discarded weapon. He was too late. He had to jump out of the way again as the anguished, infuriated otomi bore down on him.

  The captain’s foot slammed down on his own blades and his cry shot up in pitch as sharp edges of obsidian sliced through sandal leather and flesh and toe-bone alike.

  He crashed to the ground, and the burning cloth, feathers and reeds fell over him, burying his head in fire.

  On the ground beside him lay the sorcerer’s incense ladle. It still smoked faintly, although there were no coals in it, because the sorcerer had tipped all of them over the wicker frame on the captain’s back.

  10

  Lion, Handy and Quail helped me to my feet.

  ‘Be careful! That hurts! What do you mean, can I stand? What does it look like? Don’t touch the leg! I’m likely to lose it as it is!’

  ‘Ignore him,’ Lion said. ‘He’s like this with a nosebleed. Just get him back to the parish hall.’

  Handy was looking at the incense ladle. ‘What’s this doing here?’ he asked.

  ‘The sorcerer dropped it,’ I said. ‘I can explain when I can sit down and rest this leg – that’s if I haven’t fainted first! And I need a drink.’

  I never finished the sentence, because Lion interrupted me.

  ‘Look at the parish hall!’

  The temple was all but burned out by now. Yet for some reason the light seemed to be growing rather than diminishing, and I became aware of sparks dancing about me, and something pricked the back of my neck: a piece of burning vegetation. The air was alive with bright orange fireflies, dancing and coupling amid thickening clouds of white smoke.

  I followed Lion’s gaze to stare in horror at the flames that were leaping up over the parish hall. A falling ember had caught one of the plants at the top of the steps. Soon they would be ablaze, and Lily and Kite were up there, trapped by their own barricade.

  ‘We’ve got to get them out of there!’ I cried fatuously. There was no answer. When I tore my eyes from the sight I saw that Lion and the others were already running towards the blazing building. I lurched and limped in their wake, reaching the courtyard in time to see them frantically tearing at the barricade, braving the heat and the thorns and cactus spines in their efforts to get through it.

  It was not working, I realised with despair. As I watched, Lion reeled blindly away down the steps, coughing and gasping, driven back by the flames. A few moments later he staggered back up them, but by now it was hotter still, and Handy and Quail had been forced to retreat as well.

  There was no sign of Kite or Lily.

  I stumbled to the bottom of the steps just as Quail toppled down into the courtyard for the last time. ‘It’s no good,’ he gasped. ‘The roof’s going to collapse. There’ll be nothing left up there after that.’

  Lion came down, grabbing me by the arm and tugging me away with him. ‘I’m sorry, Yaotl,’ he yelled. ‘We were too late. There’s no sign of life up there anyway. We’ve got to go before the whole place comes down around us!’

  I could only stare stupidly at him while he told me the woman I loved was dead. I did not scream at him or shout ‘no’ or curse the gods, the way I have heard people are supposed to. I just allowed myself to be led quietly away, while the parish hall of Atlixco burned to the ground.

  They were waiting for us in the plaza outside: what looked like all the menfolk of the parish, and not a few of the women and children too. It was as dense a crowd as would gather for the local market. They were far too late to be of any use, of course, but still in time to enjoy a good blaze, and marvel at the carnage we had left behind: the bodies of two of their own, the otomi and lord Feathered in Black’s steward.

  ‘Out of the way!’ Lion barked, shoving people roughly aside. ‘No, I’m not telling you anything, because I know bugger all myself!’

  Handy helped me stagger along in my brother’s wake. One elderly man – the very same man I had accosted on the morning when Star’s body had gone missing – called out: ‘Hey, I know you! What’s this all about, then?’

  I looked at him, the eyes in his lined and leathery face gleaming with curiosity like a child’s, and felt suddenly sick. I could have told him what he wanted to know by now – all of it, from the beginning – but I was too tired.

  We stopped by the steward’s body.

  ‘Poor old Huitztic,’ Handy said magnanimously. ‘I never liked him, but I don’t know that he deserved that.’

  ‘I do,’ I said huskily. ‘And he did.’

  The commoner stared at me. ‘What makes you say that?’

  I sighed. ‘Can it wait till the morning? For now, let’s just say that he brought it on himself.’

  Lion said: ‘It’s a pity we didn’t get the sorcerer. You reckon we might have done, if it hadn’t been for the fire?’

  ‘I saw him!’ someone called out.

  ‘Really?’ Lion cried eagerly. I glanced at the man who had spoken, noting indifferently that he was no-one I had seen or heard before, just a tonsured commoner in a plain, brief cloak and breechcloth. ‘Where did he go?’

  The man gestured towards the path that led towards Handy’s house and the lake. ‘That way. He was running. He must have been near the temple – that’s how I know who it was – and he was screaming and trailing sparks like his cloak had caught fire!’

  Lion grinned at me. ‘You stay here. I’m going after him. Handy, you can come too, if you want to get your hands on the man who killed your wife!’

  Pain and fatigue and a peculiar sense that none of what I could see or hear was really happening were beginning to overwhelm me. My head was spinning. My voice fell almost to a whisper, but I just about managed to make myself heard: ‘Don’t bother!’

  Handy and Lion stared at me, slack-jawed. Eventually my brother said: ‘You can stay here, then. No-one’s asking you to go. But if we don’t move now, we’ll lose him.’

  ‘No you won’t,’ I said weakly. ‘That wasn’t the sorcerer.’ I stumbled dizzily forward, stopping only when Lion seized my arm and held me upright. I looked at him and Handy, taking in both of their shocked faces in turn. ‘You’ll get your sorcerer,’ I assured them, ‘and the man who ran away – you’ll get him too. But they’ll keep, both of them. There’s plenty of time.’

  As Lion lowered me to the ground, there was a disturbance near the edge of the crowd. Heads turned and feet started to move in the direction of some new spectacle, and I heard voices calling for help: a blanket, a couple of men to carry something, a brazier for warmth. Considering that flames were still crackling in parts of the parish hall, this last request struck me as funny. To find myself giggling inanely at such a time was all part of the unreality that surrounded me.

  Handy disappeared into the crowd for a moment to find out what the fuss was about. He burst back out of it almost immediately.

  ‘Yaotl, you really need to see this,’ he said, grasping my wrist and pulling me to my feet again.

  ‘Let me go!’ I protested feebly, but the words died in my throat as he tugged me after him.

  There was a small clear space at the edge of the plaza. In the middle of it was a large puddle. In the middle of the puddle, with water still dripping from her hair and clothes, sat Lily. Kite lay next to her, still strapped to his board. Both were clearly very much alive.

  Handy thrust me towards them and then stood behind me, holding me up.

  My
mistress looked me up and down. I must have presented a sorry sight, covered in blood and soot, with my clothes and hair singed. She, on the other hand, looked well, apart from the bandages on her hands and the fact that she was soaking wet and still shivering slightly.

  For a long moment neither of us said anything. Then we both uttered the same words at once: ‘What happened to you?’

  I added: ‘I thought you were dead! I thought you’d been burned alive!’

  She frowned at me. ‘Why would you think that?’

  ‘But... how did you get down?’

  ‘Yaotl, you can be so dense. Have you forgotten about the canal? It runs right past the building – or at least it did, before the building burned down. I had to push Kite off the roof – which wasn’t easy with these hands – and hope he didn’t drown before I got in to save him. It’s a good thing I’m a strong swimmer!’ She grinned then. ‘I’m surprised at you. You really don’t know me very well if you thought we were just going to sit up there waiting to be cooked!’

  FIVE WIND

  1

  From the outside, the house looked almost as it had when Lily, Kite, Snake and I had last visited it. The only small difference was that the wicker screen had already been drawn back.

  ‘As if we were expected,’ Lion said.

  ‘We are,’ I said.

  ‘Do you want me to call out?’ Snake asked.

  ‘No, I think we can go straight in.’

  We were a larger party this time: no Kite, but Lion, Spotted Eagle and Handy were with us. The two last looked about them warily as we followed Snake into the house of Red Macaw’s mother. I had promised them there would be no sorcery and they in turn had promised not to wreak some bloody revenge on the owner of the house. I suspected that by the time we were done they would have lost whatever appetite they might have for vengeance.

  Precious Light was kneeling in her courtyard. She barely looked up at us as we filed in and variously squatted, kneeled or stood by the walls. She was intent on patting down the earth she had used to fill in a small hole in the ground beside her.

  There was an earthenware cup by one of her knees. I eyed it warily. It was positioned so that she could snatch it up in an instant, but were its contents a weapon or a means of escape?

  ‘You’re later that I expected,’ she remarked.

  ‘I was late rising,’ I said. ‘It was a long night, last night.’

  She looked up then and smiled. ‘Is your leg troubling you?’

  ‘A little,’ I admitted. I had remained on my feet. My leg was too stiff to bend easily, and the bandages swaddling it from the knee down did not help.

  ‘I can give you something for that, you know.’

  ‘I’m sure you can.’ I decided the pleasantries ought to end there: I could sense Handy and his sons becoming impatient. ‘But would it be anything like what you used to give Cactus?’

  If I expected her to break down into some tearful confession, or even launch into a spirited denial, I was to be disappointed. ‘No, nothing like that,’ she said calmly. ‘Only a poultice.’

  Handy could not contain himself any longer. ‘Why?’ he cried suddenly. ‘Why did you do it? You tried to use Cactus to get at Star through Slender Neck. When that didn’t work you put her out of the way and replaced her with Gentle Heart. You sent someone to the House of Pleasure to tell them my wife didn’t need a midwife – or was that you?’

  ‘It was me,’ the old woman responded calmly.

  ‘You even tried to use the curer to kill me, but why? What was it all for?’

  ‘You made my son unhappy.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous! What did I do to him? What about what he did to us?’

  ‘Oh, I understand all that. I don’t mean you did anything; but the fact that you and Star were alive, that was the cause of his unhappiness. Do you see? I just wanted to get rid of that, the thing that was making him miserable. That was all.’

  ‘And you wanted to kill us for that?’

  She looked up, frowning slightly, an expression of puzzlement. ‘No, I didn’t want to kill you. I needed to.’

  Spotted Eagle said: ‘Where’s my mother’s body?’

  ‘I made the otomi rebury it. It’s in the plot just to the south of yours. Really, I’m surprised it’s not been found yet.’

  ‘Why did you steal it in the first place?’ the young man cried piteously.

  Precious Light’s answer to this was a sigh. Her hand drifted towards the bowl beside her. Alarmed, I said: ‘We don’t mean to weary you. Why don’t I try to answer the questions? Then if you’d be kind enough to fill in any gaps, we would be... grateful.’ I shot a warning look at Handy and Spotted Eagle.

  Precious Light laid her hand on the earth beside the bowl. ‘I’ll tell you what you need to know. In a way, I owe it to you. You’ve only been doing what you had to as well. But not too many questions. I’m tired. It was a long night for me too.’

  ‘I don’t know where this starts,’ I continued. ‘I suppose with the otomi, looking for a way to get his revenge on me and Handy.’

  ‘He wasn’t that interested in Handy,’ Precious Light said. ‘You were the one he wanted. But it was a mutual arrangement, you see: he got his revenge, I removed the obstacle to my son’s happiness, we helped each other.’

  ‘Right. Anyway, somehow he got the idea of consulting a sorcerer, and maybe getting hold of a charm to make himself invincible.’

  ‘It was the other way around. I found him.’

  ‘Through Huitztic, the steward?’

  ‘That’s right. Everyone knew he came to the parish to see Handy, and I made a point of getting to know him.’

  ‘The steward,’ I said ruefully. ‘That’s someone else that hated me.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘but I don’t think you were that important. It was the captain that mattered to the steward. He wanted to do something for the otomi – to make a friend of him, I suppose. He was terrified of him, but he seemed to be fascinated by him as well. When he talked about him to me, about how he’d come back to the city and what he wanted to do, I realised I could make use of them both.’

  ‘And pretending to be a sorcerer – to know how to do the dance with dead woman’s forearm – whose idea was that?’

  ‘It was the steward’s. I didn’t care for it, but he said the otomi would accept it, and he did. I scared him as much as he scared Huitztic. And Cactus was so easily impressed.’ The corners of her mouth turned down, as if the gullibility and folly of others were a source of regret. ‘Cactus would take any potion or herb or mushroom I offered him, if I assured him I had a second soul and could turn myself into an animal at will. And apparently lord Feathered in Black’s sorcerers would give his steward anything we needed.’

  Handy said to me: ‘You said last night that Huitztic brought it all on himself. Is this what you meant?’

  ‘Yes.’ I looked at him, Lily and Lion. ‘If you remember, I kept wondering what the link was between the otomi and the sorcerer. In fact, the answer was staring us in the face. It had to be Huitztic, because apart from lord Feathered in Black – who admittedly would have been my first choice of suspect, if the captain hadn’t made it clear they no longer had anything to do with each other – he was the only person who knew the otomi. I remember how surprised he was to see me, the day after Star’s funeral. He knew what the otomi and Precious Light had in mind and didn’t expect ever to see me alive again. And then, the otomi found us right after Huitztic vanished last night. I don’t think they met by chance. I think the steward went to tell the captain where he could find me. Unfortunately his reward was to be used as bait!’

  I turned to Precious Light. ‘It was Huitztic who told the captain where I was going when I came back to the city, but he also led me to you in the end. He knew about Star and Red Macaw. There are people born and raised in this parish who don’t know the facts about that, and none who will talk about it to outsiders. He had to have got it from you.’

/>   ‘That’s true enough,’ the old woman conceded.

  I went on: ‘That wasn’t quite the only thing that pointed to you, of course. There was Red Macaw’s behaviour as well. What was he doing following Star’s funeral procession? Why did he go out to the chinampa plot?’

  Spotted Eagle said: ‘He wanted to see my mother. He told you that before he died.’

  ‘No, he didn’t. “Wanted to see her”: those were the words he used, but we never asked who he meant by “her”. It wasn’t Star he wanted to see at all, was it, Precious Light? It was you. He wanted to stop what you were doing. He used that word too – “Stop”. He knew you were part of the funeral procession for a reason – because you were planning to interfere with the body. And he found out where you’d reburied her, and I guess he wanted to try to talk to you there too. Only the captain got to him first.’ I looked at Handy. ‘He tried to warn you, if you remember, on the afternoon of the funeral. He didn’t want to implicate his mother, so he couldn’t spell it out, but he did tell you there’d be trouble if he was left out of the procession.’

  ‘But he failed,’ Lion said. ‘They got the body.’ He addressed Precious Light himself. ‘Tell me, why did you rebury the body at all? Why not just chuck it in a canal?’

  The woman shuddered. ‘If you knew the Divine Princesses, you wouldn’t ask that! I was risking enough taking her hair and forearm.’

  ‘You did leave a body in a canal, though. It belonged to lord Feathered in Black’s spy. Why did you do that?’

  ‘That was the captain’s idea. He knew who this man was, and thought if his body were found, the chief minister would immediately have the place swarming with warriors searching for the killer. If the man just disappeared, his master might assume he’d gone to ground somewhere. It was just to slow the pursuit down. Of course, with the second one – the one he killed outside Handy’s house – there wasn’t time for that.’