by Simon Levack
‘What?’
Shield gave an unpleasant chuckle. ‘Old Black Feathers himself! The Chief Minister!’
‘Of course, there wasn’t much for us to do once we knew whose slave you were. He’s got enough men of his own to send running around after you without needing any help from us. If we’d wanted to get you for doing Idle, we reckoned we might as well wait and see what was left after they’d finished with you.’ He gave me what may have been a pitying look. ‘And from the look of some of them, you’re bloody lucky we found you first!’
I wondered what had possessed Lily to go to my master, but I had more urgent worries on my mind now. ‘So where are you taking me now?’ I asked in a low voice. ‘Back to Lord Feathered in Black?’ I could guess what would happen after that. My master would gloat over me for a while and then hand me over to the captain’s tender mercies.
‘Oh no. Not now You’re going to the Governor.’
‘Itzcohuatzin? Why him?’
‘Why do you think? I told you Skinny was a mistake. As soon as we knew who the dead man was, every parish policeman in Tlatelolco was told to bring whoever did it to the Governor. Now I don’t know whether Lord Feathered in Black has any other ideas, seeing as you’re his slave, but since I’ve had no orders to the contrary, it’s to the Governor you’re going.’
‘What happened to Skinny?’ I asked.
Shield groaned. ‘Here we go again!’
Upright snorted. ‘You might tell us. We know you attacked him on the Pochtlan side of the canal, right near the bridge with Amantlan. Why so close to where we found his brother? I suppose you were unlucky, though. I don’t reckon you hit him hard enough to have killed him outright, but of course he drowned. You could have pulled him out, though.’
‘Maybe he thought he was doing him a favour, letting the poor bugger die like that,’ Shield suggested. People who died by water were spared the terrors and misery of the Land of the Dead; instead they were destined to spend the afterlife in Tlalocan, the rain-god’s paradise, where the seasons never let you down and there was always plenty to eat.
‘I didn’t kill him,’ I said, for the sake of saying it.
‘Well, you can tell that to the Governor and whoever else asks you,’ Upright said indifferently. ‘I’m curious, though. Why’d you do it? What were Idle and Skinny to you?’
‘He fancied getting up the widow’s skirt!’
Shield’s crude jibe jolted some memory, a dream I thought I had once had, or rather a nightmare, and suddenly I was in a dark, cramped space, and a great snake was wrapping its coils around me, its woman’s voice cooing softly in my ear, saying things that should have been beautiful and arousing and were all the more grotesque and sickening because of it.
I struggled. I tried to cry out, to stand up, to flee, and then there was a massive hand on my shoulder, driving me back down into the bottom of the boat.
‘Don’t even think about it!’ Shield snarled.
I sat, shivering, while Upright looked at me thoughtfully. ‘Interesting,’ he said at last.
‘Look,’ I said, mustering all my self-control to keep my voice steady, ‘I didn’t kill Skinny because I wanted his wife or for any reason. I didn’t kill Idle. I was asked by Kindly the merchant to look for some property of his that he thought they had. That’s why I was at their house.’
Why had I found Shield’s words so disturbing? More of the visions of gods and serpents that I had had in the night were coming back to me. I wondered why the images were so enduring. Dreams, even those induced by the seeds of the Morning Glory plant, were fragile, evanescent things, usually dispersing like mist as soon as the Sun came up, but these would not go away. They were like the memory of a real event rather than something I had had to travel to the land of dreams to see.
‘We know why you were at their house.’ Shield’s voice, outlining his theory, dragged me back to the present. ‘You’d got rid of Idle and Skinny so there wouldn’t be anyone to get between you and Skinny’s wife. I bet you also got her sister-in-law out of the way too, didn’t you? We haven’t found her body yet, but we will. So now you thought you had everything nicely set up and it was time to go and enjoy yourself.’ He gave a raucous laugh. ‘You must have been really looking forward to that. I’ve seen Butterfly!’
Upright looked at me again. ‘Why’d you bring up Kindly again? We know you aren’t his slave. What’s this lost property you were talking about? Why would you have been looking for it?’
I thought quickly. There was one thing I knew I could never reveal to the policemen or anyone else, my search for my son, because I could not risk giving anything away that might help Lord Feathered in Black to guess who he really was or that he was still in the city That was my secret, I decided, but other people’s, including Kindly’s, were none of my business.
‘I was running away. I needed cash – something I could carry, like a few quills of gold dust or some copper axe heads. The merchant said he’d pay me quickly if I did this job for him. He’d bought some featherwork from Skinny and … well, we were pretty sure he’d stolen it back again. Skinny himself told me he knew nothing about it but I didn’t believe him, so I went back to look for myself.’
‘Balls,’ muttered Shield.
Upright curled his lip. ‘Well, either way, the Governor will have to make up his own mind about you. We’re nearly at his palace.’
I looked up in surprise. I had not noticed how far we had come, but there was no mistaking the shape of Tlatelolco’s great pyramid towering over the buildings in front of it. The Governor’s palace faced the sacred precinct at its base, imitating the palaces of the Emperors in Tenochtitlan. Also next to the sacred precinct was the world’s largest marketplace, a huge open space surrounded by colonnaded walls where up to sixty thousand people came every day to buy, sell, cheat, steal or just pass the time. I could hear them from here, the constant background rumble of an uncountable number of unraised voices.
The canal we were on now was a wide one, as were the ones it crossed, and the large, blank-faced buildings and sturdy landing-stages around us told me that this must be where the merchants unloaded and stored goods ready for the market.
‘Not the most direct route,’ Upright explained. He was looking forward to getting rid of me and passing the responsibility on to someone more senior, and his sense of relief made him positively chatty ‘But it’s easily the quickest. Hardly anyone uses these canals except merchants going to their warehouses, and they only travel at night. At this time of day, everywhere else will be jammed solid.’
Sure enough, it was quiet, with no traffic beside our canoe and little sign of life apart from a few weary-looking sedges growing up between the wooden reinforcing posts at the canal’s edge.
We were not quite alone, however.
Shield saw him at the same time as I did: a lone figure standing beside one of the warehouses, in the centre of the path running between it and the canal, with his legs braced slightly apart and his head turning slowly from side to side, as though scanning the area around him. ‘What’s he up to?’ Shield asked suspiciously. ‘Doesn’t look like a porter or a merchant — off he goes!’
The stranger had vanished around a corner, leaving only a blurred impression of a cloak flapping behind him as he ran. I blinked, thinking he must be extremely fleet to have covered the distance that quickly. ‘I thought he looked more like a warrior,’ I said slowly, suddenly filled with foreboding.
‘Around here?’ Upright replied. ‘I doubt it. Some of the merchants hire muscle to guard their property, sometimes. He was probably one of them.’
‘More likely a lookout man for a robbery,’ his colleague suggested. ‘Once we’ve dropped our little friend here off we ought to come back and check.’
Either of them might well be right, I thought, but hired guards tended to sit or lounge, dozing peacefully, against a handy wall, rather than standing, alert and ready for action, in the centre of a path. And robbers and their lookout men did not ru
n like a jaguar after a deer when there was no one pursuing them. They did not wear their hair piled up on their heads and flowing over the backs of their necks, either, but neither of my escorts seemed to have noticed that.
They caught up with us just short of the Governor’s palace.
Shield poled the canoe slowly along a broad waterway in the shadow of one of the marketplace’s outer walls. The distant rumble I had heard before had become as loud as thunder over the mountains, or perhaps a waterfall: a continual babbling, a sound made up of many smaller sounds that caught the ear a thousand different ways without ever increasing or diminishing.
‘Hold your noses,’ he advised us. ‘This is where they moor the dung boats.’
Upright and I both looked ahead. We were passing scores of vessels filled with the contents of the city’s privies and brought here for sale to parishes, landowners and makers of dyestufl’s.
‘Not surprising there aren’t many people about, is it?’ Shield went on nasally. It was nearly the warmest part of the day. I was breathing through my mouth and I thought the air even tasted foul. I did not want to dwell on what it must be like in high summer.
‘Look out!’ Upright shouted suddenly. A canoe had appeared in front of us, blocking our way. It looked as if it had been launched from the side of the canal straight into our path.
‘What’s he doing? Move that thing, you idiot!’ yelled Shield, but the last word died in his throat as he had a clear look at the other craft’s only occupant.
This time there could be no mistaking his occupation. If his green costume and his hair had not given it away, the deft, familiar way he handled the sword in his fist would have done. He was using it to motion us towards the bank with a curt, slashing gesture.
The captain and his men stood in a semicircle by the side of the canal.
‘What do we do?’ Shield whispered.
‘What he says,’ Upright muttered tensely. He glared at me. ‘You know anything about this?’
I said nothing. I was speechless with terror.
‘Well, hello, stranger.’ The living half of the captain’s face twisted into a lopsided grin as he caught sight of me. ‘I was afraid we wouldn’t meet again!’
‘Now look …’ Upright began.
‘Shut up. Out of the boat, the lot of you.’
Upright swore under his breath, but complied. Shield and I had no choice but to follow him. The captain and his men formed a semicircle around us as we scrambled ashore.
I stood at the very edge of the canal, with the policemen on either side of me. At that moment they felt like my only protection.
‘What do you want?’ Upright demanded.
‘Him, of course.’
‘On whose authority? He’s going to the Governor. If his Lordship tells us to hand him over to you, you’re welcome to him, but …’
‘This is my authority.’ The captain lifted the wicked, four-bladed sword I had seen him with earlier and jabbed Upright in the stomach with its blunt end, just once and not hard, and then raised it further so that the blades glittered in front of the policeman’s eyes. ‘You do what it tells you, see? Sod the Governor!’
What Upright did then was instinctive. If he had thought about it, even for a moment, he might have lived, but it all happened instantly, and by the time I saw what he was about it would have been too late to intervene even if there were anything I could do.
He raised his right hand towards his shoulder, where he wore his sword slung over his back.
He was dead before his fingers could so much as brush the weapon. Fox’s blade took him with a casual backhanded slash across the stomach. For a moment Upright just stood, watching, with a bemused look on his face, while his guts spilled out in front of him, and then he made an odd belching noise, blood gushed from his mouth and he fell over.
Two warriors had Shield’s arms pinioned behind him before he could move. He seemed unable to speak. He stood staring down at his chief’s body, open mouthed, the colour draining from his face even as I watched.
‘Fox,’ the captain said, ‘you are so clumsy Who’s going to clear up that mess?’
Shield was still struggling to find his voice. ‘You …’ he gasped.
‘Forget it.’ The captain thrust his brutal, ravaged face into the policeman’s. ‘Sorry to hear about your colleague’s unfortunate accident. The Chief Minister sends his condolences. It’s important you remember that. “Accident” and “Chief Minister” – got it?’
Shield made a noise that the captain was obviously willing to take as assent, as he turned to me.
‘Now, as for you.’
He raised the four-bladed sword. I watched the glittering black razors set into its edges, one by one, as they swept past my face on the weapon’s upward swing. I felt my stomach lurch and I squeezed my eyes shut to spare myself the sight of the blow coming.
Nothing happened.
I opened my eyes again.
The handle of the weapon ended in a heavy wooden knob. That was the last thing I saw, filling my vision as it was driven down between my eyes like the head of a mallet, before everything went dark.
2
My head was an ear of maize. The back of it lay on a grinding-stone and someone was bearing down on my forehead with a stone roller. My skull was the husk they were going to split as their hard surfaces scraped against each other.
I screamed, rolling over to escape the stones’ relentless pressure, and my face came up against a sandalled foot.
‘Ah,’ said a voice I knew and hated, an old man’s voice that I had somehow hoped I might never hear again, ‘he’s awake.’
‘I said he was, my Lord. I know how hard I hit him. He was shamming.’
‘Well, perhaps.’ The old man heaved a regretful sigh. ‘So hard to get reliable slaves, these days.’
‘Would you like me and my boys to teach him to behave himself?’ The sound of a man with not much more than half a mouth smacking his lips with relish is not one I would wish to hear again.
‘Thank you, Captain.’ The old man paused, no doubt wanting to let the Otomi’s suggestion work its way through my brain and down into my guts before continuing. ‘However, I think I would just like you to get him on his feet for now. Then why don’t you and your men have something to eat? You must be tired and hungry after your search. I’ll send for you if this slave needs … well, if I want anything further.’
‘Thank you, my Lord. You’re too kind.’
The captain’s way of getting me on my feet consisted of grasping me around the throat, which he could easily do with one massive hand, and yanking me upright. I made a strangulated noise while my feet danced about, looking for the floor. My eyes opened but everything was a blur, slightly tinged with pink.
‘If you don’t stand up,’ the big warrior hissed, ‘you’ll choke.’
I managed to get both feet on the ground. They could just about reach it, but it took some of the pressure off my neck. That felt stiff and sore, even when the hand released it to leave me standing, unsupported, swaying slightly but still upright.
My stomach made an unpleasant sound.
‘I advise you not to throw up in front of Lord Feathered in Black, Yaotl,’ said another voice portentously. ‘You’re in enough trouble already’
I turned my head slowly towards the speaker and forced my eyes to focus on him. My master’s steward, Huitztic the Prick, was squatting a few paces away, his eyes respectfully downcast in our master’s presence. He looked strange, and after a moment I saw why. Partly faded, yellowing bruises covered his arms and legs, and the ear I could see was badly swollen.
I remembered how I had left him, surrounded by a hostile crowd of Tepanecs. ‘You look a bit rough,’ I said. ‘Been in a fight?’
‘Yaotl,’ my master said evenly, ‘shut up.’
As I swivelled my head towards him I heard him admonish his steward. ‘When your advice is needed I will tell you. In the meantime, perhaps you would care to show the captain and h
is men where they can rest, and find them some food. Now, as for you …’
The old man’s high-backed, fur-covered wicker chair had been placed in one of his favourite places, on the raised patio on the roof of his palace, beneath the magnolia tree that his father had planted. From here he could look towards the Sacred Precinct of Tenochtitlan, the Heart of the World, its temples soaring towards the sky just beyond the canal at the front of his palace. He was looking that way now, probably indulging himself with a vision of me being dragged up the steps of a pyramid towards the sacrificial stone at the top.
I squinted painfully, forcing my eyes to focus on his face so that I could try to judge his mood now. To look a great lord in the eyes was the kind of impudence that would normally have got me a severe beating, but I felt as if I had had so many of those lately that it scarcely mattered. The back and front of my skull were still competing over which hurt most, but the bruises the Otomi’s finger had raised on my neck were catching them up fast.
His Lordship was dressed casually, for him, in a pale green cape with a border of shells, a matching breechcloth with golden tassels at its ends and real shells dangling from his ears. A mother-of-pearl lip-plug completed the ensemble. I thought it a little vulgar but I knew he would change if he wanted to go out anywhere and he would almost certainly never wear any of it again. The plumes in his hair were only heron, but they were the longest, whitest heron feathers you could get.
He looked me over slowly. His fingers, long swollen and crippled by arthritis, lay in his lap. He had no tobacco tube or chocolate bowl by him, but the moment he needed either he would have it almost before he could ask. All I wanted then was a drink of water, but I did not expect any graceful serving girl to slip a gourd into my hands at the merest gesture.
‘I don’t suppose,’ he began heavily, ‘that there’s much point in my asking you for an explanation, is there?’
