I had just debarked from a water taxi and gone perhaps two streets back toward the Hummingbird’s Palace when I realized I was being followed. A single man, far enough back not to be obvious and no apparent threat. I loosened my sword in its scabbard under the cover of adjusting my cloak and continued on without breaking stride.
It could be I was simply being shadowed for some reason, I told myself. After all, no one would risk Uncle Tlaloc’s wrath by attacking me while I was about his business.Yeah, right.
I made two blocks more when there was a low whistle from behind me and three more men glided out of the darkness. All were stubby, thick-set, and muffled in coarse black cloaks. Gray turbans were tied about their heads and adjusted to hide their faces and painted to look like death-heads.
I turned to face the one to my left, fumbling under my cloak as if for my sword. The man hung back and our eyes locked. I sensed rather than heard his companions rushing me.
At just the proper moment I thrust backward through my cloak and into the body of the man behind.
Then I sidestepped, slashed at the man on my right. That made him jump back and left me free to concentrate on the one to my left for just a split second. A quick upward slash and I felt my blade bite flesh and scrape along bone. He grasped his arm and reeled away while I turned to take on the man on my right as he closed in, sword held hilt low for a finishing thrust.
With a single motion, I swept my cloak off and tossed it at his head, sidestepping toward him as I moved.
He dodged away from the cloak, but he was still off balance when I stepped in and split his skull.
I turned to put my back to the wall and looked around. The one with the arm wound was pattering off down the street. The one with the split skull was dead and the third man would soon join him. Now he was rolling on the ground and clutching his belly. My follower, the one who had whistled, had disappeared.
I was breathing hard, and my hands were shaking so badly I could hardly resheathe my sword.Damn!
And that was my second-best cloak. The blood had soaked into the featherwork and there was no way to get it clean. I left it behind as a calling card and, with a final look up and down the streets, hurried off to the Hummingbird’s Palace. Uncle Tlaloc doesn’t like it when a messenger is late, and it takes more than an attack by three men to deflect his displeasure.
After delivering my report to Uncle Tlaloc, I sat in the bar at the Hummingbird’s Palace, sipping snow wine and keeping my back to the wall while I tried to figure out my next move.
Uncle Tlaloc had been much amused and mildly interested by my adventure with the Silver Skulls. I was much less amused and a lot more interested. Obviously, someone wanted me dead even more than usual.
Badly enough to hire one of English Town’s strong-arm gangs to try to take me out. But who? Who had I seriously annoyed recently? Three flower? Unlikely. Certainly this wasn’t connected to my errand for Uncle Tlaloc.
And anyway I couldn’t imagine anyone in English Town setting the Silver Skulls on me. They were the best- known of the muscle gangs, but the local opinion was they were much better at making threats and breaking knees than killing people. Which implied that my enemy was someone with more money than knowledge. Which brought me back to Lady Three flower, but that was ridiculous.
The Emperor’s Shadow? Even more ridiculous. If they wanted me dead, I’d be dead. It would be an accident, a fair duel, the work of mysterious unknowns, or perhaps at the hands of the Death Master, but it would not be done by a bunch like the Silver Skulls. A warning from the Emperor’s Shadow then? No, that was too paranoid even for English Town.
The one thing I was sure of was that I didn’t like all this attention. Not only would I have to watch my back with more than usual care, but I’d probably have to pay wergild to the Silver Skulls for the men I had killed. And I’d have to replace my feathered cloak.
I sipped my wine and thought about my tailor for a while. Certainly a more pleasant subject than the Emperor’s Shadow, or the Silver Skulls.
I was wandering the streets through a dark, starless night. Disease spirits floated through the air, brushing by me as they passed.
A dark alley filled with rapid, delicate noise. A blue hummingbird was fighting with a black butterfly. The noise of battle grew louder and louder. I ran away.
Then a rubber ball came bouncing toward me. I was about to hit it with my hip, the way I would try to play the sacred ball game as a boy. The ball suddenly stopped bouncing.
It wasn’t a ball anymore. It was Smoke’s skinless head.
“Who are you disappointing this time, Lucky?” it asked.
And a voice said, “Lucky, over here!” I knew that voice. All too well.
I found myself in the neighborhood where I grew up, where I am forbidden ever to return.
Turning to look, I saw Twoocelot. She was standing in the doorway of a rotting Frog-style hut. She wore a bride’s dress, but her lips were painted black like a prostitute’s.
“Lucky, where have you been all these years?” She asked. Her eyes were so much friendlier than her older sister’s.
I tried hard to politely look away. “You know. I know. We’re not supposed to talk about it.”
“Am I so horrible? Do you prefer my sister Three flower?”
“No.”
She stepped close to me. There was something wrong with her face. Her skin hung slack, like a limp mask.
“Why do you look at me like that? Am I so ugly?” She grabbed a handful of the skin hanging from her face, pulled and tore it away. Underneath was her sister, Three flower.
“You miss the old days, and your old life, don’t you?” She sneered. “You wish that you could have been a gentleman, instead of a thug!”
“I am what the Gods made me to be.” I turned to go.
“Lucky,” her soft voice called. Something about it stopped me in my tracks. I thought my heart was going to explode. Against my will, I looked over my shoulder at Three flower.
“Are you really? Do the Gods make us, or do we make ourselves?” Her skin rippled, became blotchy and bloated. Flesh-eating worms emerged like long pimples and ate away her face; except for her teeth, which grew long and rearranged themselves until she had the face of a huetlacoatl.
The next day started in the same way as the day before-which is to say late in the afternoon in a fog of leftover alcohol. No visit from Three flower, of course. I waited until my reflexes were back together, even if my head wasn’t, before I ventured out. Between the padded cotton tunic and the light mail shirt over it, a regular tunic over that, and a rain cloak on top of it all, I was seriously overdressed for the wet season, but I still felt better for it.
I stepped out of my building with all my senses on full alert. The way was thronged. There were overdressed merchants with retinues like nobles, too-well-dressed individuals whose professions weren’t immediately apparent but obviously unsavory. There were slaves staggering under burdens, house servants whose tunics clashed with each other and the brightly tiled walls of the houses. On the corner a vendor was hawking fruit juices from a cart. All perfectly normal and all guaranteed to put my nerves on edge this day.
I moved along at a leisurely amble with my stomach going tight every time someone moved past me or I passed the mouth of an alley. I had gone two blocks like this when someone called my name.
“Hsst. Sir Lucky.” Beside me was a boy perhaps ten years old wearing a dirty yellow tunic that marked him as someone’s not-too-important house servant.
“I know someone who’s got something for you,” he hissed without moving his lips. His eyes were darting around and his head swiveled from side to side as if looking for eavesdroppers. Obviously he was enjoying this.
I wasn’t, so I gave him my best supercilious stare. “Who might that be?”
“Oh, a beautiful lady who misses your company.” The line was the standard panderer’s come-on but he flashed a sign with the hand hidden between our bodies. The sign of the jaguar.
“Not in the market,” I said gruffly. “Go away.” I raised my hand as if to strike him and he grinned and vanished into crowd. I resumed my leisurely pace and at the next corner I turned right and headed for the market.
The gates were closed by the time I got there, but Mother Jaguar wasn’t hard to find. There is a dive called the Vulture’s Rest on the street of third-rate wine shops and fourth-rate brothels that runs along the market wall near where Mother Jaguar has her divining business. As usual, Mother was in a tiny nook in the back, well hidden from
