the doorway and doubtless close to one of her many bolt holes.
“I found something that might interest you,” she said without looking as I slid in across from her.
“Any words of the wise woman are as spring rain on my ears.” She cackled and pressed her hand into mine beneath the table. I felt her make the sign for gold.
Without comment I withdrew my hand, and slid out my other hand bearing three gold pieces beneath the table.
Mother’s head sank upon her withered breasts and she seemed to drop into sleep, or a trance. I waited as she rocked back and forth and her breathing steadied.
“One of those has been found,” she mumbled in her reedy trance voice.
My lips barely moved. “Ransomed?”
“Dead, quite dead,” she keened softly. “In the street of warehouses behind the English Docks. A man of most excellent family, of the Watermonster Clan, and most excellent prospects.”
Meaning he was well-born, but otherwise unremarkable, and had reached at least middle age without accomplishing anything of note.
“How was he found?” I asked thinking of the huetlacoatl.
“By the smell,” Mother Jaguar intoned. “The smell of those who die slowly. His belly had been slit, and days ago.”
“Sacrificed?”
“Who knows? Who knows?” Mother Jaguar wailed softly. Then she dropped her voice even lower.
“Others came and took him even before the Death Master arrived. Shadows fell and the poor man vanished forever.”
“Forever,” she repeated even more faintly and pitched forward onto the table, seemingly unconscious.
“Thank you for your wisdom, Mother.” I said loudly enough to be overheard. And, rising from the table, I placed three more gold coins upon it.
I was even more nervous when I left the Vulture’s Rest than I had been when I went in. I didn’t have to ask who the shadows were, or who had taken the body, or why the Emperor’s Shadow was interested in the death of a very minor noble. The slit belly implied he had been sacrificed.
I thought briefly of Lady Three flower and what had likely become of her friend. Then I thought in more detail about the effect this was likely to have on my career and longevity. Being interested in anything that involved the Emperor’s Shadow was not a positive career move, to say nothing of its possible effect on your lifespan. I suspected the only reason Mother Jaguar had the courage to tell me about it was that the story was all over English Town. I just hoped my interest in the matter wasn’t.
I considered my options and the more I thought about them, the more convinced I became that this was a time to spend a quiet evening at home. That wouldn’t help me if the Emperor’s Shadow came after me, but it was the last place my other enemies would expect to find me at this time of night. Besides, if I decided a sudden retirement to the country was in my best interest, I’d need items that were at home, such as gold and a certain casket that sat near my bed.
Lady Three flower was waiting for me in my chambers. She kept her mantle over her face but I knew her by her carriage.
“Is there news of Four flower?” she asked without preamble.
“None, my lady.”
“I had heard,” she stopped and gathered herself. “I had heard that someone was found today. Someone who had been taken.”
“It was not her, Lady. It was a man.” I debated telling her how he had been found-or what the implications were for Four flower.
She sighed deeply, as if a weight had been lifted from her. “There is one other matter,” she said. “My lord husband found out about my visit to you. He is extremely angry, and he may seek vengeance on you.”
So that was it!“He already has, lady.” My smile was one part irony and one part relief.
She cocked an eyebrow. “I take it he was not successful?”
“Let’s say he caused me a certain amount of uncertainty, cost me the price of a new cloak, and probably the out-of-pocket cost of a couple of back-alley thugs, but overall it was little enough.”
“Nevertheless, I shall repay you,” she said, reaching beneath her mantle.
There was something in the way she moved that made me reach out and jerk the mantle from her face.
One eye was purple black and nearly swollen shut. There were livid spots on her neck where someone’s fingers had dug into her pale flesh.
“I think,” I said slowly, “I would rather be recompensed of your lord husband.”
Her chin came up and her dark eyes flashed. “You would see me shamed, then. Does it please you?
Does it excite you?” With a jerk she loosened the pin at her shoulder and her mantle and dress cascaded to the floor. “Here. Would you like to see all of what my lord husband did to me?”
I averted my eyes but I still had a glimpse of matronly hips and full breasts, the brown nipples crisscrossed with lash marks. There were other lash marks on her flat stomach and down the sides of her thighs. “I’m sorry.”
“What is between a man and wife is no business of anyone else, especially not a clanless brigand,” she said, stooping to gather her garments. There was a rustle as she replaced them. “You have served me and I have paid you. Now it is at an end between us.”
Even if I had my full clan rank Three flower would have been too proud to accept help.
Besides, I recognized bitterly, she was right. She knew the risk she ran in coming to me in the first place and so did I. She had been caught and paid the price. It was not my affair.
The tequila pot was empty, so I slept badly that night.
“Ah, Lucky my boy,” Uncle Tlaloc rumbled when I showed up at the Hummingbird’s Palace the next afternoon. “We have a request for the pleasure of your company.” My stomach clinched at the words.
“A high-born lady, I hope.” At least he hadn’t used the nephew routine, so how bad could it be?
Uncle sighed gustily. “Nothing so romantic, I am afraid. This is from a priest-of sorts.” He caught my look. “Oh, not one of your relatives, I can assure you,” he said, holding up a flipperlike hand. “At least not one close enough to claim the relationship, but with the way you nobles intermarry, who can say?”
I cocked an eyebrow at my mentor and employer.
“I do not know why,” Uncle said. “He simply asked, very politely, to see you.” Then he reached out and took a sip from his skull mug. “Life is so charmingly full of surprises, is it not?”
Personally my life had been way too full of surprises recently, and none of them pleasant. But I smiled and took my leave as if Uncle had done me the greatest of favors. The first rule in this game is never let them see you sweat. The second rule is never let them see you bleed.
The Cloud Villas were on the other side of the city, so I took a water taxi for the first part of the trip, and then a cable car up into the hills. Once, a long time ago, the area had been a suburb, a pleasant retreat beyond the city walls for nobles seeking refuge from the heat and insects of summer. Then, as the Empire tightened its grip and clan warfare was sublimated into other channels, the wealthy and noble began to live here year around. Now those seeking a summer refuge used the distant mountains, only a few hours away by steam train. Proximity to the Great Plaza and the invention of air-conditioning had drawn the nobles back to their compounds and the wealthy had found it more convenient to live closer to their businesses. So the neighborhood had filled up with smaller houses and less important residents and the big houses had been divided into apartments or put to other uses.
The temple had started life as a nobleman’s mansion, or more likely two or three adjacent mansions. It had been knitted together with a glazed brick exterior, brilliant bloodred around the bottom and sunburst yellow on top. There was an elaborate frieze about two-thirds of the way up the side and the wall was subtly shaded to represent a stepped pyramid rather than a flat surface. A set of four broad stone steps led up to the recessed space in front of the door, flanked by two life-size carvings. The two muscular servants in feathered cloaks who stood by the oversized carved doors bore no weapons, but they were guards nonetheless.
The place looked like a child’s picture of a temple. Awesome and splendid, but overdone. I’d seen worse, such as the Whore’s Temple to Tlazolteotl, down in English Town, but this place spoke of dark old gods put to bright new uses in a way I found unsettling.
A temple virgin guided me from the door, down a maze of halls and up a flight of inside stairs to a rooftop
