‘Just lost a bit of weight, that’s all. I’d feel better if someone could untie me from this thing.’
Lion looked at the ground. ‘I wish I could. It would just get j us both into more trouble, though. Look, I’m sorry…’
‘You keep saying that. It’s starting to sound boring.’
His head snapped up and his eyes flared. I saw his hands make fists as he fought to control his sudden burst of temper. ‘Now, listen, you little…’
That was better. That was the Lion I knew. Suddenly I felt almost cheerful, as if I had not just been bought by someone intent on using me for ritual target practice.
‘All right,’ I said soothingly. ‘Calm down.’ I prodded the man who had bought me with my foot. He was still lying face down in front of me, groaning. No doubt he was feeling sorry for himself, having just been pressed into the dirt by the j weight of three slaves. ‘That’s the man who bought me, but he was acting as someone’s agent. Why don’t you pick him up and ask him what was so special about us that he was prepared to pay so much?’
He did as I suggested. ‘It’s a good question,’ he said as he dragged the wretched man to his feet. ‘It beats me why anyone would have given a cocoa bean for you, even if you didn’t look as if a house had fallen on you! And what’s that smell?’
I ignored his question and concentrated on the man trying to stand in front of me. With his cloak ripped, his palms raw from trying to break his fall and his eyes rolling dazedly, it was easy to forget that the man in front of me was, if not my owner, then very obviously someone whose standing was a good deal higher than my own. Even though I was the one still lashed to a pole with two enemy captives, all of us doomed to a ghastly fate, I found myself interrogating him.
‘Who are you working for? Who’s my new owner?’
The man blinked stupidly at me. I frowned at him, suddenly struck once again by the feeling that I had seen him somewhere before.
My brother seized his shoulder and shook him roughly. ‘Come on, answer the question! I want to know who put up all that money!’
‘Put him down and move away,’ said a stern voice from behind me. I could not turn around to look at the speaker, but I could guess what was happening. The men guarding the gateway, finding themselves outnumbered by Lion’s bodyguards, had gone for reinforcements.
My brother was unmoved. ‘Who are you?’ he asked coolly, looking past me.
‘Market police. Let that man go, or you’ll answer to the judges for it. The court is sitting over there.’ I could not see, but I assumed the man was gesturing towards the large, low building where the marketplace’s court was permanently in session. I hoped my brother would control himself: justice here tended to be swift and brutal. ‘And I want you to tell me what you’re doing with these slaves. They’re not your property.’
‘Whose are they, then?’
And then, before the policeman could reply to my brother’s insolent question, I saw the answer, sweeping through the entrance to Tlatelolco marketplace in a cloud of filth: obscen- nies pouring from the mouth of a middle-aged woman, plainly although smardy dressed in a blouse and skirt of finely woven maguey fibre. Her long, silver-streaked hair was conservatively styled, divided and bound at the nape of the neck with both ends sticking up in front. In her agitation these bobbed about like an ant’s feelers.
I could have told she was of the merchant class by her dress — too fine for a commoner, but not made of the cotton that was reserved for the families of lords and mighty warriors. I did not need the clue, however.
‘Lily?’ I said wonderingly.
Her handsome face was distorted in fury. ‘One hundred and five large cloaks! When I get my hands on that bonehead, he’ll wish he’d been eaten alive by rats! I’m going to skin him for this! One hundred and five!’
My brother turned and, along with the rest of us, gazed at her in amazement as he followed her progress through the gateway. Then he looked at the man he and I had just been questioning and did what, for him, was a rare thing: he smiled.
‘I suppose she must mean you,’ he said drily.
The man moaned and sagged and would have fallen had Lion not grabbed him. I knew now who he was and where I had seen him before: he was Chihuicoyo, a household slave belonging to Lily and Kindly, whose name meant ‘Partridge’.
But now I could not see Partridge, my brother, Lily or anything else, because my eyes had misted over. A strange, bubbling noise was coming from the back of my throat, without my willing it, and then it burst out of my mouth in great, whooping cries, and I was laughing and weeping at the same time.
It took Lily a few moments to notice us. At first she merely stared, abruptly speechless, with her hands on her hips, before compressing her lips into a thin fine and striding determinedly towards us.
‘Lily,’ I croaked.
She seemed surprisingly unenthusiastic to see me, considering what I had cost her. Ignoring me, she turned to her slave.
‘What’s the meaning of this? What did you think you were doing? Are you completely insane? I’ll make you eat your own breechcloth for this, you halfwitted excuse for a flea on a coyote’s backside, you!’
‘But… you said you’d pay any price…’
‘I didn’t mean that much!’ she shrieked illogically.
‘What could I do?’ wailed Partridge. ‘There was this warrior bidding against me! He said he was going to have them all disembowelled!’
‘Warrior? What warrior?’
That was when she noticed my brother for the first time. She took a step backward, away from him, and hissed: ‘What
