‘We’re all going,’ Lily said crisply. ‘You, my father and me.’ The boat rocked alarmingly as she stepped into the stern and picked up a long pole, which she used to push us away from the wooden pilings at the water’s edge. She handled the canoe naturally, driving the pole into the bottom of the canal and letting it trail in our wake. It reminded me how much of a breed apart the Pochteca, the long-distance merchants, were. All Aztec girls went to school, but after that most women concerned themselves with cooking, cleaning, weaving and raising children. Among the merchants, whose menfolk were often away for years at a time, other skills were often needed. Lily had obviously found it useful to be able to manoeuvre her own canoe, presumably when she was short-handed and merchandise had to be got to the market. The only surviving adult male in her household, apart from slaves, was her father, who was obviously too decrepit to be of much use. He was usually, in my experience of him, too drunk as well. Drinking sacred wine was a privilege allowed men and women over seventy who had grandchildren, and Kindly exploited it to the full.
‘Where?’
‘Tetzcoco. Mexico’s too dangerous for you now. And we’ve got some business there, so you’ll have to come with us.’
I frowned. ‘I’m not sure I want to go to Tetzcoco. That’s on the eastern shore of the lake. I thought I might try to look for Nimble, but he’d most likely have gone West, towards Tarascan country, where he grew up…’
Lily stopped poling the canoe for a moment to lean over me. She held her face so close to mine that I could smell her: she had the fresh, earthy scent of the soap-tree root she washed with, overlaid by the yellow axin she used to protect her skin from the cold.
‘Let’s get one thing clear, Yaod. I may have bought you — at a grossly extravagant price, I must say — because I thought it was the least I could do after you came back to save us from Lord Feathered in Black. That doesn’t alter the fact that you are now my slave and will bloody well go where I tell you!’
‘But…’
She took no notice of my protest. ‘Were going to be out on the open lake for a while. It’ll get cold. There’s a clean cloak in front of you. Put it on before you freeze to death.’
4
While her father dozed in the bow, Lily threaded her way through the network of crowded canals that crisscrossed Tlatelolco, often changing direction but generally taking us to the North. She seemed to be going out of her way to avoid the area around her home parish, Pochtlan. I wondered if she was afraid my former master might come looking for her once he had heard what she had done. It seemed likely.
‘If the weather holds, we should make it by nightfall. Otherwise we’ll have to stop in Tepeyac. Of course, it would help if everyone got out of my way! Who taught you to handle a paddle?’ The last words were hurled at a young man trying to put his canoe about in a waterway about as broad as his vessel was long. He appeared harassed even before Lily shouted at him. He had the plain breechcloth and tonsured hair of one who had never taken an enemy warrior captive and never would, the lowliest of commoners, and his look as he saw the ferocious woman bearing down on him was one of pure terror.
‘Go on, move that thing!’ she cried. Obediently he began churning the water with his paddle, and his canoe shot forward so fast that its bow ground into the side of the canal with enough force to split the wood. Lily’s boat coasted past his with barely a finger’s breadth between them.
‘Serve him right if he sinks.’‘Why Tetzcoco?’ I asked over the sounding of frantic bailing behind us.
‘I told you, we’ve business there.’
‘Funny business, though.’ Kindly had not been asleep after all. His filmy eyes regarded me briefly before closing once more. ‘Mysterious, even. Might appeal to you, Yaod.’
‘You’re not getting me looking for any more of your stolen property, not after what happened last time,’ I said, before looking nervously around at Lily and adding: ‘That’s not what you had in mind, is it?’
‘Nothing like that,’ the woman said, adding after a brief hesitation: ‘It’s just a message. A fellow merchant named Hare wants it given to someone at the royal palace in Tetzcoco. All I have to do is put him in touch with the recipient.’
‘You’re a go-between,’ I said. ‘Why do they need you, though?’
‘Hare doesn’t know anyone in Tetzcoco. He’s been living and trading with the Mayans and spent most of the last thirty years at the coast, near Cozumel.’ Cozumel was a large island just off the shore of the great Divine Sea, far to the East.
‘Not surprising if he needs help finding his way around after all that time among barbarians,’ Kindly remarked. ‘He’s probably forgotten how to behave in polite society, and society doesn’t come more polite than in Tetzcoco!’
‘What’s the message?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. I gather it’s in Mayan — only someone who speaks Mayan can make sense of it, I was told. But apparently the woman it’s intended for doesn’t have a problem with that.’ Who’s the woman?’
‘Her name’s Tonalna.’ The name meant ‘Mother of Light’, but by itself that told me nothing about the person who bore it - I don’t know much about her. My contacts in Tetzcoco put us in touch with each other. I’ve only met her once, when she gave me Hare’s fee for handing over the message. She was a royal concubine, back in the time of the last King, and that’s about all I know. As for what she wants with some piece of barbarian nonsense, and how she’s going to make sense of it when she’s
