I let the other ear go. The man quickly stepped back behind his wife, whimpering in pain. ‘How is it our fault? We weren’t even here.’
‘It’s you they were after!’
‘What? Look, somebody tell us this from the beginning, all right? I told you, we weren’t here.’
‘You’d better ask our landlord, then,’ the woman spat, and, surprisingly, stepped aside.
I walked up to the lone figure in the gateway, wearing what I hoped was an open and friendly expression. He scowled back at me.
‘Look, whatever happened,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry about — well, whatever it was! But you’ll have to tell us…’
‘Friends of yours, were they?’ he snapped.
‘Who?’
‘The men who came and turned this place over last night. Looking for their old pal Yaotl, they said. Tore up every wicker chest in the place, threw people’s belongings in the street, and when my son tried to stop them one of them hit him so hard I had to take him to a doctor this morning. And who’s going to pay for that?’
‘But…’ I stared at him. ‘Looking for me?’
‘They seemed to know you pretty well. Gave a very good description and said they’d tear the walls down if you didn’t turn up.’
The man was on the verge of tears, I noticed, although I did not know whether this was owing to rage, what had happened to his son or the impact on his business.
‘Did they tell you who they were? What did they look like?’
‘I told you — they said they were old friends of yours. They were Aztecs, like you, from their accents. They looked like Warriors, big men — the one who hit my son only used his fist, but I thought he’d killed him! They hadn’t the clothes or the haircuts for warriors, but that’s what they were.’
They were the men who had robbed Hare’s house, I thought, but why were they looking for me, and how did they know my name? A moment later I had the answer to both my questions. I felt my skin turn to ice as the man told me who was coming after me.
‘And the man in charge of them — he was the ugliest brute I’ve ever seen. Half his face cut away and only one eye, and a look about him like he’d kill you just for fun. And there was another one with one arm, and he wasn’t much prettier. I’m telling you, you’re leaving. I’m not having the place broken up on account of the likes of you!’
‘Do you realize who those men are?’
‘Of course I do,’ snapped Kindly. ‘They were the Otomi captain and his little band. And they’ve got that Texcalan with them, the one you were roped to in the marketplace. Obviously they followed us here. Now don’t drop any of that stuff, whatever you do!’
I stumbled after the old man, nearly collapsing under the weight of all the goods we had been able to salvage from our room. Whatever had not been broken or irreparably soiled I had bundled up into a large cape, which I had tied around my forehead in an improvised tumpline. Kindly only carried a drinking-gourd and his staff.
‘But why did you have to tell everybody where we were going?’
He sighed loudly. ‘Because I had to tell them something, didn’t I? They’d never have let us out of the house otherwise. Anyway, I was lying. I’ve no idea where we’re going!’
I stopped in the middle of the street and swore. ‘I thought we were going to find other lodgings.’
‘In the middle of Tetzcoco? You must be joking. Those bastards would find us in no time. Besides, word will have got around. I doubt if the Emperor himself could get a room here with the kind of reputation we’ve got now! I wish you’d choose your friends a bit more carefully, Yaotl.’
He set off on the road towards the nearest suburb, which just happened to be Huexotla, leaving me fuming behind him.
9
‘I’m starting to envy you,’ I told Lily morosely. ‘It’s a nice big cage, and it’s dry, and those maniacs can’t get at you in the middle of the palace — not even they would make it past all the guards.’
Lily scowled at me through the bars. ‘You’re forgetting that I’m likely to be executed in two days’ time! And I can’t see that that expensive Tetzcocan lawyer my father hired is going to do me much good. I’d be better off defending myself!’
Lily’s guard had been replaced with another, who had proved impossible to shift from his post, even for a moment. I had tried distracting him by telling him about the Otomies, since I had thought he might go running to his superiors with a story of rogue Aztec warriors loose in his city. His response had been to look at me with an expression of stony indifference.
Since we could not get rid of the guard, the woman and I talked in whispers, with our heads pressed together like lovers, I or as nearly so as her cage would allow. Even so, there was no I way to be sure we were not being overheard. I did not dare mention our discovery of Hare’s body, the message Kindly, Nimble and I had been trying to locate, or the fact that I had found no sign of the missing ring.
The first words she spoke to me when I squatted in front of the cage had been, ‘Where is it?’ In answer, I had told her instead about the disturbance at our lodgings the night before.
‘You have to find it!’ She gripped one of the bars, her knuckles whitening over it in frustration. ‘What if the Otomies have got it?’
‘They probably won’t even recognize it,’ I said, trying to sound reassuring. I was unsure whether she meant the ring or the message. ‘It’s obvious they weren’t looking for it when they went to the house, anyway.
