‘Things were a bit more lax then. There isn’t even a record of Mother of Light herself, let alone her father.’
By the time I walked down the steps at the palace entrance into the precinct outside, blinking and squinting against the afternoon sunlight, I was in far worse trouble than I had been in even that morning. Added to the dangers I now faced — death at the hands of the Otomies, if I could find them, torture and death at the hands of Rattlesnake and his fellows — was fear of what Lily would undergo if I failed to find both Hare’s message and Mother of Light — to say nothing of the nameless but apparently dreadful consequences if I could not recover the ring. I knew all this, but it was hard, even so, to resist a feeling of exhilaration at being out in the open again. I had been in the palace only since daybreak, but it had felt like a lifetime.
The forecourt of the palace was crowded. In most cases it was easy to tell why the people were there just by looking at them: the man with his arms buried in the folds of a voluminous cotton cape was an envoy, come to deliver a message or present his credentials to the King’s court. The warrior, identifiable by his piled-up hair, the red ochre smeared on his cheeks and temples, his gaily embroidered cloak and breech- cloth and the jewels in his earlobes and lower lip, was surely here to claim some privilege awarded him for his success in the field, a gift or a place at a banquet. The plainly dressed man in a short cloak of maguey fibre and an unornamented breech- cloth, with his hair neatly trimmed and his clothes and skin still lightly damp from being washed, was probably a party in a court case.
Less immediately obvious to me were the intentions of a few men whose clothes and hairstyles, while keeping strictly within the rules prescribing what was allowed to commoners, somehow distinguished them from those around them. Their clothes were made of the same material as any commoners’, but it was thicker and cut better, the hems on the cloaks straighter and their designs sharper and more vivid, while their wearers’ hairstyles, although plain, were as immaculate as any pleasure girl’s. I was puzzling over who these men might be, and noting that they seemed to talk only to one another and to ignore everybody else, when suddenly one of them looked over his shoulder at me and Hunter, detached himself from the group and all but ran in our direction.
By the time he reached us, he was so indignant that little bubbles of spit were forming and bursting at the corners of his mouth.
‘You!’ he shouted at me. ‘Why, you miserable slave! You you…’ he seemed to have difficulty expressing himself, which was unfortunate considering his profession.
‘Hello, Obsidian Tongue,’ I said pleasantly.
‘You know this person?’ Hunter asked.
‘I’ll tear your liver out for what you’ve done!’ The lawyer was almost weeping with rage. ‘You’ve made a fool of me — after what you made me do, they may never let me back into a court again! I could be ruined, you… you…’
‘“Slave”?’ I suggested. ‘Look, I’m sorry I got found out, but believe me it wasn’t pleasant for me either, and anyway, I didn’t make you do it…’
That was as far as I got before the man threw himself at me. He was no sort of a fighter, and the wild blows he flung at my face had no force behind them and mostly swished through empty air. As I leaped backwards out of the way, Hunter caught him from behind and lifted him bodily off the ground.
‘Oh, no, you don’t!’ the warrior said, grunting with the effort of holding his captive aloft.
‘Let go of me! I’m going to kill that… that…’
I grinned. ‘There’s a law against that, isn’t there?’
‘There is,’ Hunter confirmed. ‘You’d end up having to take his place, friend. Now, are you going to be a good boy, so I can put you down?’
‘All right!’ Obsidian Tongue snapped. ‘But you haven’t heard the last of me. I’m not the forgiving kind, I warn you!’ Hunter released him. He glared at us both, drew his cloak around himself and stalked off.
‘Now, what was all that about?’ the warrior asked as we watched him rejoin his colleagues. Several of them had their hands to their mouths in an unsuccessful effort to hide their mirth.
‘He’s upset because he vouched for me as a lawyer, and I got caught.’
‘Oh, right.’ Hunter uttered a short laugh. ‘He’s a fool, then. If he wants you dead he only has to wait a couple of days. Once your mistress is executed he can probably do what he likes to you — so long as we haven’t killed you first!’
So I had made another enemy. I sighed. It was not as if they had ever been in short supply.
The marketplace beyond the palace walls was, as ever, even more crowded than-the forecourt we had left, and the crowd was more varied, its members less obviously purposeful. All marketplaces attracted a great many people who seemed to have no business there except to stare at the merchandise on offer and the people haggling over it. Today there seemed to be more of this sort of person than usual, wandering aimlessly about and getting in the way as Hunter and I tried to get to the seafood stands.
‘What’s the matter with all these people?’ I cried impatiently. ‘They’re not all spies, surely? Even in this city?’
‘I’m going to start shoving them out of the way in a moment,’ Hunter muttered. ‘I still don’t understand why you thought she might be in this part of the marketplace rather than any other.’ He had been for starting right by the palace gateway, but I had pointed out that for the two of us to try to search
