As I dwelled on the message, I found myself thinking again about the conversation Kindly and I had had during the afternoon. Once more I had the nagging feeling that had come over me just before Nimble’s return to the house in Huexoda, the feeling that I had missed something, something so obvious that Kindly had managed to point it out to me without even realizing it.
Now, away from the old man’s chattering, lying in the dark, alone and with nothing to do, I tried repeating to myself everything he had said to me.
I had it in a moment, the solution to the mystery. I did not know what Hare’s message was, but all of a sudden I knew where it was, and how it was to be delivered. Then, as if some dam had burst in my head, releasing — not before time — a flood of pent-up understanding, I found I had grasped something else: not only what Mother of Light was going to do with the message when she got it, but how vital it was for us to get it to her, and how we were going to do it.
Cursing myself for a fool, I lurched to my feet, shedding leaves and grass as I clambered out of my hollow towards the courtyard wall. I took a deep breath, meaning to call out to Nimble, to tell him to get out of Hare’s house before h was too late. He was in no greater danger than he had been all along, but I now knew that what we were trying to ho here was pointless, a waste of time and potentially of all our lives.
I never did call out. Before I could, I heard what I had been waiting to hear all evening: voices coming from inside the house. One of them at least was shouting.
I threw myself over the gap in the wall, nearly tumbling headlong over the loose rubble on the other side as it shifted under me. After setting off a small but noisy avalanche of broken masonry, I hurtled towards the house. I had no idea what I was going to do or whether I could do anything at all. I had no real weapon, only a sharp piece of obsidian in either hand, picked up from the litter at the back of the house. I had only one thought: to come to my son’s aid even if there was nothing I could do.
Screaming, I raced through the doorway at the back of the house’s only room.
A painful blow caught one of my shins, snagging my leg, and I fell headlong. The earth floor slammed into my chin like a fist. I slid on my belly into the middle of the room, the obsidian chips flying out of my hands as I fell.
For a moment I lay still, in darkness, confused by the blow, only dimly aware that there were men standing around me, and one of them had stopped my charge by the childishly simple trick of tripping me up.
‘Pathetic,’ somebody said. The voice was strangely slurred, as though there were something wrong with the speaker’s mouth. ‘Stand him up. Let’s see if he’s who I hope he is!’
A hand seized the knot of my cloak and yanked at it. The coarse material caught me around the throat, constricting it and burning the skin as I was hauled upright.
‘Who are you, then?’ demanded the man with the slurred voice. ‘Cemiquiztli Yaotl? I do hope so. I’ve waited a long time and taken a lot of trouble to find you.’
‘My son,’ I croaked desperately. ‘Where is he? What have you done with him?’
The answer was a blow to my stomach that had me on my knees, retching into the dirt.
Another voice uttered a cry of triumph: ‘It’s him! It’s the Aztec!’
As my heaves and coughing subsided, I looked up at the man who had felled me. His face wore a delighted grin. There was something odd about the way his cloak fell around his shoulders. It took me a moment to realize that this was because he had lost an arm. He held the surviving limb aloft, its muscles bulging, poised as if to strike me again.
I looked quickly about, taking in the scene around me.
A small fire had been lit in the centre of the room, under the smoke hole. It provided just enough light for me to make out the scene around me.
I almost wept with relief when I saw my son. He was standing up just inside the doorway, loosely held by a warrior. The Texcalan stood just above me. A third warrior stood between me and Nimble, leering down at me with a lopsided grin. His one eye and the slab of flesh that was half his face glistened in the firelight.
I looked up towards the one-armed Texcalan. ‘Why are you here?’ I asked, genuinely mystified. ‘What are this lot to you?’
‘What do you think?’ he rumbled. ‘They told me to help bring you in. Said I’d get a flowery death if I did.’
So that was it. The Texcalan and his dead companion had been promised a new life as part of the morning Sun’s guard of honour, and rebirth as hummingbirds or butterflies, merely for helping track down a runaway slave. It must have seemed a good deal: all they had to do to have their hearts cut out by the Fire Priest was to tell the Otomies where I was going, and Lily had
