Hungry Child gave a wry chuckle. ‘I knew I would end up playing a trick like that once too often! But it’s so easy to do, when everyone thinks you’ll drop dead from shortness of breath if you have to take another step, so they don’t bother watching you… Go on.’
‘Then I worked out how you and Mother of Light were able to come and go without even Maize Ear’s spies knowing about it. It’s obvious that you sneak in and out quickly, and I’d guess that apart from your occasional sessions among the poets and musicians—’ I looked at Mother of Light ‘—you only do it when you have to and try to be as quick as possible. But that wouldn’t be enough. You had to have some secret exit that came out in a place where no one would look-— such as this palace. And that meant two things. I knew you must know the royal palace intimately — better than anyone else. And if you were using this place, it meant you were prepared to defy your own edict forbidding anyone from coming here.’
‘And who else would dare defy such an order, except the man who gave it?’ He sighed. ‘You were right, obviously. Very clever! You have tracked us down to this empty palace that belonged to my favourite son — fitting, don’t you think, for the man who once ruled all the Acolhuans, and not a few other people too, to have to spend his days surrounded by reminders of his most painful loss?’ He glanced at Mother of Light. She returned his look, and I had the feeling that something passed between them then that was beyond my understanding: not just a shared appreciation of his troubles, but something else, a secret. ‘So now, as you say, I am reduced to sneaking in and out of my own palace, while Mother of Light snatches what opportunities she can to preserve my songs and poems from withering away entirely. Can you imagine anything worse for a poet than finding his work has died even before he has?’
‘It was your choice — my lord.’
Kindly added bluntly, between mouthfuls of tortilla: ‘Yes, and while we’re on the subject — you’re supposed to be dead. Why aren’t you?’
Nimble spoke up too. ‘I was told you’d died at your retreat in Tetzcotzinco. Someone described your funeral to me.’
Hungry Child shut his eyes. ‘Oh, my funeral. Yes. I heard it was magnificent, and about all the slaves and concubines they killed to keep me company in the Land of the Dead. I wish they hadn’t, it was such a waste, since I hadn’t gone there. Do you suppose they’ll be waiting for me when…? Perhaps not.’ He opened his eyes, glanced quickly at Mother of Light again, and gave a mock grimace. ‘But as for why-— there were things I wanted to do that would have been difficult had I still been King of Tetzcoco. And there was no future in it anyway. If only Maize Ear and Black Flower realized that, they might stop squabbling over the throne!’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
He turned those dark, troubled eyes on me and answered me with a bleak certainty that defied me to doubt him, however much I wanted to.
‘I mean our World is dying.’
I heard my son gasp. ‘You mean the Sun is coming to an end?’ he cried fearfully. I looked at him in surprise, and then recalled that, as the youngest, he would have the most to lose if the present age of the World were to run its course soon.
We believed the World had been created and destroyed four times. Each succeeding age was named after the birthday of the Sun that shone upon it. The Sun of our fifth age was called Four Motion, and prophesied to end in the way that its name implied: with earthquakes that would shatter the land and cleanse it of all life.
‘No, I don’t mean that,’ the old King said, but there was nothing reassuring about his tone. ‘The land will remain, but what will perish is the World of the Aztecs, of the Tepanecs, of the Acolhuans — everything we know and value. I heard of all the portents, saw what was in the heavens, looked at the calendars. Something is coming — not this year, or next, but perhaps a little after that-— that will sweep it all away.’
I felt a chill, realizing that I had heard similar things before, from the lips of another ruler. ‘My lord, do you mean the strangers from beyond the Divine Sea? The pale-skinned men with beards? Montezuma told me of them. He knows they are coming. He believes they may be gods, come to call him to account.’
‘Montezuma? Ha!’ Hungry Child screwed up his face in an expression of disgust at the mention of the Aztec Emperor’s name. ‘What does he know? Who do you think told him how to interpret the omens to begin with? He fancies himself as a seer, you know, but still he came to me to learn what they meant. And then, when I told him, he wouldn’t believe me! Did you know I bet him my kingdom against three turkey hens that I was right?’
‘How were you going to know who’d won?’ Kindly asked drily.
‘We played a ball-game match, so that the gods would tell us through the outcome. Best out of three. I won.’ He scowled in mock outrage. ‘I never did see those turkeys, though!’
Nimble asked: ‘What will they do, these strangers?’
‘I don’t know,’ the King said frankly. ‘But there are rumours. There are islands out there, on the Divine Sea, and there are — or were-— people living on them.
