I looked at him suspiciously. Before I could voice my doubts, however, he suddenly dropped on one knee, touched the ground with his fingers and put them to his bps.
‘I will eat earth,’ he intoned. ‘Tlaltecuhtli, Lord of the Earth, will bear witness that I will do as I say. So will the Giver of Life, the Lord of the Near and the Nigh.’ He stood up again. ‘Will that satisfy you? I will ask my son for your lives, and your mistress’s. Of course, I can make no promise about his reply.’
‘It will satisfy me… my lord,’ I said. I held out the hand with the ring in it, ignoring an angry noise from Kindly.
‘Thank you.’ He looked fondly at the ring as it rested in his hand. ‘Of course,’ he murmured as though to himself, ‘I can’t take it myself. Nor can Mother of Light. It has to be someone who isn’t known to him or his spies.’
‘I’ll go,’ said Nimble.
The King looked up at him, frowning, as though he suspected a trick.
‘Wait a moment,’ I said. ‘Let’s think about this.’
‘I’ve thought about it, Father. Kindly’s too old and too slow. Maize Ear’s spies know you, and they’ll have you in a cage before you get near Tetzcotzinco. I’m the only one who can do it.’
‘What about your leg?’ I asked dubiously. ‘You’d have to go all the way to Tetzcotzinco. Can you manage that?’ Nimble’s wound looked healthy enough, and very little blood had soaked through his dressing, but it was a long journey. It might take half a day even for someone who was not already limping slightly.
‘I’ll have to,’ the young man said. ‘My Lord,’ he added, turning to the King, ‘I will eat earth too.’
Hungry Child looked at the ring again, seemingly reluctant to part with it again after having it in his hand for so short a time. Then, suddenly, he handed it over.
‘It’s a simple message you have to convey,’ he said. ‘You let it be known that the ring’s owner will be calling on his son this evening.’ He took the ring from me and passed it to my son. ‘You’d better go out the way you came in, and mind no one sees you!’
As Nimble vanished into the darkness. Kindly asked: ‘What’s the quickest way into the palace?’
‘Why do you want to know that?’ asked Hungry Child.
‘Because my daughter’s on trial there. The least I can do is go and watch!’
‘I don’t think you should. It could be dangerous for anyone associated with her.’
‘So what? Yaotl here kindly pointed out to me once that she’s all I’ve got left. Besides, most of my wealth has gone on paying that lawyer I found for her. I’d like to know if I’m getting my money’s worth.’
‘There may be a problem with that,’ I warned him.
‘What do you mean?’
Shamefacedly, I mumbled my way through an account of my last meeting with Obsidian Tongue, when the lawyer had been so enraged that Hunter had to pull him off me.
Kindly groaned. ‘Oh, wonderful! That’s the last thing we need! In that case we’d both better get over there now, Yaotl. You’re a fast talker, aren’t you? Know any law? You may be needed!’
‘If you really intend going into the palace,’ Hungry Child told us, ‘then Mother of Light will show you how. But you ought to think again. There’s nothing you can do.’
He was right, of course, and Kindly and I both knew it. But neither of us could stomach the prospect of waiting, sequestered inside this eerily empty palace, with only the ghosts of Prince of Willows and the Lady of Tollan for company, while the old King went about his mysterious business and his son’s judges mulled over Lily’s fate. And however fervently I hoped we had done enough to save her, I knew that if she was condemned by the court, then there was nothing between her and death except the whim of the young King.
Mother of Light showed us the way into Maize Ear’s palace. The arrangement was as ingenious as anyone could have wished for. A short underground passageway led straight into the small room I had seen her in two days before. At its end, a stone slab was set into its roof. As this pivoted above our heads, I realized that the King’s own chair was mounted on it. It was just as well, I thought, as Kindly and I clambered up into the room, that Maize Ear spent so much time in Tetzcotzinco.
The passageway outside was empty. I had worried briefly that Rattlesnake’s men might have been watching it, since, of course, I had told their chief where I had had my meeting with Mother of Light. It gave me a small feeling of satisfaction to reflect that the fight at Hare’s house had probably left them with more pressing things to worry about.
Mother of Light left us there with directions to the hall where we would find the Supreme Legal Council in session.
16
The Supreme Legal Council of the Kingdom of Tetzcoco met in the very heart of the royal palace. It was approached across a paved courtyard large enough to be called a plaza. Looking at the broad square of sky overhead, I could see the summit of a pyramid and a wisp of smoke drifting away from its temple fire. I wondered how many of the people I saw in front of me would glance up at it and see in it, as I did, a reminder that however many clever words might be exchanged in a place like this, it was the arbitrary will of the gods that would prevail in the end. Then I looked at the people more closely and decided that most of them were too wrapped up in their own immediate concerns to trouble
