‘Mother of Light wouldn’t be interested in cocoa,’ the woman confirmed absently.
‘No. Mayans, yes, and the things that have been happening in their country lately… But as for why we’re being taken to Tetzcotzinco, Lily, I wish I knew.’ I shuddered involuntarily. I had been summoned before an Emperor on more than one occasion, and it had never been a happy experience. On the other hand, Montezuma had never sent a litter to fetch me. It seemed an odd way for a King to treat someone he was about to punish.
I tried not to think about the possibility that Nimble might have succeeded in his mission, that Maize Ear had seen and recognized his father’s jewel and that he had agreed to reprieve us. It was too much to hope for. In all likelihood my son had been caught and driven away from Tetzcotzinco by the guards who, if the rest of Maize Ear’s domain was anything to go by, must be swarming around his retreat like wasps around a plate of honey. Besides, if I knew anything about Kings, they did not snatch people from their own prisons and turn them loose merely because they were asked to: far easier and less embarrassing to leave them be and let events take their course.
Perhaps Maize Ear had so many cases to resolve in the morning that he wanted to make an early start. Perhaps the litter was merely the fastest way of getting us to him, and considering the state his minions had left Lily in, I thought angrily, that was entirely possible, as she might not have managed the walk. Perhaps there was a line of Utters snaking its way out of Tetzcoco, and we were simply in the middle of it.
The reminder of how the woman had suffered settled over me like a cloud darker than the space within the drapes. I remembered how I had felt in the cage, terrified that her soul might have fled, bitterly sad that I might never learn what I represented in her eyes. Now, I knew, there was nothing to be done, but I needed to speak to her, to try to draw out whatever might be left.
‘Lily,’ I began awkwardly, ‘I don’t know whether we’re going to live through this, but…’
She interrupted me suddenly. ‘No one lives for ever on Earth.’
Sensing there was more to come, I waited, with the breath stopped in my throat.
‘That’s what I kept telling myself, you know, while I was in that little cage, while they were pulling my nails out and asking me about the man in Hare’s house and Mother of Light. It won’t be for ever, no one lives for ever on Earth. I must have… I must have got confused. I started saying that Hare wouldn’t have lived for ever, as if that excused what happened. Then I had to tell them, didn’t I? I didn’t want to, for her sake — I thought they’d go looking for her — but it was so hard to He about everything…’ Her words rambled to a stop and a stifled, choking sob.
‘What are you talking about?’ I asked. ‘What was it hard to he about?’
‘Killing Hare.’
‘But you didn’t kill him. Lily, listen, it’s me, Yaotl. Yaotl, your slave, your… whatever. You’re safe with me. It’s over, do you understand? You don’t have to lie any more.’
‘I didn’t lie,’ she insisted in a whisper.
‘Ah right,’ I said helplessly, appalled to think that the shock of what had happened to her had really convinced her that she had killed a man. ‘That’s enough, Lily. Don’t say another word.’
She was silent again after that, and her breathing became quiet and slow.
At some point we must have joined a highway, because the litter’s violent plunging and jerking had become a steady rhythmic rocking that was not unpleasant. In spite of my fear, I was so tired that I found myself drifting off to sleep. I tried to fight it at first, but then gave up. Dozing could hardly make my situation any worse.
I found myself in a confused dream in which Little Hen was on trial for murder and being cross-examined by Snake Heart. He kept asking her whether she could prove that she had not been at Hare’s house on the day the warrior we had found there was killed. But, of course, she was unable to answer him because she could not understand a word he was saying, and there was nobody to translate. All she did, in response to his repeated, ill-tempered questions, was make her familiar gestures: stretching her eyelids, pulling her chin, scrubbing her face, tugging at her hair.
Then I was awake, leaping to my feet, or rather trying to and striking my head on the canopy. I felt myself topple over and clutched wildly at the drapes, clinging to them for a moment before they gave way with a loud ripping sound and I was tumbling headlong out of the fitter.
It was not a long fall and what was left of the cotton slowed me a little. I crashed to the earth with a yell, but it was cry of triumph more than pain, because I knew what my dream meant, and what it meant was the solution to the mysteries that had dogged me ever since I came to Tetzcoco. Suddenly I knew what Little Hen’s message had been and why it was so important. And I now knew that we had all been wrong about who had killed Hare and his uninvited guest.
The merchant’s killer had been the last person I would have suspected, but I was quite sure. I felt a bleak certainty about it that washed away all pleasure at my own cleverness like a shower of icy water.
18
‘What’s your game?’ the warrior in charge of our escort demanded, as the bearers set the litter down beside me.
‘Sorry,’ I mumbled. ‘I fell.’
‘I can see that. Well, if you’re that keen to get out and walk, you
