I stumbled to a halt between one step and the next and turned slowly to survey the scene around me.
Kite and the two men who had stayed with him were still where we had left them a few moments before, the three of them standing or lying in the middle of the courtyard beside the brazier. My flight had carried me right past them. Long, wavering shadows in the firelight told me where three of the others were. Lion and Handy had pulled up short next to the gateway, and were standing on either side of it, while Quail was slowly walking back towards them from the bottom of the steps.
I could see nothing beyond the walls of the courtyard, but I would have bet that the captain was standing in the middle of the plaza outside, his sword by his side, bellowing out his taunt as brazenly as if he were in the midst of a battle-line.
I could not see Lily.
I looked wildly about me. I peered into the shadowed corners of the courtyard, hoping I might have missed her the first time I looked. I ran down the steps, calling her name.
‘I’m up here!’
I spun around and looked up. My mistress stood at the edge of the roof, near the top of the steps.
At first I was too astounded to be relieved. ‘What are you doing up there?’
‘I felt like doing some gardening,’ she shouted over the sounds from outside. ‘There’s a prickly pear here that’s ripe for harvesting – what do you think? I ran, the same as everyone else!’
‘What’s going on?’ Kite shouted. ‘What are you all doing back here? And who is that out there?’
The answer came back immediately. ‘You know who I am and what I’ve come for! Is Yaotl in there with you? If he is, send him out here now!’
Lily ran down into the courtyard, the slap of her feet accompanying the captain’s bellowing like a two-toned drum beating the rhythm of a hymn.
‘We have to get Kite up onto the roof,’ she cried breathlessly as she came up to me.
I stared at her.
‘Yaotl, listen! He can’t run or fight. His only chance is if we get him up there and barricade him in somehow while someone else gets help. Do you understand?’
I understood. I turned to the two young soldiers and between us Lily and I managed to convince them of what they had to do, ignoring their chief’s protests.
‘Forget it!’ Kite said angrily. ‘I can stay here. I’m not skulking on the roof while that madman makes free with my parish!’
Beside the door, my brother raised his own voice in answer to the captain’s. ‘And if he isn’t here?’
‘Then you tell me where he went. Or it’ll be the worse for you!’ Lion seemed to think about that for a moment. He turned to me and beckoned with a sharp gesture. I ran towards him while Lily supervised Kite’s short journey up the steps.
‘I’m waiting,’ came the voice from outside. ‘Do I have to come in there and look for him?’
I had only half the courtyard to cross to join my brother by the gateway, but it seemed much farther. Every step that took me closer to the roaring man in the square felt as though it might be my last. I seemed to be walking slowly, and when I looked about me I was like a dying man filling his sight with familiar things for the last time: the small square space of the courtyard, the brazier at its centre, the flat-roofed rooms surrounding it on three sides and the gateway to the plaza on the fourth side. The brazier’s flickering light made the entrances to the rooms look like the mouths of caverns. The doorways opened out into the central space, including one on either side of the stairway. At the top of the steps, crowning the rooms and so overlooking the courtyard from three sides, was Kite’s well-planted patio, whose owner was now, under protest, being settled among his cacti and succulents.
I was tempted to make a dash for it, run indoors and cower behind a large clay pot or a wicker chest, but I did not. I knew the captain would not leave or give up now until he had found me.
‘He’s in there, isn’t he?’ the captain yelled. ‘I’m going to count to twenty, and you’d better send him out before I’ve finished!’ There was a brief pause before he began, in a voice loud enough to be heard all over the Valley of Mexico: ‘ONE!’
Handy, standing beside the far gatepost, muttered an oath. ‘Why’s he want to drag this out?’
‘TWO!’
I looked at Lion, and he looked back at me, with his eyes hard and unblinking and his mouth set in a grim line. Now that his enemy had come out to confront him, he longer showed a trace of fear. ‘Yaotl…’
‘THREE!’
‘All right,’ I gasped. Somehow I managed to drag one foot in front of the other. ‘I’m going. Sorry about all the trouble, but…’
‘FOUR!’
He seized my arm, gripping it so hard that the pain cut through my misery and fear, making me flinch. ‘You stay there!’ he snapped. ‘You’re no good to anyone as a corpse!’
‘FIVE!’
I gaped at him but he was not looking at me now. He beckoned to Quail and Handy. ‘We can’t just stand here waiting for him.’ The observation met with a growl of approval.
‘SIX!’
I looked about me as if waking from a dream. ‘But…’
‘SEVEN!’
‘I wish he’d pack that in!’ Lion said, to no-one in particular. He turned back to me. ‘You’re going nowhere. Forget that you’re my brother. I wouldn’t give that bastard what he wants, even if he were demanding old Black Feathers’ liver fresh from the
