‘I don’t have a choice, do I?’ I said bitterly. ‘He’s not wrong. We need to go back to Mexico sooner or later. And I need to find out if he’s telling the truth – if that madman really is threatening my family, not to mention Handy and his brood.’
‘Can’t your brother look after them?’ Lily asked. My eldest brother, whose name was Mamiztli – ‘the Mountain Lion’ – was a distinguished warrior, who had fought his way up from the obscure origins we shared to the high office of Atempanecatl, Guardian of the Waterfront. ‘If anybody’s capable of taking on the captain, it’s him and his bodyguards.’
‘Only if he knows what’s going on. He’ll have heard the rumours, of course, but old Black Feathers won’t have told him what’s behind them. He and my brother aren’t friends. It would be like telling the whole city. I need to warn him. I ought to warn Handy as well.’
Something disturbed the air above us: a small flock of ducks, their wings beating heavily as they headed west towards the great lake in the bottom of the valley, with the mighty city at its centre. Ducks are reluctant fliers, and their laboured progress looked like an omen. We had to go that way too, whether we wanted to or not.
The noise caught Lily’s attention as well. When she turned to watch the birds out of sight, the rising sun at her back caught the white strands in her hair, making them seem to glow briefly.
‘If we have to go,’ she said abruptly, ‘then let’s get on with it. Yaotl, you need to see your parents in Toltenco, and your brother, and Handy in Atlixco – where to first, then?’
‘I think Handy’s place,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘He still runs errands for lord Feathered in Black from time to time. He may be able to tell me something useful. But I’ll go alone.’
‘Oh, no, you won’t!’ she cried. Her dark eyes glittered when she turned them on me. ‘We’re all caught up in this thing now, aren’t we? What if you don’t manage to find the otomi? What will old Black Feathers do to us then?’
‘No more than the otomi would if he caught us all together,’ her father muttered. ‘Besides, I’m not in any condition to go paddling through the marshes after some madman, and nor, young lady, are you.’
‘Don’t talk to me as if were a child!’ she shouted at him, stamping her foot in as childish a gesture as I ever saw. ‘I’ll do what I want. If you want to go home and squat in your own courtyard guzzling sacred wine with your senile friends that’s up to you. I’m going with Yaotl!’
The king looked from one to the other of them with eyes narrowed in consternation. I decided I had better settle the row before it became a brawl that got all three of us thrown bodily off the top of the hill. ‘Your father’s right, Lily. There won’t be much you can do: it’s me the otomi wants, and I’ll be safer on my own.’
‘But what about the men lord Feathered in Black was going to have following you?’
‘What about them? Chances are they don’t even exist. If they do, I’m afraid I don’t believe what I said to him was wrong. They won’t lay a finger on the captain until it’s far too late for me. My only chance is to do exactly what old Black Feathers told me not to do – skulk in the shadows, and I can’t do that in company. You and Kindly should go straight back to Tlatelolco. Make sure your house is still in one piece!’
From the way she reacted to my words I thought I might have said too much. She rocked backward on her heels as though I had threatened to hit her and her lips trembled.
‘You might get hurt!’ I burst out, desperately.
She pressed her lips together, forcing them into stillness. ‘I’m already hurt,’ she said calmly. There was no need for her to show me her wounded hands to demonstrate the point, but she dragged the back of one of them across her eyes before adding in a small voice: ‘I don’t want to be alone as well.’
Then she tried to turn away, but I had caught her in my arms before she could move.
‘You won’t ever be that, lady,’ I said hoarsely.
ONE FLINT KNIFE
1
In the event we did not leave lord Maize Ear’s kingdom until early the following morning. The king had his own boatmen paddle us across the lake, taking Lily and her father to the merchant’s quarter of Tlatelolco in the north of the city of Mexico and me to Atlixco, the poorer parish in the south where my friend Handy lived. We left before daybreak. We were all keen to make an early start, and the king was just as eager to slip us quietly back into the city we had come from, as though we had never set foot in his domain.
Lily had eventually come to her senses and agreed that I should go alone to see Handy and my family. I could be back at her house by nightfall.
The king undertook to tell lord Feathered in Black where I was going, so that his men could be on hand to keep a discreet eye on me, and intervene in case the captain appeared. As I had made clear to Lily, I placed no reliance on this. I still suspected that if the chief minister had his way, any action his servants took would come just a moment too late to prevent the otomi from finishing me off.
Trumpet calls filled the air around me as I approached Handy’s house. They might have been an ironic fanfare to herald my arrival: a little man in a commoner’s short cape and plain breechcloth. In fact the calls were made by priests blowing
