‘You weren’t,’ Lion replied shortly. ‘Yaotl, what in all the thirteen heavens possessed you to try sneaking up on us like that? And where did you get that stupid idea of trying to breathe through a straw?’
‘Worthy suggested it. He said he’d seen the otomi and thought it would help me sneak past him… What’s so bloody funny?’
My brother’s laugh sounded like a stone shattering in a fire. ‘You believed him! You fool, I was talking to him only this morning. He hasn’t seen a thing – hardly surprising, considering how old he is. I doubt he can see his hands in front of his face! It’s good to know he hasn’t lost his sense of humour!’
‘I like that,’ I retorted, ‘coming from someone who wouldn’t recognise a joke if you’d just been introduced!’
‘I wouldn’t need an introduction, brother,’ he responded coolly. ‘I’ve known you since you were born!’
‘That’s enough!’ my mother snapped. ‘Yaotl didn’t come here just so that you could insult him.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Lion replied meekly. Our mother was probably the only human being he had ever been afraid of. ‘Though to be fair, he does make it very easy.’
I sighed. My brother relished his rare jokes. He was capable of terrifying rages, but I was starting to think I liked him better angry than when he was in a good mood.
I looked around me.
Apart from Lion, who was still enjoying his private joke at my expense, everyone appeared to be scowling.
I sighed. ‘Why isn’t anyone here ever pleased to see me?’
The last time I had come here my arrival had precipitated a family quarrel, with my father trying physically to throw me out of the house, and this occasion looked like going the same way. The old man lurched forward. ‘Pleased to see you?’ he snapped. ‘After the trouble you’ve caused? Last time you were here I told you I didn’t want to see you ever again, and that was before all this started! Ollin, you can put him back in the canal where you found him!’
My brother’s bodyguards looked taken aback at that. ‘But our chief said Yaotl was his brother,’ Ollin managed at last. ‘You can’t really mean that!’
‘Do you want to bet?’ I muttered.
Lion had composed himself by now. ‘He doesn’t mean it,’ he said, with a glance at my father. The old man grunted and looked away: head of the family though he was, he would let his distinguished favourite son have his own way.
My brother turned back towards me. ‘Now, Yaotl…’
I interrupted him. ‘Just a moment.’ I looked nervously at my father, afraid the mere sound of my voice would send him flying into a further rage. ‘You said “before all this started.” All what?’
The old man did not deign to answer me. It was my mother who spoke. ‘Look around you, Yaotl,’ she said quietly. ‘What do you see?’
I did as she told me, frowning in puzzlement. ‘I don’t know… It doesn’t look any different… About time that wall was whitewashed… I give up!’
My father growled. Jade said hastily: ‘It’s us she means, you fool! Look at us!’
‘When’s the last time you saw all your brothers and sisters here, together?’ snapped my mother impatiently. ‘Lion included? And his bodyguards as well?’
‘It’s like being under siege in my own house,’ my father rumbled. ‘And all on account of you!’
Lion said: ‘I told them to gather under one roof: it makes them easier to look after. I wanted them to come to my palace as it’s more defensible, but father wouldn’t leave.’
‘My father built this house in the first Montezuma’s time!’ the old man cried. ‘I’m not quitting it now, not for anyone!’
‘You mean you knew about the otomi?’ I shouted. ‘Then I needn’t have come here at all!’
There was a moment’s silence before Lion and Jade both spoke at once.
My brother leaned towards me. ‘You mentioned the otomi before. What do you know about him?’
Jade said: ‘Why did you come here, Yaotl?’
‘I wanted to warn you about him,’ I told her. ‘My former master – lord Feathered in Black – told me he thought he was haunting the marshes near here, and at Atlixco, and he thought he might come here.’ I gave them a brief account of my meeting with the chief minister outside Maize Ear’s palace. ‘I was trying to find out for sure, and I wanted to make sure you were all safe. I suppose I’ve wasted my time. You obviously know more than I do!’
‘Well, I should hope I know what’s going on in the marshes,’ Lion replied dryly. ‘I’d not be much use as Guardian of the Waterfront if I didn’t!’
‘So it’s true, then? The captain is out there?’ I felt strangely let down. I could not have said what sort of reception I would have anticipated from my family. I would have been surprised if it had been especially cordial, but the last thing I would have expected was to be told that everything I had come to warn them about was already provided for and that my mission was unnecessary.
‘It sounds that way,’ my brother said. ‘I don’t know for sure what’s out there, mind you, but whoever or whatever it is, it’s certainly got old Black Feathers worried. He even took the trouble to warn me about it, and normally he and I aren’t on speaking terms.’ He frowned. ‘The only thing that puzzles me is why he took the trouble to warn you as well. What did he expect you to do?’
‘I’m bait,’ I said bleakly. I explained that part of the chief minister’s plan.
‘He’s got men shadowing you?’ Lion asked incredulously.
Ollin spoke up. ‘We didn’t see anyone else, Chief. I think we’d have noticed.’
‘He was probably lying,’ I said. ‘He claimed I was more use to him alive, but he didn’t say how much more.’
‘That would be a first, either way,’ my father mumbled. ‘You’ve never been much use to anyone before!’
My mother scowled at
