My mother had made it clear that I must confront the otomi, for my own sake as well as my family’s, unless I wanted to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. But I would have to face him alone, it seemed, and where would I begin to look?
My thoughts turned naturally to the woman who might be the only person in the world who cared whether I lived or died. I surprised myself, then, by how much I missed Lily, although I had been away from her side less than a day and still intended to return before the next morning. I just wanted to hear her voice again. To be reminded of what we two had endured together and how we had come through it might have made the otomi seem less fearsome, my parents’ lack of regard for me less hurtful and Handy’s despair at the loss of his wife less overwhelming.
I was so caught up with thoughts such as these that I did not see who was waiting for me in the street until it was too late to get away. The two warriors with me missed him as well, because they were looking straight ahead rather than down.
‘Hello, Yaotl.’
The sound of my own name, spoken by someone immediately behind me, was as shocking as a blow between the shoulders. I stopped, tensing, not turning around because for a moment I was too startled to move.
The two warriors recovered before I did. They both whirled, swords at the ready, but relaxed visibly at the sight of the speaker.
‘Hello, youngster,’ Ollin said. He took a step forward, with his sword now dangling loosely in his hand. ‘What are you doing there? What’s your name?’
‘I came to meet Yaotl.’
The speaker was one of Handy’s sons: the youngster, Obsidian Snake, whom I had seen at his father’s house that morning. The pang of fear I had felt on hearing my name called was replaced by anger, but that soon subsided into a kind of sullen resignation.
‘Your father send you to check up on me, did he?’
He gave me a bland look. ‘He just wanted to be sure you were all right.’ His expression changed to a puzzled frown. ‘Are you all right? There’s a funny smell – did you fall in a canal?’
‘It was an accident,’ I said shortly.
Ollin looked at each of us in turn. ‘Do you need us, then?’ My brother had told him and his comrade to make sure nobody sprang at me out of the shadows on my way out of the house, but they were plainly uncertain what to make of the boy.
‘No,’ I sighed. ‘I’ll be fine. After all, it looks like I’ll have an escort from here onwards!’
I walked briskly in the direction of Handy’s house in Atlixco. The boy scampered after me on his young legs. As he caught up with me I muttered at him out of the corner of my mouth: ‘Handy didn’t need to send you after me. Did he think I wouldn’t come back for the funeral? I said I would.’
‘He wanted to make sure you did,’ Snake replied, with more candour than an adult would have shown. ‘Besides, I wanted to come.’
I watched him curiously. ‘Why?’
‘I thought you could use me. Father said you had enemies in the city. And I’m a good lookout.’ Perhaps it was a skill he had practised while his brothers were stealing fruit or tortillas from market stalls. ‘Anyway, I had to get out of the house. It’s no fun at home at the moment – when we came back from my cousins’, my aunt and my grandparents weren’t even talking to each other and my little brothers and sisters were all making an exhibition of themselves, weeping and tearing their hair out. It was driving me crazy!’
‘What about your father?’
‘Just staring at the walls, the same as when you left him. He’s got my oldest brother with him – not that he’ll be much use. They can be miserable together.’
I looked sharply at him, wondering now at his easy, relaxed gait, and the casual note, the sneer almost, in his speech.
Snake’s hair had been shaved close – it was the custom, and it helped control head-lice – but the single tuft that would shortly mark him as old enough for the House of Youth was beginning to sprout at the back of his head. It was not much more than a fuzz around the nape of his neck but it would be enough to distinguish him from his younger brothers and cousins and it probably made him feel grown up. Perhaps that explained it, I thought, the lad already practising the arrogance of Aztec manhood, the confident air of warriors whose mere reputation was usually enough to put their enemies to flight.
Perhaps.
‘And what about you?’ I asked softly.
I had met Snake while his mother was alive, and liked him: he was a shrewd, quick-witted lad, small for his age, more of a talker than a fighter, who had reminded me a little of myself as a youngster. Perhaps that resemblance was why his words troubled me.
‘What about me?’
I stopped walking. He carried on for a couple of paces before looking around.
‘Snake,’ I said deliberately, ‘I’m sorry about your mother.’
‘My mother was a warrior,’ he informed me coldly, ‘and I’ll be one too, soon.’
‘Even warriors are allowed to mourn their dead comrades.’
‘A warrior has to
