I looked at her bandaged fingers and groaned. It was part pity, part remorse. ‘Lily, I’m sorry. I got you into this. You and your father. You should have left me in that slave-dealer’s cage!’
She shivered violently. ‘Well,’ she whispered, ‘I didn’t.’ She looked down. ‘Will he take us back to Mexico, do you think? Or has he brought the captain with him?’
The captain was my former master’s favourite henchman. He was an otomi, a member of that select band of elite warriors who were among the most feared in the Aztec army. The otomies were berserkers, sworn never to take a step backwards in battle. They were instantly recognisable in the field by their close-fitting green cotton uniforms, their hair, worn piled up on their heads and flowing over the napes of their necks, and the towering feather-bedecked devices that they carried on wicker frames strapped to their backs. The mere sight of an otomi was usually enough to cow his enemies into submission. The captain was even more terrifying than most of his comrades because he had lost half his face and one eye during some particularly brutal fight many years before. The fact that he had survived the encounter at all was not the least frightening thing about him.
And he hated me. With my friend Momaimati, a commoner whose name meant One Skilled with his Hands or ‘Handy’, I had once humiliated the captain by leading him into a hostile crowd from which he had had to be rescued by a squad of Aztec warriors. The captain and his men had pursued me to king Maize Ear’s kingdom of Tetzcoco. I knew that he would blame me for what happened as a result: a fight with the locals in which his followers had perished and from which he had been forced to flee. He would not rest now until one or other of us was dead.
‘Perhaps we could run away,’ I suggested.
‘How? This hill is ringed with guards. Remember what my father said. If a centipede couldn’t get in, how do you think we’re going to sneak out of here? And where would we go? Back to Mexico? Where lord Feathered in Black is chief minister?’
‘Then I’ll have to fight him,’ I said stoutly. ‘Challenge him, maybe. Old Black Feathers likes to bet, you know. I could wager our lives on the contest – if I beat the otomi, the old bastard has to let us go!’
Lily laughed. It was a brittle sound with no humour in it. ‘Don’t be absurd! You’re no warrior, and half the army couldn’t take on the captain and win. Besides, would you trust the chief minister to honour the bet if you did win?’ The laughter suddenly dissolved into the strangled, choking sound of barely-suppressed tears. ‘It’s hopeless,’ she gasped. ‘And I thought… No-one lives forever, I know, but you and I, we might have been happy…’
If I had been able to find any words, I would never have managed to squeeze them out past the constriction in my throat. I squatted awkwardly in front of her. I reached out to her as if to take her hands in mine, but then dropped my arms when I remembered how tender to the touch her fingers still were.
For a long moment neither of us said anything. Lily looked between her knees at the mat, while each of us waited for the other to speak. When she at last looked up at me, there was no more concealing the tears that started from the corners of her eyes and rolled silently down her cheeks.
I stretched my arms towards her again, this time to touch her face, cradling it between my palms. ‘Lily,’ I groaned. ‘I’m sorry.’
THIRTEEN MOTION
1
The same messenger called for us just before daybreak, repeating his summons with the same awkward diffidence he had displayed on the previous evening.
‘I’ll say this for the Kingdom of Tetzcoco, you have the politest way of delivering a death warrant,’ I told him sourly as we came out of the house. ‘Where I come from, it’s a lot less formal. They just throw you in a cage and leave you there till they get around to strangling you.’ The man stared at me, looking gratifyingly shocked, but then for all I knew he genuinely believed he was inviting us to breakfast.
The four of us made a glum little procession as we climbed towards the royal Palace at the summit of the hill. Grey mist, rising from the mighty lake that filled the bottom of the valley of Mexico, swirled around us, wrapping us in darkness and making each of us clutch our cloaks tighter for warmth. Moisture dripping from branches and rocks made the ground slippery and treacherous. Even if we had not all been sunk in our own thoughts, we would have been too busy trying to keep our footing to speak to one another.
Near the top, steep steps had been etched into the rock, and our progress up them reminded me too vividly of the shuffling gait of captives being led up the side of the great pyramid in Mexico. It was the right time of day too, I judged. Around now, the priests would be hailing the dawn with trumpet calls and killing the first prisoner of the day, cutting his heart out to nourish the gods, in the hope that they would let the sun rise once more.
Sure enough, the sun was there to greet us when we reached the summit.
The officer strode on towards the king’s palace. But he was used to this place. Kindly, Lily and I were not, and for moment we could only stand and stare at the things around us like little children at their first ball game.
None of us said anything until Lily let out a sob. ‘It’s so beautiful,’ she whispered.
We had climbed above the mist. The valley below us was like a
