I looked up to catch Handy’s eye. After staring at us in mute astonishment for a moment he shook his head violently and said: ‘Er… Have I got this right? This is Lily? You are her slave, yes?’
‘That’s a long story too.’ I turned back to Lily. I was about to ask her again why she had left the safety of her own house to come here. However, I was distracted by the sound of running feet, the flat thump of sandals striking hard earth.
Spotted Eagle came into sight, his face nearly black with the exertion of running all the way to the parish hall and back. He was barefoot, naturally, as a commoner in the city. The sound had been made by the man following him: Kite the policeman, wrapped in his long cloak and brandishing an obsidian-bladed sword as though he were expecting a fight. He skidded to a halt when they saw us.
‘Father!’ The young man went straight up to Handy before halting and staring at Lily.
‘What’s happened here, then?’ the policeman demanded. In answer, Handy gestured towards the thing on the ground.
Spotted Eagle had told the policeman what to expect. It ought not to have come as a surprise, but he faltered, turning slightly pale, when he set eyes on the corpse.
Beside me, Lily screamed. It was only long afterwards that it occurred to me that she had been so angry and delighted at the sight of me that she had failed to notice the dead man. I had to steady her now to prevent her from falling. She was as brave as any warrior, but what lay at her feet would have turned the stomach of the most accustomed butcher.
Kite looked the body over. He asked whether anyone recognised the dead man. Nobody did. He asked Lily who she was and what she was doing here. He made both me and Handy give our own accounts of what had happened in the night, although all Handy could say was that he had been asleep. From the way he barked his questions it was obvious that, as I had predicted, he was not pleased. ‘So now I have another unidentified corpse, besides sorcerers, demons, thieves…’ He glanced at me and gestured towards Handy’s house. ‘You think they were trying to get in here?’
‘It looked that way.’
‘Why?’
Handy said: ‘I was just about to ask Yaotl that myself, before you turned up.’
The policeman had the answer to that. ‘They were after you, weren’t they?’ he said, looking at me. ‘You said the sorcerer – if that’s what the dancer was – called you by your name. So did whoever followed you the night before last.’
Spotted Eagle’s features suddenly twisted into a look of revulsion. ‘You mean my mother’s body was stolen just so that someone could break into the house and kill this slave?’ He spat the words out disgustedly, but the energy that had been behind his attack on me of the previous morning had gone. All he could manage now was a half-hearted snarl. ‘So you did bring this on us, after all.’
‘I didn’t mean to,’ I protested wearily, ‘and if I did, I don’t understand how. Maybe the otomi captain had something to do with it, but how could he have known where to find me, and so quickly? I’d only been here a day the first time I was attacked.’
‘I know.’
We all turned to look at Lily. She had recovered somewhat from her earlier shock and was standing unsupported, but there was an audible tremor in her voice all the same. ‘It’s easy, isn’t it? The chief minister lied to you. He hasn’t lost control of the captain at all. They’re still working together. He knew you were likely to come here.’
For some reason – no doubt because it was such an unpleasant idea – this had not occurred to me. It made perfect sense, of course. Why should I assume that my former master had suddenly forgotten his grudge against me?
I tried in vain to protest: ‘No, he didn’t! Who’d have told him?’ But it carried no conviction. How like the vindictive old bastard, I thought, to lull me into a false sense of security by pretending he and the otomi had fallen out. Now my situation was more hopeless than ever, trapped between the two of them.
Handy said: ‘His steward saw you yesterday.’
Kite smiled humourlessly. ‘Well, that would solve my problem. All I have to do is hand you over to lord Feathered in Black!’
Listening to these two was like being left by a roadside with a copper knife stuck in you, and having passers-by come and twist it this way and that for fun. ‘You can’t do that!’ I cried. ‘I’m a slave, remember? Lily, tell him he can’t do that!’
‘You don’t need to,’ she assured Kite. ‘I’ll take charge of my slave. If I take him back to Tlatelolco, whoever’s after him will follow us, surely? And I think we merchants can look after ourselves, otomi or no otomi!’
They were brave words, but I could see from the pulse in her neck that Lily understood just how dangerous that course of action might prove to be. Even the chief minister might hesitate to try his strength against that of the merchants, but the fact remained that lord Feathered in Black and the captain had once invaded the sanctuary of her house in Tlatelolco, and they might do so again. But I was denied the chance to say so.
My reply, together with whatever else anyone might have been about to say, was choked off by the sound of a scream.
Several moments passed before I recognised the woman who had just come through the gateway to Handy’s courtyard as his sister-in-law. She looked as though she had been struck down by some wasting sickness. Her hair hung lankly about her temples, its strands as tangled and
