Lord Maize Ear’s grandfather had carved a huge reservoir out of the rock at the summit of the hill and built his palace on an island at the centre of it, in the shade of a grove of cedars. We had seen it once before, in moonlight, and then it had been lovely. At daybreak it was like one of the thirteen levels of heaven. The ripples on the lake glittered, the trees were hung with dewdrops that sparkled like jewels where the sunlight hit them, and the birdsong rising from the valley somehow made the foot of the hill, the mist-shrouded land below us, seem more remote than ever.
A causeway led across the lake to the palace in its centre. Against the gleaming surface of the water it was black, like a deep crack across the face of a gold statue. I hesitated to set foot on it, knowing who must be waiting for me at the far end; but the officer beckoned, and there was nothing we could do but follow.
Among the cedars, bathed in the morning’s first rays of sunlight, two men sat on high-backed wicker chairs. One was in his twenties, tall, fresh-faced, his slight but well-muscled frame sheathed in a plain white robe of fine cotton and his brow crowned with the turquoise diadem of a king. His neighbour could not have looked more different: shrunken with age, with grey wisps of hair framing a face like an old leather mask, and his hands swollen and liver-spotted and shaking. My former master was dressed gaudily, as was his habit, in a blue mantle decorated with orange butterflies and a matching breechcloth, with grackle feathers in his hair. The effect was of a grotesque, overdressed doll – or it would have been, but for the eyes that shone out of that ravaged face, their gaze steady and bright with cunning.
Two girls in plain skirts and blouses, with their hair modestly bound up, kneeled just behind the wicker chairs. They were obviously there to fetch food or drink or anything else the great men required. I saw no-one else. My head darted from side to side as I looked anxiously for the hulking figure of the otomi captain, but if he was there, he was hiding.
We walked slowly forward, my hand on Lily’s arm and hers on her father’s. She was trembling, but I was oddly calm, even numb. If I felt anything at all it was anger rather than fear.
‘How could that young bastard do this to us?’ I muttered. ‘We’re supposed to be his guests!’
‘He’s emperor Montezuma’s nephew’, Kindly reminded me. ‘He probably doesn’t have a choice. As soon as the chief minister learned we were here…’
‘And how did he find that out, then?’ I demanded. ‘Who told him?’ I could feel my fists clenching with barely suppressed rage, all the fiercer for my helplessness.
Before Lily’s father could answer, the young king had got to his feet, speaking the ritual words of greeting in a soft treble voice: ‘You are welcome. You have come far, you have expended breath to get here, you are hungry. Please, rest and have some food.’ At the same time my nose caught the warm scent of freshly-made tortillas from somewhere within the palace at his back.
‘You’ve got that wrong, my lord,’ I said, removing my hand from Lily’s arm. ‘Victims are usually fasted before the sacrifice, not fed!’
The king could not have looked more shocked if I had stepped forward and spat in his eye. Beside me, Kindly drew in his breath with an audible hiss. ‘Careful! Remember where you are!’
I ignored them both. I turned instead to lord Feathered in Black, my former master, to find those piercing eyes fixing me with an unblinking stare. My courage – a frail thing at the best of times and now sustained only by despair – almost failed me then, but I managed to stammer some more defiant words: ‘I suppose I should feel honoured. What made you come in person, rather than sending some hireling?’
Young lord Maize Ear started forward, but surprisingly, my former master restrained him with a gnarled hand on his wrist. The old man did not shift his gaze. When he spoke, it was in the low growl that I had come, over the years, to fear more than his most thunderous rages.
‘Prostrate yourselves before the king!’
I heard two bodies hitting the ground. Out of the corner of one eye I saw Kindly lying in an awkward posture, twisted sideways, as his knees had obviously given way on his way down, while his daughter was propped up on the heels of her hands in an effort to save her damaged fingers.
‘You too!’ the chief minister barked, and then my muscles seemed to give way of their own accord as I flopped forward onto the cold flagstones.
‘That’s better.’ A faint creaking told me lord Feathered in Black was settling himself more comfortably in his chair. ‘You’re too soft, Maize Ear,’ he muttered in an aside to his young relation. ‘Your uncle the emperor would have had them all dismembered just for looking at him! And as for you, Yaotl, you ought to watch that tongue of yours. It will get you into trouble some day!’
I raised my head enough to see both the king and my former master. The former had resumed his seat. He was not looking at me. He stared sideways at the malevolent old man next to him, and I noted with interest how pale he was, and how the veins stood out on the backs of his hands, as though he were tense or furious.
‘My lord,’ I said to him, ‘I am sorry. I forgot myself, seeing my former
