As soon as he was out of sight I breathed a deep sigh. ‘Well, that’s that. Where do we go now?’
Lily stared at me. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Snake’s right about one thing. We haven’t got any closer to finding out what happened to his mother’s body or to his uncle. The trail must be getting colder with every breath we take. And we’re no nearer to learning who’s haunting the streets and terrorising the fishermen, or who the two dead men we’ve found were. And every moment I stay in Atlixco, I’m in danger. I wonder if we shouldn’t just head back to your house in Tlatelolco.’
I gave what I thought was an encouraging grin. Lily’s answering look wiped it away the way a large, sandalled foot would scrub out a child’s drawing in the sand. ‘You want to run away.’
‘No!’ I replied earnestly. ‘Or at least, well, not exactly. But I can’t see what more I can do here. And if that monster is still looking for me...’
‘Then he’ll find you, wherever you are.’ She spoke harshly as she finished the sentence. ‘Yaotl, what kind of a slave are you? You weren’t bought for your strength and the gods know it wasn’t for your looks, so it must have been your brains, yes? Well now bloody well use them! Why did we come back to Mexico to begin with?’
‘I’m having trouble remembering,’ I said, with mistimed flippancy. ‘Maybe life in Maize Ear’s retreat was getting boring.’
‘It was for you and your precious family!’ she cried. ‘And now you’re here, and your enemies know it. Whoever attacked you last night and the night before knows you’re in Mexico, and for that matter so does lord Feathered in Black. The very most you’ve managed to do is stir whoever was after you up, so they’re even more likely to want to kill you. If you leave now, what do you think will happen?’
I held up my hands. ‘I give in! You’re right. They’ll keep trying to break into Handy’s house, and maybe it’ll work, and then I suppose they’ll go to Toltenco and start on my parents. And no doubt if this is a real sorcerer then sooner or later he’ll track me down to Tlatelolco too.’ I groaned. ‘I know all this. I don’t want to drag you into it. And I suppose I thought it might be nice to have a rest, even just for a day. Lily, it was good in Tetzcotzinco, wasn’t it? It felt like the first time in years I wasn’t being hunted or threatened with death! I’m so tired of running away all the time... What’s the matter?’ I stared at her in consternation, for suddenly there were tears streaming down her cheeks.
‘Nothing,’ she gasped.
I held her arm gently. ‘I’m sorry. We’ll go back to Handy’s house. We’ll think of something else. Maybe I can have another word with Cactus. Maybe I can try my brother. Lion might know something. It’s all right. I’m not going anywhere, I promise.’
Her shoulders were heaving. She bowed her head, and drew the back of a bandaged hand across her eyes to wipe away the tears. Then she gave a loud sniff and turned fully around to face me.
‘Do you think that’s it?’ she asked softly.
‘Well, isn’t it?’ Trying to grasp her meaning was starting to make my head hurt. ‘Lily, I don’t understand. You don’t want me to run away and when I tell you I’m not going to, you burst into tears! Please tell me what you want me to do.’
She took two steps towards me so that her face was very close to mine. ‘But I want to know what you want.’
‘It doesn’t matter. I’m a slave. I can only do what you tell me.’
‘That’s exactly the point! Don’t you understand what I’m telling you, you silly man?’ She shouted the words at me from about a finger’s breadth away, and the force of it made me recoil. I nearly fell over. ‘Why do you think I bought you out of the market in the first place?’
‘Well, you did say it wasn’t for my looks or my strength....’
‘And apparently it wasn’t for your brains either! But for some reason I thought your worthless life was worth saving, when your closest friend – if you ever had any! – wouldn’t have given a mouldy cocoa bean for it!’
I gaped at her, probably looking as foolish as I felt. Suddenly I knew why she had been weeping, and what the look in her eyes now meant.
‘What do you want?’ she asked me again, in a much softer voice.
‘You’re telling me I have to start thinking for myself,’ I said wonderingly.
‘Yes,’ she said hoarsely.
‘About you?’
‘About everything. Yaotl, you can’t run all your life. Even if we live through this – afterwards – you musn’t be just a slave. I need more than that!’
Fortunately Kite was long gone and there was nobody about: no-one gardening on the surrounding rooftops or polling a canoe past us on the neighbouring canal. The sight of a middle-aged man and middle-aged woman embracing in the middle of the path, both of them seemingly laughing and crying at the same time, was an unusual one. It would have caused comment.
When we got back to Handy’s house, we found Kite standing by the canal outside it. He had his sword and was turning it over in his hands, examining it and every now and then stroking one of the obsidian slivers set into its shaft or pinching it between thumb and forefinger. I did not much like the look of that: he seemed to be testing the blades, making sure none of them was loose, and the only reason for doing that was that he expected to have need of the weapon soon.
He glanced up at Lily and me as we approached. ‘You two look happy.’
‘We had a row,’ I said.
‘That explains it.’
Lily had been holding my arm loosely,
