The lips moved again. ‘“Looking.... Looking for you”?’ I repeated.
‘Here’s a cup,’ said Kite. ‘But are you sure...’
‘Here’s your water, Red Macaw,’ I called out. ‘You can have it in a moment. Just a couple more questions, please.’ I held the cup above his face, and watched the eyeballs tracking it thirstily. I hated myself then; but I knew that the first sip Red Macaw took from that cup would be the last thing he ever did, and there were things I had to know first.
‘Who’s looking for me?’
The eyes closed, as though he could not bear to look at the cup any more. I held it where it was, irresolutely, for a moment. I was on the point of weakening, of giving him his drink and his release, when I saw the lips move again.
I frowned as I tried to make out the words. They did not look like an answer to my question. ‘Wanted... to.... see... her...’
I said nothing.
There was one more word to come: ‘Stop.’
‘Stop?’ I said. ‘Stop what? Who did you want to see?’
This time there was no reply.
After a few moments I looked at Kite. Some unspoken agreement passed between us. The policeman cradled Red Macaw’s head in his hands while I tilted the cup towards his lips. Something like a smile passed over them, and he drank.
The result was less violent than I had feared. At first, nothing happened. Then his eyes snapped open. They rolled slowly up into his head. His body shook once, and from his mouth came a faint sigh and a thin dark trickle of blood.
I threw the cup against the wall of the hut. ‘That’s that, then! I’ve finished off the bastards’ work for them!’
Yet I still think that at that moment, it was the only kind thing I could have done.
7
‘Have a look over here.’
I took no notice of the policeman. I squatted by Red Macaw’s inert body, with my head in my hands, trying to shut out the sight of the dead man but seeing only his face in his last instant of life. For the first time in all the years since the stuff had nearly done for me, I longed for a gourd of sacred wine. I wanted to get uproariously drunk, even though to do so would be to risk execution.
‘Yaotl! Stop feeling sorry for yourself and look!’ Kite barked. You need to see this.’
With a sigh I hauled myself to my feet and turned around. ‘Kite, don’t you realise...’ I never finished what I was going to say because I had seen what he wanted to show me, and the sight of it stopped the breath in my throat. For a moment I forgot Red Macaw had ever existed.
The policeman stood under the hole he had made in the roof and held something up in the light. It was perhaps half as tall as he was, but he could lift it with one hand, because it was made of nothing more substantial than cloth stretched over a wicker frame. It was green, shaped like a huge teardrop with long green feathers – quetzal tail plumes, the most precious feathers of all – trailing like tassels from the tapered end at the top.
‘You know what this is, don’t you?’ Kite said.
My mouth was too dry to form words.
‘The rest is in that pile behind me: the green cotton suit, the sandals with the long straps, everything.’ He lifted the wicker and cloth construction a little higher. ‘How tall would a man look, carrying this on his back? Half again his own height? And you thought the monster that followed you was too tall to be human!’
‘It’s the captain,’ I whispered, appalled.
‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ Kite said in a tone of grim satisfaction. ‘This is an otomi’s back device. It’s what he’d wear into battle.’
The marks of an otomi warrior were the hair piled up on his head and spilling down his back, the tall, conical back device, the green cotton suit that clung to his torso and limbs like a second skin, the heavy jewelled sandals. They ensured that he could be seen and recognised across the most crowded battlefield, so that his friends would rally to him and his enemies faint at his approach. Perhaps some of the younger and bolder warriors on the other side would see the captain’s distinctive garb as a goad, and rush at him, keen to try their luck, but it would be all one to him: they would end up as corpses or captives.
I had heard this costume described and seen warriors sporting the clothes and the hairstyle, but never had I set eyes on a man wearing the full regalia, not even in my youth when I had served with the army as a priest.
‘He’s been wearing it in the city,’ I said. ‘Who’s his enemy here?’
‘You seem to have earned that honour!’
I squeezed past the policeman to look at the clothes. They had been neatly folded but were not clean. The front of the green suit was covered in dark stains. ‘It looks as though others have got in his way. Including that poor bastard on the floor.’ I squatted and stretched out a hand to feel the material, as though I wanted to satisfy myself that it was real and not something that belonged in the land of dreams. ‘It’s good cotton,’ I said absently.
‘The emperor would have presented it to him.’ the policeman responded. ‘He doesn’t give out rubbish!’
‘I hope he doesn’t want it back, then. It’s ruined now. Take a lot of cold water to get these stains out and then it’ll probably shrink.’ I stood up. ‘Let’s get out of here before he comes back for it, shall we?’
Kite had already started heading towards the doorway. ‘I’ll round up every man we’ve got and come back here
