‘I will overlook it,’ lord Maize Ear said absently. ‘Although I may say that I had no idea that he knew where you were either!’
Lord Feathered in Black grinned humourlessly. ‘Did you really believe, cousin, that lord Montezuma would let you reign in Tetzcoco without keeping a careful watch on your court? His concern for your welfare would never allow it!’
So our safe, comfortable resting place in the royal retreat of Tetzcotzinco had been an illusion. I groaned at my own naivety, and the king’s. Old Black Feathers had known where we were from his spies almost from the moment we had arrived.
‘Of course,’ the old man went on, ‘we lost touch with Yaotl when he first came here. Hence the unfortunate, er, misunderstanding…’
‘Misunderstanding!’ the young king cried. ‘Your men invaded my kingdom…’
‘Half a dozen hotheads are hardly an invasion, Maize Ear,’ my former master said sharply, ‘and anyway they weren’t my men. I’ve explained that. They came of their own accord.’
That provoked Kindly into breaking his silence. ‘You mean the otomi and his men, don’t you? They came because you told them to look for us in Tetzcoco. You didn’t manage to have Yaotl sacrificed the way you wanted, so you sent…’
‘Not “sent”, remember,’ I said drily. ‘How about “encouraged”?’
‘Yes, that’s a good word. You “encouraged” those madmen to come after us. And look what they did! Look at my daughter’s hands!’
‘Oh, stop babbling!’ said lord Feathered in Black wearily. ‘Yes, all that’s true, but so what? I was angry and disappointed, and I really don’t care for disappointment. Yaotl had let me down, so he had to be punished, naturally.’ He sighed, and his eyes took on an unfocused, faraway look, as though he were seeing, in his imagination, something pleasant, a long way off, impossibly remote, never to be attained. ‘And I’m still angry. Really, Yaotl, I’d still like to see you flayed alive! But there it is.’ He sounded brisk, all of a sudden. ‘We can’t always have what we want, can we?’
‘You can, it seems.’ I had heard my former master’s words but in my anger and bitterness had missed their meaning entirely. ‘So where’s your tame otomi? Did you bring him with you or is he at home in Mexico, roasting children for supper?’
Apart from a loud cough from Maize Ear, that remark was greeted by silence, until eventually lord Feathered in Black murmured, in a voice little more than a whisper: ‘Ah. Yes, the otomi. Now…’
‘And how come you’re here, instead of him? I thought he ran your errands, not the other way around!’
His lordship’s patience finally snapped. ‘Shut your mouth, slave!’ he roared in a voice that must have carried to the far side of the valley. ‘Interrupt me again,’ he added, more quietly, ‘and I’ll have things done to you that will make you curse the gods for ever letting you be born, do you hear? And that goes for you two as well!’
I heard movement from beside me. Glancing sideways, I discovered that Lily was as still as if she had been frozen solid, but her father was fidgeting and shuffling as though trying to put as much distance between me and him as he could.
Lord Feathered in Black went on: ‘Yaotl, if you talked less and thought more it might have occurred to you to wonder why all three of you aren’t already shrieking your lungs out in agony. Don’t imagine I’m not tempted by the prospect! But the fact is that right now I need you alive more than dead. You asked me where the otomi was. Here’s your answer: I don’t know! So what do you think of that?’
It was just beginning to occur to me that the old man had not had us brought up here to kill us, after all, but I was too bewildered now to feel relief. My mind grappled with his last words. ‘You’ve lost him.’
For some reason the old man seemed to find that funny: it set off a throaty, wheezing noise that I had learned to recognise as laughter. ‘You might say that! I… what was the word? I “encouraged” him and his men to come here, as you know…’
‘To kill me and Lily.’
‘Yes, that’s right.’ It was typical of him that he could acknowledge this without a trace of embarrassment. ‘Now, I have no idea what happened to him here. No doubt you know more about it than I do! He came back alone, without any of the men who’d been with him. I must say, Yaotl, that if you managed to dispose of a squad of otomies, there must be more to you than I thought!’
‘Um, well, I didn’t exactly…’
‘Of course, I told him to have another go. But then he disappeared. I thought I’d heard the last of him then. I had the impression, when he was telling me – babbling incoherently, to be more precise – about what you’d done to him, that his nerve had gone. But then I started getting… reports.’
‘What sort of reports?’
‘Incidents – violent ones. People attacked in the street – always at night, alone, never with any witnesses. Rumours of a monster, a demon, creeping about in the city after dark. The fishermen are terrified: something’s been raiding their nets, stealing their catches.’ He paused, either for breath or for effect. ‘The rumours are especially strong down by the lake, in the south of the city. And in two parishes in particular – Atlixco and Toltenco.’
‘My parents live in Toltenco!’ I burst out.
‘So they do. And doesn’t your friend Handy have his house in Atlixco?’ The chief minister knew perfectly well where both my family and Handy’s lived.
I had an unpleasant suspicion about what the old man might have in mind.
I had not killed the otomi’s comrades, as it happened; but died, they certainly had, in a violent clash that only their leader had survived. He had been
