All of these people were present. However nothing else about the house was as it ought to have been.
The women were not weaving. Their looms lay abandoned on the flagstones while they huddled in little groups in the corners. The men had dropped their pots of whitewash and were hovering by the warriors, trying to look important while avoiding catching the armed men’s eyes. The only messenger stood by himself, apparently with nothing better to do than loiter here after delivering his despatch. The guards, instead of lounging idly by the doorways waiting to be relieved, were fidgeting and glancing nervously about them, the blades of their swords catching the sunlight and glittering as they twitched in their hands.
All of this I noticed out of the corner of my eye, but my attention was drawn to what I saw directly me in front of me. A small group of people stood or sat in the centre of the courtyard, surrounded by a large, clear space, as though no-one else dared to approach them.
My brother, the Guardian of the Waterfront, was formally dressed. He wore a long, yellow cotton cloak with a red border, tubular plugs in his ears, white ribbons in his hair, and yellow sandals with long, loose straps. His face and what could be seen of his body were stained black, although the pitch had not been laid on so thickly as to conceal his expression, which was ferocious.
Beside him stood a short, slightly plump woman of about my age: his wife, Papan, or ‘Banner.’ She was fidgeting, nervously shifting her weight from one foot to the other while two of her women wavered close by, impatient to be allowed to finish dressing her. Her cheeks were still brown because they had yet to apply their customary coat of yellow ochre, and her hair was a tangled mess.
Lion had made very few mistakes in the course of his career, which had seen him rise smoothly from the humble origins we shared to his present eminence; but he was not perfect, and to my mind, marrying Banner had been his greatest blunder of all. It was understandable, of course: he had been the glamorous young warrior, sporting the finery he had just won by taking two captives single-handed on his first campaign, no doubt feeling very pleased with himself and entitled to the best his grateful city could bestow on him. She had caught his eye during the early summer festival of the Great Vigil, when the girls carried ears of maize to the temple of the goddess Chicome Coatl. Whether it was the glow of the pyrites stuck to her skin or the way she tossed her unbound hair, I never knew, but he had decided that she was the loveliest creature he had ever seen and therefore his by right. Her parents had agreed, partly I suspected to get her off their hands. Their wedding had been a conventional affair, the couple kneeling with their cloaks knotted together as they fed little maize cakes to each other, and the most remarkable thing about it was that she had somehow managed to stop talking for long enough to allow the ceremony to go ahead.
She was not talking now, although her mouth was open. She was staring with a mixture of astonishment and awe at the figure dominating her courtyard: a very old man, wrapped in a rabbit’s-fur cloak against the morning chill, and huddled in a wicker chair that must have been placed here for him by the litter bearers who now stood behind it. His presence explained my brother’s suppressed anger and my sister-in-law’s nervousness, for he was none other than my former master, lord Feathered in Black.
If Ollin had not been standing next to me I might have turned around and left the moment I recognised the chief minister. The sight of his steward, Huitztic, skulking behind his master’s chair as though hoping to use it to conceal himself, would only have encouraged me to walk faster. As the big, well armed warrior at my side was likely to object to my going, I stayed.
‘It’s a bit crowded in here, Lion,’ I said loudly. ‘Who else have you invited to this party?’
It was Banner who answered, trilling her way through the ritual greeting: ‘Yaotl! You have expended breath to get here, you are tired, you are hungry. You must rest and have something to eat...’
‘Nonsense, woman,’ her husband growled. ‘He’s not exhausted because Ollin brought him in the canoe, and there aren’t any tortillas yet because nobody in your household has done any work since our noble guest arrived.’ The ironic emphasis on the word ‘guest’ reminded me that he and the chief minister had never been friends. Lord Feathered in Black’s father had once been Guardian of the Waterfront and my former master hated the thought of a commoner like my brother holding the rank.
The old man in the chair had been looking at the ground. Now, when he raised his head, regarding me with hollow eyes sunk deep into his gaunt features, I noticed that he did not look well. Something must have happened in the last few days to age him dramatically.
‘Yaotl,’ he said. His voice was unusually hoarse. ‘We’ve been waiting for you.’
‘So sorry to have kept you waiting, my lord,’ I said drily. ‘Unfortunately when your steward came to fetch me I was busy. Of course if I were still your slave, it might have been different, but seeing that I’m not...’
My brother heaved an exasperated sigh. ‘Yaotl, this isn’t helping...’
Lord Feathered in Black frowned. ‘What do you mean, when my steward came to fetch you?’
‘You sent him to Atlixco, the day before yesterday. I presume it
