‘Where he joined the otomies.’
‘Of course. What else could they do with anyone who’d survived an ordeal like that, and come through it still able and willing to fight?’ Suddenly my brother shuddered so violently I felt it through the dugout hull of the boat. ‘But it’s the man who went into that ordeal who scares me, Yaotl. What kind of man could lie there, while they were doing that to him, waiting for the precise moment when they’d be off their guard? That’s not courage. It’s not even madness. It’s something beyond either, and that’s what your old master expects me to go up against.’
‘Old Black Feathers was right about one thing,’ I said. ‘It would be better for us to find the otomi than wait for him to spring out at us in his own time.’
My brother responded to my observation with a sardonic smile. ‘I’m sure you’re right. Do I take it you have some sort of plan, then, beyond blundering around in the marshes?’
When I explained what Lily and I had had in mind, he surprised me by turning pale. ‘You really think that’s a good idea – questioning Cactus and the midwife?’
‘Don’t worry. I don’t think Cactus is a real sorcerer.’
‘You don’t?’
The eagerness in his tone reminded me that he had always been superstitious, and found anything associated with magic troubling.
‘No. I’ve been thinking about this. The other night I got as close to a dancer with a dead woman’s forearm as anyone ever did, and it didn’t even make me feel drowsy. I think the otomi believes his ally is the genuine article – that’s why he’s so scared of him – but I don’t. He’s a fake. Which makes it all the more likely that Cactus is our man, because he’s a fake too – not even a real curer. He’s dangerous, of course, but only as a man.’
‘Well, that’s something. Mind you, it’s not just him I’m worried about. You expect me to come to a House of Pleasure with you? Have you any idea what will happen to me at home if Banner finds out about it?’
I laughed in spite of myself. ‘For a moment I thought you were worrying about something trivial! Now look – here’s Handy. He looks as if he’s been waiting for us.’
We had reached the commoner’s house in Atlixco. Handy threw me a mooring rope while I let the canoe drift against the bank. He raised his eyebrows when he saw Lion and I was afraid for a moment that he was about to prostrate himself before him: he had always been somewhat in awe of my brother.
Lion himself cut short any obeisance, scrambling ashore before the boat had stopped moving and demanding brusquely: ‘How’s Kite?’
Handy stammered: ‘M-my lord...’
‘Just “Sir” will do.’
‘Sir... He should live, the curer thinks.’ He looked at me wide-eyed. ‘He didn’t faint, did he? So with any luck his soul should be safe.’ Whenever anyone suffered a severe shock there was always the fear that his soul would flee, leaving the body a shell, to wither and die from within.
I looked towards the house. ‘Where’s Lily?’
‘Ah.’
I whirled to confront the man. He was studying the sky now as though finding something intensely interesting in its uniform blue. ‘What?’ I asked dangerously.
‘I did try to persuade her not to. I said you wouldn’t be happy, but she said... Well, I wouldn’t like to repeat it word for word, but it was along the lines of who was whose slave and you didn’t have to like it.’
‘Where’s she gone?’
He sighed. ‘She didn’t want to wait, that was all. And it didn’t seem too dangerous, what she wanted to do – just to go and talk to that curer, Cactus, and Gentle Heart. Surely the marketplace and the House of Pleasure should be safe enough?’
Lion and I looked at one another. ‘He’s got a point,’ my brother said cautiously. ‘What harm can she come to?’
‘Harm?’ I cried, appalled. ‘Do you have any what those two may have done?’
‘No.’ Handy looked at me curiously. ‘I only gathered you’d be angry when you found out she’d gone without you... What’s this all about?’
‘We’d better go after her,’ said Lion, gripping his sword.
The three of us ran all the way to the marketplace, where the sight of the Guardian of the Waterfront, armed and clad in all his finery, but panting and glistening with sweat, was enough to silence the small crowd of buyers and sellers we found gathered there, the hush spreading around us like ripples on a pond.
‘Cactus!’ I gasped. ‘Where’s Cactus?’
Nobody answered.
My brother raised his sword. Its blades caught the sunlight as he shook it in time with his words. ‘What are you all standing there staring at us for? Where’s the curer? Where’s his friend the midwife?’
The people around us were a nondescript lot: commoners dressed in short, plain maguey fibre capes, and their womenfolk in equally rough but gaily-coloured skirts and shifts. The men were mostly scrawny, grey-haired individuals whose tonsured scalps meant they had never taken a captive in war. It may have been this that tempted my brother to try cowing them into answering our questions, forgetting that whatever else they might be, they were all Aztecs, and so born bloody-minded.
Two of the nearest stallholders, dealers in cheap crockery, to judge by their merchandise, looked at one another. ‘Have you seen a curer and a midwife?’ one of them said.
‘Can’t say as I have,’ replied the other, scratching himself thoughtfully. ‘Not that I’m sure I’d know what they looked like if I saw them. Do you know what they look like?’ he asked Lion.
The innocent question had the effect
