There was no sound in the courtyard that I could hear. Nonetheless the sensation that I was not alone would not go away. I could feel it as a tingling at the nape of my neck and a coldness beyond the chill of the evening air.
I turned to go, expecting to feel my way out of the plaza. However, I had not taken three steps before I bumped into something large and hard.
“Hey...!”
The thing moved. Suddenly I was lifted off my feet, the breath squeezed out of me in a bear hug. I heared a man’s voice, very low but clear: “So the priest told you, did he?”
I struggled, lashing out with my feet but kicking only empty air. I wanted to shout but had no breath to do it with.
“Where is it?” the man holding me hissed. “You found it, didn’t you? What have you done with it?”
All I could manage by way of reply was a strangled gasp. My assailant’s grip slackened a little when he realised that I could not answer his questions unless he stopped trying to suffocate me.
I thought quickly. “It’s all right,” I croaked, using up the little air he allowed me. “I know what happened. It was Huitztic, the steward! He put the poison in — I’ve got the proof!”
It did not work. The powerful arms gripped me tighter than ever. I felt dizzy. Coloured lights began to dance before my eyes.
Then another man spoke, from somewhere in the shadows. I knew the voice instantly.
“Who’s that? Yaotl? What’s going on?”
The man holding me dropped me on the ground.
As I fell, crashing backwards onto the flagstones, my lungs filled up and I was able to yelclass="underline" “Huitztic, stop him!”
The steward did not understand. “There you are!” he bellowed triumphantly. “I know your game. You thought you’d hide from me until you’d made up a pack of lies to tell to Lord Feathered in Black. I’ll see you dead before you pin this thing on me!”
I groaned aloud. “No — you idiot! — quick, stop that bastard before he runs away!”
A foot flew out of the night and slammed into my shoulder. I gasped in pain. I drew breath to call out again but then I heard the sound of running feet, moving away.
Huitztic yelled: “Got you, you miserable slave — wait, who are you?”
His words turned into a cry of pain as the young man who had assaulted me hit him.
After that there was a long silence, broken only by the steward’s painful whimpering.
“So which one was that?” I wondered out loud, while I nursed my bruised throat. “Was it Owl or Firstborn Son, do you think?”
There was no answer.
“I think we’d better go and see old Black Feathers now,” I continued, “and if you don’t say anything about how both you and that young fool tried to silence me, then I won’t.”
My master received me alone, seated in his favourite place, under the magnolia on the roof of his palace. We left the steward in the courtyard below to fret and pace about nervously. He still thought I was going to accuse him, but I knew that would not do for the old man. He wanted proof.
I showed him what I had brought from the temple. It was, I had guessed, the thing the young man who had attacked me had been after: the one reed out of the two hundred and sixty I had found that had seemed lighter than the rest. As he held it up to peer at the Moon through it, I told him what had happened.
“There were four hundred dancers, two hundred and sixty straws, and fifty-two jars,” I began.
“Yes, yes, I know,” he replied absently, still squinting through the tube.
What I said next got his full attention, however. “Wrong! There were two hundred and sixty-one straws — and two of them were bored through. The one your great-nephew had, and this one.”
“No, that doesn’t make sense. If two of them had cheated, one of the others would have become intoxicated — or worse, if he’d drunk from the same jar as Heron.”
“He was at the same jar as Heron, my Lord. He didn’t drink, though. He must have smuggled that tube in just as Heron did, but he never intended to suck through it. He blew.”
My master’s sharp eyes glittered as he stared at me.
“That ceremony always turns into a riot. There’s no time for anyone to check whether the tube they’ve got is hollow or not, if they’re lucky enough to be able to lay hands on one at all. So you’ll always get several young men sucking away at each jar, most of them due to be disappointed. The one who poisoned your great nephew knew that and took advantage of it. He stuck close to Heron with a hollow reed full of powdered mushrooms, knowing nobody would think anything of it if he dipped his reed in the same jar. He blew the poison in just as Heron was slurping the stuff up.”
Lord Feathered in Black looked at the tube with distaste. “Clever,” he conceded. “But if what you say is right, then how do we know which of them it was?”
“I don’t think we ever will,” I replied carefully. I was sure it had been either Owl or Firstborn Son who had attacked me, but I did not blame him. He must have been terrified when he found out how hard the chief minister had taken his prank.
“Well, at least we know where he got the straw from,” the chief minister said.
“We do?”
“Two Rabbit. He vanished yesterday, just after you saw him at the prison. Collected a few things from his lodging at the temple and hasn’t been seen since. I don’t suppose he ever will be again, at least not in Mexico.”
I found Fire Snake looking none the worse for his brief stay in the prison.
“You did it! Well done, Yaotl — thank you, old friend, thank you! I shan’t forget this...”
“I wish you would,” I said shortly.
“If there’s ever anything I can do...”
I looked at his eager face, the grin white against the pitch he used to stain it, and felt disgusted. The gods had been affronted, but all that mattered to Fire Snake was that he had got away with it. “Just tell me something,” I said quietly. “How did Two Rabbit know what you and Heron had done?”
The effusion of words abruptly halted. He hesitated before saying: “But we talked about that. Didn’t he learn it from someone Heron had been bragging to? What about that girl?”
“Precious Flower didn’t talk. I’ve met them both. She didn’t like what Heron had done but there’s no way she’d betray him. That young fool doesn’t deserve her.”
“Well, then...”
“In fact,” I went on, “it seems to me there’s only one person who could or would have told him, expecting him to do exactly what he did. His assistant, the one he thought was too ambitious. You knew how this was likely to turn out, didn’t you? When that young man attacked me — I still don’t know who it was, by the way, and I don’t want to — he said he thought the priest had told me what happened. At first I thought he meant you, but he was talking about Two Rabbit. Your chief gave one of Heron’s rivals a tube full of sacred mushrooms, but he only did it because he knew what Heron was going to do. And he can only have learned of that from you.”
“That’s absurd!” Fire Snake protested, but I could hear the tremor in his voice.
“No, I think it’s quite clever. You didn’t actually poison young Heron but you found a way to bring it about. The possibility of implicating poor old Two Rabbit must have made it even sweeter for you. Of course, it went a bit wrong when you were arrested — you didn’t expect that, I’d guess — but it all turned out well in the end, didn’t it? Will they make you chief priest now, I wonder?”
He clutched anxiously at the hem of my cloak as I turned away from him, but I did not want to hear any more claims on an old friendship that had never existed.