I was standing in a little plaza with a short, stumpy pyramid at its far end. With its dozen or so steps and its single shrine, a thatched shelter at its summit barely tall enough for a man to stand up in, it might have been a baby of one of the mighty edifices that towered over the Heart of the World. In fact, there was every chance that this modest monument was older than they were. The great pyramids that towered over the city and could be seen rearing up into the sky from right across the valley had been rebuilt many times, and each time saw them rise higher than before. Not so long ago what had stood in their place must have been as crude as the one I was looking at, with a single scratched and cracked clay brazier in front of its shrine and a single priest with a conch-shell as large as his head standing behind it, glaring at me through its smoke.
This vision of how the greatest monuments we had thrown up to our gods had once looked was one more reminder of how far my people had come in the few bundles of years since they had found themselves on this island.
It also gave me an idea.
I hastened away, before the priest could accost me and demand to know what I was doing dropping fleas all over his parish, and made my sore feet take me back to Amantlan.
I soon found myself back in a familiar place: on the Amantlan side of the canal dividing the featherworkers’ parish from the merchants in Pochtlan. As I neared the bridge where I had seen someone dressed as a god and the shelter where I had found Idle’s body, I had to force myself to walk slowly, stand upright and look straight ahead, although what I really wanted to do was scuttle quickly from shadow to shadow in the hope that nobody would see me. Despite my disguise I felt horriblyvulnerable. Both sides of the water were crowded, but nobody seemed to be paying much attention to me and there was no sign of any warriors.
I could just see the local temple, whose pyramid peeped above the roofs of the nearest houses. Seeing a narrow path that led that way, I made for it, after a quick precautionary glance over my shoulder. That was when I saw my son.
I glimpsed him only for an instant among the people milling about on the far side of the canal. If I had not been searching for him for three days I might not have recognized him, for the crowd closed around him again straight away His skin was paler than I had expected. But I had no doubts.
‘Nim-!’ I bounded towards the bridge but stopped myself just in time, choking off my cry before anyone could wonder what had made a priest lose his composure. I walked as quickly as I dared. The crowd parted for me, out of respect for what they thought I was, but the bridge was crowded, and by the time I was in Pochtlan, Nimble had vanished.
I wasted half the morning hunting him among the streets and canals of the merchants’ parish. Eventually I found myself back where I had started, beside the canal, leaning against a wall to catch my breath, with my eyes shut tightly to stop the tears of frustration flowing.
When I opened them again, the first thing I saw, on the far side of the water, was the top of Amantlan’s pyramid.
It was hard to leave Pochtlan, knowing that Nimble had been here, but I decided that I might as well go through with my original plan.
The pyramid in the featherworkers’ parish was not much taller than the one I had seen first thing that morning, but it was much more opulent. Its shrine was a solid-looking little house, and the steps leading up to it were smooth, sharp edged andclean, and showed signs of recent repair and daily attention.
About halfway up the steps a young acolyte was bent over a broom, sweeping away imaginary dust. His face, like mine, was stained black and streaked with blood, some of which was still fresh enough to drip on the steps at his feet and spoil his handiwork. As I watched him working his way down the stairway, always going backwards so as not to turn his back on the god at its top, I wondered whether he was destined for the priesthood, or whether he was a featherworker in training, sent to the priests to learn the art and meaning behind the pictures he would make, as Angry’s nephew would be before long.
Above the sweeper, in front of the shrine, stood a large earthenware brazier, a round vessel, half the height of a man, with the face of a god sculpted on its front and painted in dazzling colours. I had seen the face before, in a niche at the featherworker Skinny’s house. Now, presented for the first time with a more-than-life-size representation of the god, Coyotl Inahual, I could see properly how he looked, with his sharp, dog-like features and the feathers, needle and flattened bone for spreading glue in his hands. A lot of work had gone into making that face as lifelike as possible. Only real spittle dripping from its jaws could have made it more realistic.
I began to mount the steps. Their stone was cold and hard under my bare feet. The young man sweeping them seemed oblivious to my presence until I was standing next to him. Then I cleared my throat noisily and he dropped his broom in fright.
‘Never ends, the sweeping, does it?’ I remarked.
‘Who … who are you?’ he demanded, looking up at me fearfully as he bent down to pick the broom up.
‘Just a visitor. A fellow priest.’ I flourished my robes and fought off a violent impulse to scratch. I gestured towards the summit of the pyramid. ‘May I?’
‘Um …’ The youth looked nervously into the plaza below us. There were one or two loiterers but I suspected he was hoping to see the parish priest, and there was no sign of him. ‘I … I suppose it’s all right. As l-long as you don’t go inside the sh-shrine.’
‘No chance of that.’ As I mounted the rest of the steps I added, over my shoulder: ‘What’s your name?’
‘El-Elmimiquini,’ he replied, following me.
‘Featherworker’s boy, eh?’ That seemed a safe guess: it was hard to imagine anyone being taken into the priesthood with a name that meant ‘Stammerer’.
‘Yes.’ We had reached the top now and stood there for a moment in silence, while I surveyed the parish.
Amantlan and its neighbours lay below us. Through the shimmering heat of midday I could see gleaming white stuccoed squares, darker patches where the roofs were thatched and between them the black wells of deeply shadowed courtyards. Canals ran in straight lines among them, splitting the parishes one from another the way a cotton thread was used to cut maize cakes into portions. I could clearly see the waterway separating Amantlan from Pochtlan, and the bridge over it. I fancied I could see Angry’s house, and Kindly’s, farther off, on the far side of the canal, embedded in a jumble of evergreen trees and rooftops and small open squares.
Presiding over all of it, and looking down on us, so tall and solid that it might have been close enough to touch, stood the great pyramid of Tlatelolco. From here, with my view of it unobstructed by surrounding houses, it looked vaster and more imposing than ever, its summit bearing its two temples, to Huitzilopochtli and Tezcatlipoca, so high up that they had vanished into the low clouds.
‘Nice view,’ I observed.
‘What do you want?’ The boy gripped his broom tightly, asif afraid I was going to snatch it from him.
‘As I said, just visiting,’ I said vaguely. If I could brazen this out, I thought, and let Stammerer think I was someone in authority — perhaps a Keeper of the Gods, an overseer at a House of Tears, a terrifying figure to a boy being trained by priests — then he might tell me anything. So far my disguise seemed to be working, and I was managing to hide the terror of being found out that was tying my guts into knots. ‘You must be able to see everything that happens in the parish from up here.’
To my amazement, the youngster laughed. ‘Oh, I … I see what you’re up to! You want to know about the vi-vision!’
I stared dumbly at him for a moment, before remembering that I was supposed to be intimidating him. I frowned as sternly as I could. ‘Now, listen to me, young man …’