His chair creaked loudly I heard him get up, his sandals slapping the floor as he came around the back of it and stood over me and my brother. I pressed my nose to the ground and prayed silently to Tezcatlipoca for deliverance.
‘I remind you,’ he said, ‘that this costume has been stolen once before.’ His voice was quieter now. He spoke almost under his breath, and his words were the more menacing because of it. ‘It somehow came into the possession of Kindly the merchant, who by your own admission asked you to retrieve it when it was stolen from him. I do not know what possessed you to agree, but it does not matter.
‘You will do for me what you were to do for Kindly. You will find and bring me the costume. You will do it by tomorrow. If you do, I may be disposed to be merciful.’
He stopped. There was a long silence, during which I was aware of his brooding presence above me, the most powerful being in the World looking down upon a cowering slave.
I resolved to keep silent, but it was my brother, of all people, who blurted out the one question I did not want the Emperor to have the chance to answer.
‘And … and if he does not, my Lord?’
‘Then he will suffer the slowest and most excruciating death we can devise.’
Lion barely spoke to me after the Emperor dismissed us from his presence. I could hardly blame him. I had no idea what I might have said in his place: ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ would have been quite inadequate.
‘My boys will take you home,’ he said shortly, waving me towards one of his canoes.
‘But …’ I started to protest.
‘Just get in!’ he snapped. ‘I don’t know what you’re going to do about finding this costume of the Emperor’s. I don’t know how you’re going to find your son, either. But there’s not much you can do now till morning, so go and see our parents. Sit out the vigil in their courtyard.’ He hesitated before adding, in a voice that had suddenly become hoarse, ‘We both know it’s likely to be the last visit you ever pay them. Do whatever you have to tomorrow, but for tonight’ — he grinned weakly — ‘well, you can always tell Father that he doesn’t have to kill you after all. It looks as if your master and the Emperor between them are going to spare him the trouble!’
5
The house had fallen silent by the time the canoe bumped up against the wooden landing-stage, but nobody in it was asleep. As I approached, the smell of wood smoke filled my nostrils, and looking up, I saw embers and the tips of flames dancing over the top of the courtyard wall.
Suddenly an astonishingly loud noise, a trumpet call, split the air around me. A moment later the whole neighbourhood seemed to reverberate to the sound of singing, accompanied by drumming and the squeaking of flutes. The vigil had begun.
I stepped through the doorway to be greeted by the sight of a small crowd squatting or kneeling around a bonfire. Those nearest to me were just black lumps against the light of the flames, but I could see that most of my family were there, apart from Lion and the errant Sparrowhawk. My nieces and nephews were gathered in silent, solemn groups around their parents. My father and mother were on the far side of the fire, so that its orange light flickered over their faces. They squatted together, but with a deliberate distance between them that implied that words had been exchanged, and from the way my father glowered at me, his eyes glittering under lowered brows, I thought those words might well have concerned me. Perhaps Mother had told him that he would have to put up with me for one night, at least. He did not speak, but his eyes tracked me suspiciously as I took my place next to Handy.
On my other side was a little party of musicians and singers from the House of Song, led by a young priest with a conch-shell trumpet.
Cautiously, and with my eyes on the old, inimical face glaring at me across the pool of firelight, I squatted in my place and prepared to join in the vigil.
I picked up the song easily. It was an old hymn to Tlaloc:
In Mexico
God’s goods are borrowed
Among paper flags
And in the four zones
Are men standing up
And also it’s their time for tears …
I looked at Tlaloc himself, the rain-god who was also one of the mountains that my mother and sisters had modelled out of amaranth seed dough and placed on his own little mat, among his divine companions. His teeth and eyes glowed like embers in the firelight and the paper vestments that the priests had made for him shone. Strange, flickering shadows played on the paper: the shapes of his instruments, the tiny drum, the gourd rattle and the turtle shell that lay on the mat before him. Also there were his food and drink. He had a plateful of miniature tamales, and a green gourd containing a shining pool of fortified sacred wine. It was his first meal and his last, for along with all the other gods and holy mountains around him, he was due to die in the morning.
But I’ve been formed
And for my god
Of bloody flowers of corn
A festive few
I take
To the god’s court …
‘Do you think it will rain?’ Handy hissed, between verses.
I looked up. The paper streamers hanging on the pole moved sluggishly in the updraught from the fire. There was no sign of any wind, and through the light and smoke it was hard to tell whether there were any clouds overhead or not. ‘I don’t know. Still, the rains have been good so far, this winter.’
You are my warrior
A sorcerer prince
And though it is true
That you made our food
You the first man
They only shame you …
I opened my mouth for the next verse, but shut it when Handy started whispering to me again.
‘Got something for you.’
I looked anxiously at the young priest on my other side. I might have expected him to disapprove of our chattering instead of singing but he seemed too intent on not losing his own way in the song to take any notice.
‘What?’
‘Here you are. No idea what it is. A slave delivered it just after you and Lion left.’
‘Whose slave?’ I asked suspiciously. I took the thing. It was a parcel, wrapped up in the kind of cloth bag field hands took their lunch to work in.
‘He didn’t say. He spoke to your brother, Glutton. He said it was for you, or if you weren’t here, it was to be given toLion. He ran off before Glutton thought to ask him where he was from …’
‘Trust Glutton!’
‘Your father wanted to open it but your mother gave it to me. She thought I’d be able to get it to one of you … What’s the matter? Aren’t you going to open it?’
I hefted the parcel in my hand. It was heavy for its size. I could feel something hard and unyielding through the cloth. When I turned it over I caught a brief bright gleam, a sliver of something shining in the firelight.
It was so sharp that it had cut its own opening in the bag, almost as if it wanted to escape.
The parcel, the fire, the priest on one side of me and the commoner on the other all suddenly became blurred. In that moment I could not have said whether the tears in my eyes were tears of joy or unspeakable sadness.