‘He got the raiment of the god back for us, in the end, even if he didn’t mean to, and as for killing Idle — be honest, Lion, do you really care?’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ he admitted reluctantly. ‘I’ll have to give the Emperor some sort of report, but it’s the costume he’s concerned about.’ He looked sternly at the two youths and the priest. ‘Just remember that none of this ever happened, do you understand? Your lives depend upon it! Now, what do you want?’
The warrior bounding up the steps two or three at a time was almost black in the face with exertion and could scarcely draw enough breath to deliver his report. Fortunately, it was a very short report.
‘That policeman, sir — came round — wanted to warn your brother — his master’s at the merchant’s house! He’s got a bunch of Otomi warriors and they’re holding Kindly and Lily!’
Shield met us on the bridge. He was rubbing his head as he fell into step beside my brother, my son and me.
‘Look, I’m sorry about this,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘Forget it,’ he said roughly. ‘Compared to those animals, your brother’s boys are like wet-nurses.’ I had no need to ask what animals he meant: his frown, the set of his jaw and the way he spat the word out, as if it were snake venom sucked from a wound, were enough.
‘You’re sure old Black Feathers is there in person?’ my brother asked. ‘How many men has he got with him?’
‘Nothing happens in this parish without me knowing about it,’ the policeman assured us. ‘They turned up about midday — the Chief Minister, twenty Otomies and a priest.’
‘A priest?’ I asked. ‘Why would he have a priest with him?’
‘How should I know? He was a youngster, that’s all I can tell you. Looked as if he’d come straight from a vigil — he was still carrying a conch-shell around, like he hadn’t had time to put it away and wasn’t sure what to do with it.’
‘Idiot!’ I cried, slapping my own forehead. Now I knew why my master had been willing to give me only Handy as an escort, and why the young man my mother had hired to lead my family’s devotions had left in such a hurry.
‘Forget the priest,’ said my brother. ‘What about the Otomies?’
‘Like I said, twenty And don’t kid yourself that I might have made a mistake. I’m not likely to forget what that little squad of lunatics looks like — especially the big ugly one-eyed bastard in charge of them! Mostly they’re in the house. They’ve got a few posted outside as lookouts, and a couple of the others on the roof. They don’t take any trouble to keep out of sight.’
Lion halted. ‘We need to work out how to play this,’ he said.
His bodyguards drew up behind him as he looked at my son and me.
I said: ‘It’s easy enough to see what the old man’s after. He wants me and Nimble. He probably hoped to catch us in Pochtlan. Now he’s got Kindly and Lily as hostages, and he’s just sitting there, waiting for us to come back.’ I turned to Upright. ‘How’s he going to get away with it, though? Surely the merchants won’t stand for this?’
Tlatelolco’s merchants had their own laws and their own courts and policed their own affairs. They bitterly resented any interference from outside, and could afford to make their resentment felt — so long as they remained the Emperor’s obedient subjects and kept the Palace supplied with exotic foreign goods and intelligence from abroad.
‘They won’t,’ the policeman confirmed. ‘They’ll complain to the Governor, and he’ll complain to the Emperor, and your master will have to explain himself. He’s supposed to be the Chief Justice of Tenochtitlan, among other things, and we all know what happens to corrupt judges.’ Strangulation was the usual penalty.
‘Yes, I can just hear it,’ said my brother drily. ‘“All a silly misunderstanding. Just paying a call on some old friends. Of course I had my guards with me, I always do, I’m a great lord, what could be more natural?” No one will believe a word of it, of course, but it won’t matter if the right people get paid off. And by then it’ll be too late anyway. What do we do in the meantime?’
‘You mean, besides busting in there and freeing Lily and Kindly?’ It came out more sharply than I had intended. Nerves had added an edge to my voice. What was the captain doing now? I wondered. Was he content to squat in Lily’s courtyard and wait, or had he found some other, unspeakable way to pass the time? My teeth ground together in anger and frustration.
Lion went pale. ‘Now listen, if you think I’m afraid of a bunch of thugs with silly haircuts …’
‘Relax,’ I said hastily. ‘I know you’re not. I only meant …’
‘We’ll go in,’ he went on, ignoring me, ‘but we need to know where they all are first. I’ll get a couple of lads to spy out the land.’ He looked at Shield. ‘How well can you see the house from the parish temple? I could send someone up there for a recce.’
‘No you won’t,’ I told him.
He rounded on me. ‘Mind your own business! This is war, Yaotl, not some game you can win with a bit of luck and a fast mouth. Now leave it to me!’
‘Lion, will you listen?’
‘Shut up!’
‘Please! Father, Uncle!’
The tremor in Nimble’s voice made us both pause. I looked at him and understood, from his wide-eyed and fearful expression and the way his lower lip trembled, that he must be as afraid for Lily as I was. More so, perhaps, since she had nursed him back to health, treating him for a few days as if he had been her own.
I stretched out a hand and put it on his shoulder, gripping it the more firmly as the knowledge of what I had to do became clearer, along with the certainty that this was the last I would ever see of him.
‘I’m sorry, son. You too, Lion.’ I turned back to my brother. ‘Nobody doubts your courage, or your men’s. But face it, you’re wrong: this isn’t a war. This is the middle of Mexico, not some frontier province. If you go charging in, half your men are going to get killed, at least, and even if you get Lily and her father out alive, the chances are old Black Feathers will twist the whole thing around afterwards so as to make it look as if it was you who started it. As you said yourself, as long as the right people get paid off …’
‘But what can we do?’ cried Nimble desperately.
I looked silently into his face for a long time. I wanted to speak, but the words would not come, and I could not have forced them past the lump in my throat. Nonetheless he understood. I could tell as much from the way his eyes filmed over with tears and his lips parted, silently forming the word ‘No’.
‘It’s … it’s the only way,’ I whispered at last. Tears were clouding my own vision. I swatted them away furiously, not wanting to lose sight of him a moment before I had to.
‘What are you talking about?’ my brother demanded, his head darting from side to side as he stared at each of us in turn. ‘What’s the matter?’
I forced myself to look away from my son and towards Lion, whose puzzled frown might have struck me as comic in other circumstances. ‘Lord Feathered in Black wanted me to tell him where Nimble was.’ I spoke deliberately, bringing the words out one at a time because I knew that if I did not, they would all come at once in a desperate, incoherent, unintelligible rush. ‘But he knows perfectly well that I wouldn’t betray my own son, no matter what he did. He hoped to catch one or both of us at Kindly’s house, but he missed us. So now he’ll be ready to work out his anger on whichever of us he can get his hands on. If I give myself myself up to him, he’ll let Kindly and Lily go. He’s taking too big a risk holding them not to. But Nimble — you have to run away. Now, before he sends the Otomies after you!’
‘You can’t go!’ the boy cried. ‘I’ll go instead!’
‘No — look, you don’t even exist, as far as the law’s concerned.’ Having been brought up among barbarians and crept back unnoticed into the city, Nimble had no parish and, apart from me, no family. ‘Even if you did, he could charge you with complicity in Shining Light’s crimes.’ I saw him wince at my brutal reminder of his dead lover and the vicious cycle ofdeceit and murder he had been drawn into. ‘I’m a slave, remember? There’s not much he can do to me, except sell me. He’ll have enough to do covering up his activities today, without breaking the law further by ill-treating a slave. Look, I’m not really taking a risk.’ The illogic of my own words was painfully plain to me, and I could see from the look in my son’s eyes that he saw it too, but my brother and the policeman took it up.