He was also furious. Even if I had not heard what he had said tothe boy, I could have told as much by the soft tapping of a jeweled sandal on the stuccoed floor. I wondered how long he had been waiting for me before the boy had turned up. I wished he had sat indoors, enjoying a cup of chocolate or the attentions of his favorite concubine, rather than out here, feeling the gathering chill seeping into his bones.
“My Lord.” I made my obeisance, throwing myself abjectly on the floor.
“Yaotl. You’re late. Where have you been?”
The Chief Minister was capable of rages that could make a volcano seem tame, but I knew he was never to be feared more than when refined, controlled anger lowered his voice to an intimate whisper.
“I’m sorry. I fell asleep, after the sacrifice …”
“You’re lying. You’ve been to see the Emperor.”
I stared fixedly at the floor, thankful that at least I did not have to meet my master’s eyes.
“That brother of yours was here.” My master’s deceptively gentle voice hardened. His own father had been Guardian of the Waterfront in his youth, and old Black Feathers often bemoaned the fact that a man of Lion’s humble birth should be allowed to hold the rank. “Everyone knows what a toady he is. He was obviously running some errand for Montezuma. Do you think I’m so stupid I can’t work out what you’ve been up to?”
“I couldn’t help it!” I protested. There was no point in denying that I had been with the Emperor but at all costs I must not let my master know what I had been ordered to do. “He sent for me to give him my account of the sacrifice-there was no way I could refuse!”
“Oh, the sacrifice!” he said as if he had forgotten all about it. “And tell me, slave, are you going to favor me with your account as well? Or do I have to make do with getting it secondhand from some passerby?” He was no longer whispering.
“My Lord, I came as soon as I could …”
“After all, I could ask anyone, couldn’t I? The whole city heard what that Bathed Slave said and saw how he died. ‘Watch out for the big boat.’ That’s it, isn’t it?” Now he was shouting. Age had not weakened his voice. “Anyone could tell me how my fool of a slave let him go-if they could only stop laughing long enough, that is!”
“My Lord, I’m truly sorry, we couldn’t hold him.” I cast about frantically for something that would mollify him. “But he did say something else, before he went-and no one else heard it.”
“What?” Something creaked-either his bones or his seat’s wicker frame-as my master leaned forward urgently. “What else did he say?”
I told him. I had no idea what the words might mean to him. “He said: ‘Tell the old man.’”
He stiffened visibly. Watching discreetly through lowered eyes, I saw his face darken to the shade of the sky above us. For a moment I thought he was going to be taken ill. Then he slumped in his chair.
“What do you suppose he meant?”
“My Lord, I’ve no idea. Unless …” I could just see one of his knuckles in the corner of my vision, and the answer was there, in the tautness of his skin over the swollen joint. The merchant’s slave’s last words had been a message for my master.
“Unless he meant you, my Lord.”
“Me?” he asked sharply. “Why should he have meant me?”
“I …” I hesitated. It was all too easy to guess why: because Montezuma and my brother had been right. The man who had died this evening had been one of the Emperor’s escaped sorcerers and my master had been behind it all. “I don’t know,” I added wretchedly.
It must be more complicated than that, I realized. Whatever my master’s involvement may have been in the sorcerers’ disappearance, it could not explain how one of them had come to throw himself off the Great Pyramid, or account for the anger and distress old Black Feathers felt on account of his death. Whatever plans my master may or may not have made for the sorcerers, something had clearly happened to frustrate them.
“Where do you think the merchant got his victim from?” my master demanded.
“The market at Azcapotzalco?”
“Don’t be stupid! You know perfectly well he was never anywhere near a slave market!”
“Then … my Lord, you do know where he came from!”
“Know?” Old Black Feathers’ sudden laughter was a dry, mirthless cackle. “Of course I know! That young man used him to make a fool out of me. No doubt it suited him to have the man raving like a lunaticjust before he died, with my own slave in attendance to make sure every word was passed on to me. No doubt he thinks he’ll get away with it, keeping them all from me, just to make sure I keep dancing to his tune, but he won’t.”
“You mean the merchant has the sorcerers?” Simple astonishment made me blurt the words out even as I realized they were a mistake.
I was still prostrated before my master, with my hands stretched out flat on the floor in front of me. Suddenly something was squeezing each of them: the rough sole of a sandal. I heard a creak as my master leaned forward in his chair, and felt his breath on the back of my neck as he bent down to speak once again in that deadly whisper.
“I may be old, but I can still break every finger in both your hands before you can even scream-and that’s before I give you to my steward to play with. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I gasped.
“Now I know Montezuma didn’t summon you just so that you could tell him about a botched sacrifice. He told you about the sorcerers and ordered you to spy on me. What else did he say to you? Don’t lie or leave anything out. You know what I will do to you if you do.”
I found myself stumbling through the events of the evening since I had met my brother, as helpless as a man staggering through a nightmare, with the thought of frail bones cracking driving me on like a demon at my back.
As I neared the end of the tale I felt the pressure on my hands relax. I flexed my fingers automatically. Long moments of silence passed before I summoned the courage to look up.
My master had raised his head to look at the branches spreading above him. They were bare now, stripped by frost.
“My father’s tree.” He sighed. Abruptly his manner had changed: it became abstracted, almost wistful, as his fingers began caressing a naked branch. “All I ever wanted was something that wasn’t his: some renown of my own. See this tree? My father, Lord Tlacaelel, planted it before I was born-the best part of two bundles of years ago. It will still be growing here when I’m dead.” Suddenly he seized a twig, twisted it violently until it snapped off, and hurled it out of sight into a corner of the patio. The rest of the tree shook and rattled. “And they will still talk about him then, won’t they? The great Tlacaelel!The man four emperors looked up to, the Chief Minister who turned down the throne because he was king enough already! What do you suppose they’ll say about his son?”
I was too afraid to answer. The question was not really addressed to me anyway.
“I dance attendance on my young cousin, Montezuma, and amuse myself sitting in the court of appeal trying to work out which of two depositions amounts to the bigger pack of lies, or deciding which parish’s turn it is to muck out the zoo. But I should be happy with that, shouldn’t I? Because I’m the great Tlacaelel’s son, and that should be enough for anybody!” He sighed. “I suppose it will have to be enough for me, now.”
“My Lord-I don’t understand. Even if Shining Light’s offering was one of the sorcerers, what was he to you? Why does it involve your father?”
“Can’t you see, Yaotl? It’s because of my father that the Emperor is afraid of me! Montezuma acts as if the gods themselves installed him on the throne, but they didn’t-the chiefs elected him, just as they elected every Emperor before him. But he knows his throne is rightfully mine!”