Sorcery came at a price, however. It meant dealing with strange, unnerving creatures who could easily do you more harm than good. If the sorcerers Montezuma had questioned were genuine then they may have been able to tell him what the future held. Obviously he believed they had not dared to and had used their powers to escape him.
And the more convinced he was that they had seen his future, the more desperate he would be to get them back.
I examined the nearest empty cage. “Let’s leave magic aside, for the moment. If I were shut up in here, how would I get out?”
“You wouldn’t!”
“No, but just suppose I were to try it.”
He sighed. “Oh, all right. To begin with, there’s no door. You’d have been dropped in through the trapdoor on the roof-see it? Once you were inside we’d have weighed it down with a stone slab and no way would you get it open. Don’t even think about pushing it out of the way-we won’t stop you, but trust me, it won’t budge.” He gave me a nasty grin. “Shall I shut you in and let you try it for yourself?”
“No!” I stepped hastily away from the cage. I could still remember the wood creaking under the weight of that stone slab. “I’ll take your word for it. So I’d have to have someone open the trapdoor from outside.”
The majordomo looked suspiciously at his inmates, a couple of whom had lifted their heads and seemed to be taking an unwelcome interest in our conversation. He raised his voice deliberately. “Forget it! To begin with your accomplice would have to get in past my guards-and I’ve told you, they were doubled up that night. He’d have to find the right cage, open it and let you out, and do all thiswithout being spotted. What’s more, he’d need help shifting that stone. Then he and his mate would have to sneak you out, again past my guards, who wouldn’t have missed them going in in the first place! There’s only one way in or out of here, you know, and you’ve seen how small the windows are. Oh, and on this occasion, he’d have had to do the same trick five times.” He looked about him smugly, as though he had forgotten that in spite of everything a number of his prisoners had managed to slip away. “I tell you, it couldn’t be done!”
“Who’s allowed in here, besides your guards?”
“Nobody! Apart from the judges, of course, if they want to question the prisoners-and the work details who come in to clean up when it’s their parish’s turn at the job.”
I could not help grimacing. Forced labor was a part of the common man’s lot and most would cheerfully tackle dredging a canal or hauling stone to the site of a new public building, but for a people who liked to keep themselves clean, mucking out the prison would be a different matter. “I suppose you’re going to tell me they’re always escorted?”
“All the time! We count them in, we watch them and we count them out again. Face it, there are only three ways out of here. The rats eat you, the judges let you out, or …” He lowered his voice again. “Or you use sorcery! That’s what we told the Emperor, and he believes us!”
I asked the majordomo whether I could question his guards.
“Go ahead,” he said indifferently. “It’s the same shift we had on duty when the prisoners went missing, but they won’t be able to tell you anything I haven’t.”
Each of the guards had been handpicked for two qualities: being able to wield a huge cudgel and being able to tolerate enough boredom to crush the mind of anybody that had one to crush. I could not credit any of them with great powers of observation, but I could not imagine any of them falling asleep on the job either. Each of our conversations was a repeat of the last, with me staring up into a slack-jowled, thick-jawed, heavy-lidded face that bore all the expression of one of the masks of human skin worn at the Festival of the Flaying of Men. It would go something like this:
“What did you see the day the prisoners went missing?”
“What prisoners?”
“The sorcerers.”
“The sorcerers?”
“Yes, the sorcerers-the ones the majordomo says turned themselves into birds.”
“Oh, the sorcerers!”
There would be a pause.
“Well, what did you see?”
The guard I was questioning would turn to one of his colleagues-preferably the one I had last spoken to.
“Did you see anything, mate?”
“When?”
“When those sorcerers went missing.”
“Sorcerers?”
“Yes-you know.”
“No.”
“No what?”
“No, I don’t know.”
“The sorcerers-the men who got out. When that happened, what did you see?”
There would be another pause.
“I didn’t see anything.”
The guard I was questioning would turn to me in triumph.
“See? He didn’t see anything either. I reckon they must have flown away, like bloody birds!”
After three attempts at this I gave up. I had found out as much as I was going to here.
2
I stood outside the prison, savoring the midday sunshine, which had dried up the last of the rain, the clean air and the newly swept earth under my feet.
I watched the Aztecs around me, the men and women strolling or hurrying through the street or paddling along the canal beside it. I sought out things that distinguished the passersby from the wretches in the prison. I looked at the men’s cloaks with their bright colors and bold patterns, each announcing its wearer’s rank and achievements, and at the earrings and lip-plugs sported by those entitled to them. I looked at the skirts and blouses of the women, no two alike in their rich embroidery, at the yellow ochre on their faces and at the ways they wore their hair-loose or cut short or braided, or done in the formal style that was the emblem of respectable Aztec womanhood: divided and bound at the nape of the neck to leave two ends projecting over the crown like a pair of horns. When I looked down at my own apparel-a plain, functional cloak and breechcloth, with none of the cheap brash jewelry or feather-work that slaves sometimes had to put on to suit their owners’ tastes-I felt comforted. I was among my people, and I was as good as they were, or at least I would be as soon as I could have a bath.
Something stirred the crowd. Peering between the jostling bodies, I followed the disturbance to its source near the walls of Montezuma’s palace, and caught sight of the heads of a little group of men moving purposefully toward the steps my brother and I had gone up the evening before. There was something familiar about the movement, and the bodyguards’ casual way of parting the crowd to let their master through. Then I saw a flash of yellow as the hem of his cloak brushed the lowest of the steps leading to the palace’s interior.
I glanced irresolutely in the direction of my master’s house before I made up my mind what to do. He had released me so that I could obey the Emperor’s command and visit the prison. I had a little time in hand, and there were things I had to say to my brother.
It took me a long time to persuade the sentries to let me into the quarters my brother shared with his fellow executioners, and by the time I found him, he had settled his powerful frame comfortably into a chair and was drinking chocolate.
He glared at me over the rim of his bowl. “You’ll pardon me for not offering you any. I wasn’t expecting you.”
“It’s all right,” I said lightly. “I bet you had them put pimentos in it. I hate pimentos in my chocolate. How’s the hand?”
“Fine.” Under its heavy bandages his left hand looked gratifyingly stiff and swollen. “Nothing hot piss and honey couldn’t cure. What do you want? Have you been to the prison?”