“Good. Shining Light seemed very anxious about it.”
“You saw him, then? I thought he’d vanished off the face of the Earth, yesterday. What else did he have to say for himself?”
“We didn’t have time to talk. He was in a rush. He was just setting off in his canoe. He was actually sitting in it when he gave me the letter. It looked as if he had a long way to go, judging by what he had with him-bags of provisions, toasted maize, stuff like that-the sort of stuff you’d take on a long journey.”
“Hang on!” That could not be right, I thought. I glanced quickly up at the clouds chasing each other briskly across the sky and notedthe promise of fresh wind and rain in the evening. “You’re telling me you saw Shining Light setting off on a long journey today-on One Reed?”
“That’s what it looked like. I know what you’re going to say-it’s not the most auspicious day he could have chosen. I thought it was strange too, especially for a merchant. This sorcerer I go to every time the gods lumber us with another child, he tells me merchants are some of his best clients. They’re so superstitious they never go anywhere without consulting the Book of Days.”
One Reed was a day influenced by Tezcatlipoca: the Smoking Mirror, the most unruly and capricious of our gods. There could hardly be a worse day for setting out on a long journey. “I wonder where he’s going?”
We sat silently for a moment, each wrapped up in his own thoughts. Shining Light had left in a hurry, it seemed, but he had still had something to tell my master so urgent that Handy had to trot halfway across the city for the sake of it.
“Yaotl?”
“Sorry.” I looked up. “I was thinking.”
“I was just asking if you knew of any work going around here? I thought I was on to a good thing with Shining Light, you see, but if he’s gone away, then I’m short of an employer …”
I looked at his muscular arms and recalled his efforts of the day before. What had happened had not been his fault, I thought generously, any more than it had been mine. “I’ll suggest my master bear you in mind,” I promised.
I went to see the Chief Minister the moment I finished speaking to Handy, to tell him about my visit to the prison.
In the event my master paid scant attention to my conversations with the majordomo and his guards. He seemed distracted, toying impatiently with a piece of paper on his lap. He did not show me the paper but I assumed it was the letter from Shining Light that Handy had delivered. He kept looking down at it and then at me in a speculative way, as if its contents concerned me.
When I had finished speaking he tapped the paper on his knee and asked: “What am I going to do about Shining Light?”
“My Lord, I was going to see him today, but Handy says he’s gone away.”
“Gone away-a merchant, going on a journey on an unlucky day like One Reed? Rubbish! He’ll be hiding somewhere-and no wonder! He must have a pretty good idea what I’m going to do to him-that’s if the other merchants don’t get their hands on him first!”
“Then you want me to go to his house today, after all?”
“Yes. No,” he corrected himself hastily. He looked at his letter again, and a curious half-smile appeared on his face, as if a pleasing thought had just struck him.
“I think it’s too late to go today. Go, by all means, but leave it till tomorrow.”
“As you wish, my Lord.” I had no urgent wish to go all the way to Pochtlan that afternoon.
“Is that man Handy still around?”
“Yes-I believe he’s looking for work.”
“Good! Tell him not to go anywhere. I will have a letter for him to carry and we’ll make it worth his while if he delivers it tonight.”
TWO JAGUAR
1
The slave who greeted me at Shining Light’s house was barely polite. After staring at me for so long that I began to wonder whether there was something wrong with his eyes, he showed me into the courtyard and told me to rest there, among the foliage plants and empty flowerpots of a winter garden. He offered me something to eat, although when I turned to him to accept he had vanished, leaving me to the courtyard’s only other occupant.
An old man sat with his back to an immaculately whitewashed wall, against which the dull mottled brown of his ragged cloak stood out like a stain. His head was bowed, and he seemed to be asleep. A thin trail of saliva ran from a corner of his mouth across his chin.
I shifted my weight indecisively from one foot to the other while I wondered how to get into the house without causing offense. The slave seemed prepared to leave me where I was, alone save for the unconscious old man, for the rest of the day.
The courtyard’s freshly swept stuccoed floor was already warm beneath my bare soles and its walls gleamed in the morning sunshine, making the doorways into the interior of the house resemble dark cavities. Wicker screens covered some of the doorways, and if anyone apart from the old man was at home, I thought they must be behind one of those.
I started toward the nearest of the screens.
The voice cut me off before I had gone two steps.
“If it’s money you’re after, don’t bother. We don’t keep any here.”
The other man in the courtyard had raised his head and was watching me. His stare had a vague quality that made me think hewas looking past me, until I noticed that his eyes were filmed over with age. There had been nothing vague in his voice, however.
“I want to speak to Shining Light,” I informed him brusquely. “Do you know where he is?”
“You want my grandson? Oh, I was right, then. It is money you’re after! You’re still wasting your time, though. You’re welcome to look, but you won’t find so much as a bag of cocoa beans.”
I reappraised him hastily. I had assumed this piece of human litter was some broken-down old slave that the merchant’s family tolerated out of sentiment and because they expected death to relieve them of him shortly. A second glance did little to change my impression of him, but if he was Shining Light’s grandfather then he might well be head of the household and so entitled to some respect.
I believed what he said. Merchants hid their wealth. They kept it in secret warehouses, often using each other’s, so that no one else could ever be quite sure who owned their contents. Anything they kept in their own houses would be carefully concealed behind false walls. If I had been interested in the merchant’s money-whether he kept it in the form of cotton cloaks, bags of cocoa beans, little copper axes or goose quills filled with gold dust-I would have known better than to look for it here.
“I’m not after money,” I assured him. “I just want to speak to Shining Light.”
“Aren’t you that man he does business with down at the ball court-what’s his name, Curling Mist?” I recalled the meeting I had overheard between my master and Curling Mist’s son; here was confirmation that they had had dealings with Shining Light as well. “I assumed you were him, come to collect.”
“I was sent here by the Chief Minister, Lord Feathered in Black,” I declared importantly. “He’s the one who has business with your grandson-not some petty criminal.”
The old man laughed, sending a shower of spittle across the courtyard. “The Chief Minister! Young Shining Light’s surpassed himself this time, then, if he’s managed to get into trouble with him! I wish I could help,” he added, wheezing while he got his breath back, “but my grandson isn’t here.”
“Then I’ll wait here until he returns.”
“We don’t know when he’ll be back.” This was the voice of theslave, who had come back bearing a plate of the stuffed maize cakes known as tamales. He stood in front of me, offering them as politeness dictated, although his surly expression made it clear that this was as far as his courtesy extended. “You might as well go home.”
I looked from the slave to the old man. “No one said he was in trouble. I was just told to speak to him about the Bathed Slave he presented at the festival, that’s all.”