“Yaotl!” The voice was still indistinct but I could not mistake my own name. “Nimble! Where’s Yaotl?”
I peered up the boat’s side, listening to the shouting and the sounds of running feet.
A face appeared above me.
The youth and I stared at each other, both too astounded to speak or move. I saw streaks of blood on his cheeks and neck. It had not had time to dry since I had hit him.
“Yaotl!” the voice cried again.
The face vanished without a sound.
I swam for my life.
5
The shore here was man-made, the edge of a chinampa plot held together with stakes and willows. There was no easy, shallow beach for me to flop onto like a stranded fish and crawl up. On the other hand there were plenty of tangled willow roots for my numb, slippery fingers to cling to as I hauled my protesting body onto relatively dry land.
I had no idea whether anyone had followed me from the boat. I had not heard anyone, but I did not care. I was too exhausted to do anything except collapse, face upward, in the middle of a muddy field.
The Sun had set. The sky was darkening, turning a deep blue, and the willow branches overhead were dark jagged shadows, shot through with stars that were steady bright points in the thin, clear winter air.
If I stayed here I might freeze to death, I thought dreamily, but I could just lie still for a moment, listening to the faint rustling of the bare branches as they swayed gently above me.
I closed my eyes.
They snapped open again.
Something was moving through the branches.
I peered straight up, looking for the movement again, wondering whether I had fancied it. Then I both saw and heard it: a large bird, its wings beating madly as it took off from a bough just above me, seemed to dither in midair and dropped heavily onto a lower limb. A little shower of broken twigs fell around me, followed by a couple of large feathers drifting downward.
The bird perched, swaying uncertainly back and forth. Something about its brief, awkward flight made me think it was unused to being airborne.
I tried to get up for a closer look. I slipped in the mud under me, landing hard on my backside, and swore.
The bird took flight. It exploded into the air, showering me again with debris from the trees as it crashed through the branches around it, and streaked off into the night, cawing loudly, and then there was nothing left but a few scattered feathers and the sound of its raucous voice over the water.
I do not know how long I stood there, staring after it. It was long enough for the Moon to come up because, when I picked up one of the long, stiff feathers and examined it, I noted how it glistened in the silver light, and how deep was its red color.
I was trembling by then, but not from the cold. It was a natural reaction, I told myself, even for one who had been a priest, when confronted with a message from the gods: for the bird had to have been an omen.
I had not mistaken its cries as it had flown away. I had heard them before, in the moments before the boy had hit me with the paddle. Now I knew them for words. But what kind of bird could utter human speech?
“Save us!” it had cawed, over and over again. “Save us! Save us! Save us!”
I had a long walk home from the chinampa plot. I staggered and sloshed my way across one waterlogged field after another, scrambling in and out of the icy ditches between them where they were too wide to jump, unsure whether I was heading the right way or just going around in circles.
When I reached my master’s house I was exhausted, cold, wet, hungry, filthy, in pain and furious. I had had long enough to think about what had happened to me to ask myself what it meant, and to come up with the only possible answer. I stamped up the steps toward my master’s private apartments, intending, if I had to, to burst in on him there, because by now I was too enraged to care what he might say or do to me.
I found old Black Feathers at the top of the stairway, sitting under his magnolia tree, enjoying a quiet smoke under the stars before turning in for the night. He had his eyes closed, but opened them at the sound of my footsteps.
He sat upright. His eyes started from their sockets, his hands flew out in front of him as if to ward off an attack, and the pipe fell from his mouth and struck the floor with a clatter. He made a faint noise far down in the back of his throat.
“You seem surprised to see me,” I said, pausing significantly before adding, “my Lord.”
A thin streak of smoke rose from the dropped pipe into the air between us. Neither of us made any move to pick it up. I would normally have retrieved it as a matter of course, but I was in no mood to tonight. My master seemed to have forgotten about it.
“You didn’t think I’d be back today, did you? Were you expecting to see me again, ever? What did Curling Mist want with me, anyway?”
His hands dropped onto his knees. He relaxed a little against the back of his chair. A puzzled frown took the place of his stupefied stare, deepening the lines permanently etched in his forehead.
“Curling Mist?” he echoed.
“Yes, my Lord. We both know what sort of dealings you have with him and why his son comes here. You sent me to Pochtlan and they knew exactly where to find me. That’s what you wanted Handyfor yesterday, isn’t it-to deliver the message? What happened-did the team from Huexotla let you down? Was he collecting his winnings? And why me?” I added, my voice rising with bitterness. “It’s not as if you couldn’t spare the money. Am I that useless?”
Ordinarily I would never have got away with such insolence, and if repeated it would have given my master a lawful reason to put a wooden collar round my neck and send me to the market, where the only likely buyers would be priests looking for sacrificial victims. This time, however, all he could find to say, over and over again, was: “Curling Mist?”
“You can’t pretend you didn’t know he’d be there.” As I told him what had happened to me I watched his frown deepen. When I finished there was a long, thoughtful silence.
“Curling Mist,” my master murmured to himself, for the last time. “But that doesn’t make sense …”
Then he seemed to pull himself together. The frown lifted and he coughed once to clear his throat.
“I don’t understand your story, Yaotl, and frankly I don’t believe it.”
“But you know it’s the truth!”
“Silence!” he roared, his hands gripping his knees and his knuckles suddenly turning white with fury. “Who do you think you’re talking to? Have you forgotten who I am, slave?” He was trembling with rage, and in spite of myself I took a step away from him. “I tell you to go and find the merchant and what happens? Not only do you fail to do what I told you, but you come barging into my presence, unbidden, looking and smelling as if you’ve been sleeping in a ditch, and have the temerity to tell me what I know or don’t know! I could set you to work in the quarries for this-that would teach you some manners!”
“But my Lord, I …” I spluttered, but then fell silent, my indignation failing in the face of his anger. In a few words old Black Feathers had reestablished our relationship of master and slave, reminding me that I was his man and not my own.
“I’m sorry, my Lord,” I mumbled.
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The trembling subsided.
“I don’t pretend to know what you’ve been up to,” he said at last,“but from the look of you, you’ve obviously been through a lot.” I had lost my cloak, my breechcloth was torn and sodden, dried blood caked my face and neck, my legs and feet were black with mud, and a small puddle had formed on the stuccoed floor around me. “In fact,” he went on, “I wonder if you haven’t been overexerting yourself. Perhaps you ought to rest. After all, it’s not as if you’ve got anywhere nearer to finding Shining Light, or the sorcerers, for that matter. Yes, that’s it. You can spend tomorrow resting, and see if you get any fresh ideas.”