“Anybody would think you had woman trouble,” muttered Kindly sardonically.
“Maybe I have.”
He laughed: a short, harsh, barking sound. “Never my daughter? Well, good luck to you. You’ll need it. I was wondering why she’d taken to wandering around the courtyard at night.”
“It’s not like that at all,” I said impatiently. “She thinks I’m a nuisance-no, more than that. A threat.” My scalp itched where she had twisted my hair.
Kindly groaned. “You never repeated what I told you about Shining Light?”
“I had to,” I said helplessly. “I have to find out what Curling Mist is up to. He’s tried to kidnap me twice, remember?”
The old man mumbled something into his drink. It sounded like “Idiot.”
Constant’s harsh voice cut across my thoughts. “Yaotl! Come here!”
The servant was standing in the entrance to my room. Behind him, half hidden, lurked the shadowy figure of the stranger who had come in with him.
“What do you want?” I felt a twinge of foreboding. Who was the stranger?
“Time for your medicine!”
“What medicine?”
Constant stepped outside, giving me room to pass indoors and leaving the stranger behind him. “How should I know what medicine?” he answered testily. “Am I a physician? This man says the mistress sent for him, so get on with it!”
There was a snort of laughter from Kindly. “Better go, then, son. Once my daughter’s taken it into her head that something needs doing, you don’t want to start asking questions!”
“But I don’t need any medicine,” I protested, although I limped toward the door anyway. “Lily didn’t tell me anything about this.” And I could not ask her, as she had left the house before I had woken up.
She had gone to talk to Nimble. She had made no secret of it.
Now here was this stranger, claiming she had sent him to give me medicine I had not asked for.
Dreadful, cold certainty gripped my bowels as I realized this could hardly be a coincidence.
I had left it too late to run away. The confrontation I had sought when I first went to look for Lily was about to happen, and whether I felt strong enough or not, I had to face my enemy now.
Constant muttered: “Just get in there. The gods know what this is costing. She must have spent three times your worth keeping your miserable body and soul together already!”
Kindly laughed again.
Ignoring them both, I stepped through the doorway.
“Yaotl.”
The voice was like claws scrambling up my backbone. He was still talking like a priest, sounding as though there was something wrong with his mouth. I supposed it must have become a habit.
He squatted in the shadows, in the corner of the room. I sidled away from the doorway, keeping as much distance between us as I could and wishing the room were larger. I wondered whether he still had his knife. Fresh from the whitewashed brightness of the courtyard, my eyes told me nothing about him.
“What do you want?”
I heard a brief, unpleasant, throaty laugh. “To offer you some medicine!”
“No you don’t,” I said tautly, fighting to suppress the panic that was threatening to render me speechless. “I know who you are. I know what you’ve come for.” At my sides, my fingernails dug into my palms. I forced my clenched fists to relax slightly. I had no idea what was going to happen, or when, or how to prepare for it.
“Oh, but I think you’ll like this medicine, Yaoti-it’s mostly sacred wine!”
A hand snaked toward me out of the gloom, bearing a small gourd whose contents sloshed faintly.
I looked at it the way you might look at a live scorpion. Then I glanced through the doorway, as if reassuring myself that I had an escape route-a mistake, as the glare of the courtyard at midday blinded me again to whatever was to be seen in the room.
“Come on, Yaotl,” said the voice coaxingly. “I’m offering you a drink!”
The gourd was unstoppered. I could smell the contents, heady and sour. It smelled like good sacred wine, although there was a hint of something else, a slightly bitter undertone.
“I don’t want it!” I cried. “Just tell me what you want from me!”
Curling Mist erupted out of the darkness. He slammed into me, hurling me backward onto the floor, and the gourd was jammed against my lips, its contents running down my throat so that I must either swallow them or drown.
“Come on, drink it, you bastard!” he hissed.
Punching and kicking did no good. My hands and feet flailed uselessly in the darkness above me. The man holding me down was far too strong for my wasted, injured muscles. With a gourd jammed against my lips I could not even call for help. He held it there until it had emptied itself into me and then wrenched it away and tossed it aside.
“This is obsidian wine!” I spluttered. There was no mistaking the taste of the little mushrooms we called the Food of the Gods. I tried getting up again but there was a hand weighing me down like a rock on my chest. “Why?” I gasped.
“I think you know. You said it yourself: you’ve drunk the obsidian wine, the stuff they give captives before they die!”
I could feel the stuff reaching my belly, hot and indigestible, like a tortilla snatched straight from the griddle. I had to get rid of it before it started to spread through my veins, and the mixture of sacred wine and sacred mushrooms loosened my soul and deprived me of my will. I struggled furiously, contracting my stomach muscles and gulping air in the hope of making myself sick and expelling the poison.
“Not that I made you drink it because I’m going to kill you, Yaotl.” Curling Mist spoke in a throaty whisper. “I’d rather have you fully conscious. I want you to know exactly what’s happening to you, I don’t want you to miss a thing …”
I could feel myself weakening, the weight on my chest turning from a rock to a boulder, my head spinning, the tips of my fingers starting to tingle. Was it the drug or lack of breath which was doing this? Saliva filled my mouth and I swallowed it, bolting it down with more air as I fought to clear my stomach.
“But I made a promise, see? I told Nimble I wouldn’t kill you until you’d told us what he wanted to know. So I’ve given you something to get your tongue working. In a moment you won’t be able to help yourself.”
I bit my tongue to add blood to the fluid and air I was forcing into my stomach. The voice came to me over the roaring in my ears like the voice of a god speaking from the back of a cave.
“Do you remember the Priest House, Yaotl? Do you remember Young Warrior, and the girl in the market? You’re going to tell me all about her-what you did with her, everything!”
The mushrooms were beginning to work. I thought I heard footsteps and voices, a long way away, and someone calling my name: “Yaotl! What is it? What’s happening?”
I opened my mouth.
The twisting in my belly caught me by surprise, doubling me up with such force that the hand was thrown from my chest, and out of my mouth the poison, the sacred wine and the mushrooms and everything else poured in a jet that caught the other man just as he was struggling to keep his own balance.
As he cursed me I used the last of my strength to roll over and cry out, in a strangled voice, “Help! Help! Murder!”
Constant must have been waiting outside. I wanted to call out a warning but had no breath left to do it. My enemy hurled himself atthe slave, barged him out of the way and raced into the courtyard, but I knew from Constant’s cry that he had hit him with something more than his fists.
I staggered outside, my feet catching on Constant’s prone body and splashing through his blood.
“Help! Murder!” I croaked again. “Stop that man!”
The floor of the courtyard rose and fell beneath me as I blundered drunkenly across it, until finally I lost my footing and the ground came up and hit me in the face.
I lay there, with the sun-heated ground hard against my cheek and my voice still bleating vaguely about murder, until it occurred to me that no one was responding.