My brother stiffened but did not answer her. Instead he looked thoughtfully at me.
“Let me see if I’ve got this right. You’re saying Young Warrior-that friend of yours at the Priest House, the one who vanished before they could stone him to death for fornication-really ran off with the girl you’d both been seeing, and they had the child she told you about, and now he’s going around pretending to be a priest and taking bets on the ball game, with the boy in tow?”
“They must have come back to the city years after they left,” I confirmed. “Nimble was brought up abroad, in exile. The lad still hasan accent.” I wondered where he had acquired it-among the Tarascans, perhaps? That would explain the bronze knife. “Young Warrior can’t use his own name, of course, and he goes about in disguise. Whenever I’ve seen him, he’s been so heavily blacked up he might be anyone.”
“But Young Warrior was a priest! What’s he doing, taking illegal bets for a living?”
“I was a priest-what am I doing as a slave?” I responded crisply. “Young Warrior’s been living outside the law ever since he left the Priest House. You said it yourself: he could be stoned to death. What has he got to lose?”
“So what do you want to do now, go and denounce them all to the Emperor-your master, Young Warrior and his lad?”
“The young man might be your nephew,” my mother warned him.
“No he isn’t!” I insisted. My mother’s and my sister’s willingness to believe the child had been mine made me uneasy. “All the same, I don’t think it would be a good idea. The Emperor wants the sorcerers, not a tall story about his Chief Minister. Telling Montezuma that old Black Feathers doesn’t know where those men are because he lost them, when we have no more idea of their whereabouts than he does, won’t help us at all.”
“So what can we do, then?” I noticed that all of a sudden Lion and I appeared to have become allies. I had mixed feelings about that: the renowned and mighty warrior was not going to be content to take directions from his disgraced younger brother for long. “Go looking for Curling Mist, Young Warrior, whatever his name is?”
I grimaced. “That hasn’t done me a lot of good so far! Besides, I don’t even know what he looks like under all that soot-not after all these years, anyway. I’d rather concentrate on the sorcerers. I think we ought to find out what my master’s interest in those men was in the first place-what any of them might have done that would have made him go after his whole family. The boy you saved from the burning house is the only person I know of who might be able to tell us that. As far as I know, he’s still at Handy’s place. He wasn’t talking when I left. He may have said something since, of course, but if he hasn’t, it will be because Star’s too gentle. I have a feeling what heneeds is a fright, to shock it out of him.” I looked steadily at my brother. “Seeing you again ought to do it.”
“That sounds brutal,” my sister objected.
“He could be right, though,” Lion replied. “Might even help the lad, in the long run. Boys from the House of Youth get like that sometimes, the first time they follow the army to war and see the darts flying and real wounds. They come back and won’t talk about it, and that’s not good. You want to go and see your friend Handy tomorrow, then?” The prospect of doing something, however small, to repair the damage he had done had given him back something of his old briskness of manner.
His pride had taken a beating, however, and was obviously still suffering under his mother and his sister’s reproachful looks. He soon announced that he was tired and wanted to go in and rest. I imagined him sitting awake all night, with his face to the wall, now scowling, now twisted with grief and regret, now frowning in bewilderment at the position he found himself in.
“You, in the meantime, can make yourself useful,” my mother said, handing me a bark-beater.
“What?” I cried feebly. “You let my brother go in and rest and expect me to do women’s work?”
“You’re eating our food, you can share our work,” said my sister. “And leave Lion alone-can’t you see he’s suffering?”
“So am I! I’ve still got the bruises-and I haven’t killed anyone!”
I wondered how it was that my brother’s offense seemed to have been so quickly forgiven, but then I decided to forget it. I was never going to be the favorite son.
TEN WIND
1
My friend Handy, my brother had called him, but judging by the way the big commoner greeted us at dawn the next day he clearly saw our relationship differently.
“Get away from my house,” he said before I had opened my mouth, “and take your filthy pal with you.”
I took a step back from his threshold and stared at him in astonishment. I resisted the temptation to turn and look at my brother to see what he made of Handy’s appraisal. I was dressed in my usual short maguey fiber cape and breechcloth. Lion had let his appearance deteriorate still further since the previous day: now he wore only an old breechcloth that looked as if a pair of dogs had been fighting over it.
“Listen,” I protested, “you haven’t given me a chance to explain.”
“Explain what?” He turned back into his house. A mass of human hair, dangling from the ceiling, brushed the top of his head and he swiped at it angrily. It was an old war trophy, taken no doubt from the owner of one of the thighbones decorating his courtyard. “What’s there to explain? Exactly how I’m going to be put to death, just for being seen talking to you? I’d rather not know!”
“But we just wanted to talk to the boy!” I called from the doorway.
That brought Star waddling into the room from the courtyard with urgent shushing noises. “Be quiet, you fools! Do you want the whole city to know?”
Handy turned back to me with a helpless gesture. “You see, now? I wouldn’t have to put up with this if I hadn’t litstened to you. Now I have this extra mouth to feed and the moment anyone so much as comes round the corner at the end of the street, we have to stuff thelad in a maize bin in case it’s that steward of your master’s.” He sighed in exasperation. “Look, you might as well come in. Snake! Where are you? Run on ahead and tell them I’ll be late.”
“Thanks. My master’s steward? What would he be doing here?”
“Giving me orders. I work for Lord Feathered in Black now.”
“What?” Lion and I cried simultaneously. I looked quickly at my brother and then even more quickly away again. “As what?” I added weakly.
“As a handyman, a messenger. Lord Feathered in Black needed someone he could rely on, especially after his most valuable slave had gone missing. I’d been carrying messages to him for that merchant, Shining Light, and I suppose he thought I was reliable.” Handy caught me glancing nervously at the doorway. “Oh, don’t worry. I’m not about to turn you in. But you see how awkward this is for me. How would I explain it, if I was found talking to some runaway?”
I could see how awkward it might be for him. More to the point, I could see how fatal it might be for me. “Of course,” I said as smoothly as I could. “I quite understand. Lion, we’d better forget the boy.”
But at that moment the boy from Coyoacan himself appeared. He had been attracted by all the fuss. Ignoring the rest of us, he went straight up to Star.
“What’s happening?” he asked.
“Nothing, Storm,” she said soothingly. “These men were just …”
Then he noticed my brother. He screamed.
Star wanted to get the boy out of our sight, but my brother would not have it, and Handy, forced to choose between them, sided reluctantly with the Constable. The woman submitted less than graciously to her husband’s will, planting herself by the door with a fierce scowl on her face and an arm draped protectively around the child’s shoulders. The moment we left the house, I suspected, Handy was going to wish he had never been born.