I
left Handy in the midst of my family. If my father could forgive him for being associated with me, I knew they would make him feel welcome.
I ran down to the canal and caught up with Lion just as he was about to climb into a canoe. There were three of them, moored in a line: one for Lion and me and two for his escort of powerful warriors.
âI've learned from experience that whenever you're involved I've got to be ready for anything,' he explained. âNow, in you get!'
âAren't you going to tell me where we're going?'
âWhen you're in the canoe, yes.' By which time, of course, I would not be able to bolt. Ignoring my misgivings, I climbed into the canoe. It was either that or go home again and get beaten up by an old man.
âI have to hand it to you, Yaotl,' Lion continued as he settled himself behind me, âwhen you get yourself into trouble, you do it in style. After all, if you're going to piss people off, why not go straight to the top?'
âWhat are you talking about?'
He chuckled. âCan't you guess? This is the second time in a matter of days you've managed to earn yourself something most people don't get once in their entire lives.' He leaned
forward to add, murmuring into my ear in a confiding tone: âYour very own private audience with the Emperor himself!'
Â
Night was falling. The canals and streets around us were almost empty. The evening rush home from the city's places of business, its marketplaces, courts, palaces and temples, was largely over, and it was too early yet for the merchants and their secretive, nocturnal traffic, or for any revellers on their way to dances or banquets, which usually began at midnight. The trumpet calls that announced sunset had faded and there was little sound other than the lapping of water against the sides of my brother's boat.
âMy favourite time of day,' Lion mused.
âMe too,' I said eagerly. âI liked watching the Sun go down over the mountains when I was a priest. I used to tend the temple fire on top of Tezcatlipoca's pyramid sometimes, even when I didn't have to, to get the best view. On a good evening it would make the surface of the lake shine like gold.'
My brother stared at me. âWhat are you on about? I just like the fact that the canals are empty and I don't have complete strangers bumping into me!'
âWhat does the Emperor want?' I asked.
âDon't know, but I guess it has something to do with whatever you've been up to in Tlatelolco. Are you going to tell me about that?'
He listened to my account in grave silence. In the gathering gloom it was hard to read his features, but I thought I could see a frown forming and deepening as I neared the end of my tale.
âSo what actually happened to you last night, at Skinny's house?'
âI'm not sure,' I confessed. âI thought it was all a dream, brought on by the Morning Glory seeds, but now ⦠well,
some of it must have happened. I mean, there really was a woman there. I found signs of her when I woke up this morning. And I had been tied up and someone had come and cut my ropes. But the rest I don't know about.'
âI never get dreams like that,' my brother remarked ruefully. âStill, if you're telling me it was another case of you not being able to keep your breechcloth on, I can believe that!'
âThat's not fair! I was drugged!'
âSo you say. Still,' Lion went on soberly, âyour problem right now comes down to this, doesn't it? Old Black Feathers wants to tear Nimble limb from limb. He's given you until tomorrow to produce him, failing which you'll suffer the same fate, but you don't even know where he is.'
âI thought that if I found the featherwork, I'd find him. That's what Kindly as good as told me.'
Mention of the old man's name drew a derisive snort from my brother. âFrom what little I've seen of Kindly, I wouldn't place too much reliance on that!' He sighed regretfully âBut as for your master ⦠I don't know, brother. I'd do what I could, you know that.' I believed him. At one time, not so long ago, it would not have surprised me to see him in the audience at my own execution, visibly gloating over my fate, but a good deal had happened to both of us recently. âIt's not as if old Black Feathers is any friend of mine! The trouble is that he's the Chief Minister and I'm just an officer. So long as the Emperor is minded to let him, he can do pretty much what he likes.' He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. âI could probably stop him from doing anything too flagrantly illegal. Even for a man in his position it would be awkward if the Guardian of the Waterfront started asking what had become of his brother, and he couldn't come up with some sort of explanation. But he has a perfect right to admonish you, especially since you've run away twice already, and no power in Mexico can prevent
him. And we both know what's likely to follow if it happens a third time.'
Â
At the entrance to Montezuma's Palace we were directed towards the Zoo.
The Emperor shared the vast, rambling complex that was his residence when he was in Mexico with many other creatures, both human and animal, and some that might have been said to be something in between.
At any one time Montezuma would give house room to enough servants and guests of varying ranks, from the Emperor of Tetzcoco to the most newly admitted of the Eagle Warriors, to fill the ranks of a small army Some three hundred of the Palace staff worked full time looking after a select group of their fellow residents: the inmates of the Zoo and the aviary. Here, in stout cages that in many cases were bigger than most houses in Mexico, the Emperor kept specimens of every kind of bird and animal he and his subjects could get their hands on. Everything with feathers on it from eagles and vultures down to finches and sparrows had a perch here. There were ponds for brilliantly coloured ducks and flamingos to paddle in, whole trees full of fruit for parrots and toucans to destroy and avocados to keep the resplendent quetzal happy and encourage him to grow his magnificent long green tail feathers. What the eagles and vultures ate scarcely bore thinking about, but it was probably the same as the jaguars, cougars, bears and coyotes, who lived in another section of the Zoo with smaller meat-eaters such as foxes and ocelots. Their diet included man: the torsos of sacrificial victims.
There were snakes here too, kept in pots that had been lined with feathers so that they could lay their eggs in them without breaking them.
âYou can tell where we're going,' my brother remarked.
âYou can hear them from here!' The birds twittered, cawed or screamed, the jaguars and their cousins howled and roared, and I could imagine, even though I could not hear it yet, the hissing of the snakes.
Not all the specimens made a noise. There was no sound at all from the humans. For another section of the Zoo held its most curious exhibits: men and women born with the wrong number of fingers and toes or their joints reversed or no eyes in their heads or some other deformity that marked them out as someone the gods had noticed and decided to have some fun with.
âI hope the Emperor isn't looking at those brothers joined at the hip,' Lion said glumly. âThey bother me, I don't mind admitting. Twins are unlucky enough, but those two â¦' He shuddered.
âNot this evening, my Lord,' our escort assured him. âHe's with his newest guest. Please come this way.' The growling noise from where the meat-eaters lived was growing louder, and now it came with a rank animal smell, like a cross between a temple, just after a victim's blood has been smeared on the door posts, and a dog kennel.
âChange your cloak in here, if you will, my Lord,' our guide said. He ignored me. My brother could not appear before Montezuma in his fine cotton cloak and his sandals. As I had neither cloak nor sandals of any description, I simply waited for him to reappear, barefoot and in an old, patched and frayed piece of maguey fibre that ended almost indecently far above his knees.
âI don't think I want to know what happened to the last person who wore this,' he muttered, as we waited to be admitted. âI just hope his end was quick!'
Something was fluttering about in my stomach. I tried to calm it. The last time I had been shown into the Emperor's presence, I had been threatened with death.
Our escort motioned us forward.
âRemember â don't look at his face!' he hissed.
Between us and the room where Montezuma was waiting stood a single guard, a Shorn One, an elite warrior who blocked the entrance and our view of what lay beyond completely because he and the doorway were about the same size and shape. He stepped aside, at the same time hissing: âThe Guardian of the Waterfront and a slave, my Lord!'
As I prostrated myself on the floor, I wondered why the announcement had been delivered in a whisper.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that the room gave directly on to a garden. Pale evening light flowed through a wide opening, and made a striped pattern on the floor that puzzled me until I realized that the entrance to the garden must be barred. Against what, I could not tell, but I thought I heard something out there making a rustling noise.
Montezuma the Younger sat in front of the opening, looking out. Almost all of his body was hidden from me by the tall back of the wicker chair that had been placed there for him, and most of what I could see was an irregular shadow against the pale background of the garden. However, where the light fell on his face, with its delicate features and neat little beard, and on the hand resting on the arm of the chair nearest to me, it picked him out eerily, as though he were outlined in silver thread.
A man stood beside and just behind the chair. He must be the interpreter, I thought, since Montezuma was not given to speaking directly with any but the most exalted of his subjects.
Suddenly sound erupted from my brother.
âMy Lord!' he cried ritually. âO Lord! My great Lord!'
Absolute silence followed him. Even the rustling in the garden stopped.
A small noise came from Montezuma. I was not sure
whether there were any words in it but its meaning was clear enough for the interpreter to turn to us and say: âThe Emperor says shut up!'
Lion gulped audibly.
I knelt, with my face pressed to the floor and wondering whether I could breathe more quietly if I somehow managed to use just one nostril at a time, until a faint creaking noise from the Emperor's chair told me he had relaxed a little. A moment later I thought I heard the rustling sound I had noted earlier. It was louder now, somehow more confident, as though whatever made it had decided to push its way into the open rather than skulking cautiously in the bushes.
âAh.' The voice was undeniably the Emperor's, and to hear it so full of contentment was such a relief that I could not help risking a peek at whatever was happening out in the garden beyond him. It took me a moment to spot it.
âHere he comes.'
I twisted my neck awkwardly, so that I could look up without meeting Montezuma's eyes if he should chance to look round.
The garden looked as if no one had tended it in years. The plants were tall and unkempt and, except for an area just on the far side of the bars that was empty apart from a few artfully placed tree trunks and branches, so densely crowded together that if anybody had wanted to weed the place, they would have had to do it by starting a fire in the dry season. Foliage and ornament were not the point here. There was something else: something that I could just make out as a pale shape among the dark stalks and leaves beyond the clearing.
It moved. It became a long, white form, sliding along the ground so smoothly that I took it for a snake until I saw that it moved upon feet. One foot was advanced at a time, the paw put deliberately and silently in place before another was lifted, and
the legs were bent as tensely as a bow, keeping the body as close to the floor as it could be without scraping along it. It was stalking something. Its sharp-pointed, triangular ears were erect and its eyes, strangely pale against its white face, were wide open.
I saw its prey only in the instant of its death.
It was a small dog. The keepers had tethered it by a long rope to a peg in the middle of the clearing, although they need not have bothered. It was one of the little fat hairless creatures we kept for food, born and bred for the pot, and any instinct that it might have had to survive, to run away or turn and fight for its life, had been lost many generations before. It simply had no idea what was going to happen until the moment when the jaguar sprang.
The creature became a white streak. Only when its great claws clapped together around it did its victim at last react. The dog let out a single yip and shot into the air, escaping momentarily until it reached the end of its rope and was cruelly snatched back to earth. Before it landed a paw swiped it out of the air, slamming into it with a blow that knocked it sideways and snapped its neck at the same time.
The great head stooped and picked its meal up. It held it aloft, and for a moment those strange pale eyes looked straight into the Emperor's. It seemed to know that it was the only creature in Mexico that might do that and live.