Doug Allyn - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 131, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 799 & 800, March/April 2008

I followed his gaze and saw for the first time that there was a young man sprawled against the courtyard wall. His legs were splayed like an infant’s. In the poor light, his skin looked sallow and unhealthy, and a trickle of saliva glittered like silver leaf on his chin. His eyes were open, but as I looked more closely I realized he saw nothing through them. Their pupils were huge black disks that stayed fixed on something far away when I passed a hand in front of them. His breath had a sour reek that I knew well. He had been drinking sacred wine. Perhaps he had been celebrating: I noticed that he was missing the single lock of hair that boys grew at the napes of their necks, and this was a sign that he had taken his first captive in battle, and could call himself a warrior.

Why had my master called him “the rabbit“?

I felt a moment of panic as I struggled to answer His Lordship’s question. The old man was not renowned for his patience.

It was the steward who saved me, unwittingly. With a sudden nervous giggle he called out: “Come on, Yaotl. What’s he taken? You’re the expert!”

I stiffened indignantly at the taunt. Huitztic knew my past: how I had sold myself into Lord Feathered in Black’s service, trading my freedom for the sum of twenty large cloaks, enough to keep me in drink when I had nothing left but the breechcloth wrapped around my loins. He knew also what had first driven me to seek refuge in a gourd of sacred wine: the despair and humiliation of being expelled from the priesthood, years before. As a priest I had learned and experienced the use of every kind of leaf, herb, seed, and root, everything a man could put into his body to turn him into a slobbering imbecile. The steward’s comment was a deliberate jibe, and it stung, but even as I bit back my retort I realized the oaf had given me the clue I needed.

My master responded before I could. “Be quiet, you idiot,” he snapped. “You’re in enough trouble over this already! Yaotl, I want your answer before I have both of you strangled!”

“He’s been drinking,” I said hastily. “That’s obvious, I can smell it. But it’s not just that. Sacred wine wouldn’t leave him like this. He’d just have been violently sick and then fallen asleep, and by now he’d have a sore head and a tongue like tree bark. Anyway, you didn’t send for me to tell you he’s got a hangover. He’s had something else — mushrooms, perhaps: the Food of the Gods. But I don’t understand...” I hesitated before turning to look at the grim-faced old man in the chair. “What’s he to you, my Lord? Why do you need to know what happened?”

“Isn’t it enough that some prankster chose to break up the Dance of the Four Hundred Rabbits — a religious ceremony, and me the chief priest? But it just so happens that this young fool is my great-nephew. So I take what happened rather personally.”

The Dance of the Four Hundred Rabbits! In the years since I had left the priesthood I had all but forgotten about it, but it came back to me now. And the young man had reeked of sacred wine, which could mean only one thing. “Your great-nephew won the contest?”

The chief minister’s deathly features twisted into something resembling a smile. “His prize turned out to be more than he expected — as you have confirmed for me. Now you’ll find out the rest — how it happened, and who was responsible.” He cast a sideways glance at his steward, who squirmed grotesquely. “You and Huitztic will look into this together.”

I had to repress a groan. Being made to investigate what sounded like a childish trick would be bad enough without having that vicious buffoon of a steward for company.

“I will not be made a fool of.” I noticed with a thrill of dread that my master’s voice had dropped to a whisper, a sign of his rage. “I will not have my family made fools of. Somebody did this to young Heron here to spite me. After you’ve brought me his name, I’ll have him cursing the gods for ever letting him be born!”

“What are you in trouble for?”

We were barely out of earshot of Lord Feathered in Black. The moment we were dismissed, Huitztic strode on ahead as before with barely a backward glance. I hung back until I judged I was out of range of his fists before I dared mention the thing that had most intrigued me about the interview we had just had: the steward’s obvious fear and our master’s equally evident anger with him.

I had miscalculated. The man spun on his heel and his long, powerful legs brought him back to me in two steps. Before I could react he had the knot of my cloak in his fist and was twisting it, tightening the rough cloth around my neck until I could feel my skin burning under it and was struggling to breathe.

“Let’s get one thing clear, you little worm.” Spittle flew into my face as he dragged it closer to his. “I am not the one in trouble. I only did what he told me to. It was Patecatl who let him down, not me, and I’m not going to let you talk the old man into believing other-wise. I’ll cut your tongue out if I catch you even thinking about it!”

“Patecatl?” I managed to gasp. “You mean the priest?”

“He’s already in prison. That’s where we’re going now — to see if they’ve sweated the truth out of him yet. Maybe you can think of some clever way of tricking him into giving it to us. If you can’t, then you’d better just keep your mouth shut. Old Black Feathers may have told me I had to have you trailing around after me like a lost dog, but I don’t have to like it!” He let go with a snarl, thrusting me away from him so hard that I fell over backwards, my legs buckling under me.

“The priest’s in prison?” I repeated as I got up. I had to run to keep pace with him as he made off into the street outside our master’s palace. “What for, though? You may as well tell me what you think he did.”

Huitztic ignored my suggestion until he was brought up short by one of the city’s countless canals. As he looked right and left for a boat that could take us to the prison, he apparently had second thoughts. Wrinkling his nose as though he had caught a whiff of the green water at his feet, he muttered: “All right. I may as well, since we’ve got to see him together. But you remember what I said. I only did what I was told!”

“So how do you think Heron managed to win the contest?” the steward asked as he flopped angrily into the stern of the boat.

“It wasn’t just luck, then?” I had already guessed that if the gods had willed the outcome, they had had some human help to arrange it.

“Only if having one of the most powerful men in the world for your great-uncle counts as luck. Actually, old Black Feathers can’t stand the young toad, but he dotes on his niece — the boy’s mother — and she wants to see her son get to the top.”

“And winning a contest like this won’t do the lad’s career any harm.” To be marked with the gods’ favour counted for almost as much as taking a captive in war. “So our master ordered you to give him a helping hand, is that it?”

Huitztic gripped the boat’s sides so hard his knuckles turned white. “Me and the priest both. Young Heron had the only hollow drinking-tube sewn into the hem of his cloak, after I’d been to get it from Patecatl. Only I reckon it had more than a hole in it. How hard would it have been for him to prime it before he gave it to me?”

I thought about it. “Not hard. Mushrooms, you could dry them, grind them into powder, and as long as you didn’t pack them in too tight I suppose the young man could have sucked it up with the sacred wine without noticing — at least until it started to work. Did anyone look at the tube afterwards?”

“Sure. Heron was still clutching it when he was brought here. But the poison was all gone by then, of course.”