Simon Levack - Shadow of the Lords

‘And used it, too.’ I took the knife out once more and examined it. It was valuable in itself, since it was made of bronze, that dull, hard metal that only the Tarascans in the West knew how to work and which was almost unknown in Mexico, but its material worth was not what Kindly had been thinking of.

‘Let me guess,’ I said. ‘You think whoever came here the other night knew the knife was in this room …’

‘In the house, at least. This was the only empty room, and the rest of the house was full of people, so it would have been the first place a thief would look anyway.’

‘And then, having taken the knife, he decided to lift this costume as well?’

‘It can’t have been that simple. For one thing, there was some sort of struggle over the costume, because that feather was broken off. For another …’

‘The knife was used.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you don’t know who was injured?’

His frown turned the lines on the old man’s face into ravines. ‘I don’t. Nobody in my household, and I think one of the guests would have complained if he’d woken up with stab wounds, don’t you? But there was a trail of blood from here out into the courtyard.’

‘There were two of them.’ In spite of myself I was curious. ‘What happened — did they fall out?’

‘It looks like it, doesn’t it? What else could it have been — two men burgling my house in the same night, both of whom just happened to know exactly what they were looking for and where to find it, and one of them deciding to stick a knife in the other? I think that sounds unlikely.’

‘Where did you find the knife?’

‘In the courtyard.’

I stared at the knife again. It occurred to me that it ought to be cleaned up, but then I thought that was not my task. It was my son’s. Mine was to return his knife to him.

‘What I thought,’ Kindly was saying, ‘was that maybe whichever of them stabbed the other changed his mind and carried his friend home. Of course, they had my property with them. And if you found either of our thieves, you see, then you’d find my property. But at least one of them camehere looking for that knife. And you want to know who that was, and why, don’t you?’

‘So that’s why I’m here,’ I said dully. I kept looking at the weapon. Suddenly I was seeing it with fresh eyes. It was valuable, to be sure: but what might it be worth to someone who had never owned anything else?

My grip on the thing tightened until it shook and my knuckles turned white.

‘I was right, wasn’t I?’ the old man said softly. ‘You’ll do anything to get this back to its owner.’

‘How did you know?’

‘Call it a lucky guess. Lily told me what happened on the lake, the other night, and all the things you’d said to her about yourself while you and she were … while you were here before. It wasn’t too difficult to work out that that boy must be yours. And if you thought he’d been here, instead of running away from the city and putting a safe distance between himself and the Chief Minister, you’d be desperate to find out where he was, and what he was up to.’

I remembered the effort and heartache it had cost me, learning that Nimble was my child. How had Kindly discovered it? I shivered at the thought that if this feeble-minded old man could manage to deduce the truth so easily, in spite of the lies I had told his daughter, others might be able to as well — my master among them.

‘So you think my son came looking for his knife,’ I replied in a low voice, ‘and that I’m bound to go looking for him, and if I find out what happened to him, I’m bound to find your precious featherwork.’

He clapped his hands together delightedly. ‘I knew you’d understand! Of course, I’ll pay you if you bring it back in one piece. When can you start?’

My jaw dropped so fast and so far that it hurt. ‘I don’tbelieve you! You somehow manage to get hold of a fabulously valuable piece of featherwork. You keep it here, in a house full of mushroomed-up warriors who everyone knows have no love for you merchants — not to mention the other merchants you invited as your guests, all of them rivals of yours who would cheerfully steal from you out of spite. Then when it gets stolen — big surprise, that! — you expect me to go and get it back from you? Are you mad?’

Anyone else might have accepted what I said. I might have expected a different man’s face to darken or turn pale, according to whether he felt embarrassed at his own foolishness or angry at my reproof, or perhaps to crumple dejectedly when he realized he was not getting his own way. Indeed, I watched Kindly’s face as I finished speaking, but I saw none of these things, and it quickly dawned on me that I was not going to.

The Kindly I had known was a broken old man, good for nothing except lounging against the wall of his courtyard, swilling sacred wine and talking idly with anyone who still had the patience to listen to him. The steady, unremitting stare with which he returned my gaze belonged on another, still older face than his: the face of a merchant who had once journeyed through hot lands, frozen lands and steamy swamps, who had seen friends die, his son-in-law among them, who had burned his fellow merchants’ travelling-staffs with their bodies and then fought and beaten the barbarians who had killed them. No words of mine were ever going to touch this old man.

‘You know I’m not,’ he said stonily. ‘And I know you’ll do what I’m asking, Yaotl, because it’s the only way you’ll find out what happened to your son.’

I was still gripping the knife. It would have been ridiculously easy to stretch out my arm and sink the blade in this vile old man’s chest. Nobody could have known my hand wasbehind it: nobody except Kindly himself knew I was there. For a moment there was nothing I would rather have done, but my arm seemed to have gone dead.

I dropped the arm with a sigh, letting the weapon dangle loosely from my limp fingers.

‘All right. You win, you old bastard. You’d better tell me just what this wonderful piece was. A headdress, a warrior’s back device, a mosaic?’

‘Oh, no. Nothing so mundane.’

‘Well, what, then?’

‘It was the raiment of a god.’

‘ The raiment of a god.’

It was so obvious, I thought, and it explained so much. I cursed myself for an idiot, for the terror I had felt on the bridge, confronting what I had thought was an omen. ‘I bet I can guess which one.’

‘You’ve heard the stories, then.’

‘About the vision? I can do better than that, Kindly. I saw him myself!’

He stared at me. ‘You?’ he spluttered. ‘When?’

‘Just before I got here.’ Suddenly I felt the urge to laugh, remembering my own incredulity at hearing the featherworker’s account at my master’s house. Of course neither of us had seen a god. We had both met a man in a stolen costume, although what he was doing haunting the canal between Pochtlan and Amantlan, and how he had managed to vanish so completely, were still a mystery.

Kindly stared at me dumbly while I told him what had happened to me. ‘So it’s still in this parish,’ he muttered when I had finished. ‘Maybe it’ll be all right after all.’

‘Just how did you get hold of this thing? It must be worth …’ My voice tailed off as I tried vainly to imagine what you could barter for something so valuable.

He laughed. ‘It’s priceless, Yaotl! It’s not even as if Skinny was the only craftsman whose work went into it. Naturally asa featherworker he was the last to handle it, since the feathers are the most fragile part, but … well, you saw the mask? The serpent’s head? The scales are turquoises, and so’s the spear-thrower the god was given to carry.’