Simon Levack - Shadow of the Lords

I scuttled away. A small circle of spectators, mainly my curious nieces and nephews, had gathered around us, and I made for its edge. He caught me before I got there, grabbing the hem of my cloak and jerking at it until I heard the cloth tear. ‘Come back here, you coward! I’ve not finished with you yet!’

I let him have the cloak. I managed to undo the knot with one hand and help myself to my feet with the other. I whirled around, just in time to see my father collapse, screaming with rage as the cloak fell away in his hands.

My mother called his name again as she ran to help him up. She shot me a reproachful look.

‘Get him away from me.’ The old man was suddenly in tears. ‘I can’t bear to see him here. Just get him out!’

I watched and listened, mystified. ‘I don’t understand you,’ I gasped. ‘You won’t even let me tell you why I came.’

‘He’s probably looking for me.’

The newcomer spoke in a self-confident drawl that I knew very well. I turned in time to see him stepping forward from among the spectators, the red border of his rich yellow cotton cloak swirling about his feet and the white ribbons at the napeof his neck flowing behind him. His sandals had big loose straps which slapped the ground as he walked.

The Guardian of the Waterfront stopped to survey the scene in front of him, a knowing smile spreading across his face as he watched my mother helping my father to his feet and me rubbing my sore shoulder.

‘Looks as if I got here in time. I see you two have met at last!’

‘Lion!’ My father limped towards my brother with his arms outstretched and his eyes sparkling with joy. ‘I didn’t think you’d come! Are you here for the festival?’

Lion’s reception could not have been more different from mine. While they embraced, clapping each other on the back, I looked around. The little children and their parents were beginning to move away to resume their seats at the edges of the courtyard. I saw Handy among them, looking self-conscious. I hoped my elder sister had not teased him too much.

When he had managed to disengage himself Lion said: ‘I can’t stay. I’m sorry, I’m needed at home.’ Lion’s family was housed in a mansion near the city centre, and if he intended to celebrate the festival he would have a pole of his own standing in the biggest of his courtyards. ‘I came to find him.’ He looked at me.

‘How’d you know to look here?’ I asked suspiciously.

‘Just a lucky guess. I gathered from that evil little scorpion of a steward your master employs that you’d gone out. He claimed to have no idea where you’d gone, so I thought I’d try here first. It’s where I found you last time, if you remember. You seem to be making these reunions a habit!’

My father gave me a disgusted look. ‘Well, you’ve found him,’ he snapped. ‘Now will you please take him away with you’.

I groaned, realizing that I was about to get the blame for mybrother’s not being able to stay. ‘Look,’ I began, ‘I only wanted to say …’

‘Come on, then,’ said Lion briskly. ‘Don’t forget your cloak.’ He turned to my mother. ‘I’m sorry about this. Duty calls — for both of us. But I’ll send him back later.’

My mother said nothing. My father stepped towards me, then turned on my brother. ‘Bring him back? That’s the last thing I want. I don’t want to see him again!’

Lion had started towards the doorway, gently brushing away the small crowd of admiring children who were trying to feel the hem of their hero’s cloak. Now he stopped and looked back.

‘I’ll send him back,’ he repeated coolly. ‘What you do with him then is up to you. But it looked to me as if you two had some unfinished business and I would hate to interfere!’

He walked away. The only sound was the flapping of his sandal straps.

I looked at my parents. My mother looked back at me. Her face looked as if it had been carved in stone. My father merely stared wistfully after his favourite son.

‘Well?’ my mother said eventually, in a cracked voice.

‘You heard what he said, Mother. I’d better go.’ I turned away.

‘Do you want your cloak?’

‘No,’ I said, without looking around. ‘Keep it. In return for the paper!’

Ileft 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.

‘I’ve learned from experience that whenever you’re involved I’ve got to be ready for anything,’ he explained. ‘Now, in you get!’

‘Aren’t you going to tell me where we’re going?’

‘When 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.

‘I have to hand it to you, Yaotl,’ Lion continued as he settled himself behind me, ‘when 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?’

‘What are you talking about?’

He chuckled. ‘Can’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 leanedforward to add, murmuring into my ear in a confiding tone: ‘Your very own private audience with the Emperor himself!’

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.

‘My favourite time of day,’ Lion mused.

‘Me too,’ I said eagerly. ‘I 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. ‘What are you on about? I just like the fact that the canals are empty and I don’t have complete strangers bumping into me!’

‘What does the Emperor want?’ I asked.

‘Don’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.

‘So what actually happened to you last night, at Skinny’s house?’

‘I’m not sure,’ I confessed. ‘I 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.’

‘I never get dreams like that,’ my brother remarked ruefully. ‘Still, if you’re telling me it was another case of you not being able to keep your breechcloth on, I can believe that!’

‘That’s not fair! I was drugged!’

‘So you say. Still,’ Lion went on soberly, ‘your 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.’