Simon Levack - Shadow of the Lords

‘I 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. ‘From what little I’ve seen of Kindly, I wouldn’t place too much reliance on that!’ He sighed regretfully ‘But 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. ‘It’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. ‘I 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 preventhim. And we both know what’s likely to follow if it happens a third time.’

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.

‘You can tell where we’re going,’ my brother remarked.‘You 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.

‘I hope the Emperor isn’t looking at those brothers joined at the hip,’ Lion said glumly. ‘They bother me, I don’t mind admitting. Twins are unlucky enough, but those two …’ He shuddered.

‘Not this evening, my Lord,’ our escort assured him. ‘He’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.

‘Change 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.

‘I don’t think I want to know what happened to the last person who wore this,’ he muttered, as we waited to be admitted. ‘I 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.

‘Remember — 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: ‘The 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.

‘My Lord!’ he cried ritually. ‘O Lord! My great Lord!’

Absolute silence followed him. Even the rustling in the garden stopped.

A small noise came from Montezuma. I was not surewhether there were any words in it but its meaning was clear enough for the interpreter to turn to us and say: ‘The 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.

‘Ah.’ 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.

‘Here 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.