Simon Levack - Shadow of the Lords

‘You’d better go, too,’ Lily said. ‘It wouldn’t do for them to get there before you.’

‘No,’ I agreed. I started to leave, but turned back again. ‘Lily — I’m sorry about Shining Light. I mean it. If I could have done anything …’

She hesitated. She looked over her shoulder at her father, but he appeared to have nodded off over his last gourd full of sacred wine. We might as well have been alone.

She walked towards me, stopping only when she was so close I could see my own eyes reflected in hers.

‘My son,’ she said in a brittle voice, ‘was vermin, worse than a rattlesnake. The World is better rid of him!’

I blinked, confused by what I was hearing. ‘But …’

Suddenly she let out a huge groan and threw herself forward, and then her head was on my chest, jerking up anddown against it as the sobs racked her body. ‘Why do we do it, Yaotl?’ she cried in a muffled voice. ‘Why do we risk everything for them? You could have got yourself killed, defying your master, and I took a stupid chance with the merchants just to find out what had happened to my son. Why?’

I held her awkwardly. ‘I don’t know,’ I murmured.

I could have added that I knew an old man who might have told us. His love for his daughter had induced him to take terrible risks as well, and dragged him into an unspeakably vicious plot. I pitied that old man because I could imagine the anguish he had been through already and the horror he was about to witness, on account of that love.

But that was not going to stop me using it to destroy him.

The labourers working on the plot at the back of the house in Atecocolecan had started hammering again, raining blows upon the wooden piles around its edge more fiercely than ever. It looked as if the weight of the rocks and mud they had piled up in the middle of the plot had made some of the piles collapse, and now they had had to pull some of them out of the bottom of the swamp and reset them. I grinned at the thought of the curses and arguments that must have started flying about when that had been discovered.

I was still grinning when I entered the house.

Butterfly knelt in the courtyard, alone. On the ground beside her was a plate, empty but for a few crumbs. On her other side were a jug and a small bowl half full of water. Her hair hung loose and tangled over her shoulders and she wore no make-up. The courtyard had been tidied and swept, as though she had belatedly remembered her obligations to the gods.

I noticed that Xolotl’s statuette was still missing from itsplinth. I wondered whether Butterfly had got rid of the broken pieces yet.

She did not get up when she saw me. She smiled thinly. ‘Hello, Yaotl. I thought you’d come back. I was told you were dead, but I didn’t think I’d seen the last of you. You’re just like me, aren’t you? You’d live through anything.’

‘Who told you?’

‘Why don’t you sit? That policeman from Pochtlan — what’s his name, Shield? He told me about the Otomies. He was upset about what happened to his colleague. He didn’t mean to tell me about it, but I got it out of him.’ She giggled. At one time the sound would have enchanted me; now it seemed grotesque. ‘Men usually end up telling me everything I want to know! He seemed to think it would help him if he found some featherwork that he thought I was hiding. Of course, he didn’t find it.’

‘He wouldn’t,’ I said. I jerked my head in the direction of the narrow room, the one that had been forbidden me, and which I had tried to search, on the night when I was knocked out and had that strange dream, which had hardly been a dream at all. ‘Did you let him look in there?’

‘Oh, no. I just told him, very sweetly, that he could look at anything he liked.’ She giggled again. ‘He was out of the house in no time!’

Even now, just looking at the innocuous-looking, curtained-off doorway was enough to make me break into a sweat. ‘All the same, I think we might go in there now, don’t you?’

She yawned and stretched so that the cloth of her blouse and skirt flowed and tightened suggestively across her body. Then she looked at me, wide eyed, and deliberately curled her tongue around the outside of her mouth.

‘Why, what did you have in mind?’

My patience snapped. I stepped towards her, bent down and seized her by the arm.

‘You know why I came here, Butterfly, and it wasn’t to play games! There are three people dead, maybe four, because of your scheming, and if I don’t get what I’m here for there will be a lot more by nightfall, and you’ll be one of them! Now, we’re going into that back room and you can show me what it is you’ve really been hiding in there all along!’

I hauled her to her feet and began to drag her towards the doorway She did not resist. She smiled, as if convinced that, whatever it was I thought I knew, nothing I could do or say would hurt her.

For the moment, at least, she was right.

The cloth had been hung over the doorway again. I had just got a corner of it between my thumb and forefinger when a strong, harsh voice called out, ‘Stay there!’

Angry strode through the entrance to the courtyard. A sword swung from one massive fist, an old one, with some of its blades missing, obviously not used in years but still deadly. His nephew trotted behind him with the nervous air of a small dog unsure whether it was about to be petted or put in a cooking pot.

Nimble was not with them. I realized they must have been on their way here already, even before I had sent him to fetch the featherworker.

I dropped both the door covering and Butterfly’s arm. The woman sprang away from me, and then hit me, slapping me across the face with enough force to send me staggering into the door post.

In two steps Angry was next to me, with the sword poised under my chin. ‘Move away from her,’ the old man growled, ‘or I’ll cut your throat. Are you alone?’

‘Yes.’

He looked about him. ‘I don’t believe you’re that stupid.’ He turned to his nephew, who was looking at each of us in turn with a baffled expression that made it plain he had no idea what all this was about. ‘Crayfish, go out and watch the street. Yell the moment you see anything!’

‘But, Uncle …’

‘Shut up and do as you’re told!’ the big man roared, and the sword twitched in time with his words. The boy jumped, and then, without a word, turned and ran through the front room and out of the house.

His uncle turned back to Butterfly and me. For a moment he seemed unsure of what to say, or, perhaps, which of us to say it to. When he spoke his voice was surprisingly soft.

‘You know why I’m here.’

Butterfly said nothing.

‘I heard a rumour in the marketplace, and I checked with the parish police. They told me Skinny was dead. Discovered floating in a canal, yesterday morning. They found nothing with the body — nothing. I came here the moment I heard.’

The woman maintained her silence. A hint of a smile lifted the corners of her mouth. She seemed to be enjoying herself. I knew why: she had something the featherworker wanted, and that gave her power over him.

‘Now, where’s my daughter?’

Still Butterfly had nothing to say. I jerked my head in the direction of the second room, the one she had tried to keep me out of. ‘In there,’ I said.

Angry’s jaw dropped. Then, without a word, he reached towards me with his empty hand, seized the knot of my cloak and yanked me towards him until my face was pressed against his and I could smell his breath.

‘I don’t have to cut your throat straight away,’ he hissed. ‘Do you think I don’t know how to use this sword? I could skinyou alive. Any more jokes about my daughter and I’ll make a start right here!’