Simon Levack - Shadow of the Lords

‘Angry,’ I gasped, ‘I’m not joking!’

‘I’ve been in that room! There’s nothing there but garbage!’

‘I’m telling you, I know where she is!’

‘Angry,’ Butterfly said, in her most reasonable tone of voice, ‘this is a stupid charade. You’ll get your daughter back, but listen to me — there’s something we have to do first. The costume is missing! We have to find it now. What do you think Montezuma will do to us if we don’t? We daren’t waste any more time on this slave. He knows too much anyway Just kill him!’

Helpless in the big man’s grip, I could not react, but my mind was reeling. If the costume was missing, how was I going to get it back to the Emperor?

For a moment Angry seemed to have no idea what to do. He and Butterfly were not friends. Only terror, desperation and blackmail had made them temporary allies, and it would not take much to set them at one another’s throats.

‘Missing? But Idle …’

‘It’s like the police told you — there was nothing with the body! Now get rid of the slave, and then we have to talk.’

Droplets of sweat glistened on the featherworker’s forehead. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his sword blades flashing in the sunlight as the weapon shook in his hand. The grip on my cloak tightened convulsively, and then loosened a little.

‘No,’ he muttered, ‘I want to find out what he knows.’

He shoved me away from him, at the same time raising the sword. He could have struck down either me or Butterfly in an instant, but instead he gestured with the weapon towards the forbidden doorway. ‘In there, you say? Go on, then, both of you. If you’re lying, slave, you know what to expect!’

We crammed ourselves into the room, which was so muchsmaller than it looked from the outside. I looked around me quickly, wondering whether Angry was really so stupid that he could not see what I could, before reminding myself that I had missed it myself at first. The unpleasant mixture of smells still hung in the air, the nastiest of them, the blend of blood and putrescence, stronger than ever. Even that was not enough to tell the featherworker what he so badly wanted to know.

‘Angry, listen, the costume …’

‘Shut your mouth, woman!’ He waved the sword in front of my face. ‘Now you, talk, before I cut your nose off!’

I opened my mouth to speak, but hesitated. I could tell him what he wanted to know straight away. I wanted to, out of revulsion for what Butterfly had done, and pity for her victim, but I did not know what the featherworker would do after he had learned the truth. Would he just kill both me and the woman out of hand?

Too clever by half again, Yaotl, I told myself. I had sought this confrontation, but it had got out of my control. I had hoped to face Angry with Lion and a squad of warriors beside me. The featherworker had thwarted me by arriving early. All I could do now was to spin this out for as long as I could, and pray that Partridge had convinced my brother of his mission’s urgency.

I looked at the wall beyond the pile of rubbish. Angry followed my glance but its significance seemed lost on him. ‘You remember the first time I came here, don’t you, Butterfly? I met you and your husband, Skinny, and asked you if you knew anything about Kindly’s featherwork. Of course, you told me you didn’t, and that Skinny’s workshop was closed.’

‘It’s true. It was. Look around you — this is all garbage, it’ll be gone as soon as I can get around to clearing it out.’

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ I said hastily. ‘I believe you!’ I could not help smiling at my next thought. ‘It’s funny, though. If you’vespent your whole life telling lies you forget how easy it is to be fooled by the truth. I assumed you were lying about Skinny’s ’s workshop being closed, but strictly speaking you weren’t. It was bound to be closed, since he was dead.’

She laughed.

‘Don’t be stupid! You met him!’

‘No, I met his brother.’

Her expression froze. ‘Angry,’ she said deliberately, ‘I told you he knew too much! You’ve got to kill him. Do it now!’

I flinched as the sword jerked towards my cheek.

‘I’ll kill him after he tells me about my daughter,’ the man growled. ‘You hear that? You’re going to die, but how I do it depends on whether you tell me the truth. Fast or slow, it’s your choice. Now get on with it!’

I spoke quickly. ‘Idle stole the costume from Kindly’s house and killed his brother. He’d planned the murder all along, of course. When Skinny asked the merchant to look after the costume, Idle probably realized his brother was on to him, and that would have made killing him more urgent. It was such a simple, obvious thing to do. Get his hands on the single most valuable piece that would ever come into his twin brother’s workshop, get him out of the way, take his place and collect his money from the Emperor. It would never occur to Montezuma that there was anything wrong, provided the costume was delivered in pristine condition. And who would have seen through the deception, out here in Atecocolecan, where Skinny hadn’t been seen in years?’

‘What’s this got to do with Marigold?’ rasped Angry.

‘Everything,’ I said, as coolly as I could, ‘because she would have seen through it.’ I looked at Butterfly. ‘And so, naturally, would she. But you were in it from the beginning, weren’t you? And after the murder, you helped Idle hide the body.’

‘Who told you they were twins?’ Butterfly snapped.

‘Nobody But I found an idol of the god of twins in this room. I misread it: I thought someone must have been praying to Xolotl to relieve sickness. That was stupid of me, wasn’t it? I should have realized there was a reason why Idle was so eager to identify his brother’s body, and even provide his own charm as the evidence. Come to think of it, why else would the killer have gone to so much trouble to dispose of it in such a way that nobody would be willing to examine it too closely?

‘You tried to throw me off the scent by hiding the idol. That was silly of you, you know — I might have overlooked it if it had been with the others!’ I turned to Angry then. ‘But it was what you said that really put me on to the trick.’

‘What do you mean?’ His voice was a threatening rumble, like a sleeping volcano’s.

‘When’s your son-in-law’s birthday?’

‘Seven Flower,’ he rapped out, automatically. ‘If you think I’m playing some kind of guessing game with you …’

Keeping my voice as even as possible, I went on: ‘When I talked to you and Crayfish at your house, you told me you didn’t know when it was and didn’t care. But of course you knew! Before your daughter and Idle got married, you’d have hired a soothsayer to check that their birthdays were compatible, as anybody would.’ Unconsciously I echoed the words the priest at Amantlan had spoken to me when he told me about Skinny’s wedding to Butterfly. ‘If I’d picked up on it at the time I’d have realized you were lying to me for a reason. You didn’t want to tell me when Idle was born, because then I’d have known he and Skinny were twins. When I finally got my head around that, I could see what had happened, and how you were involved, and why. And that’s how I know where your daughter is.’

‘I knew I should have killed you after I knocked you out.’Butterfly sighed. ‘Couldn’t resist it, though. You looked so tempting, lying there …’

‘Shut up,’ Angry hissed. ‘You,’ he said to me, ‘get on with it!’

Where was my brother? I strained to catch some sound from outside. Occasionally a muffled thump would come from the work gang labouring behind the house. I had not noticed the noise to begin with but it seemed to be getting louder, and occasionally the walls would shake a little.