‘On you, you mean! Don’t try and kid me, Lion. That’s what this was always about, isn’t it — keeping me busy digging over some weed-infested mud-patch somewhere, safely out of sight, so I wouldn’t blight your precious career!’
To my surprise, the mighty warrior did not fly into a rage. He looked briefly, sadly, at our feet — his with the one precious sandal that was what remained of his dignity, mine bare as always — and mumbled: ‘No, it’s not that.’ Then he looked up again, his face wearing as thoughtful an expression as I had seen on it. ‘Look, your antics over the years haven’t helped — but I’ve overcome that; all of us have. Except you. Are you really going to be a slave for the rest of your life? No one lives for ever, Yaotl, not even slippery characters like you. The bestyou can hope for is to leave a good name behind. Maybe it didn’t matter before, when you thought you had no children, but now you know you’ve got a son. Don’t you want to leave him anything, beside the knowledge that his father died a slave? If you won’t exert yourself for your own sake, what about his?’
It was a long speech for him, delivered softly, with none of the hectoring tone his lectures were usually couched in. In the awkward pause that followed I reflected that it must have cost him a lot of effort. I wondered whether he had been saving it up, rehearsing it.
I turned away from him. The crowd flowing around us suddenly seemed distant. I tried looking into the busy, preoccupied faces that were hurrying past me, but for some reason it was hard to bring them into focus. I wished he had not mentioned Nimble.
Eventually I muttered: ‘If my son has any sense, he’ll be on the far side of the mountains by nightfall. He’ll never know me.’
‘Maybe he’ll be back, some day.’
I shook my head furiously, to clear it. ‘Anybody would think I had a choice!’
‘You could run away. It’s One Death — you could do it today.’
‘Only if I happened to be in the marketplace.’ I knew about the custom he was alluding to, the tiniest chink of an opening that was offered to slaves on Tezcatlipoca’s special day. ‘And then only if I managed to reach the Emperor’s palace without being caught first. Oh, and the rule is I have to tread in a turd on the way, remember?’ I had always suspected this last twist revealed the custom’s true purpose: to give the bystanders a good laugh. What could be funnier than watching a man running through the market with soiled heels, with his cursing master behind him, stumbling in his efforts to avoid steppingin his slave’s footprints? ‘Do you think I’m likely to be let near the marketplace today? It’s a fairy tale, Lion. Nobody ever really escapes that way — not unless he’s more trouble than he’s worth and his master lets him go just to spare himself the expense of feeding him.’
‘Buy your freedom.’
I laughed out loud. Startled faces turned towards me, and even the piercing cries of the girls still squabbling behind us dried up, as if they had realized that their audience’s attention had wandered.
‘Buy my freedom?’ I hissed, abruptly feeling the need to be a little bit discreet. ‘You must be joking! With what?’
Lion looked ruefully down at the tattered remains of his cloak. ‘I’m still the Guardian of the Waterfront, even if I don’t look like it! What did old Black Feathers pay you for your liberty — twenty cloaks? I can double that. I can offer more if it isn’t enough.’
‘And how would I pay you back?’
His answer caught me unawares. He said nothing. Instead, he lunged at me with both arms outstretched and his palms, held out flat in front of him, slammed into my chest with all of a hefty, muscular warrior’s substantial weight behind them.
I was a pace or two from the edge of the causeway, with my back to the water. With a shout of alarm, I staggered back under the force of the blow until there was nothing under my heels but empty space. For a moment my arms whirled frantically as I tried to keep my balance, and then I fell, breaking the surface with so much force that the breath burst from my lungs as a glistening cloud of bubbles.
By the time my head was in the air again, with water streaming from my mouth and nose, I had got the joke. I gathered he had explained it to the bystanders, judging by the laughter that greeted my reappearance.
‘Happy birthday!’ he cried.
‘Very funny,’ I gasped, as my fingers sought a purchase among the rough stones lining the causeway’s side. ‘It would be funnier still if you’d help me up!’
‘Going Through the Water’, we called it: the traditional ducking your friends and family would give you on your name-day. ‘I suppose I’m supposed to provide you with a feast,’ I muttered, as I scrambled back on to the road. ‘Sorry, Lion, but you’re out of luck there!’
‘All right,’ he replied mildly, ‘I’ll let you off. But as for paying me back — I’m offering you the chance to buy your freedom as a present, you idiot!’
For a moment I felt light headed with relief.
I had a day ahead of me when I could pretend to be my own man; but that was only because I belonged to Tezcatlipoca, and on his day, that one day in every two hundred and sixty, nobody dared lay a finger on a slave. Tomorrow, I would be returned to my duties, and the first of them would be to hunt down my own son.
Yet my brother was saying that this need not happen. I could be free every day of my life. I could be free of old Black Feathers’s arbitrary and often murderous will, with a new beginning that somehow cancelled all the shame and misery I had known since the day I left the Priest House. The prospect was like the best sacred wine I had ever tasted: it made me feel almost giddy but still sharp, and even as I was about to embrace it — as I was about to embrace my brother, for the first time since we were children — I saw the fatal flaw in the scheme.
‘Forget it,’ I said brusquely, forging ahead into the crowd.
‘Forget it?’ For a moment Lion could only stand still, echoing my words incredulously. Then he dashed after me, rudely shouldering aside a couple of men who had strayed into hispath. ‘What do you mean, forget it? Are you mad? Don’t be so stubborn, Yaotl. Listen to me!’
I kept looking for gaps between the broad backs blocking the way ahead — anything rather than meet my brother’s confused, anxious, angry eyes.
‘I’m not being stubborn, brother,’ I said at last. ‘It’s Lord Feathered in Black we’re talking about — the Chief Minister. You could offer him twenty times my worth and it wouldn’t matter. He’s the second-richest man in the World. He doesn’t need your money, or anyone else’s. If he keeps me on, it’s because he still has a use for me — and the moment he doesn’t I’m dead, and nothing you can offer will make the slightest difference.’
For a moment Lion looked as hurt as if I had struck him. Then the streak of bloody-mindedness that was possibly the only trait we had in common took over, and I saw his face freeze into an impassive mask.
‘If that is how you feel, Yaotl,’ he said stiffly, ‘then all I can say is, I hope you enjoy your holiday!’
2
Lord Feathered in Black had a splendid palace near the centre of the city, within easy reach of the Heart of the World, the sacred precinct, around whose temples and towering pyramids much of the business of our lives revolved. Also nearby was the still more magnificent palace of my master’s cousin: the Emperor Montezuma the Younger.
I returned to my master’s house feeling footsore and numb. After a sleepless and violent night followed by a long walk and a quarrel with my brother, I found it hard to think about anything other than the urge to find my own room, shed the clothes I had worn all night in favour of my old cloak, curl up on my reed mat, pull the cloak over my head and fall asleep.
Sleep was long in coming, however. I could not stop dwelling on the task my master had set for me, and my brother’s startling offer.
The law was kind to slaves, but my master had shown more than once that he was too strong for the law to bind him. I might be allowed to rest today, but tomorrow he was going to make me look for my son, and if I displeased the old man — if, say, the boy was allowed to get away again — then he would make sure I regretted it. He could find a way of disposing of me if he wanted, I was confident of that.