Shadow of the Lords Read Online Free Page A

meet my brother’s confused, anxious, angry eyes.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜If that is how you feel, Yaotl,’ he said stiffly, ‘then all I can say is, I hope you enjoy your holiday!’

2
    L ord 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.
    The prospect of being free of all these fears once and for all was tantalizing, and it kept me awake like an itch I could not
reach. It was all the more maddening because, had I belonged to almost anyone else, my brother’s scheme would have worked. But I knew my master: if Lion approached him, old Black Feathers would just laugh in his face.
    I lay shivering under my cloak, although it was not a particularly cold day, and was still wondering when sleep would come and chase my fears away when the steward shook me awake.
    Â 
    â€˜Yaotl!’
    Something was amiss.
    It was dark in my room; with the wicker screen that covered the doorway pushed aside it was not quite pitch black, but the pallid grey light of evening falling on my floor told me I must have slept what had remained of the afternoon away. That was not what had confused me, though.
    â€˜Yaotl!’
    I could hear drums. From somewhere close by came the sharp, shrill call of the two-tone drum and under it the massive, insistent beat of the ground drum. I could hear flutes as well, and the wail of a trumpet, but it was the drums whose voices I fixed on, as they seemed to reverberate through the stucco floor under me, making my sleeping-mat shake in time with their rhythm.
    No, it was not the drums either. I was used to the drumming. It must mark a ceremony of some kind, an offering to a god: I would be able to work out which god when I woke up and remembered what day it was.
    â€˜Yaotl! Wake up!’
    There was something wrong with the voice. I knew it from somewhere: a rough growl made hoarse by years of shouting at people, but its tone was all wrong. It sounded polite, almost deferential, and seemed even more odd when I realized that the shaking was not the drums after all, but the speaker’s hand
gently pushing at