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concealing his wealth as they always did, or perhaps a craftsman – a lapidary or a goldsmith or a featherworker. My master was not given to inviting people to his house unless they were likely to have something he wanted: knowledge or money or a skill he could use.
    I noticed he had been giving his blood to the gods; his cheeks and neck were covered with it, and some was still glistening.
    â€˜If he is, it’s hardly surprising. We all have to appease the gods tonight. Why else do you think we’re all standing out here? Haven’t you heard?’
    â€˜No.’
    My reply took him aback. ‘Have you been asleep all day or something?’

    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Then you’ve not heard what happened last night.’
    It was my turn to stare. Surely, he could not mean my master was beseeching the god to help him because of what we had been doing the previous night. I could see why he might have done, because our adventures on the lake had added a last twist to the crazy turns his fortunes had taken lately. However, there was no way old Black Feathers would have let that become public knowledge.
    â€˜I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said carefully.
    The man had been whispering, but now he lowered his voice until it was almost inaudible beneath the musicians’ thumping and squealing and my master’s entreaty to the god.
    â€˜You must be the only person in Mexico who hasn’t heard! A god has been seen, in the streets, in the north of the city, in Tlatelolco. Several people saw him – I saw him myself! It was Quetzalcoatl, it was the Feathered Serpent!’
    He looked at me expectantly.
    If he expected me to gasp or groan or cry out or start tearing at my hair and skin or do whatever else people are meant to when seized by fear of the gods and the anticipation of their own doom, he was disappointed.
    â€˜Really?’ I said.
    I had reached my own understanding with the gods many years before. They had given their own blood and bodies to form the first humans and make the Sun and the Moon rise. To sustain them and recompense them for their sacrifice, we offered them the hearts and lives of great and beautiful warriors. Because we did that, we claimed the right to address them on their own terms. Whimpering with fright would not make the crops grow, stop the lake flooding or deflect the spears of our enemies; making sacrifices and demanding that the gods accept them and do as we asked just might.

    Which is not to say that I took no notice of omens or that most of the city was not transfixed by them. Almost anything, from seeing a rabbit run into your house to dreaming about your teeth falling out, could be taken as a portent. In recent years, more strange things than ever had been seen: strange lights in the sky, temples bursting into unquenchable flames for no reason, the lake boiling and rising on a day when the air was still. Perhaps that was why everyone was so jittery about this latest apparition. Looking around me, it seemed to me that the crowd in the Chief Minister’s courtyard was unusually large, and unusually silent and attentive, even for Aztecs.
    â€˜So what happened, exactly?’ I asked.
    â€˜You’re a cool one,’ my neighbour grumbled. ‘What happened? Why, the god was seen up there, just after midnight. Lots of people saw the same thing. When Lord Feathered in Black heard about it, he summoned us all here.’ As Chief Minister my master was ultimately responsible for what went on in the streets of the city, and gods roaming around on the loose were clearly something he had to know about. I wondered whether he had been as sceptical about what he had heard as I was.
    â€˜You say lots of people saw it?’ The streets of Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco were usually deserted at night. There were too many malignant spirits about. Nobody wanted to risk seeing an owl, a sure portent of your own death, or meeting the Divine