Doctor Who_ Left-Handed Hummingbird - Kate Orman [15]
She wondered who or what it was. But as the Doctor had once put it, the possibilities were endless.
She surfaced again, flicking water at his shoes.
‘We had an agreement,’ he said.
Ace screwed up her face. ‘It was only a little gun.’
‘We agreed. No combat suit, no weapons. No heavy metal.’
‘And what about the trap?’
The Doctor held her gaze. ‘How much good did your little gun do you?’
She plunged back under the water. Enjoy the quiet while it lasted.
And so they sailed on through the Vortex. Through an endless pulsing web of space and time.
* * *
Chapter 3
Sun King
* * *
Tenochtitlan, 1487
It was hot in the city of the Mexica. In the marketplace, sweat streamed down the faces of merchants, jammed side by side from one wall of the sacred enclosure to the other, each one sporting a halo of customers, all haggling at full speed. There were feathers and precious stones, skins of jaguars and deer, fruit and grain, wood and honey, rabbits and ducks, fish and fowl. And there were the slaves.
The sound of chisels rang out over the enclosure. The stone‐workers called to one another, hurrying. They had a task to finish, perhaps the most important in their lifetime. The Great Temple – the very greatest temple – was to be dedicated in three days’ time. And if they did not complete the final work, well, they could see the slaves’ cages in the marketplace.
Inside one of the cages, Iccauhtli was waiting to die. He sat hunched over in the low wooden pen, his arms wrapped around his knees, keeping his eyes to the ground. He wore nothing but a breech‐cloth and a wooden collar. No more the finery of the nobleman’s son for Iccauhtli.
It had been his own fault, of course. The punishment was perfectly justified. He had made a mistake in the drumming, losing his grip on the stick at just the wrong moment, so that it clattered across the wood and to the ground, making an ugly, random sound like hailstones. Such errors were to be expected in the school. But not in the emperor’s palace, during his coronation. A wrong note was as dangerous as a mis‐recited prayer.
At least they were going to kill him. It might not be the Flowered Death, but it was the next best thing to dying on the battlefield. And he had hated being a slave.
He wondered if his father and his brother might visit the marketplace. Even if they spotted him in the dense crowd, they wouldn’t speak to him, of course, they’d pretend he wasn’t there. There was no reason for them to share in his shame. The thought that they might be there, looking, was too much for him. Hurriedly, he glanced around the market.
It was because of this that he didn’t miss what happened next.
* * *
The TARDIS landed where it had been, minus five hundred and seven years. It stood in the sun for a few moments. The virtual paint peeled a little bit more, imperceptibly. Then, with a wriggle that would have put the best morphing program to shame, it transformed itself into a stone statue with a faceful of teeth.
The Doctor and Ace emerged. They were covered from top to toe in hooded cotton robes. The design was not pure Aztec, but with so many foreigners about in the city, the Time Lord didn’t expect anyone to notice. He glanced at the baleful idol his TARDIS had become and grinned at it, irreverently. The swimming pool wasn’t the only thing he’d repaired.
It was the noise which struck Ace first – a blend of drums and human shouts, the long Nahuatl words running together in a rhythmic pattern. Everyone seemed to be talking at once; they were awash in the sound of barter and gossip. A macaw squawked somewhere nearby, its electric blue and red plumage catching her eye as it shimmered in the heat.
Each merchant had a blanket, or a collection of blankets, and their wares were arranged with geometrical tidiness. Grains formed squares of red and black and white. Different kinds of fruit were separated into neat piles. How did they keep it all in order with everyone so close together, treading on one another’s toes? Ace imagined one person falling over and knocking everyone else