Doctor Who_ Left-Handed Hummingbird - Kate Orman [16]
She could smell meat cooking, and something else that reminded her of the pancakes in Cristián’s flat. Suddenly she realized that she hadn’t had breakfast. ‘Doctor,’ she said, but the Time Lord was gazing around the marketplace, lost in memories hundreds of years old.
She tugged his sleeve. ‘Earth calling Gallifrey. Listen, how about some Mexican take‐away?’
The Doctor produced a small bag from inside his cloak. Ace drew its strings and sniffed. ‘Cocoa beans. Barter, right?’
He nodded. ‘I think we ought to stay together.’
‘Too right.’
Ace went up to the nearest merchant. He was stewing something in a big earthenware pot. ‘Um,’ she said, hoping he couldn’t see her clearly inside the cloak. ‘What are you selling?’
The Aztec grinned broadly, and lifted up a rolled tortilla filled with the stuff in the pot. ‘Frogs with green chilli,’ he said.
Someone screamed in Ace’s ear. She whirled around, grabbing at her hood to make sure it stayed in place.
‘Yahhhh!’ shouted the boy. ‘Big lock of hair on the back of the head!’
She caught just a flash of his face as he pushed roughly past her. He was dressed in a breech‐cloth and a white cape, and his naked chest was splattered with blood.
He was just one of a gang of young men, all dressed similarly. Each carried a long wooden blade like a narrow cricket‐bat. The edges were studded with ragged chunks of black volcanic glass. They jeered and leered at their rivals: another group of youths whose skin had been painted a dark colour. They screamed and shouted back, waving their swords. Then the groups were gone, pushing and shoving their way through the hubbub of the market.
‘Big lock of hair?’
‘He didn’t see you,’ murmured the Doctor. ‘It’s an insult. True warriors have their children’s lock of hair cut off.’
‘And they were true warriors?’
‘Some of them were – warriors in training. The priests have the body paint. Otherwise, there isn’t too much difference. The knights are chosen from both the warriors and the priests.’
‘I need Jane’s Book of Aztecs,’ said Ace.
The Doctor nodded towards a man bending over a wooden box. Ace did a double‐take. The man was dressed as a giant cat – no, a jaguar. He wore a padded jaguar‐skin suit, and a helmet made from the head of one of the big cats. His impassive face looked out from beneath the jaguar’s snarl. He was awful and magnificent, and he obviously knew it.
‘The warriors and the priests are rivals – at least, the younger ones are,’ the Doctor was saying, as though he were speaking to himself. ‘And the jaguar and the eagle knights are sometimes rivals. The Aztecs are intensely competitive. It begins at the moment they are born, and it continues throughout their life: the litany of duty, of correctness, of doing what you’re supposed to do. Every warrior wants to die. They live for it.’
Nearby, drums were beating softly, as a man half‐sang and half‐recited, gripping his feathered cloak.
‘May your heart open!
May your heart draw near!
You bring me torment,
You bring me death.
I will have to go there,
Where I must perish.
Will you weep for me one last time?
Will you feel sad for me?
Really we are only friends,
I will have to go,
I will have to go.’
The jaguar knight had moved aside, and she could see into the cage. ‘Is he a sacrifice?’ she asked quietly.
‘No,’ said the Doctor. ‘He’s a slave. But…’
‘They sacrifice the slaves?’
‘They paint by the numbers. The priests won’t just snatch you off the street and tear out your heart. They sacrifice only the correct people in the correct way.’
* * *
What does it take to distract the marketplace? What could draw the Aztecs’ attention away from the merchants, the mock battles, the shouts and songs?
The Doctor simply took his hood off. He heard a drum clatter to a standstill, heard a merchant shout in surprise.
He looked around at the crowd, his face expressionless, neither hostile nor welcoming. His pale face, his blue eyes. The Indians stood with surprise graffitied across their faces. Only the ringing of tools on stone did not stop, echoing out across