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was brought to a halt again by more priests and enforcers. Clearly a massive cull was in progress and victims were being rounded up in every part of the prison.
    She tried twice more in different directions but always with the same result. A ring of priests and enforcers was closing in and there would be no escaping it.
    ‘Very well then,’ said Tozi. There was no point in even trying the fog with so many priests coming at her. ‘We’ll just have to stay here and not be seen …’
    ‘You mean disappear?’ Malinal said hopefully.
    ‘I mean not be seen.’ Tozi looked around. ‘We need mud,’ she said. ‘
Now
.’
    Malinal rubbed at the dry earth with her toe. ‘There is no mud,’ she said.
    Tozi lifted her skirt, squatted and let loose a stream of urine. When she was finished she plunged her fingers into the damp puddle and began to knead the earth, churning a few handfuls of it into mud. She looked up at Malinal: ‘Brace yourself,’ she said, ‘this is for you.’
    ‘Me!’ Malinal choked. ‘Why me?’
    ‘Because I’m dirty enough already. So is Coyotl. But your clean skin’s going to get you noticed. We need to filthy you up. It’s a matter of life or death. Are you OK with that?’
    ‘I guess I’m OK with that.’
    ‘Then squat right there and make us some more mud.’
    After she had thoroughly smeared Malinal with the wet earth, got it all over what was left of her hair, rubbed it into her forehead, left long streaks of it down her face, and daubed it on the exposed parts of her legs and arms, Tozi looked the older woman up and down. ‘Much better,’ she said. ‘You’re a real mess …’
    ‘Thank you …’
    ‘You’re still beautiful, of course, but you’re filthy and you smell bad. Let’s hope that’s enough.’
    There were more screams. A wild-eyed, frantic woman charged by, another blundered past, bleeding from the scalp. All around prisoners were murmuring fearfully and trying to sidle away. ‘What’s happening?’ asked Malinal. ‘What do we do?’
    Tozi sat down cross-legged. ‘We do nothing,’ she said. She lifted Coyotl’s head into her lap and beckoned Malinal to sit beside her.
    The priests had approached to within fifty paces and were cutting through the crowd directly towards them. They were followed by their teams of enforcers, armed with heavy wooden clubs, who seized the victims they nominated and marched them off – presumably for immediate sacrifice.
    Tozi didn’t intend to find out. ‘Think of yourself as ugly,’ she whispered to Malinal. ‘You are hunched and wrinkled, your breasts are flat, your stomach sags, your teeth are rotten, your body is covered in boils …’
    ‘What good can that possibly—?’
    ‘Just do it.’
    As the line of priests came on, Tozi’s heart sank to see Ahuizotl again in the lead. There must be scores of priests inside the pen now, so was it just bad luck, or was it some malign intelligence that kept sending the sharp-eyed old killer straight to her? She noticed with some small satisfaction that the left side of his face was badly swollen after Xoco’s attack and he walked with a limp, using his spear as a crutch. Four big bodyguards were clustered round him. They weren’t armed with clubs but with
macuahuitls
, the wooden battle swords, edged with obsidian blades, favoured by Mexica knights. Obviously no repetition of the Xoco incident would be permitted.
    The priests were forty paces away now, then thirty, then twenty. Under her breath, Tozi began to whisper the spell of invisibility, but for a few moments longer she held to the hope that the disguise would work; that, smeared and dirty as they were, Ahuizotl would simply pass by without seeing them, that inconspicuousness would indeed prove to be the better part of concealment and that there would be no need for her to risk her life in a rash adventure into magic.
    Yet as the high priest continued to advance, some magnetism, some connection, seemed to be drawing him