Under happier circumstances, I would have reacted sharply to his cruel flippancy, but caught between the demands of caution and the surprise of my continued survival, believing as I had that Quetzalxochitl had sabotaged the armour, I was at a loss for words, and merely replied with a weak shake of my head. A look of diabolical satisfaction crept across Necocyaotl’s features, and my mortal fear at once flooded back. In spite of his evident pleasure, he did not wear the look of a man who was going to trouble himself to honour troublesome pledges of mercy, when it would be much simpler to shoot me dead and claim his prize.
A cold vice seemed to clamp around my chest as his grip tightened upon the pistol, but he did not fire, though his hand continued to contract so tenaciously that the bones
