”Acatl-tzin, what a surprise,” a sarcastic voice said.
There were only three people in the room: the one who had spoken was Quenami, the newly appointed High Priest of Huitzilpochtli the Southern Hummingbird, his lean face suffused with the arrogance of the nobility and with the knowledge that, as priest of our patron god, he was our superior both in magic and politics. I had disliked him from the first moment I’d seen him, and he was doing nothing to change that opinion. He wore the blue-and-black makeup of his god, his cloak was of quail and duck feathers, and more feathers hung from his belt, opening out like a turquoise flower.
Acamapichtli, High Priest of Tlaloc, scowled at me with undisguised animosity. I was not surprised. The Storm Lord had recently tried to seize power in the Fifth World, and I had played a significant part in foiling the attempt. Now Acamapichtli was in disgrace, and he blamed me for all of it.
I’d expected to see Tizoc-tzin, Master of the House of Darts, the heir apparent and favourite for the succession, but he wasn’t there. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or angry; my relations with him were icy at best, but his place was here with his deceased brother, not planning a gods-knew-what manoeuvre to secure his accession to the Turquoise-and-Gold Crown.
The last man, instead, was Tlilpopoca-tzin, the She-Snake and vice-emperor of the Mexica, a short, slight man wearing unrelieved black, and who was said to have played the game of politics from his mother’s womb.
The She-Snake was also the only one who had not removed his sandals, a privilege afforded only to him. He and the Revered Speaker were two sides of the same balance, near-equals, one male, one female; one in charge of external policy and one keeping order in the city and in the palace, just as men waged war while women managed the daily business of the household.
I bowed to the She-Snake, and to everyone else in turn.
”My lords,” I said. “I have come, as custom dictates, for the body of the Revered Speaker, Huitzilpochtli’s chosen.”
”We surrender it willingly,” the She-Snake said, in the singsong accents of ritual. His voice was grave, inviting trust. “We all must leave this world, the jades and the flowers, the marigolds and the cedar trees. Having nourished the Fifth Sun and Grandmother Earth, we all must leave the world of mortals. For those who died without glory, they must go down into the darkness, and find oblivion at the end of their journey. Let the Revered Speaker be no exception to this.”
I did not know where he stood. Rumour had it that he opposed Tizoc-tzin, that he might even want to become emperor himself instead of the eminence behind the Revered Speaker. He probably believed in the gods only distantly – like his father, who had viewed religion as a tool, and not as the life and breath that kept the Fifth World whole.
”Let the Revered Speaker be no exception,” I repeated, and broke off the ritual with a bow. Now that the formalities were out of the way, I could finally approach the body.
Axayacatl-tzin lay on his reed mat, relaxed as only death could make a man. His face – the face upon which no mortal had been allowed to gaze back when he had been alive – was slack, every trace of divinity long since fled. He looked much like any other corpse in my temple, save for the turquoise tunic that denoted him as Revered Speaker. He was painfully thin, the bones of his arms visible through the translucent skin, and his body smelled faintly unpleasant, the rancid odour of a man old before his time. He’d died of war wounds gone bad; of the decay that had settled into his bones and muscles. No foul play here. Not in a palace barricaded by protective wards, not under the watchful gaze of so many priests.
”Satisfied?” Quenami asked. The High Priest of Huitzilpochtli looked even more smug. I hadn’t imagined that was possible.
”I expected to be,” I said, turning back to face him. “You know that the corpse isn’t the problem when a Revered Speaker dies.”
Acamapichtli snorted. “The star-demons? You worry far too much, Acatl. Last time, the wards held for more than a month. And I should think our fighting abilities haven’t diminished since then.”
I wasn’t a fighter, and he knew it. “When we are talking about beings that want to tear us apart, yes, I’d rather worry.”
”Worry, then, if you wish. The interregnum will be short, in any case. We’ll soon crown a new Revered Speaker, whom the Southern Hummingbird will invest with His power.”
I turned towards Quenami, who made a small grimace. “Yes,” he said. “It might be worth considering them. The palace wards will be reinforced.”
He was young, newly come into his role, elevated from the nobility through connections and privilege and not from the clergy. He had no idea of the stakes. “You take this far too lightly,” I snapped. “If you’d seen the creatures that prowl the boundaries, you wouldn’t laugh.”
Ahuizotls
, creatures that feasted on the eyes and fingernails of drowned men; Haunting Mothers, who tore babies and toddlers into pieces; and star-demons, crouched above us, waiting for us to make a mistake, waiting for their time to come…
Gods, it wasn’t a time for levity or carelessness.
”And
you
have no idea of the stakes,” Acamapichtli said, with obvious contempt.
This, coming from a man whose god had tried His best to topple the Fifth Sun. “Do dispel my ignorance,” I said.
Acamapichtli crossed his arms over his chest, looking down at Axayacatl-tzin with no expression on his face. “He might not have been a great Emperor. He did not carve our territory out of the forsaken marches, or elevate us from tribe to civilisation. But he held us together.”
What did he mean? “As will the next Revered Speaker.”
The heron-feathers in Acamapichtli’s headdress rippled in the breeze. “If he can be chosen.”
”Tizoc-tzin was the Revered Speaker’s choice,” Quenami said, as seamlessly as if they’d planned it together. Considering the wide distance they kept from one another, I rather doubted it; but then again, Quenami had amply proved in the past that he knew how to sway a conversation. “His brother, the Master of the House of Darts, the commander of the regiments. He holds the loyalty of the army’s core.”
Politics. Power-grabbing. Always the same. “I still don’t see what that has to do with us. Whoever becomes Emperor will want to maintain the boundaries. They will want the Heavens, the Fifth World and Mictlan to remain separate. They will want us to
survive
.”
The She-Snake spoke up, in a calm, measured tone. “That’s what they want to tell you, Acatl-tzin. That the council might dither. That it might not want to confirm Axayacatl-tzin’s decision, that of a sick old man whose mind was halfway to Mictlan, after all.” The She-Snake’s voice carried the barest hint of sarcasm. He had to be one of the other candidates the council was split over; and his adversaries had just embarrassed themselves in front of him.
I thought of the stars overhead, growing larger with every passing moment. It would probably only be a few star-demons prowling the city, but even a few was too many. “If they wanted to dither, they should have done it before the Revered Speaker’s death. It’s too late now. Every passing day, the stardemons draw closer to us.” There would be remnants of Huitzilpochtli’s protection, tattered pieces, so easy to grind down to nothingness. There would be wards, such as the ones in my temples, drawn by devotees of other gods – the Flower Prince, the Feathered Serpent, the Smoking Mirror… But nothing like the impregnable wall that had been in place during Axayacatl-tzin’s reign.
”Nonsense,” Quenami said. “In the chronicles, they sometimes took entire weeks to decide on a new Revered Speaker. It never seemed to harm anyone.”
”This is not a good time,” I said. “The moon grows closer to the sun. The calendar priests have been warning about an eclipse for some time. We stand in its shadow, and this means that star-demons will be able to breach the boundaries.” As the moon loomed closer to the sun, eating into its radiance, She of the Silver Bells, the moon goddess, grew stronger; and her brother, Huitzilpochtli, our protector, weaker. “In previous reigns, perhaps we were made of stronger stuff,” I said, a slight jab at Acamapichtli and Quenami, who didn’t react. “But today we are weak and defenceless. I have seen stars tonight, bearing down upon us. They are already coming to us. Have you ever seen a star-demon, my lords? You wouldn’t laugh, believe me.”
They were all looking at me with mild interest, as if I were trying to sell them a mine of celestial turquoise or a quarry of underworld jade. They didn’t care. They thought it was an acceptable risk, so long as the end result allowed them to rise to greater power and influence.
They disgusted me more than I could express in words.
”My lords,” I said, bowing. “I will attend to the body, and leave you to the mundane matters–”
I never finished the sentence. The entrance-curtain was cast aside in a discordant sound of bells slammed together, and someone strode into the room. “Acatl-tzin!”
”Teomitl?” My student, who also happened to be Axayacatltzin’s and Tizoc-tzin’s brother, wore more finery than I’d ever seen on him, a gold-embroidered tunic, a quetzal-feather headdress, and black and yellow stripes across his face. He clinked as he moved, from the sheer weight of jade and precious stones on his body.
Both the High Priests and the She-Snake bowed to him, deep. Tizoc-tzin had many brothers, but, should he attain the Turquoise-and-Gold Crown, Teomitl was likely to be anointed Master of the House of Darts in his stead, heir apparent to the Mexica Empire. Ignoring him would have been a mistake.
Teomitl made a dismissive gesture. “There’s no time for pomp. Acatl-tzin, you have to come. Someone just killed a councilman. In the palace.”
TWO
The Moon Hungers to Outshine the Sun
The murdered man did not live in the Imperial Chambers, or in those of the high nobility: his rooms were as far down the palace hierarchy as they could be without it being an outright insult. They were on the ground floor, opening up onto a small courtyard away from the bustle of palace activity with a very simple fountain to make up the garden. The walls were decorated with rich frescoes, but without the outright ostentation that marked the imperial family.
Somehow “killed” seemed a deeply inaccurate description of what had been done to the councilman. To say that he had been torn apart would also have been an understatement. There was no body left, not as such, just an elongated, glistening mass of bloody flesh with bits and pieces of organs spread all over the stone floor. Something which might have been an arm lay outstretched on one of the wicker chests; something else coiled around the braziers, and on the reed mat, lay the two globes of the eyeballs and an elongated shape that had to be the rippedout tongue, somehow the most uncomfortable detail in the whole mess. A small obsidian knife lay near an out-flung hand, preceded by a trail of red.
Blood stained the room, stains of various sizes, all the way down to small drops marring the frescoes. It had not been quick, or easy.
Ordinarily I would have knelt, closed the body’s eyes and said the death rites; this time, it seemed like the body was scattered over the whole room. So I just stood there, and said the prayers I always did.
“We live on Earth, in the Fifth World
Not forever, but a little while
As jade breaks, as gold is crushed
We wither away, like feathers we crumble
Not forever on Earth, but a little while…”
Teomitl waited until I had finished before he spoke up.
“What do you think killed him?”
Given the remains, it was unlikely to be anything human. “Whatever you choose,” I said, angrily. I hadn’t expected the evening to go wrong, so fast. “Anything could have done it. With your brother dead, we’re wide open to whoever feels like summoning creatures.”
”Acatl-tzin,” Teomitl said, with an impatient shake of his head. “I’m on your side, remember?”
I sighed. “Yes. I know.”
The She-Snake had left after only a cursory glance inside; apparently he was going to interrogate the guards to know how such a thing could have happened. I’d sent Palli back to the temple to bring back priests and supplies, and begin the rituals over the Emperor’s corpse.
The two other High Priests were outside trying hard to hide their nausea. Ironic, considering that they’d officiated at so many sacrifices. But the offerings to the Southern Hummingbird simply had their hearts removed and those to the Storm Lord were drowned. There was blood, but not that kind of butchery.
My order, on the other hand, dissected dead bodies to know how they died. This much frenzied bloodletting was unfamiliar; but the contents of a human body were almost like old friends.
And this particular one…
I knelt by the side of the largest mass, staring at it for a while with my priest-senses. “Tell me about him,” I said. “The dead man.”
Teomitl spread his hands, a little more defensively than I’d have expected. “Ocome. A minor member of the imperial family, perhaps descended from a Revered Speaker three, four generations ago. The blood ran thin.”
”That’s not really helping,” I said, not looking away from the scattered flesh. Magic still clung to the room, the memory of a memory, faint and almost colourless, as if something had washed it away. “Any family?”
”Distant, I think. Ocome’s wife died a while ago, and his marriage had not been fruitful. He’d be by far the most unsuccessful member of his family.”
Aside, of course, from the position on the council.