Harbinger of the Storm (20 page)

”I see. What did you have in mind?”

”I want men.”

”They are in short supply.”

”Look,” I said. “Those star-demons, they’re being summoned here, inside the palace wards. Someone, somewhere, has converted a room for the purpose.”

He was quick to seize my meaning. “And it’s a large palace.”

”I’ve had my priests search it, but we’re not enough.”

”Surely, you would need magical training to find such a spot.”

I shook my head. “It’s going to be large, and bloody, and definitely not discreet.” Not given the amount of power that had been expanded to call so many star-demons down into the world in such a short time.

”I see.” The She-Snake pressed both hands together, thoughtfully. “I see.” At length, he looked up, and fixed me again with his gaze. “I’ll send the men I can spare. Was there anything else?”

”Do you know where the other High Priests are?”

That same mirthless smile quirked up the corner of his mouth. “Quenami is with Tizoc-tzin. Acamapichtli… I fancy we won’t see much of Acamapichtli in the days to come.”

”I don’t understand.”

”Oh, come, Acatl.” His gaze was pitying. “He threw his weight behind the Texcocan princess. Gambled it all, and lost it all.”

”He’s…” I started, and stopped. Nothing short of death or treason could remove a High Priest from his post.

”He’s in disgrace, if that’s what you mean. Not that he wasn’t before, mind you.”

The whole business with the Storm Lord trying to take over the Fifth World. Acamapichtli seemed to have a singular gift for backing the wrong person or god.

I’d have pitied him, if he hadn’t been the man who’d tried to condemn my brother to death. “If we were to arrest all the men who backed the wrong person in this struggle, the palace would empty itself fast,” the She-Snake said. He still sounded amused, as if he secretly relished the chaos.

I didn’t trust him. I couldn’t.

”Arresting the waverers might give people a reason to stop playing,” I said darkly, and took my leave from him.

I made my way back to Teomitl’s room, where I found Mihmatini still sleeping. Thank the Duality; if she’d woken up and found me gone, I might not have survived her sarcastic remarks.

I looked up at the sun. It was almost noon, and I’d eaten nothing all day. I managed to find a servant in one of the adjoining courtyards, and sent him to the kitchens for a meal.

While I waited for his return, I mulled on what Palli had told me.

A death – a powerful one – and star-demons. Perhaps a last entreaty against chaos, made by a desperate man? But why tar, and why the Revered Speaker’s rooms? There was a place for rituals like this, in the Great Temple, the religious heart of the city. Why there, unless it was something specifically connected to the Imperial family?

The bells on the entrance-curtain tinkled. “Come in,” I said, keeping my voice as steady as I could.

It was Yaotl, still garbed in his warrior’s costume. He looked worse than before. The blue paint did not mask the dark circles under his eyes, or the paleness of his face. He cast a distant glance in Mihmatini’s direction, but made no comment. “I heard you got into more trouble,” he said.

I said nothing. There was nothing I could say. In the light, his eyes were huge, a reservoir of grief that spilled over into the Fifth World.

”She died just after dawn.” Yaotl did not bother to sit. I thought he didn’t want to remember that he was my social inferior; not now, not when his whole world seemed to come undone around him.

”I felt it,” I said. I hesitated. I knew all the words, all the empty things one could say when Lord Death has taken his due. They meant nothing save comfort to the living. But Yaotl served the Duality, and he would know that death was part of the eternal balance, that destruction and creation were entwined like lovers, making and annihilating the world in an endless dance. “I can’t believe she’s gone,” I said, settling for the truth.

Yaotl’s lips thinned to a line. “Me neither. I keep expecting her to rise from her funeral mat and take charge.” His gaze wandered again. “I hear you arrested the poisoner?”

”I think so,” I said, cautiously.

”It’s all over the palace.” Yaotl’s voice was grim.

”And Xahuia?” He didn’t look as though he had caught her, but one never knew.

”Gone to ground, too well hidden.”

I nodded. “Even if she wasn’t guilty, I don’t think her activities were entirely lawful.”

Yaotl barked a short, unamused laugh. “Resisting arrest alone would have been enough. We found the paraphernalia of sorcery in her private rooms: mummified animals, dried women’s hands, arms preserved in salt baths…”

”The Smoking Mirror?” I asked, thinking again of Nettoni’s touch on my skin.

”Yes,” Yaotl said. “But nothing tied to the summoning of star-demons.”

”I think that was Manatzpa,” I said, feeling less and less convinced the more I thought about it. “You need to find her.”

”I’m looking for her.” Yaotl could barely hide his exasperation. “It’s a big city, as you no doubt know.”

I suddenly realised how we looked – two men meant to be allies, tearing at each other, no better or no worse than the rest of the Court. “Forgive me,” I said. “It’s been a long couple of days.”

”For both of us.” Yaotl smiled, a pale shadow of the terrible, mocking expressions he’d throw at me. There was no joy in it whatsoever.

Then again, I guessed I didn’t look much better.

The heavy silence was broken by the jarring sound of bells struck together. Teomitl had lifted the entrance-curtain with his usual forcefulness, and was striding back into the room. He was followed by the servant I’d sent for a meal, who appeared much less eager.

”Acatl-tzin,” Teomitl said.

I rose, gingerly, leaning on the wall for support. “I take it you were able to speak to him.”

Behind him, the servant moved, to lay his tray of food on one of the reed mats. He bowed, and was gone.

Teomitl barely noticed any of this. “I spoke to Manatzpa, yes.” He looked a fraction less assured, a fraction less angry. The arrogance I’d seen over the past few days had almost faded away, leaving only the impatient adolescent, as if whatever Manatzpa had told him had shattered Tizoc-tzin’s influence.

”And?” Yaotl asked, shaking his head impatiently. “Did he confess?”

Teomitl looked at him blankly.

”The murder of Guardian Ceyaxochitl,” I prompted him.

”Oh.” He did not look more enlightened. “We didn’t talk about that.”

”Then what about?” Yaotl was fuming by now.

”About the star-demons.” Teomitl’s face was hard again, on the verge of becoming jade. “He’s said that he’ll only talk to you, Acatl-tzin.”

I briefly woke Mihmatini to let her know where we were going. She made a face of disapproval I knew all too well, a mirror image of Mother’s when my brother or I had broken a dish or muddied a loincloth. “You haven’t eaten anything.”

I pointed to the tray the servant had left. “I had maize soup. And a whole newt with yellow peppers.”

Her gaze made it clear she wasn’t fooled. “Acatl, you’re in no state to walk.”

”I feel much better.” And it was true; utterly drained, but much better. The pain was gone, leaving only the dull feeling that nothing would ever be right again.

Mihmatini made a face that told me she didn’t believe me. “I should come with you,” she said.

Teomitl put a hand on her arm gently. “No. Not now.”

”But–”

”Out of the question,” I said. My judgment might be a little shaky now – a little pale and empty like the veins in my body – but there was no way I would let her walk into Tizoctzin’s chambers.

”Acatl-tzin is right,” Teomitl said. “My brother won’t be happy to see you, and this isn’t the time for this.”

”Teomitl…”

He shook his head again. “No.”

And that effectively ended the conversation, though Mihmatini glowered like a jaguar deprived of its prey. “I’ll be waiting for you,” she said, and the way she spoke made it doubtful she’d hand out hugs or flowers.

I could feel Yaotl’s amused gaze on my back all the way to Tizoc-tzin’s chambers; but he said nothing.

I wondered what Manatzpa could have to tell me. How he could not hate me, when I had been the one who had brought him down? Most likely he would taunt me. I doubted that he would bend. In that way, he was very much like his nephews Tizoc-tzin and Teomitl. But there might be something to be gleaned, information that would help us. For if my gut feeling was right and he was not the summoner of star-demons, then we still had someone out there, busily plotting our ruin.

I’d expected some silence in Tizoc-tzin’s courtyard; or at any rate, some mark that something was wrong with the palace, but it seemed like nothing had changed. Warriors gathered on the platform, laughing among themselves. Noise floated from Tizoc-tzin’s rooms, the singsong intonations of poets reciting compositions, the laughter of warriors, the deep rhythm of beaten drums. But underneath, in the wider courtyard, were other warriors, dressed far more soberly, their long cloaks barely masking the whitish scars on their limbs. They talked amongst themselves, casting dark glances at the finery on the platform; the other part of the army, the true warriors, the ones who would support only a veteran, not a mediocre fighter like Tizoc-tzin.

If nothing else, things were starting to get ugly here, with factions openly declaring themselves.

Teomitl, oblivious, strode into a smaller courtyard, a mirror image of the House of Animals, loaded with exotic trees and bushes. It seemed as though we had stepped into another world altogether, a land to the south where the heat was stifling and quetzal-birds flew in the wild, raucously calling to each other. Cages dotted the landscape at regular intervals, huge, empty, their wooden bars almost merging with the foliage of the trees. The air smelled of churned mud, with the faint, heady fragrance of flowers. What was not expected, however, was the reek of magic, so strong it burnt my lungs.

”Something is wrong,” I said, but did not have time to go further.

She stepped out of the caged wilderness as if She belonged within it; tall, Her skin as black as the night sky, and stars scattered at Her elbows and knees, stars that were also the eyes of monsters. Her cloak spread behind Her – no, it was not a cloak, but wings made of a thousand shards of obsidian, glinting in sunlight – and her face was pale skin, stretched over the hint of a skull, with bright, malevolent eyes that held me until I fell to my knees, shaking.

”Priest. Warrior. Slave.” Her gaze swept through us all. I clenched my hands to stop my fingers from shaking. “You’re too late,” She said.

Something shone clung to Her wings, a light that was neither sunlight nor starlight; the memory of something that had once belonged in the Fifth World. A soul, ripped from its body.

Manatzpa.

She threw me a last searing glance, and leapt over me with an agility I wouldn’t have expected from something so monstrous.

And then She was gone, with only the reek of magic to remind us of Her presence.

My obsidian knives were warm, quivering under my touch, as if She had affected them too. I looked around. The air smelled of charnel and blood, and the single cage ahead of us had its bars broken.

We’d arrived too late.

Both Yaotl and Teomitl had gone down. Yaotl was still shaking, and Teomitl was pulling himself up, with the wrath of Chalchiuhtlicue filling his face.

”What was that?” he asked.

”I–” She had looked like a star-demon; but different, too: not a mindless thing, but a goddess in Her own right, unmistakably female. “Itzpapalotl,” I said, fighting past the constriction in my chest. “The Obsidian Butterfly, Goddess of War and Sacrifice.” Leader of the star-demons, She who would take us all into Her embrace, when the time came.

”That’s impossible,” Yaotl remained sitting in the mud, oblivious to the growing stain on his cloak. “She’s–”

”I know.” Imprisoned, like Coyolxauhqui of the Silver Bells, like the star-demons.

”Why now, Acatl-tzin?”

”Because someone did not want Manatzpa to talk.” A chill had descended into my stomach and would not be banished. Because he had known something, because he would, indeed, have revealed it to me?

Whoever it was they were in the palace, and aware of what was happening in Tizoc-tzin’s closest circle. Either Xahuia still had agents inside, or…

Or it was someone else entirely.

”Acatl-tzin!” Teomitl’s voice was impatient. “Come on.”

I must have looked blank, for he shook his head impatiently, the whites of his eyes shifting from jade to white and back again as he did so, an eerie effect.

”It’s still in the city. We have a chance to catch up to it. Come on!”

Still in the city? Why hadn’t it–

No time to think. I picked up my cloak from the ground, shook some of the mud loose, and ran after Teomitl.

As we exited the palace, running down the stairs leading up to the Serpent Wall and the Sacred Precinct, the
ahuizotls
came, slithering out of the canal besides the palace. Their faces wrinkled like those of a child underwater for too long, their tails curling up into a single clawed hand, which opened and closed as they moved.

On ground, they looked wrong, as black and sleek as fish out of the water, crawling on their four clawed legs like salamanders or lizards, and yet still moving with a fluid, inhuman speed that seemed to surprise even Teomitl.

The star-demon was ahead of us, moving through the Sacred Precinct. The crowd fought to avoid Her, the pilgrims elbowing each other, sacrificial victims being pulled aside by their keepers, the priests hastily kneeling on the cleared-out grounds, fighting to trace quincunxes and circles in a vain attempt to slow Her down or banish Her.

Teomitl, who was younger and much fitter than me, was already ahead, the
ahuizotls
fanning around him in a grisly escort. He moved in the trail left by the star-demon, widening the circle of emptiness she had left around Her.

I cast my mind out, trying to summon the Wind of Knives. Up and up it went, over the crowded plaza, over the houses of noblemen, past the canals and the islands on the outskirts, into the cenote, until His presence went up my spine, straightening it with one cold touch.