It was past noon. The Fifth Sun overhead battered us with His glare. On the steps leading up to the palace massed a group of priests clad in blue cloaks, embroidered with the fused lover insignia of the Duality. They were tracing glyphs on the ground with a set of twined reeds. Most other orders would have shed blood, but the Duality deemed blood offerings unnecessary.
At their head was a man I knew all too well: Yaotl, Ceyaxochitl's personal slave. He'd never looked less like a slave, though; his neck was bare, unencumbered by any wooden collar, his cotton cloak was richly embroidered, his cheeks painted blue and black, the same colour as the priests' cloaks.
"Ah, Acatl," he said, his scarred face splitting into a smile. He did not venture any explanation, which did not surprise me. Like his mistress, Yaotl often kept me in the dark, but made no pretence of altruism; it was purely for his own amusement.
I summoned my priest-senses, and took a look at the stairs. The glyphs drawn before the entrance shone for a moment, before sinking into the stone. A fine coating of light had always hung around the palace, the protective wards that kept the high nobility safe, but now the light was growing warmer, clearer. The stone under us was quivering with power, like a heart barely torn out of a chest.
"Reinforcing the wards?" I asked.
"I see your observation skills are as keen as ever." Yaotl cast an amused glance to the sandstone face of the palace, with its frescoes depicting the end of the migration from the heartland, and the founding of Tenochtitlan on the spot where the Fifth Sun's eagle had perched on an agave cactus, gorging himself on a human heart.
"Why now?" I asked.
"As a precaution," Yaotl said. He shook his head, as if to clear a persistent thought. "Huitzilpochtli is already watching here, but He is weak. Mistress Ceyaxochitl thinks help wouldn't hurt."
"Where is she?" I asked. "Inside the palace?"
Yaotl nodded. I looked again at the light. It was now tinged with the blue, peaceful radiance of the Duality, but the structure underneath, the magic of the Southern Hummingbird woven in daily layers, was more than solid. Even weakened by Axayacatl-tzin's death, it was impregnable.
"It doesn't need help," I said, aloud. "They hold."
"Observation at work once again," Yaotl said.
No, that wasn't the problem. "It was summoned inside the palace."
"The star-demon?" Teomitl asked.
I nodded. I had been wrong. It wasn't just some foreign sorcerer with a grievance against us. It had to be someone who had access inside.
To be sure, there were means to bribe palace servants, but this wasn't just a matter of someone scouting out the weaknesses of the palace guard. The summoning had to have been done inside the wards, from beginning to end, which implied two things. First, the summoner was enormously skilled, which only confirmed what I already knew. Second, the field of suspects had just been drastically limited. The pillars of the entrance were enchanted, and a sorcerer without Court accreditation wouldn't have been able to pass between them.
So, not just any sorcerer, but a member of the Court with access to magic. I would need to check who was on the list of accreditations.
I added this to the growing number of things I was going to need men for. I hated taking people away from the Revered Speaker's funeral, which should have been my priority, but if there was a summoner of star-demons loose in there…
Teomitl turned, to look at the protective spells over the gates with a dubious frown.
The Storm Lord blind me, whoever had done this was extremely well prepared. Not only had they managed to find someone on the inside, but they had also been ready to do their summoning in the hours that had followed Axayacatl-tzin's death.
I didn't like the sound of that.
The first thing I did upon entering the palace was to go to the Revered Speaker's rooms. I found the guards at the gates in a state of alert. I assumed they had been apprised by the She-Snake on the murder, and were holding themselves ready for anything.
Inside, the burly offering Priest Palli was watching as two dozen priests for the Dead prepared the corpse for its funeral. A quincunx of blood spread across the tiled floor, with the faint greenish tinge of Mictlan's breath. The priests were all chanting hymns, calling on the minor deities of the underworld; except two, who were busy undressing the former Revered Speaker. Clothing was all-important: the mummy bundle that would be burnt would be made of dozens of layers of many-coloured cotton, each added with the proper beseeching to the gods, each garnished with gems, amulets and gold and silver jewellery.
Palli nodded to me when I entered, but waited until the current hymn was finished to move outside the blood quincunx. "Acatltzin. As you can see, we have matters well in hand."
I nodded. The forms looked to be respected. The room itself was pulsing with a presence like a burst dam, the breath of the river that separated the underworld from the Fifth World. Everything was well taken care of. "No doubt of that." I hesitated; but it was still something that needed to be done. "How many could you spare?"
Palli looked dubious. "I could without half, but the rituals would progress more slowly…"
"No matter," I said. "The funeral isn't going to be for a while anyway." Not if the other high priests had their way.
"It's about the body, I assume."
I nodded. "It looks like the summoning of what killed that man was done from inside. I need one person sent to the registers, to check up on the accreditations of all the sorcerers."
"You don't mean–"
"I'm not sure what I mean," I said, darkly. "But watch your step, definitely."
Palli nodded. "I can do that, but…"
"I know." It was going to be a long list. Most noblemen had access to magic, if only for their protective spells. If they didn't have a pet sorcerer, they were sorcerers themselves; and that didn't count the numerous priests and magistrates who came here, either in the service of their temples or in the service of the Imperial Courts.
"And the others?" Palli asked.
"I want them to search the palace. If a summoning was done here, it should show." The magic wouldn't be washed away, not so easily. "Every room, every courtyard. There has to be a place we can find." It was the timing I didn't like: the murder of Ocome had taken place barely one hour after the death of the Revered Speaker. This suggested… planning. Someone, somewhere had held themselves ready for an opening, knowing it couldn't be long until the ailing Revered Speaker passed into Mictlan.
Palli grimaced again, an expression he was a little bit too fond of. "I'll see who I can spare. For the ritual's end…"
Only the High Priest for the Dead could ease a soul's passage into the underworld. "I'll be there." One way or another. I wouldn't rob a dead man to serve another one.
I just hoped the corpses would stop arriving.
• • • •
Teomitl and I dropped briefly by Ocome's room, which still stank of death. Two guards were keeping watch by the entrance-curtain, looking as if they would have given anything to be elsewhere.
In the room itself, there was not much new to see: the magic was slowly dissipating, absorbed by the wards. I'd expected the scattered gobs of flesh would have started to rot, but they remained in the same state, as if the star-demon's removal of the soul had put a stop to the decomposition process.
I'd made more cheerful discoveries. No matter; he would still burn on his funeral pyre as well as any corpse, provided we could scrape the flesh from the floor and from the walls. For once, I was glad to be High Priest, which meant someone further down the hierarchy would do the exhausting, distasteful work.
When we came out in the courtyard in the dim light of late afternoon, I turned towards the burliest of the guards. "How long ago were you assigned to this room?"
I could see him hesitating, his eyes roving over my regalia, weighing the possibility that he could get away with a lie.
It was his companion who spoke, a much thinner man, with the white lines of scars crisscrossing his legs identifying him as a veteran of some battlefield. He held his
macuahitl
sword – a wooden club studded with obsidian shards – with the ease of those who had carried it nearly all their lives. "We've been guarding this place for three weeks."
"I see," I said. And, as casually as I could, "I take it you weren't standing guard when this happened?"
The burly guard grimaced. "We thought we heard something on the other side of the courtyard, so we went to investigate."
"And didn't come back?" This from Teomitl, who had been standing with one hand on the entrance-curtain.
The guard grimaced again. "It turned out to be nothing, but we still wanted to make sure. I went to ask the others who were on guard in the next courtyard." He wouldn't meet my gaze, but in any case I knew he was lying. His companion the veteran was even less talkative.
"Really?" Teomitl started, but I lifted a hand.
"Someone called you away?"
The burly guard had the grace not to answer; the veteran shifted uncomfortably. There was a light in his eyes I couldn't read, anger or fear, or a bit of both. What had been promised to them, in exchange for their silence?
I sighed. Whoever had done this had influence, a currency I was short on. "You do know who this is?" I asked, pointing to Teomitl, who stood up even straighter. "Tizoc-tzin's brother, who will soon become Master of the House of Darts. Do you truly wish to lie to him?"
The burly guard shook his head, a minute gesture that he stopped before it became too visible, but it had already betrayed him. He didn't believe in Tizoc-tzin; or at least, didn't want him to wear the Turquoise-and-Gold Crown.
I didn't know whether to be relieved I wasn't the only one to dislike Tizoc-tzin, or terrified that the divisions within the Court ran so deep.
"I can have them dismissed," Teomitl said. His gaze was on me, his whole stance had hardened. This wasn't my student anymore, but the man who would one day become Revered Speaker. "Master of the House of Darts or not, I'm still imperial blood."
The guards' faces did not move, but the veteran's hands clenched around his
macuahitl
sword, slightly tilting it towards us. The obsidian shards embedded in the wood glinted in the sunlight.
"My lord," the burly guard said, cautiously. "We don't seek to deny you, but surely you must understand that there are higher powers–"
Teomitl cut the guard off with a stab of his hand. A pale green light was dancing in his pupils, the power of Jade Skirt, his protector. The Duality only knew what he thought Chalchiuhtlicue could accomplish in this situation. She was more subtle than her husband the Storm Lord, but not by much.
I was slightly taken aback, but not surprised. Teomitl had absolutely no sense of humour when his face and his heart were questioned, or his reputation cast in doubt.
Better stop this before it went too far. Given the tense atmosphere of the palace, I had no intention of explaining why my student had attacked two guards. "Teomitl."
He lifted his eyes – ageless, cruel, malicious – towards me. "They're wasting our time with lies."
"Yes," I said, carefully. "I think dismissing them would be enough, don't you? There's been a lot of blood shed."
For a moment I saw not him but Jade Skirt in the murky reflections within his eyes, in the way he seemed to grow taller. "There is never enough blood, priest," She whispered, Her gaze piercing my flesh, holding me squirming like a fish on a pike. Distant, rhythmic voices whispering in my mind, like songs through underwater caves and then She left, the divinity draining out of Teomitl like water through a pierced vessel.
If I was shocked for a moment, and had to pause to recover my breath, it was nothing compared to the guards. The colour had gone from their faces, leaving them as white as sacrifice victims or drowned bodies.
The veteran looked from his colleague to Teomitl, and finally spat on the ground. "Who cares about her?" he said. "She's not even Mexica. It was Xahuia-tzin, my Lord. She asked us."
Xahuia was one of Axayacatl-tzin's oldest wives, the daughter of Nezahualcoyotl, former ruler of our neighbour Texcoco, given to the Mexica Revered Speaker in marriage to cement the Triple Alliance. Her father had been a canny politician, and he had no doubt taught her all she would need to survive at Court. I was a fool; I had been so obsessed on imagining foreigners within the city that I had forgotten the most obvious, those already in the palace.
"What did she want?" I asked.
"An interview with Ocome," the veteran said, cautiously. "She had an offer to make."
"And she asked you?" Teomitl's voice was contemptuous.
The burly guard, still visibly shaken, said, "Xahuia-tzin wanted us to let her inside, and leave her alone with him. She said he wouldn't dare throw her out if she could find her way into his rooms, that turning her away at the door was one matter, but once inside, she'd have enough time to speak to him."
I didn't ask what Xahuia had wanted to speak to him about; it was obvious. Ocome, as Teomitl had said, was small and insignificant, a failure by his family's standards, except now, at the one moment when his opinion would make a difference.
"So Xahuia came here," I said. "And you left?" The body had been discovered in the middle of the night, around the Hour of Lord Death; but the death could have occurred well before that.
The guards glanced at each other. "Yes, soon after nightfall. She said she'd warn us when she was done."
And they hadn't returned until the She-Snake sought them out, which made a good four hours unaccounted for. Four hours left unguarded.