"It ate him from the inside," Teomitl said. "They always compared him to someone: to Father, to Axayacatl, it didn't matter. How long can you live your life in shadow?"
A typical warrior's fallacy, that – that burning need to matter, to be showered with gifts and status, to stand out on the battlefield or in the city, no matter the cost. "Some people can," I said. As when I talked to my warrior brother, I had the feeling of slipping into an alien world, where the rules weren't the ones I'd always lived by. "Some, however…"
"I know." Teomitl made an impatient gesture. "Not everyone is a warrior. But, really, what else could he be?"
Growing up in the imperial family, being goaded to take his place in the Southern Hummingbird's dominion? No, not many paths open to a man whose father and brother had both become Revered Speakers. "He made his choices," I said. "You can understand him, but you can't change that."
"I suppose not." Teomitl shook himself, in a gesture eerily reminiscent of an
ahuizotl
. "Not that it matters, now. I wish…"
That things were different. I knew, and I knew nothing I could say would change anything. But still… "Teomitl–"
I was cut off by the sound of sandals in the courtyard, Nezahualtzin, followed by a cluster of warriors, striding with his characteristic, thoughtless ease. "Taking some air?"
"As you see," I said. "What's going on, Nezahual-tzin? Why are we here?"
Teomitl had pulled himself upwards with preternatural speed. He stood watching Nezahual-tzin as a vulture might watch a dying animal, waiting for a moment of weakness to swoop down and finish it off.
"Good, good," Nezahual-tzin said, eluding my question altogether. "I had some preparations to make."
"What preparations?" I asked. "For a ritual?"
He smiled. "So impatient, Acatl."
I rolled my eyes upwards, towards the stars shining in the blue sky. "There are pressing matters, and not only of politics." Acamapichtli had said two days. They'd still be gathering the councilmen, fighting for influence. They would surely elect Tizoc-tzin, and start the weighty rituals that went into investing a Revered Speaker with the authority of Huitzilpochtli. The Storm Lord's lightning strike me, there had to be a chance, no matter how minuscule, that we would survive this…
"Of course." Nezahual-tzin bowed his head. "Come with me. There is something you must see."
"I don't play games," Teomitl said haughtily.
Nezahual-tzin's smile was starting to become annoying. "This isn't a game," he said, slow, sure of himself. "Merely an invitation, as your host. A proffered hand."
The last person to talk of proffered hands had been Quenami, and I had no wish for a repetition of what had happened afterwards. "And if we refuse?"
"You do as you wish. It would be a shame, but I have no doubt all of us would recover." Nezahual-tzin started to move away. The warriors followed, one of them holding a large fan to keep his master refreshed.
"Who does he think he is?" Teomitl whispered.
Revered Speaker, sadly, and, secure in the familiar setting of his power a radically different man than the one who had chatted with me on the boat. One more disappointment. I was getting used to those. "Let's indulge him," I said in a low voice. "I don't want to sample the Texcocan cages."
Nezahual-tzin must have had keener hearing than I'd assumed, for he turned, and smiled at me, sweet and innocent like a young warrior just released from the House of Youth.
I was not fooled. Whatever he thought we should see would be to his own advantage. If we were lucky, we would glean useful scraps, but nothing more.
If that was political acumen, then I was glad Teomitl was incapable of learning it.
We went down the mountain, following the flow of the water. It shimmered to my priest senses, a reminder of who the palace complex was dedicated to. It made me slightly uneasy. The last time I'd dealt with the Storm Lord, He had been trying to overthrow the Fifth Sun. But still, the mark on my hand, an itch that grew strong the closer we went to the water, was a reminder that things were no longer quite the same.
In the canals floated garlands of flowers and wood carvings of frogs and seashells; and everywhere were small reed islands, scat tered in the shape of quincunxes, reminders of the harmony of the Fifth World. Power hung over the water, shimmering like mist. I breathed it in with every step, a liquid constriction in my lungs, a heaviness in my throat.
We had been going for a while when Nezahual-tzin stepped into a courtyard, which seemed no different from all the others – save that the adobe walls surrounding it formed a circle, and that reeds had been carved all around the circumference. Dark stains marred the ground – living blood, a maze of power that thrummed in my chest, not the sharp, oppressive beat of Tlaloc's magic, but rather that of another god.
Reeds, and a circle. A circle for the unbroken breath of the wind, and reeds for One Reed: Topiltzin, Our Prince, the man who had ruled the legendary city of Tula as the incarnation of Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent.
Teomitl took in a sharp, unpleasant breath, and threw a glance at me. I nodded. It was a spell set in a circle wide enough to contain an entire battalion with the blood of dozens of… I paused, then, unsure of whether Nezahual-tzin would be ready to sacrifice so many of his subjects for one ritual. But no, the Feathered Serpent disliked human sacrifices. It had to be animals.
Still, it was impressive.
Shallow steps descended towards the centre of the courtyard, and so did the water too, flowing over them in a wide cascade. In the middle of the water was an island of stone, the part above the water carved over with a mass of serpents, that shivered and danced in the sunlight, almost as if they were alive… I shifted, and saw a yellow eye open and close. The gods take me, it
was
stone, and they were somehow alive.
Slaves laid a bridge to carry us across the water. Nezahual-tzin walked onto it with scarcely a break in his stride.
The only building on the island was an awning of cotton, a poor protection against the gaze of the Fifth Sun. Someone sat underneath – shifted slightly when Nezahual-tzin approached, in a way that was gut-wrenchingly familiar. Beside me, Teomitl tensed. "Acatl-tzin."
"I know," I said, having only eyes for her.
"You have visitors," Nezahual-tzin said, in the way of a priest enjoying a secret joke. "See that you behave yourself."
"When have I not behaved myself, brother?" Xahuia-tzin, Axayacatl's missing wife, smiled up at us, as careless and as regal as if she had still been ensconced within the Imperial Palace in Tenochtitlan, but her eyes were dark and hollow, those of a woman already defeated.
A quick, intelligent man would have made a snide remark to let Nezahual-tzin know that his manipulation had not succeeded. A smarter man would have smiled, enjoying the same secret joke.
I was neither fast on my feet, nor smart, nor dishonest. I simply gaped, looking for words that seemed to have fled.
"It has been a long time, Acatl-tzin," Xahuia said.
Nezahual-tzin had retreated slightly, standing near the wooden bridge leading back to the palace, his hand carelessly wrapped around the hilt of his
macuahitl
sword. But, of course, like the SheSnake, he never did anything carelessly.
Teomitl spoke first, his face as harsh as newly-cut jade. "You said you hadn't found her."
Nezahual-tzin smiled. "I would have hated to waste a good ritual. Wouldn't you?" He inclined his head in a way that implied disagreeing with him would be foolish.
"I think a little honesty would have served us all better," I said, more sharply than I'd intended – cutting Teomitl mid-sentence, before he could say something irreparable. Perhaps it was a good thing, after all, that he was far removed from the imperial succession; or he and Nezahual-tzin would tear what remained of the Triple Alliance apart.
"Perhaps," Nezahual-tzin just smiled that smug, annoying smile of the superior. He looked every bit the warrior parading through the streets. "Won't you talk to her, Acatl?"
"I don't see why I should. You've already learnt everything you need to."
"You're assuming I spoke to him," Xahuia said. She threw a glance at her brother that was– no, not hatred, but something more complex, a mixture of reluctant admiration and determination. "I don't see why I should."
It occurred to me that someone was missing from the family reunion. "Your son–"
"My own business," Nezahual-tzin cut in. "Talk to her, Acatl."
Like his suggestion for the ritual, it was an order from a Revered Speaker in his own right. One day, I'd get used to the fact that the person speaking in such a composed, authoritarian tone was a boy, barely old enough to have left
calmecac
school.
But then again… I might as well make use of the opportunity before me, before he did whatever he'd intended to do with us all along. "I'm not sure you'll want to talk to me," I said to Xahuia.
She lifted her head and there was still, in spite of everything, a hint of the same attractiveness I'd seen back in the palace, in another life. Her eyes met mine, held my gaze for a while.
"I'll speak to you," she said. "Alone."
Nezahual-tzin's shoulders moved, in what might have been a shrug. "As you wish. Teomitl?"
Teomitl glared back at him, but they stepped back onto the shores of the islands, unconcernedly.
I remained alone with a woman I wasn't quite sure how to deal with. Her only crime, as far as I knew, had been ambition, but it would have led her to worse if we hadn't intervened. Her sorcerer would have stopped at nothing to get her the Turquoise-and-Gold Crown.
"Things have changed, haven't they?" Her gaze took in her surroundings – the coiled power of Quetzalcoatl the Feathered Serpent, the ground under us, the throbbing stone mass that was composed of living snakes – no, better not to think about that. There were visions I wasn't quite ready for, at least not until I was back on dry land.
"They have." I crouched on my haunches, coming to rest at her level. "They could have turned out another way."
She shook her head. "Very differently, perhaps. And then you'd have been the one coming to me as a supplicant."
"Am I not?"
The corners of her mouth twitched, a little. "So it is that even prisoners and slaves have power, in the form of knowledge." Her hands clenched. "That's what Nezahual would say, at any rate."
"He's not always right."
"He's right in too many things." Her gaze drifted again, coming to rest on Teomitl and Nezahual-tzin, standing side by side like two comrades, if one didn't know any better. "Enough small talk, Acatltzin. You have questions. Ask them."
"I'm not sure why you'd answer them," I said, carefully.
"What difference, as long as you have the answers?"
"I'd know how true they were likely to be."
That made her laugh, sharp, bitter, joyless. She had changed indeed, away from power. "Fine. I'm not a fool. I know when to swim into stormy waters, and to stop before
ahuizotls
drag me down. I can play for Tenochtitlan, Acatl. I won't play for the Fifth World."
I looked at her; she returned my gaze, her eyes steady, not a muscle of her face moving. I had heard the same thing so many times, from so many different people; and they had all been sincere. The problem was the line between reasonable risk and endangering the Fifth World, a line everyone seemed to place much further out in their minds than it really was.
"Fine," I said, finally. "Let's say I believe you. For the moment. What did your sorcerer do?"
"Nettoni?" She looked surprised. "He was my bodyguard."
"Bodyguard?"
"As you no doubt saw, it wasn't a safe place to be after dark." Her voice held the lightest touch of irony.
"Yes," I said. "You employed him before the murders started, though."
"One can never be too careful." Her smile was bright, and just the tiniest bit forced, not quite spreading to her eyes.
"I don't think it's that," I said. I was carefully dancing around the subject. What I truly wanted to know was what had frightened everyone in the council. But if I asked directly, I suspected she'd clamp up like a shell. "The palace was a busy place after Axayacatltzin's death."
Her lips tightened, her eyes moved away from me. I thought of the tar. "Before his death, too, wasn't it?"
"I was a fool. I came in too late. Axayacatl had told me–" She closed her eyes. "He told me that I need not fear the future. And I believed him." Her hands came up, as if to push me away. "Fool."
He had told her… I thought about it for a while. Unbidden, a memory was rising to the surface of my mind, a deep voice on cold shores, and a shadow that became more and more indistinct the further it walked into Mictlan, and its words to me, a mystery that had remained unsolved.
"I'd always known there would be a rift when I died. But only for a
time. I've made sure it will close itself."
"He did something," I said, slowly, carefully, building my sentence in the same way a child will pile wooden blocks in the mud. "To make sure his choice was respected. He and Tizoc-tzin–"
Oh gods. Was I truly sitting here, accusing the former Revered Speaker of colluding with Tizoc-tzin, of arranging the summoning of star-demons to sway the council his way? I couldn't possibly…
"You're wrong," Xahuia said, in the dreadful silence that froze my heart. "Axayacatl was many things, but he was a warrior first and foremost, a servant of Huitzilpochtli. He would have wanted to do the right thing, and preserve the Fifth World."