Master of the House of Darts: Obsidian and Blood Book 3

by Aliette Bodard

  "Acatl?" Mihmatini asked. "How are you feeling?" She knelt by the side of the bed – I'd expected sarcasm, or some biting remark about my tendency to get into scrapes, but there was none of that; merely thin lines at the corners of her red-rimmed eyes.

  Then I remembered. "Teomitl. Where–?"

  "Ssh." Mihmatini laid a hand on my forehead. She grimaced. "What I need to know now is how you are."

  "I've felt better," I said, carefully. My tongue scraped against my palate, as abrading as coarse sand, and there was a distant ache in my stomach, like a beast laying low, waiting for the best moment to pounce again. "You haven't told me about Teomitl."

  "I need you to rest," Mihmatini said. "Whatever protection you had blocked part of the sickness, but you're not invulnerable, Acatl."

  Neither was Teomitl. I watched her – clad in the blue cloak of a Guardian, with feathers hanging down the nape of her neck and black paint, applied to her cheeks and forehead with a trembling hand, leaving large swathes of skin uncovered. And, on the ground beneath her feet, was a thread of yellow light – going straight through the wall, its radiance contracting and expanding with every one of her breaths, like a heartbeat. "It's bad, isn't it?"

  She wouldn't look at me, as if I'd somehow turned into her superior. "Whatever it is, it's affected him worse than you. It's as if he had a special affinity with the sickness."

  Then why hadn't it struck before? But, of course, he had always been quite far away from the corpses; he had given the first one only a cursory examination, and while he'd stayed in the room of the second one he hadn't cast spells or even strayed close to the body. Then again… for all I knew, he could have been affected already, and not said a word to me about whatever trivial symptoms he might have felt.

  Southern Hummingbird blind the man and his pride.

  "I need to see him," I said, pulling myself upright. Or rather, trying to. None of my limbs seemed to work properly; it was all I could do to fall back in a vaguely graceful manner.

  "You're staying on the sleeping mat," Mihmatini said, in a voice I recognised all too well – reserved for disobedient children, or recalcitrant priests. "You're quite obviously in no state to walk, Acatl, and I will not have you push yourself past your endurance."

  "It wouldn't be the first time," I said, knowing what her answer would be.

  "You know, that doesn't strike me as something to be particularly proud of," Mihmatini said. "Stay here."

  "And what? Wait? He's my student as much as he's your husband. If anything happens…" I wouldn't forgive myself.

  "Then what?" Mihmatini's voice was low and terrible, that of a judge about to pass sentence. "You're a priest of Mictlantecuhtli, Acatl. You don't do healing spells."

  "No," I said. I pulled myself upwards again, more carefully this time, letting the full weight of my body rest on the wall. "But I know about illnesses."

  Mostly as causes of death, granted. But still… still, the priests of Patecatl were quite obviously useless. For something like this – a deliberately cast disease – we needed to fight the sorcerer who had cast it: a man or a woman we still knew nothing about.

  Either that, or…

  "He's Chalchiuhtlicue's agent," I said.

  Mihmatini rolled her eyes upwards. "I've already thought of it. We tried healing or cleansing spells that called on Her power."

  "And?" I said.

  "They're not working. But then nothing else has."

  I shook my head. "It's not spells you'd need, but Her personal attention."

  Mihmatini grimaced. "Going into Her own land? We tried that, as well."

  "You have?" It was bad, then; for going into Tlalocan, the land of the Blessed Drowned, was far from simple or safe. By going into a god's world, one agreed to be bound by its rules and caprices – to face monsters and magic, and desires that predated the Fifth Age.

  Mihmatini's face was pale. "The way was closed. Perhaps She thought us beneath Her notice."

  "You'd be beneath Her notice, but Teomitl wouldn't." She had schemes for him – whatever they were. She'd picked him up, chosen to wield Her powers in the Fifth World. She wouldn't have done that without a reason… and I had a feeling the days were fast approaching when we would come to know it. "Unless something has gone wrong." Acamapichtli – abruptly, I remembered the trial. "Acamapichtli's arrest. That's what's gone wrong." And Tapalcayotl in his cage; and probably the whole clergy, all over the city – the Consort, High Priestess of Chalchiuhtlicue, and her own clergy… "The arrest of her husband's clergy must give Her enough to be busy."

  Mimahtini shook her head. "I know it's serious, Acatl, but that's not what we're focusing on right now."

  No. She was right. One couldn't grasp four hundred stalks of corn at the same time. We needed to shape our minds to a single purpose, or Teomitl would be gone just the same way as Eptli.

  I thought again of the corpse – small and forlorn and abandoned, and my stomach lurched within me at the thought of Teomitl's being there, in Eptli's place.

  "You don't know healing spells either?" I asked Mihmatini.

  "I've thought of something, but it cannot possibly work as it is. Come and see."

  She found a cane for me, which looked suspiciously like her predecessor Ceyaxochitl's cane. I used it to prop myself upwards – and half-carried by Mihmatini, halfpushing myself on the cane – I made my way out of the room. Ironic, really – Ceyaxochitl herself had been the fittest old woman I'd known, using the cane mostly for show in order to enjoy the respect and pity accorded to the frail elderly. She'd never been one much for frailty, and she would probably have scolded me for being such a weakling.

  Gods, what I wouldn't have given to have her back – overbearing and patronising as she'd always been. The cane was warm under my fingers, but she was gone, down into Mictlan, never to return, her wisdom and knowledge going the way of dust blown by the wind.

  The entrance-curtain opened into the main courtyard of the Duality House: like most temples, it had a rectangular layout, with a pyramid shrine in the centre, and various rooms and compounds opening into the main courtyard, their entrance-curtains shaded by a pillared portico.

  Yaotl was waiting for us at the entrance, sitting on his haunches in a position of attention. He unfolded himself when Mihmatini came out; she acknowledged him with a curt nod. For me, he had nothing but his usual, mildly sardonic glance – not that I had expected more than that.

  "Anything?" Mihmatini asked.

  Yaotl shook his head. "No change." He handed his mistress a folded piece of paper. Mihmatini took it, but didn't open it.

  "Come," she said, and all but dragged me to another room, the entrance-curtain of which was marked only by a few glyphs.

  Inside, an antechamber led into a deeper, more shadowed room – Mihmatini's quarters, in as much disorder as usual. The wicker chests bulged with clothes: colourful headdresses and skirts spilled out from under their lids, and a feather-fan I'd last seen in Neutemoc's house rested on top of one of them. The two sleeping-mats had been unrolled: one was empty; the second one held Teomitl.

  He was so pale – his skin so leeched of colours it seemed like pallid gold. His eyes were sunk deep into his face; his hair, curled and plastered with sweat, clung to his scalp in clumps, and he tossed and moaned. I dragged myself closer, and painstakingly crouched down – not so much a deliberate gesture as a gradual sagging of my body, stopped at regular intervals by my grip on the cane – slow and messy.

  Teomitl did not move, or give any sign that he had registered my presence; after a while, I realised that he wasn't moaning, but talking under his breath, so fast I could barely follow – delirious snatches of sentences mentioning anything from Jade Skirt's touch to beasts of shadows. I touched the mat; it was already soaked. "You said you had something."

  A flutter of clothes, and then Mihmatini was crouching by my side – the thread between her and Teomitl reduced to an arm's length, bright and vivid, like blood in an open wound. Her face was calm,
expressionless – like obsidian in the instant before it shattered. "I haven't been idle. We've cast spells of protection in the Duality's name, and we have also been looking into possible causes for the sickness. It's one – or more – of four things. He's carrying something within him, which was put there by a sorcerer. I don't think it's the case: insofar as I can tell, none of the dead men touched anything?"

  I thought, uneasily, of Eptli. "It might have started that way, but I don't think it's using a physical vector anymore."

  "Hmm." Mihmatini unfolded the piece of maguey paper Yaotl had given her: it was a transcription from a divinatory priest's calendar, listing horoscopes and fates for a particular birth – a beautiful piece, with coloured glyphs swirling around the images of the protector gods.

  "His?" I guessed. A man's birth influenced many things, not least of which the healing rituals which would be effective.

  "It was hard to find," Mihmatini said. "Fortunately, Yaotl is frighteningly efficient at what he does."

  I wasn't surprised. It wasn't only healing rituals that depended on the birth-signs, but also vulnerabilities – naturally, someone as paranoid as Tizoc-tzin would not want his war-council to be on display for any sorcerer to tackle.

  "Ten Rabbit. He could have a nahual totem; but he's never been strong enough to materialise one. And none of the other affected men had nahuals – Eptli was born on a Five Knife, his prisoner was a Two House insofar as we could check, and Coatl is quite definitely a Ten Rain. So it can't be that, either."

  The words came fast, one atop the other – almost without pause. "Mihmatini. Slow down. It's not going to change anything."

  "You don't know that," she said, angrily, but she didn't protest further.

  "What about the tonalli?" I asked. The spirit in the head, the vital force that sustained us – many spells cast by sorcerers were "frights", which caused the tonalli to vanish like a burst bubble, and the victim to enter a slow decline towards death.

  "It's weak," Mihmatini said. "But that could just be because the body is weak. Which leaves the last explanation." Her finger rested on the paper, near the head of Tlaloc the Storm Lord. "It's some kind of influence."

  I thought of the shadows – this far into the Duality House, under the influence of so many protection spells, they had all but gone – but they had been real enough. "Given what I've seen of the sickness, I think it's some kind of influence. But I don't think the influence would hold here."

  "If he has it within his body, he's sheltering it from our wards," Mihmatini said. "That was my idea: to make him expel it." She stopped; looking at me – for guidance, I saw with a start.

  "You're old enough not to need me anymore," I said, though I was secretly pleased to see she still looked up to me.

  She rolled her eyes upwards. "Of course I do need you. I can dispel the influence once it's out of his body, but I can't draw it out."

  "You need a physician."

  "No, I don't. I can't say I've been impressed by the performance of the priests of Patecatl so far," Mihmatini said. "I need someone more competent than that."

  You, her gaze seemed to say. "I can't," I said, the words burning in my throat. "I'm no healer. I serve Lord Death – I can sever the soul from the body or call it back, but nothing finer than that. If I cast a spell, it will expel his own life-force from his chest."

  She fell silent – Southern Hummingbird blind me, I should have been able to give her another answer. I took the folded paper from her, and stared at it. Teomitl had been born on the day Ten Rabbit in the week One Rain. This put him under the tutelage of Tlaloc the Storm Lord – and given what was happening all over Tenochtitlan, we couldn't possibly hope to call on Him.

  Unless…

  "Quetzalcoatl," I said aloud, my hand trailing on His image – the Feathered Serpent, Lord of Wisdom and Knowledge.

  "I don't see…"

  "It was His blood that brought humanity back to life, in the beginning of the Fifth Age. His breath that runs through us." Quetzalcoatl-Ehecatl, the breath of all creation, the wind that no walls, no mountains would ever stop for long.

  "It might work," Mihmatini said. "But I'm not sure the priests of Quetzalcoatl have escaped the widespread arrests."

  I folded the paper, carefully – back into the shape Yaotl had given it at the start. The arrests – yes, we would need to talk about those, to see if anything could be done…

  Focus. One thing at a time. Save Teomitl first – if we could. Tlaloc's Lightning strike me, we had to succeed – I wouldn't lose him as I'd lost Ceyaxochitl. I couldn't.

  "It needn't be a priest of Quetzalcoatl," I said, slowly. "I've got just the right person in mind."

  I wrote a message with shaking hands – the glyphs drawn askew, the red and black ink running, staining my fingers. A disgrace, my teachers would have said; but we were long past that. Yaotl carried it to the palace, while Mihmatini dispatched other messengers – slaves and priests both – to Chipahua's house, in order to collect the bodies.

  The Duality House, as usual, seemed to have become our bulwark against the storm, and my sister was at the heart of it, managing everything with the proficiency of someone born to it.

  Ceyaxochitl had once told me she was gifted; and I could still remember my answer. Gifted, yes – more than you or I – but not, I think, destined for Guardianhood or for the priesthood.

  I'd forgotten how often Tezcatlipoca the Smoking Mirror delighted in twisting fate – sending us down unswept paths, into unexplored wildernesses.

  Mihmatini remained in the room, but at length a priest came to her with an urgent question, and with a last, agonised glance at Teomitl, she had to step out.

  While I waited for her to come back, I held Teomitl's hand; it was the least I could do. The priest of Patecatl would have frowned, and raised up the spectre of contagion, but what did it matter?

  From where I crouched, the sounds of the House – the conch-shells, the hymns and the chants, the wet sound of bloodied grass balls slapped onto altar-stones – all receded away, and I was left alone with Teomitl. He had been moaning and muttering beforehand; I'd assumed it was nonsense, but as time went by, I caught words, a few at first, and then, as moments trickled by like drops of water, I picked up more – bright beads amongst threads – and the pattern itself, coalescing out of darkness, an endless litany of delirious failures.

  "Fool, fool, fool, what did you think? Going in as if you were invulnerable – of course you never were, of course you never will be. She'll watch you from the World Below, she always does, what do you think you can prove?"

  He could only be referring to his mother, who had died after a long struggle to bear him into the world – leaving him forever unable to prove himself as brave as she had been. "Teomitl," I said. "She'd be proud of you."

  But he couldn't hear me – he just went on repeating the same things over and over, the same delirium.

  A tinkle of bells announced the entrance of Mihmatini, accompanied by Nezahual-tzin – in regalia at least as fine as the one Teomitl had worn, from the red feather-suit to the finely wrought helmet in the shape of a coyote's head.

  "I received your message," Nezahual-tzin said. "Most interesting. It was, ah, lacking a certain amount of flourish, shall we say?"

  Mihmatini, I couldn't help but notice, was already glowering at him. What had he said to her, in the few moments in which they had walked through the House?

  "You'll have to excuse me. My health isn't what it was at the moment."

  Nezahual-tzin nodded, gravely. "Nevertheless… there was a most interesting pattern in your glyphs."

  "We're not talking about interesting," she snapped. "We want your help. Are you going to give it, or stand here making cryptic pronouncements?"

  Nezahual-tzin removed his feather headdress with slow, deliberate gestures before laying it to the ground. Then he unclasped his blue-green cloak and let it fall onto the floor. He had us all staring at him – and he no doubt knew it.

  "
Your brother will no doubt tell you that making cryptic pronouncements is a pastime of mine." Nezahual-tzin's voice was slow and stately, as if making a formal speech – every word delivered with the proper stresses, in the accent of Texcoco, the purest dialect of Nahuatl in the whole Anahuac Valley. He moved in a fluid, easy gesture, and before I knew it he was crouching by my side, watching Teomitl.

  He smelled of herbs, the same bitter smell as the physician – had he just come from the sweatbaths? He liked going there to restore his strength and increase his power tenfold.

  "The tonalli life-force is weak, but the teyolia soul is still in the body."

  "We already knew that," Mihmatini pointed out.

  I intervened before the conversation degenerated further. "He has something within his body, and we need you to draw it out."