The restaurant’s facade was painted with a life-sized Mexica woman in a skirt and matching blouse, standing before an electric stove. Over the woman crouched Chantico, Goddess of the Hearth, wearing her crown of maguey cactus thorns and her heavy bracelets of carnelian and amber.
The restaurant itself had two parts: a small shack which churned out food to the aircars of busy men, and a larger room for those who had more time.
I headed for the last of those, wondering where I would find Coaxoch. The room was not unlike a Xuyan restaurant: sitting mats around low circular tables, and on the tables an electric brazier which kept the food warm – in this case maize flatbreads, the staple of Mexica food. The air had that familiar smell of fried oil and spices which always hung in my mother’s kitchen.
There were many customers, even though it was barely the Sixth Bi-Hour. Most of them were Mexica, but I caught a glimpse of Xuyans – and even of a paler face under red hair, which could only belong to an Irish-American.
I stopped the first waitress I could find, and asked, in Nahuatl, about Coaxoch.
“Our owner? She’s upstairs, doing the accounts.” The waitress was carrying bowls with various sauces, and it was clear that she had little time to chat with strangers.
“I need to see her,” I said.
The waitress looked me up and down, frowning – trying, no doubt, to piece the Mexica face with the Xuyan robes of state. “Not for good news, I’d wager. It’s the door on the left.”
I found Coaxoch in a small office, entering numbers onto a computer. Next to her, a tall, lugubrious Mexica man with spectacles was checking printed sheets. “Looks like the accounts don’t tally, Coaxoch.”
“Curses.” Coaxoch raised her head. She looked so much like her younger sister that I thought at first they might be twins; but then I saw the small differences: the slightly larger eyes, the fuller lips, and the rounder cheeks.
Coaxoch saw me standing in the doorway, and froze. “What do you want?” she asked.
“I —” Staring at her eyes, I found myself taken aback. “My name is Hue Ma. I’m the magistrate for the Yellow Dragon Falls District. Your sister is dead. I came to inform you, and to ask some questions.” I looked at her companion. “Would you mind leaving us alone?”
The man looked at Coaxoch, who had slumped on her desk, her face haggard. “Coaxoch?”
“I’ll be all right, Mahuizoh. Can you please go out?”
Mahuizoh threw me a worried glance, and went out, gently closing the door after him.
“So she is dead,” Coaxoch said, after a while, staring at her hands. “How?”
“She fell over a railing.”
Coaxoch looked up at me, a disturbing shrewdness in her eyes. “Fell? Or was pushed?”
“Was pushed,” I admitted, pulling a chair to me, and sitting face-to-face with her.
“And so you have come to find out who pushed her,” Coaxoch said.
“Yes. It happened this morning, near the Fourth Bi-Hour. Where were you then?”
Coaxoch shrugged, as if it did not matter that I asked her for an alibi. “Here, sleeping. I have a room on this floor, and the restaurant does not open until the Fifth Bi-Hour. I am afraid there were no witnesses though.”
I would check with the staff, but suspected Coaxoch was right and no one could speak for her. I said, carefully, “Do you know of any enemies she might have had?”
Coaxoch looked at her hands again. “I cannot help you.”
“She was your sister,” I said. “Don’t you want to know who killed her?”
“Want to know? Of course,” Coaxoch said. “I am not heartless. But I did not know her well enough to know her enemies. Funny, isn’t it, how far apart you can move? We came together from Tenochtitlán, each thinking the other’s thoughts, and now, twelve years later, I hardly ever saw her.”
I thought, uncomfortably, of the last time I’d talked to my parents – of the last time I’d spoken Nahuatl to anyone outside of my job. One, two years ago?
I couldn’t. Whenever I visited my parents, I’d see the same thing: the small, dingy flat with the remnants of their lives in Greater Mexica, with photographs of executed friends like so many funeral shrines. I’d smell again the odour of charred flesh in the streets of Tenochtitlán, see my friend Yaotl fall with a bullet in his chest, crying out my name, and I unable to do anything but scream for help that would never come.
Coaxoch was staring at me. I tore myself from my memories and said, “You knew about Papalotl’s lovers.” I couldn’t pin Coaxoch down. One moment she seemed remote, heartless, and the next her voice would crack, and her words come as if with great difficulty.
“She was notorious for them,” Coaxoch said. “It was my fault, all of this. I should have seen her more often. I should have asked . . .”
I said nothing. I had not known either of the two sisters, and my advice would have sounded false even to myself. I let Coaxoch’s voice trail off, and asked, “When did you last see her?”
“Six days ago,” Coaxoch said. “She had lunch with Mahuizoh and me.”
Mahuizoh had looked to be about Coaxoch’s age, or a little older. “Mahuizoh being . . . ?”
“A friend of the family,” Coaxoch said, her face closed.
Something told me I could ask about Mahuizoh, but would receive no true answer. I let the matter slide for the moment, and asked, “And she did not seem upset then?”
Coaxoch shook her head. She opened the drawer of her desk and withdrew a beautiful slender pipe of tortoiseshell, which she filled with shaking hands. As she closed the drawer, I caught a glimpse of an old-fashioned photograph: a young Mexica wearing the cloak of noblemen. It was half-buried beneath papers.
Coaxoch lit her pipe. She inhaled, deeply; the smell of flowers and tobacco filled the small office. “No, she did not seem upset at the time. She was working on a new piece, a commission by the Prefect’s Office. She was very proud of it.”
“Did you see the commission?”
“No,” Coaxoch said. “I knew it was going to be a swan and a hummingbird, the symbols of Xuya and Greater Mexica. But I did not know what text or what music she would choose.”
“Does Mahuizoh know?”
“Mahuizoh?” Coaxoch started. “I do not think he would know that, but you can ask him. He was closer to Papalotl than me.”
I’d already intended to interview Mahuizoh; I added that to the list of questions I’d have to ask him. “And so she just seemed excited?”
“Yes. But I could be wrong. I had not seen her in a year, almost.” Her voice had gone emotionless again.
“Why?” I asked, although I already knew the answer.
Coaxoch shrugged. “We . . . drifted apart after settling in Fenliu, each of us going our own way, I suppose. Papalotl found her refuge in her holograms and in her lovers; I found mine in my restaurant.”
“Refuge from what?” I asked.
Coaxoch looked at me. “You know,” she said. “You fed the Civil War as well, did you not?”
I said, startled, “You can’t know that.”
“It is written on your face. And why else would a Mexica become a Xuyan magistrate?”
“There are other reasons,” I said, keeping my face stern.
Coaxoch shrugged. “Perhaps. I will tell you what I remember: brother turning on brother, and the streets black with blood; the warriors of the Eagle Regiments fighting one another; snipers on the roof, felling people in the marketplace; priests of Tezcatlipoca entering every house to search for loyalists —”
Every word she spoke conjured confused, dreadful images in my mind, as if the twelve-year-old who had fed over the border was still within me. “Stop,” I whispered. “Stop.”
Coaxoch smiled, bitterly. “You remember as well.”
“I’ve put it behind me,” I said, behind clenched teeth.
Coaxoch’s gaze moved up and down, taking in my Xuyan robes and jade-coloured belt. “So I see.” Her voice was deeply ironic. But
her eyes, brimming with tears, belied her. She was transferring her grief into aggressiveness. “Was there anything else you wanted to know?”
I could have told her that Papalotl had died naked, waiting for her lover. But I saw no point. Either she knew about her sister’s eccentric habits and it would come as no surprise, or she did not know everything and I would wound her needlessly.
“No,” I said, at last. “There wasn’t anything else.”
Coaxoch said, carefully, “When will you release the body? I have to make . . . funeral arrangements.” And her voice broke then. She buried her face in her hands.
I waited until she looked up again. “We’ll let it into your keeping as soon as we can.”
“I see. As soon as it is presentable,” Coaxoch said with a bitter smile.
There was no answer I could give to that. “Thank you for your time,” I said instead.
Coaxoch shrugged, but did not speak again. She turned back to the screen, staring at it with eyes that clearly did not see it. I wondered what memories she could be thinking of, but decided not to intrude any further.
As I exited the room my radio beeped, signalling a private message had been transmitted to my handset. Mahuizoh was waiting outside. “I’d like to have a word with you in a minute,” I said, lifting the handset out of my belt.
He nodded. “I’ll be with Coaxoch.”
In the corridor, I moved to a quiet corner to listen to the message. The frescoes on the walls were of gods: the Protector Huitzilpochtli with his face painted blue and his belt of obsidian knives; Tezcatlipoca, God of War and Fate, standing against a background of burning skyscrapers and stroking the jaguar by his side.
They made me feel uncomfortable, reminding me of what I’d left behind. Clearly Coaxoch had held to the old ways – perhaps clinging too much to them, as she herself had admitted.
The message came from Unit 6 of the militia: after leaving the tribunal, Tecolli had gone to the Black Tez Barracks. The militia, of course, had had to stop there, for the Barracks were Mexica territory. But they had posted a watch on a nearby rooftop, and had seen Tecolli make a long, frantic phone call from the courtyard. He had then gone back to his rooms, and had not emerged.
I called Unit 6, and told them to notify me the moment Tecolli made a move.
Then I went back to Coaxoch’s office, to interview Mahuizoh.
When I came in, Mahuizoh was sitting close to Coaxoch, talking in a low voice to her. Behind the spectacles, his eyes shone with an odd kind of fervour. I wondered what he was to Coaxoch, what he had been to Papalotl.
Mahuizoh looked up and saw me. “Your Excellency,” he said. His Xuyan was much less accented than Coaxoch’s.
“Is there a room where we could have a quiet word?” I asked.
“My office. Next door,” Mahuizoh said. Coaxoch was still staring straight ahead, her eyes glassy, her face a blank mask. “Coaxoch —”
She did not answer. One of her hands was playing with the tortoiseshell pipe, twisting and turning it until I feared she would break it.
Mahuizoh’s office was much smaller than Coaxoch’s, and papered over with huge posters of ballgame players, proudly wearing their knee- and elbow-pads, soaring over the court to put the ball through the vertical steel-hoop.
Mahuizoh did not sit; he leaned against the desk, and crossed his arms over his chest. “What do you want to know?” he said.
“You work here?”
“From time to time,” Mahuizoh said. “I’m a computer programmer at Paoli Tech.”
“You’ve known Coaxoch long?”
Mahuizoh shrugged. “I met her and Papalotl when they came here, twelve years ago. My capulli clan helped them settle into the district. They were so young, back then,” he said, blithely unaware that he wasn’t much older than Coaxoch. “So . . . different.”
“How so?” I asked.
“Like frightened birds flushed out of the forest,” Mahuizoh said.
“The War does that to you,” I said, falling back on platitudes. But part of me, the terrified child that had fled Tenochtitlán, knew that those weren’t platitudes at all, but the only way to transcribe the unspeakable past into words.
“I suppose,” Mahuizoh said. “I was born in Fenliu, so I wouldn’t know that.”
“They lost both their parents in the War?”
“Their parents were loyal to the old administration – the one that lost the Civil War,” Mahuizoh said. “The priests of Tezcatlipoca found them one night, and killed them before Papalotl’s eyes. She never recovered from that.” His voice shook. “And now —”
I did not say the words he would have me say, all too aware of his grief. “You knew Papalotl well.”
Mahuizoh shrugged again. “No more or no less than Coaxoch.” I saw the faint flicker of his eyes. Liar.
“She had lovers,” I said, carefully probing at a sore space.
“She was always . . . more promiscuous than Coaxoch,” Mahuizoh said.
“Who has no fiancé?”
“Coaxoch had a fiancé. Izel was a nobleman in the old administration of Tenochtitlán. He was the one who bargained for Papalotl’s and Coaxoch’s release from jail, after the priests killed their parents. But he’s dead now,” Mahuizoh said.
“He’s the man whose picture is in her drawer?”
Mahuizoh started. “You’ve seen that? Yes, that’s him. She’s never got over him. She still makes funeral offerings even though he’s beyond all that nonsense. I hoped that with time she would forget, but she never did.”
“How did Izel die?”
“A party of rebel warriors started chasing their aircar a few measures away from the border. Izel told Coaxoch to drive on, and then he leapt out with his gun out. He managed to stop the warriors’ aircar, but they caught him. And executed him.”
“A hero’s death,” I said.
Mahuizoh smiled without joy. “And a hero’s life. Yes. I can certainly see why Coaxoch wouldn’t forget him in a hurry.” His voice was bitter, and I thought I knew why: he had hoped to gain a place in Coaxoch’s heart, but had always found a dead man standing before him.
“Tell me about Papalotl,” I said.
“Papalotl . . . could be difficult,” Mahuizoh said. “She was willful, and independent, and she left the clan to focus on her art, abandoning our customs.”
“And you disapproved?”
His face twisted. “I didn’t see what she saw. I didn’t live through a war. I didn’t have the right to judge – and neither had the clan.”
“So you loved her, in your own way.”
Mahuizoh started. “Yes,” he said. “You could say that.” But there was a deeper meaning to his words, one I could not fathom.
“Do you know Tecolli?”
Mahuizoh’s face darkened, and for a moment I saw murder in his eyes. “Yes. He was Papalotl’s lover.”
“You did not like him?”
“I met him once. I know his kind.”
“Know?”
He spat the words. “Tecolli is a parasite. He’ll take everything you have to give, and return nothing.”
“Not even love?” I asked, seemingly innocently.
“Mark my words,” Mahuizoh said, looking up at me, and all of a sudden I was not staring at the face of a frail computer programmer, but into the black-streaked one of a warrior. “He’ll suck everything out of you, drink your blood and feast on your pain, and when he leaves there’ll be nothing left but a dry husk. He didn’t love Papalotl; and I never understood what she saw in him.”
And in that last sentence I heard more than hatred for Tecolli.
“You were jealous,” I said. “Of both of them.”
He recoiled at my words. “No. Never.”
“Jealous enough to kill, even.”
His face had grown blank, and he said nothing. At last he looked up again, and he had grown smaller, almost penitent. “She didn’t understand,” he said. “Didn’t understand that she was wasting her time. I couldn
’t make her see.”
“Where were you this morning?”
Mahuizoh smiled. “Checking alibis? I have very little to offer you. It was my day off, so I went for a walk near the Blue Crane Pagoda. And then I came here.”
“I suppose no one saw you?”
“No one that would recognize me. There were a few passers-by, but I wasn’t paying attention to them, and I doubt they were paying attention to me.”
“I see,” I said, but I could not forget his black rage, could not forget that he might have lost his calm once and for all, finding Papalotl naked in her workshop, waiting for her lover. “Thank you.”
“If you don’t need me, I’ll go back,” Mahuizoh said.
I shook my head. “No, I don’t need you. I might have further questions.”
He looked uncomfortable at that. “I’ll do my best to answer them.”
I left him, made my way through the crowded restaurant, listening to the hymns blaring out of the loudspeakers, inhaling the smell of maize and octli drink. I could not banish Coaxoch’s words from my mind: I will tell you what I remember: brother turning on brother, and the streets black with blood . . .
It was a nightmare I had left behind, a long time ago. It could neither touch me nor harm me. I was Xuyan, not Mexica. I was safe, ensconced in Xuya’s bosom, worshipping the Taoist Immortals and the Buddha, and trusting the protection of the Imperial Family in Dongjing.
Safe.
But the War, it seemed, never truly went away.
I came back to the tribunal in a thoughtful mood, having found no one to confirm either Mahuizoh’s or Coaxoch’s alibi. Since we were well into the Eighth Bi-Hour, I had a quick, belated lunch at my desk – noodle soup with coriander, and a coconut jelly as a dessert.
I checked my mails. A few reports from the militia were waiting for me. The timestamp dated them earlier than my departure for The Quetzal’s Rest, but they had been caught in the network of the bureaucracy and slowed down on their way to the tribunal.
Cursing against weighty administrations, I read them, not expecting much.
How wrong I was.
Unit 7 of the Mexica District Militia had interviewed the left-door neighbour of Papalotl: an old merchant who had insomnia, and who had been awake at the Third Bi-Hour. He had seen Tecolli enter Papalotl’s flat a full half-hour before Tecolli actually called the militia.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 22nd Annual Collection Page 106