Harbinger of the Storm

by Aliette de Bodard

  I started chanting again, the words that he needed to make his way across.

  "Past the beasts that live in darkness, that consume hearts,

  Into the city of the streets on the left, the city where walk the Dead

  We must go, we must find the way into oblivion…"

  The scene shifted as I spoke. We were in the middle of the lake, on a boat that held its steady course, and he was by my side, darkness sweeping over his face. The headdress vanished, as did the cotton clothes.

  "The region of mystery, the place of the fleshless

  Where the strength of jaguars, the strength of eagles

  Is broken and ground into dust…"

  Then we stood on the other shore of the lake, dwarfed by a huge mass of rock. Ahead of us was darkness, and the faint suggestion of a gate. The Dead passed us by, shambling on, unaware of our presence.

  I lowered my hands, and let the blood drip onto the ground. Each drop fell upon the other and stuck, so that little by little a darker mass detached itself from the ground, the faint shape of a dog, shining yellow in the darkness, like a pale memory of sunlight or of corn.

  "I give you the precious life, the precious water

  The Fifth Sun's nourishment, Grandmother Earth's sustenance,

  All of this, I give you as your own

  To guide you, to take you down into darkness."

  When I finished chanting, the dog sprang to life, running around the shadow like an excited puppy, its tinny barks the only sign of life around us. Its paws struck up dust where it passed.

  "It's time," I whispered to Axayacatl-tzin.

  "I see," the former Revered Speaker said, and his voice was clearer, stronger than on the other shore. He was among his own kind now, in the only place where his existence still had meaning. He turned towards me, a featureless shadow among featureless shadows. "Thank you, priest."

  I couldn't help a slight recoil of surprise. The Dead tended to be tremendously self-focused – for such was the nature of death, which severed all bonds of the Fifth World – and I had never had any spirit turn back and thank me before setting on.

  "I am Revered Speaker, Huitzilpochtli's own agent." There was a hint of self-deprecating humour in Axayacatl-tzin's voice. "I have known propriety all my life, in death I will not forget."

  Though I'd only seen him from afar when he was alive, already I liked him, more than any of those who would claim his ruler's mat. "I am honoured," I said, bowing. "But I was only doing my work."

  "And you do it well." If the Dead could look amused, he would have. "I'll leave things in your capable hands."

  I could not help a slight grimace, and he was shrewd enough to see it. "Do you not think yourself capable?" His head moved, slightly. His eyes shone yellow, the same colour as the dog at his feet, a memory of the sunlight that had once been poured into him. His features had been completely washed away, so that he seemed to have become the mask they had put onto him. "Ah, I see. It's others you don't trust."

  Tizoc-tzin had been his choice and he would have approved the nomination of the other two High Priests – not to mention of Xahuia, favoured enough to bear him a son. "I apologise–" I started.

  "No need to." He sounded amused again. "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."

  "How?"

  His head cocked towards me, a fluid movement like a bird's. "Let that be a surprise, priest."

  "Someone poisoned the Guardian," I said, the words torn out of me before I could think. "A devotee of She of the Silver Bells."

  "The Silver Bells? Her worship should be dead." His eyes blazed, touched for a bare moment with all the might of Huitzilpochtli.

  "So you don't know who it could be?" I was pushing my luck. One did not interview the Revered Speaker – even less so the soul of the dead Revered Speaker – as if he were a witness in a courthouse.

  He was silent for a while. At length, he hunkered down on the dry, dusty earth as if he were still sitting in judgment. "I didn't know in life, and so wouldn't know in death. But…" he paused, as if admitting something painful. "The She-Snake has always had unorthodox worship practises. Not surprising. His father used religion as a tool, and made the worship of Huitzilpochtli into a political act."

  "You think he's reacting against that?" I asked. A touch of Mictlan's cold went down my back. If the She-Snake was worshipping She of the Silver Bells, things had just escalated. His men were all over the palace, keeping watch over all the key areas – not only of the palace, but also of the Sacred Precinct and of the city itself. All the temples, and all the Houses of Darts, the arsenals where we stored weapons.

  "I don't know," Axayacatl-tzin said. "But I can tell you this, priest – beware of him. He can act with the best of them, and you'll only know he's lied to you after he's twisted the knife in your chest and taken out your heart for his own purposes."

  I nodded. That would teach me to trust a pleasant face. I hesitated; but there was too much at stake. "Your wife Xahuia–"

  "I remember Xahuia." His eyes softened.

  "Do you remember her sorcerer?" I asked. "Nettoni?"

  "Dedicated to Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror? Yes," Axayacatl-tzin said. "An ambitious man to serve an ambitious woman. His ally, for as long as their goals overlap." He rose, turned back towards the waiting darkness. "But I don't think– " He paused. A thread of cold light wrapped itself around his waist; climbed, snake-like, to his ears, as if to whisper words I couldn't hear. "Ah, yes. A reminder, worthy to be heeded, priest. It's the star-demons who will end us, coming down from the sky to devour us, swarming over Tonatiuh until His light is extinguished and the age of the Fifth Sun comes to an end."

  "And?" I asked, but I had remembered, too. I knew what Lord Death had told him, nothing more, nothing less than what I had already known.

  If Axayacatl-tzin still had a mouth, he would have smiled. "The Smoking Mirror is the Sixth Sun. It is His destiny to climb into the sky and take His place as supreme god of the new age."

  And His desire, perhaps, to see the Fifth Age, the age of the Fifth Sun Tonatiuh and the Southern Hummingbird Huitzilpochtli, end much sooner than it should.

  "I see," I said. The cold was in my bones and in my heart. "I see. Thank you, Axayacatl-tzin."

  When I opened my eyes, I was back in the Fifth World within my blood-quincunx, the potency of which was slowly leeching away. Axayacatl-tzin's corpse still sat facing me, but something seemed to have gone out of him, some bright, subtle light that even death had not extinguished. His soul – his heart, the divine fire which animates us all – had passed into Mictlan, never to return.

  But what he had left me with was troubling. I had forgotten that the Sixth Sun was Tezcatlipoca, and that the devotees of the Smoking Mirror would therefore have ample motivation for ushering in chaos – a chaos that would lay the ground for their god's rise to power. They might not worship She of the Silver Bells, but did it matter, as long as they could control the star-demons?

  But still, that would require the devotees of both gods to be in collusion. It wasn't uncommon. The previous year I'd uncovered a plot between Xochiquetzal, the Quetzal Flower, Goddess of Lust and Desire, and Tlaloc, the Storm Lord. But it still seemed a very complicated conspiracy, if conspiracy there was.

  I sighed. The light that filtered through the entrance-curtain was the pale, grey one before dawn. as expected, the ritual had taken all night. There would be time, later, to reflect on the consequences of what I had learnt. What I needed now was rest.

  I made it home just in time for the blast of conch-shells and drums that announced the rise of the Fifth Sun, did my offerings of blood; and fell on my sleeping mat.

  When I awoke, the sun was slanting towards the horizon, bathing everything in the room in warm, golden light. I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts.

  Outside, I half-expected to find Teomitl waiting for me, but though there was someone in my courtyard – wh
ich could hardly be called "private" anymore given the sheer flow of visitors that came through it – it wasn't my student.

  "Yaotl?"

  Ceyaxochitl's slave was still dressed sumptuously and his eyes shone with a resolution I'd seldom seen, though his face was haggard beneath the makeup. The eagle feathers of his headdress drooped, as though he'd walked through a squall; and his embroidered cotton cloak was slightly askew on his shoulders. Any humorous remark I might have made about his intrusion died on my lips.

  "What observation skills," he said. It started bitingly, and then became toneless as he remembered the seriousness of the situation.

  "Any news?"

  He shook his head. "The physician said that she might live if she can survive the next day. Her body might purge the poison on its own."

  One day. Fourteen hours. We both knew this wouldn't happen. Though she lived and breathed, Ceyaxochitl was as dead as the Revered Speaker.

  "You haven't come here for that," I said.

  A shade of the old sarcasm shone in his eyes. "No. I came to tell you we know what poisoned her."

  "So?" I asked.

  He raised a hand. "All in good time." There was a gleam in his gaze that suggested that what he had to tell me was of much more import than the nature of the poison – Storm Lord blind him, this wasn't a time for his usual equivocations.

  "Yaotl–"

  "It's obscure," Yaotl said. "The physician looked through all his notes, and finally found a case that was similar."

  "You're enjoying this, aren't you."

  He looked up at me, and let me see for the first time what lay beneath the mask of irony – an anger that possessed him to the bones. "She's as good as dead, Acatl-tzin. Doomed. Gone from the Fifth World. She took me from the marketplace, and turned me from a slave into her assistant. She gave me status and riches. And you think I don't want her murderer punished?"

  "She helped me too," I said.

  Yaotl's face clearly said that I couldn't understand – that I'd been a priest long before Ceyaxochitl took an interest in me. He had been a captive destined for a life of drudgery. He breathed in, once, twice. I could almost feel the air trembling in his lungs. "It's a newt. A fiery-looking critter with a red-belly and stripes across the back. Rather distinctive. They secrete a poison that acts that way, shutting down the muscles one after the other."

  A newt. I thought, uneasily, of all the times in the palace I'd eaten one. Why, I had taken some from the kitchen only a few hours ago. "That wasn't all you had, was it?"

  Yaotl's smile was like the rising of a star, as red as blood and as bent on causing chaos. "They're uncommon. Finding them takes work. Except–" he brought both hands together with the finality of a book closing. "Except that they flourish on the lake shore near Texcoco. Xahuia-tzin asked for them specifically last week. She said it was for cosmetics."

  And what interesting makeup those would make.

  Yaotl, predictably, was eager to take a troop of Duality warriors into the palace and bodily arrest Xahuia.

  I, on the other hand… I could remember Xahuia's spell, and the aura of power that hung around Nettoni, enough to make me a lot less eager than Yaotl. "Tlaloc's lightning strike you, I need to think! We can't possibly barge in there that way."

  "Why not?"

  Because… Because, if Axayacatl-tzin was right, the SheSnake might be complicit, or at the very least sympathetic. Because Xahuia and Nettoni, between them both, had enough power to level this palace twice over.

  "There's too much at stake," I said. "This is going to be a declaration of war against Texcoco."

  Yaotl shrugged. His stance said, very clearly, that if I cared about such trifles I was an ungrateful fool.

  I could guess what Tizoc-tzin's reaction would be, if we brought him the news. Sarcasm, and perhaps even a declaration that he cared little about the Guardian's fate. But we needed allies, and they were in short supply. We needed someone to give us their support.

  "We need Manatzpa," I said. This was political and if we had it wrong, if Yaotl's guesses and my circumstantial evidence gathered from Axayacatl-tzin's vague memories were just coincidences, then the Triple Alliance would tear itself apart for nothing.

  That is, if we survived the arrest at all. I doubted Xahuia or Nettoni would go down peacefully.

  "That's not his place," Yaotl said, sharply.

  "This is a princess of Texcoco. Not just some grubby little summoner in a peasant's hut in the Floating Gardens." I hated politics, but I could see the shape of the game, all too clearly.

  Yaotl watched me for a while, and relented. "Fine. But if you're not here at the Hour of the Earth Mother, my men and I will go in regardless."

  • • • •

  For once, I was lucky. Manatzpa and Echichilli were both in the council room, going over some papers.

  "See, the province of Cuahacan hasn't delivered their tribute of jaguar pelts," Manatzpa was saying.

  "I think it was waived this year," Echichilli said, his wrinkled face creased in thought. "Let me see…" He reached for some of the other papers in the pile, and stopped when I entered in a tinkle of bells. "Acatl-tzin?"

  He looked up when I came in, genuinely surprised. "Acatl-tzin?"

  "We need your help," I said.

  "Our help?" Manatzpa sounded sceptical.

  "I know who poisoned Ceyaxochitl."

  "That's a grave accusation," Echichilli said. "Do you have evidence?"

  "Yes." I outlined, briefly, what had led us to this.

  When I finished, Echichilli did not look satisfied. "It's scant. Too scant."

  "The Guardian was poisoned," I said.

  "But if you're wrong… It will mean war with Texcoco."

  "I know." I wanted to scream, but I had more decorum than that. "But we can't let that kind of thing go unpunished. Otherwise, who knows what else might happen?"

  Echichilli looked at Manatzpa for a while. At length, the younger councillor set aside his writing reed. "I think it's enough," he said. "It's a presumption, to be sure, but we can find a way to apologise if it doesn't turn out the right way. The presence of a strong sorcerer inside the palace at this juncture is enough to be suspicious."

  "You were always good with words." Echichilli sounded sad. "See how we can tear ourselves apart."

  "I wasn't the one who started." Manatzpa sounded angry. He rose, wrapping his cloak around his shoulders. "I'll go with you, Acatl-tzin."

  He and Echichilli both looked polished and clean, their ornaments from embroidered cloaks to feather-headdresses impeccable, suited to attending the imperial presence. Manatzpa himself would be all but useless in a fight, merely giving us his support, but little else.

  I needed Teomitl. "We'll need to collect someone first," I said.

  The palace was a big place, and it seemed even bigger when searching for someone. We headed straight to Teomitl's rooms, a small courtyard by the side of where Tizoc-tzin was holding court, where the entrance-curtain fluttered orange in the breeze, the same colour as Teomitl's cloak. Unlike Tizoc-tzin's, the room was on the ground floor, but then, Teomitl had never cared overmuch about pomp. He applied his own exacting standards to himself, and the opinions of his peers mattered little to him.

  At least, that was what I'd thought before Tizoc-tzin started teaching him.

  "Teomitl?"

  No answer came from within. I'd expected guards, or at the very least a slave, but nothing moved beyond the curtain. I debated whether to enter, and finally settled for silently drawing the curtain aside, to make sure that Teomitl was not sleeping inside.

  I had been in the courtyard outside those rooms, but in the year I'd taught him Teomitl had never invited me inside. The room was decorated with rich frescoes in vivid colours, depicting our ancestors in Aztlan, the fabled heartland of Huitzilpochtli's strength. Fish and leaping frogs filled water as clear as that of a spring, and little figures withdrew nets under the gaze of the god and of His mother Coatlicue, a wizened, harsh-looking
woman wearing a dress of woven rattlesnakes, her large breasts obscured by a necklace of human hands and hearts.

  The furniture, however, was at odds with the wealth of the decoration. A single, thin reed mat lay in the furthest corner, turned yellow by age. A stone box, a shallow vessel in the shape of an eagle, a three-legged clay pot with a chipped rim and two worn wicker chests completed the furniture. It would have seemed almost unlived in, save for the three grass balls pierced through with bloody thorns.

  Carefully, I released the curtain; I couldn't help feeling embarrassed at discovering more of Teomitl's intimacy that he'd ever revealed to me.