Harbinger of the Storm

by Aliette de Bodard

  Nezahual-tzin stood near the prow, watching the houses go past. He looked much like any other nobleman's son, his cloak of thin cotton, his jade lip-plug glinting in the sunlight, his hair pulled back and caught in the base of his feather headdress.

  We swung east into ever-smaller streets. The boats wove their way through the traffic – peasants coming back from the marketplace, warriors standing tall and proud in the regalia they had earned on the battlefield, priests with bloodmatted hair on their way to the Sacred Precinct – with preternatural ease. If I didn't have Nezahual-tzin in my sights, I could have sworn that there was more to this than the agility of two warriors.

  Teomitl was a little further down our boat, his hand trailing just above the water. His face was furrowed in concentration, his eyes focused on the dark shapes trailing the boat.

  We came out into an expanse of open water. Ahead of us was the bulk of Nezahualcoyotl's Dyke, keeping back the saltwater and regulating the level of the lake during the flood season.

  I had expected trouble at this juncture, but the few warriors manning the fort on the dyke looked bored, and the boats were carried over to the other side without any major incident. While Nezahual-tzin and I engaged the guards in idle conversation, the ahuizotls leapt over the wall and slid noiselessly back into the water, dark shapes gone past in an eye blink.

  Behind the dyke were only a few boats, going either to Teotihuacan or Texcoco, merchants with goods to sell and wider barges belonging to noblemen on pilgrimages.

  Teomitl moved to stand near Nezahual-tzin. "Time to go a little faster."

  The ahuizotls dived, two under each boat. I felt a slight jerk as they moved to bear the weight of the keel, and then we were gliding across the water at a greater speed than oars alone could have managed. Teomitl's face shone the colour of jade, the light flickering across his features.

  "How long can he hold?" Nezahual-tzin asked, sliding next to me.

  "I don't know." Teomitl's eyes were two pits of darkness, and sweat ran down his face. I had seen him control more ahuizotls, but it had been for a much shorter amount of time. He had to have summoned these early in the morning for my rescue, and he hadn't released them since.

  "I see." Nezahual-tzin stroked one of the owls in the cages, his fingers nimbly avoiding its beak stabs. "You're tutoring him well in magic, but his grasp of politics is appalling."

  "So is mine," I said, and it wasn't an admission of shame. "Quenami's, however, is excellent."

  "Point taken. But still…"

  "You think Tizoc-tzin will be Revered Speaker?" I asked.

  Nezahual-tzin's head moved a fraction. "I don't like the idea any more than you do, but we have to face this fact: Tizoc-tzin is likely to have been elected Revered Speaker by the time we come back."

  "I know," I said. I hated myself for lending reality to his words, but he was right. There was nothing we could do. "But he won't want Teomitl to succeed him."

  "You forget." Nezahual-tzin's lips curled up in a smile. "He's the only one who doesn't get a vote in his succession."

  "His opinion matters."

  "It does." Nezahual-tzin was silent for a while. "But Teomitl is destined to be a great warrior. He'll honour the Southern Hummingbird much better than I ever did, and the council will see that, in time."

  "You're a politician," I said, slowly. To think I was having idle chitchat with the Revered Speaker of Texcoco…

  "To each his own. I leave war to those with more heart for strife." Nezahual-tzin smiled. His eyes rolled up in their orbits, as white as pearls. "My face and heart are turned towards knowledge."

  A fitting devotee of the Feathered Serpent indeed. "You didn't have to come with us," I said.

  "No," Nezahual-tzin said. He watched the water for a while.

  "But it was getting a little uncomfortable in Tenochtitlan?" I guessed.

  "I'm a fair man, Acatl," Nezahual said. "I know exactly what my faults are, but the Smoking Mirror curse me if I'm going to let Tizoc-tzin run amok. A Revered Speaker may be Lord of Men, but he has a responsibility to them. He is the servant of the people. He is humble and an example of the law he upholds."

  Hardly Tizoc-tzin's qualities. "Still," I said. "You can't ask that of everyone."

  Nezahual-tzin's eyes drifted briefly towards Teomitl, whose grip on the boat had become so strong it seemed to be eating into the wood. "No. But some people will do it, regardless." He looked down again. "Axayacatl was one of them, but not any more."

  He seemed angry or embarrassed. I couldn't be sure. "There was nothing more you could have done," I said.

  "No," Nezahual-tzin said. "It's not that." He looked into the water. "I'm Revered Speaker of Texcoco, Acatl. My role is to vote on his designated successor, and to make the first speech at his funeral. That's the only reason I came into Tenochtitlan."

  And now it looked as though he would fail at both.

  I lifted my gaze against the glare of the sun, watching the shore grow closer and closer. "You'll probably not be in time for the vote. Tizoc-tzin has made sure of it. But, at the rate we're going, you might make the funeral."

  And I was startled to see him smile for the first time, surprised and careless, like the boy he was.

  • • • •

  We reached Texcoco sometime in the evening. Teomitl was white. As the boats wove their way through the canals of the city, he came down, and sat next to me, his shoulders sagging against my chest. I could hear the thunder of his heartbeat and feel his skin, as cold and as clammy as underwater algae. The Duality curse me, I shouldn't have let him go so far. It was my responsibility to tutor him in magic and to teach him his limits, even if I had a suspicion I would lose that particular battle. Teomitl thought limits were for the weak.

  The boat bumped against a dock. Nezahual-tzin stretched himself, looking at the tall adobe houses critically. The warriors in the other boats spread themselves around him in a tight knot. "We're not staying here," he said. "Let's go to the summer palace."

  Teomitl did not answer. "He's in no state to walk," I said. I had a dim memory of the summer palace, somewhere in the mountains above Texcoco. It did not exactly sound like an easy trip, and I was in only marginally better shape than Teomitl.

  "He won't have to," Nezahual-tzin said. His eyes shone white in the darkness, without pupils or cornea, white as the full moon hanging over us. He had never looked so alien. He shifted aside slightly and two litters loomed out of the darkness, a massive chair of carved mahogany, with a canopy of feathers and gold, and another, simpler one of wood and cloth, with enough sitting space for two. "Get on."

  He couldn't have sent word ahead so fast, could he? I didn't know any spells of the living blood to communicate across distances, but he might not have been operating on quite the same rules as most priests. As Quetzalcoatl's servant, his power would come from fasts and vigils, and the occasional sacrificed animal.

  Nevertheless, the timing was eerie. I wasn't sure if the point was to disorient us, or whether there was some other, more sinister purpose to his moves, and I had no way of knowing.

  Enough. I wasn't Tizoc-tzin, and now wasn't the time for paranoia.

  Teomitl did not stir as I set him into the second chair. I climbed on as best as I could, helped by one of the silent bearers. As soon as I was in, the litter started moving with a rocking tilt, away from those few lights I could see.

  Nezahual-tzin had climbed in with the ease of someone who had ridden in litters all his life, he sat negligently in his chair, with the casual arrogance of the ruler, and looked at the land around him with the eyes of its owner. The warriors spread behind us, closing the march.

  As in Tenochtitlan, the adobe houses gave way to wattleand-daub, first with triangular, brightly-coloured roofs, and then simple structures of twigs and branches. The road snaked through the mountain, and soon the only lights were those of the torch-bearers by our side as we climbed higher and higher. Scraggly trees went past us in the darkness, the only noise was that of
the bearers' feet scattering rocks and gravel on the path.

  I dozed off. When I woke up again a huge structure loomed over us, a mass of stone and light clinging to the face of the mountain, with the smell of flowers and copal incense drifting towards us. Slaves rushed to help us dismount and I stood on shaking legs, looking at the sculptures of the Feathered Serpent framing the massive entrance, their jaws open as if to swallow us whole. Above the lintel was carved an image of the Storm Lord, fangs protruding from His lower lip and a snake shaped like lightning in His left hand. His blackened eyes seemed to be following me a little too closely for comfort.

  And there was magic on the ground, arcing through my legs and spine, a slow ponderous heartbeat that seemed to link the Heavens and the earth, a compound of spells I couldn't identify. Wards shimmered all over the stone, shivering like a sea of crawling insects. From the ground to the sky above, endlessly renewed, endlessly forged anew. My hand itched where Acamapichtli's talisman had burnt me.

  Nezahual-tzin was all but subsumed in a crowd of slaves and servants but he turned towards me, his eyes still rolled up in their orbits, shining like pearls in the murk of the lake, his smile like that of a jaguar. Something cold descended from my throat to my stomach, coiling like a venomous serpent – a sense of disquiet, a pressure against my chest.

  I had felt this once before, a year ago, moments before the Fifth World slid all the way into chaos.

  Tlaloc. The whole complex was dedicated to the Storm Lord.

  "Welcome to my humble abode, Acatl," Nezahual-tzin said. "I'm sure you'll find the stay worth your while."

  EIGHTEEN

  The Pleasure Gardens

  "We shouldn't have come here," Teomitl said. He sat on the reed mat in my room scowling, something he had been doing ever since waking up. Behind him, the columns of the rooms were carved in the shape of huge snakes rising up from the floor, their painted maws closing around the carved flowers jutting down from the ceiling.

  "There wasn't much choice," I said. I felt like scowling, too. Tlaloc's magic was anathema to that of Lord Death, just as the Southern Hummingbird's was. So far, it wasn't anything like what I'd undergone in Tizoc-tzin's cell – a little tightness in the chest, as if I stood atop a high mountain, a sense that every gesture was made through tar; but that didn't mean I felt comfortable here.

  "There were plenty of other choices. I was a fool. We could have hidden in Tlatelolco, or Tlacopan."

  I shook my head. "They wouldn't have sheltered us. Tlacopan is a member of the Triple Alliance, but their influence has been on the wane for a while. And Tlatelolco…"

  Tlatelolco, our direct neighbour on the island had been conquered seven years ago, its ruler killed. Now there was only a governor who owed everything to the Imperial Court, and would have no wish to set himself against the future Revered Speaker.

  Teomitl grimaced. "I know." He pulled himself upwards in a fluid gesture, and went to stand before one of the carved frescoes. It was early morning, and the scent of flowers was all around us, the smell of the gardens casually spread on the mountain's face through hundreds of aqueducts, of the canals and bath-houses, the luxuries of Nezahual-tzin's father. A summer retreat, Nezahual-tzin had called it. Except that he seemed to have disappeared, and that none of the ever-present army of servants would answer our queries. Why had he brought us here? Obviously, it had been deliberate, but what use could he possibly have for us?

  I didn't think he wanted to end the Fifth World. He had sounded sincere when he had said that. But he would have the best interests of his city at heart, like any ruler.

  Not Tizoc-tzin, a treacherous part of me whispered in my mind. I quelled it before it could fester.

  And, if the best interests of Texcoco were to hand us back to Tizoc-tzin, to smooth over their little "disagreement"… I had no doubt Nezahual-tzin would do it in less than a heartbeat. For all his youth, necessity had made him ruthless.

  "Come on," I said. "Let's go for a walk." He needed the distraction, and the gods knew I needed to reassure myself that my legs were still working after my time in prison.

  They were none too steady. In spite of my best intentions, we made it through two courtyards before I had to stop, leaning against one of the carved pillars until I stopped shaking.

  "That was a foolish idea," Teomitl said. He glared at the manicured flower patches, and finally settled on the ground, crouching on his haunches as he often did. Unlike any palace I'd seen in Tenochtitlan, the ground sloped down, and the palace followed it. Water flowed out of a fountain in the centre, cascading downwards along a flight of stairs towards a room with a richly decorated entrance-curtain adorned with a huge stylised frog, splayed on the cotton cloth as if transfixed by a spear.

  "No more foolish than breaking me out of prison," I said. "I haven't thanked you properly."

  "You don't need to. Anyone would have done what we did."

  "You were the only ones," I pointed out.

  His gaze didn't move from the flowers. "Perhaps. But I don't do formalities very well, Acatl-tzin."

  You're going to have to learn, I thought, but didn't say. "You've gone against your brother now."

  "Yes," Teomitl said. His whole body radiated frustration. "It was always going to come to that, in the end, wasn't it?"

  "It might not have," I said. There was so much more I wanted to add, except that my resentment and my hatred would come billowing out of me and wreck my relationship with Teomitl forever. Because he was right, blood should stand by blood, no matter how tainted the blood might be. It was what brothers should do for each other, and I had paid the price of that lesson a year ago, when my own brother had almost died because of my prejudices. "He's a paranoid man."

  Tizoc was surely a more complex man than the wreck which had sentenced me to death for being a hindrance. He had to be. As our next Revered Speaker, he had to–

  But I couldn't shake the She-Snake out of my mind, and the casual, almost instinctive way he had given my worst fears life and blood: "Are you wondering if he'll be able to channel the Southern Hummingbird's powers into the Fifth World?"

  And I had known the answer, even then.

  Teomitl looked up at the star-studded sky. "He was a great man, once. At the beginning of Axayacatl's reign, everyone was glad to have him as Master of the House of Darts. He was the darling of the Court, his acts the fabric of legend. They thought he was going to be as great a warrior as Father, leading the Empire to glory that would endure past the end of this age."

  He couldn't have been remembering that, for he had been a toddler at the time Axayacatl ascended the throne. I guessed the warriors or the servants would have told him that as he grew up moody and isolated. Like a wildflower, Ceyaxochitl had said of him, and I wasn't altogether sure he'd ever go back to manicured gardens and clear-cut boundaries. Too much wilderness in him, and far too much knowledge. "Not everyone lives up to the expectations we have of them," I said.

  "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 differ
ent. 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, Nezahual-tzin, 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…