Obsidian & Blood

by Aliette De Boddard

  "Not that I could see. I wouldn't know. But illnesses can be a long time brewing."

  "I see."

  A rattle of bells cut the conversation short, as Teomitl yanked the entrance-curtain open. "Acatl-tzin!"

  "What is it?" I asked.

  Teomitl threw a wary glance at the priest – who had resumed his position of studied indifference – and then a more respectful one to the warrior, as one equal to another. He held out his hand to me, unfolding tanned fingers one after the other for maximum effect.

  Inside was a single notched bead of clay – which, unfortunately, meant nothing whatsoever to me. "Would you mind explaining?" I said.

  "I found it inside," Teomitl said. "It had rolled under the brazier." He raised a hand, to forestall my objection. "I didn't touch the body, Acatl-tzin. I swear."

  "I still don't see–"

  "This belongs to a woman," Cuixtli said.

  "How do you know so much about Mexica women?" I asked.

  He snorted. "How can you know so little about them? Any fool knows that. It's too delicate to be a man's ornament."

  Teomitl shook his head, impatiently. "It doesn't matter, Acatltzin. Don't you see? A woman was here."

  I glanced at Cuixtli, who was looking at the bead thoughtfully. "I didn't know sacrifices were granted spouses." In very rare cases, such as the sacrifice of Tezcatlipoca's incarnation, the victim was granted all his earthly desires – and, as he ascended the steps of the Great Temple, everything was stripped away from him: wives and jewellery, and then finally clothes, to leave him as empty-handed as in the hour of his birth.

  Cuixtli spread his hands. "Our last hours are spent with the gods, like those of our afterlife. How men make peace with that varies. I don't begrudge them." But his frown suggested he didn't approve.

  "So you didn't know about the woman?"

  He shook his head. "No. But I can enquire. Do you want me to send word?"

  "Send it to me," Teomitl said.

  "Indeed." Cuixtli looked at him, waiting for something – an introduction?

  "Ask for Ahuizotl, the Master of the House of Darts."

  The man's face froze – it was minute and didn't last long, but I saw it clearly. "I see. And why does the Master of the House of Darts concern himself with such lowly folk?"

  "Lowly? You are the bravest in this palace." Teomitl's voice was low and intense. "You give your life; you give your blood on the altar-stone for the continuation of the Fifth Age. You die a warrior's death for all our sakes."

  The warrior's face puckered, halfway between puzzlement and pride. "I see," he said again. "Thank you."

  Teomitl made a dismissive gesture, and ducked back into the room. I followed him after bowing to the warrior.

  "Teomitl?" I asked, once we were inside.

  He was looking once more at the dead man, with that peculiar frown on his face – anger? I'd only seen him truly angry once, when Tizoc-tzin had belittled his wife-to-be in front of the court – but that hadn't been the same. His face had gone as flat as obsidian, his eyes dark. Now he just looked thoughtful – but much like a jaguar looked thoughtful before the hunt.

  Southern Hummingbird strike me, I needed to stop this. Paranoia was all well and good, but applying it to those few people I trusted was stabbing myself in the throat.

  "Yes, Acatl-tzin?"

  "Eptli's case," I said. "What happened? Coatl told me the prisoner was contested between him and Chipahua."

  "The case?" Teomitl looked surprised. "I don't remember – there was nothing special, Acatl-tzin. Those two claimed the same prisoner. They wore near-identical battle-garb, with similar standards."

  "Coatl told me it was a difficult decision to make."

  Teomitl's eyebrows went up. "Coatl likes simple decisions. He's a warrior, through and through. There is your side, and the enemy's side, and you shouldn't have to wonder about more than that."

  "And you're not like him?" I asked. Not that I was surprised: politics couldn't be dealt in such a simplistic fashion. Mind you, I couldn't blame Coatl: I preferred my divisions clear-cut, but I was aware that the gods seldom gave you what you liked best.

  "I can think," Teomitl said, contemptuously. "At any rate – we questioned the warriors of the clan-unit, and the prisoner Zoquitl, and we thought it likely Eptli was in the right."

  "Wait," I said. "Zoquitl was willing to testify before a Mexica tribunal?" I couldn't see for what gain. Either way, he would die his glorious death on the altar-stone – and if there was no conclusive evidence, he would be given to the Revered Speaker, and the endgame would be the same.

  "He's a warrior," Teomitl said, with a quick toss of his head that set the feathers of his headdress aflutter. "He wouldn't cheat a fellow warrior."

  I had my doubts. After all, as my brother Neutemoc had proved, warriors – even Jaguar Knights – were like the best and the worst of us. They walked tall above us, but sometimes, like any mortal, they stumbled and fell. "Fine," I said, grudgingly. "You listened to the testimonies and decided to award the prisoner to Eptli. Why?"

  "You want a detailed argumentation? Now?" Teomitl's gaze moved to the dead prisoner.

  "The gist of it," I said.

  "He was more likely to be in the area, his description fitted Zoquitl's testimony better, and he was more muscular than Chipahua, more likely to be able to capture him with one blow, as Zoquitl testified." Teomitl's voice was monotonous, bored.

  "And you never had doubts?" I asked.

  "No. Acatl-tzin, why go over this again? We ruled and there is no appeal."

  Why? I frowned, not quite sure why myself. "I thought an inconclusive trial conclusion would explain why Chipahua was so angry at Eptli, and vice-versa."

  "Well, it's not that." Teomitl hesitated. "There was someone who didn't agree with this, originally."

  "On the war-council?" I asked.

  "Yes. Itamatl. He's the deputy for the Master of the Bowl of Fatigue. He was sceptical at first, and argued against the evidence. But not for long."

  That didn't sound much like a divided war-council, no matter how I turned it.

  "We need more evidence," I said.

  "I should say we've got more than enough here," Teomitl said, sombrely.

  "That's not what I meant."

  I needed to see how ordinary warriors had considered Eptli. I needed inside information, but Teomitl would be useless on this one: like Coatl, he moved in spheres that were too exalted to pay attention to the common soldiers. What I needed was someone lower down the hierarchy.

  I needed–

  Tlaloc's Lightning strike me, I needed my brother.

  I had caught a glimpse of Neutemoc at the banquet, so I knew that not only had he come home safe, but also that he had gained from the campaign. But the formalised banquet hadn't left me time to have a quiet chat with him, and I had been looking forward to visiting him.

  I just hadn't intended that my visit – the first for months – to come with strings attached: the last thing we needed was for my High Priest business to interfere in our fragile and budding relationship.

  FOUR

  Brother and Sister

  First, we needed to make it out of the palace – preferably without running into Acamapichtli and his absurd notions of quarantine again.

  Luckily, the priest who'd brought us into the prisoners' quarters had vanished, and his replacement at Zoquitl's door was more interested in doing his job as a guard than checking on our departure.

  "We'll run into priests," I said as we exited the prisoners' quarters. "The palace was overrun by those sons of a dog."

  Teomitl shook his head. "Not if we take the least-travelled paths. Come on, Acatl-tzin!"

  Of course, he had all but grown up there in the early years of his brother's reign and he knew the place like the back of his hand. He took a turn left, and then a dizzying succession of turns through ornate courtyards where slaves brought chocolate to reclining nobles – until the crowds thinned, the frescoes faded into
paleness and the courtyards became dusty, deserted squares, with their vibrant mosaics eaten away by years of winds.

  "The quarters of Chilmapopoca," Teomitl said, laconically. "My brother Axayacatl's favourite son. He died of a wasting sickness when he was barely seven years old."

  It smelled of death and neglect, and of a sadness deeper than I could express in words. I shivered and walked faster, hoping to leave the place soon.

  And then we were walking past the women's quarters: highpitched voices and the familiar clacking sound of weaving looms echoed past us – the guard in the She-Snake's uniform gave Teomitl a brief nod, and waved us on.

  "Are you sure?"

  Teomitl's face was lit in a mischievous smile. "Remember three months ago, when that concubine blasted her way out of the palace?"

  The scar on the back of my hand ached. The previous year, in the chaos that had followed the previous Revered Speaker's death, we'd uncovered a sorcerer working for foreigners. In his deaththroes, he had opened up a passageway, allowing his employer to escape into the city.

  "It was supposed to be sealed up."

  "It was," Teomitl said. "But I got them to make me a key."

  The women looked away as we walked past, though not all of them. Some were smiling at Teomitl – whether because he was an attractive youth or because his uniform marked him as Master of the House of Darts, I didn't know. But Teomitl, lost in his current task, didn't even appear to notice them.

  As for me… I'd been sworn to the gods since I was old enough to walk; and the women didn't even raise the ghost of a desire in me. A goddess had once accused me of being less than human, but she'd been wrong. I saw them as people – not for what they could bring me in bed, or the status they symbolised, but merely as the other half of the duality that kept the balance of the world.

  At length, we reached another courtyard, which was entirely deserted. Teomitl breathed a sigh. "Good. I hate throwing women out of here. They always make such a fuss."

  The building at the back of the courtyard was a low, one-storey structure, an incongruity in a palace that almost always had the coveted two floors. Columns supported its roof, creating a pleasant patio for summertime, though we were barely out of winter and most trees were bare.

  In the centre was a patch of clearer adobe, clear of all frescoes: Teomitl reached out for it, and I felt more than saw the discharge of magic leap to his hand, the jade-green glow characteristic of his goddess. The adobe lit up from within, as if exhaling radiance – and then it seemed to sink back onto itself, receding until it revealed a darker entrance. The air smelled of that peculiar sharp smell before the rain.

  "It's not the same passageway, is it?" I asked. The one I remembered all too well had torn through the neighbouring quarters: looking through it had merely revealed a succession of courtyards and quarters.

  Teomitl grimaced. "I… used an opening in the wards, to keep it simple. Come on, Acatl-tzin."

  He laid his hand on my shoulder as I entered, and a tingle went up my arm – like a mild sting by an insect, moments before it started itching.

  That feeling, too, I knew – not the exact same one, but close enough. "Your shortcut is through Tlalocan." Tlalocan, the land of the Blessed Drowned; the territory of Tlaloc and his wife Chalchiuhtlicue, Jade Skirt, Teomitl's patron goddess. A land anathema to me, the power of which ate away at my body and my magical ability.

  "Yes." Teomitl said.

  "Do you have any idea–"

  "–how dangerous it is? Please, Acatl-tzin, I don't need a lecture."

  That wasn't what I'd wanted to say. If he'd cast the spell and the Fifth World had still failed to collapse on us, then he'd got the tunnel contained. And he hadn't breached any boundaries – strictly speaking, the breach had been made by the original creator of the passageway. Sophistry, but the gods that guarded the boundaries, such as the Wind of Knives and the Curved Obsidian Blade, thrived on such rules.

  "You have a passageway into the palace," I said, following him through the tunnel. It was dark and damp, and reminded me of too many unpleasant things – I knew too well the tightening in my chest, the growing dizziness, the gradually blurring field of vision. "Do you have any idea what Tizoc-tzin would do if he found out?"

  I guessed more than saw him grin in the darkness. "Unpleasant things," he said. "My brother's paranoia hasn't improved." He sounded cold. His relations with his brother had always been as complex as mine with my own brother, but they hadn't been good for a while.

  The pressure against my chest grew worse as we went deeper – the tunnel was dark and murky, as if we were at the very bottom of Lake Texcoco, and there were things moving in the darkness, shadows that would vanish as soon as I focused on them. The air smelled of mould and mud, and greenish light played on the back of my hands and on Teomitl's clothes, washing everything into monochrome insignificance.

  Ahead was a thin beam of light, which didn't seem to grow any closer – and I was finding it hard to breathe, struggling to put one foot after the other; it was if I were moving through thick sludge, as if I breathed in only mud…

  "Acatl-tzin!"

  I trudged on. Teomitl's silhouette wavered and danced within my field of vision, and – just when I thought I couldn't take it any longer, that I would have to sit down and recover some of my strength – the light abruptly flared, and grew larger – and I stumbled out, into a world washed orange by the late afternoon sun.

  We were in a street I didn't recognise: the back of the palace; not the Sacred Precinct, just an expanse of dirt with a canal running alongside it. It was deserted, both the canal and the streets, with not a boat or a pedestrian to be seen.

  "Let's – not – tarry – here," I said. Each word hurt like a burning coal in my throat.

  "Get your breath back." Teomitl was scanning the street. "Curses. I was hoping there'd be a boatman."

  "So you could commandeer it?" I asked. "That would be hardly discreet."

  "If we're going to your brother's, it's quite likely Acamapichtli will figure it out sooner or later."

  "I'd rather it were later," I said. "It would give me time to ask questions." I'd forgotten, in the months when the army was gone, Teomitl's tendency to rush in first and ask questions later. It was all well and good for the battlefield, but elsewhere it tended to be a little less efficient, and a little more likely to hinder us, or make us enemies.

  Teomitl sighed. "As you wish. We can walk."

  • • • •

  Since neither I nor Teomitl had changed out of our regalia, we made an imposing sight on the way: about half the people we crossed stopped, unsure whether to bow. As we went deeper into Moyotlan, one of the four districts of Tenochtitlan, I reflected somewhat sadly that for once he'd been right. Acamapichtli would likely find out where we'd gone in a heartbeat.

  However… it was approaching evening, the streets slowly growing darker and the first parties of night-visitors coming out with lit pine-torches, going to a banquet, or a celebration of a birth, of a wedding, or even a party for the return of the warriors. The first snatches of flute music filled our ears, along with voices raised in speeches, and the distant beating of temple gongs in the clan-wards. With the sun gone, the weather was markedly colder and I was glad for the thick cloak of my High Priest's regalia. Teomitl, of course, barely seemed to notice anything so trivial as the change in temperature.

  Neutemoc's house was brightly lit, the leaping jaguars on its façade seeming almost alive. But there were no more torches than usual: no visitors, then. I wasn't altogether surprised. Neutemoc's reputation had been badly damaged a year before, when he'd been accused of murder and had lost his wife in a matter of days. Neutemoc himself hadn't been the same – less given to boisterous parties, or even to participating in the clan's daily life. He might have regained some of that on the march, but the damage went too deep to be removed at one stroke.

  The burly slave at the entrance knew both Teomitl and I, and gestured for us to go inside.
<
br />   The reception room was more sober than it had been the year before: gone were the feather fans, and the silver and jade ornaments had been put away, presumably in the wicker chests against the wall. The only things that hadn't changed were the huge frescoes of Huiztilpochtli, the Southern Hummingbird and the Mexica protector god, trampling bound enemies underfoot.

  "Teomitl! Acatl!" My sister Mihmatini rose from where she was sitting. She wore the simple garb of a priestess: an embroidered tunic over a skirt, with the fused-lovers symbol of the Duality set over her heart. She positively glowed – not all of it was my imagination, or my pride as her brother. A faint, radiant thread snaked from her feet to Teomitl – who stood, smiling at her.

  "You're not at the palace anymore?"

  Technically, they were married: Tizoc-tzin himself had set up the betrothal banquet, and had brought the stone axe to the priests – the axe which signified Teomitl's release from the education owed a youth, and his entrance into adult life. The wedding itself had been a grand, lavish ceremony, performed just before the army had left for the coronation war. Mihmatini herself had a room in the women's quarters, but of a common accord, she and Teomitl had moved into the Duality House, where Mihmatini continued her training as Guardian. I wondered how much of this was due to Tizoc-tzin's presence.