Quenami smiled. "Yes. But the war has been won, Acatl. Shall we not celebrate, and laugh in the face of Lord Death?"
Having met Him numerous times, I very much doubted Lord Death was going to care much either way – He well knew that everyone came to Him in the end, no matter what they did.
"It's a lie," I said, fiercely, but other hymns had started, and Quenami wasn't listening anymore.
The morning dragged on, interminable. There were chants, and intricate dances where sacred courtesans and warriors formally courted each other, reminding us of the eternal cycle of life and the order of the Fifth World. There were drum beats and the distribution of maize flatbreads to the crowd, and songs and dances, and elaborate speeches by officials. And through it all presided Tizoc-tzin, insufferably smug, as puffed up as if he'd been one of the captive-takers.
I stood on the edge, mouthing the hymns with little conviction – my mind on the warrior and on his fall. People did collapse naturally: from weak hearts, or pressure within the brain that couldn't be relieved; reacting to something they'd eaten, or the sting of some insect. But there had been magic around him, strong enough for me to feel it.
I doubted, very much, that it had been a natural death.
After the ceremony, the officials of the city went into the palace, where a formal banquet was served: elaborate maize cakes, roast deer, white fish with red pepper and tomatoes, newts with sweet potatoes… Tizoc-tzin, as usual, ate behind a golden screen; Teomitl was sitting with the other members of the war-council, around the reed mat of the highest-ranked, the closest one to the window and the humid air of the gardens. Beside him was Mihmatini, my younger sister – as his wife, she should have been sitting at a separate mat, but she was also Guardian of the Sacred Precinct, agent of the Duality in the Fifth World and keeper of the invisible boundaries, enough to give a headache to any protocol master. Beneath her elaborate makeup, her eyes were distant: she didn't like banquets anymore than I did, though she could hardly afford to ignore them.
Between them was a thin line I could barely see – a remnant of a spell they'd done together, a magic which kept them tied even though the spell had ended.
Though Teomitl was obviously glad to see Mihmatini, I could see him fidget even from where I sat between Quenami and Acamapichtli, doing my best to avoid speaking to either of them. I could feel his impatience – which mirrored my own.
Further down, several Jaguar Knights were sitting around their own reed mats – among them was my elder brother Neutemoc, smiling gravely at some joke of his neighbour. It looked as though the campaign had enabled him to re-establish ties with his comrades, and other things besides. He looked plumper, and the jaguar body-suit no longer hung loosely on his slender frame: perhaps he was finally getting over his wife's death.
I let my gaze roam through the room, waiting for the banquet to finish. Amidst the colourful costumes, the faces flushed with warmth and the easy laughter there was something else, the same undercurrent of unease tightening in my belly. The atmosphere was tense: the laughing and smiling Jaguar Knights carefully avoided looking at the golden screen, while the warriors clustering around Tizoc-tzin – richly dressed noblemen, with barely a scar on their smooth legs – huddled together, talking as if they were in the midst of enemy territory.
All was not right with the world.
As soon as the last course of the banquet was served, I got up.
"Leaving so soon?" Quenami asked.
"I want to see the body," I said.
Quenami raised a perfectly-plucked eyebrow. "Always the High Priest, I see. Forget it, Acatl. The man had a sunstroke."
I shook my head. "Magical sunstrokes don't exist, Quenami. Someone cast a spell on him."
I expected Acamapichtli to say something, but he had remained worryingly silent – as if lost in thought. Probably thinking of how he could turn the situation to his advantage.
Quenami smiled. "Look at you. Such wonderful dedication." His voice took on a hard edge. "Nevertheless… today we celebrate our victory, Acatl – the return of the army, and the confirmation of our Revered Speaker. Tizoc-tzin needs his High Priests here."
An unmistakable, utterly unsubtle threat. But I'd had enough. "This isn't the confirmation," I said. "As you said – today we celebrate our victory. I don't think the absence of one person is going to make a difference." Especially not one High Priest with dubious loyalties, as far as Tizoctzin was concerned. "I don't stop being High Priest for the Dead when we celebrate."
Quenami made a slow, expansive gesture – one I knew all too well, the one which suggested there were going to be unpleasant consequences and that he'd done all he could to warn me.
And, of course, the moment I had my back turned, he was going to go to his master and denounce us.
At least I knew where I stood with him.
The dead warrior had been taken deep within the Imperial palace – on the outskirts of Tizoc-tzin's private apartments. The sky above us had the uncanny blue of noon, with Tonatiuth the Fifth Sun at his highest.
A slave took me to a small, dusty courtyard with a dry well – I'd expected it to be deserted, but to my surprise two people were waiting for me there. The first was Teomitl, still in full finery, looking far older than his eighteen years. Next to him was a middle-aged man, whom I recognised as another member of the war-council. Though he wore rich finery, the lower part of his legs was uncovered, revealing skin pockmarked with whitish scars. He nodded curtly to me – as an equal to an equal.
"I didn't see you leave," I said to Teomitl.
He grinned – fast and careless – before his face arranged itself once more in a sober expression, more appropriate to the Master of the House of Darts. "We were right behind you."
"Tizoc-tzin–" I said, slowly.
"Tizoc-tzin can say what he wants," the other man interrupted. "I have no intention of abandoning one of my own warriors."
"This is Coatl," Teomitl said, shaking his head in a dazzling movement of feathers. "Deputy for the Master of Raining Blood."
And, as such, in command of one quarter of the army. "I see," I said. I pulled open the entrance-curtain in a tinkle of bells, and slipped inside.
It was dark and cold, in spite of the noon hour: the braziers hadn't been lit, and the dead man lay huddled on the packed earth, abandoned like offal – an ironic end for one who had worshipped Huitzilpochtli, our protector god: the eternally youthful and virile Southern Hummingbird.
Automatically, I whispered the words of a prayer, wishing his soul safe passage into the underworld, for his hadn't been the glorious death of a warrior, the ascent into the Heaven of the Fifth Sun, but rather small and ignominious, a sickness that doomed him to the dark, to the dryness of Mictlan.
"You knew him," I said to Coatl.
He made a curious gesture – half-exasperation, halfcontempt. "Eptli. Yes. I knew him."
"Did he have any enemies?"
"Eptli was one of the forty honoured warriors, out of an army of eight thousand men. I'd say there would be strong resentment against him."
"Yes," I said. "But why single him out? Why not any of the others?"
Coatl spread his hands. "I knew Eptli because he was under my orders, but no more than that. His clan-leader was responsible for his unit."
There was something – not quite right in the tone of his voice, as if he was going to say more, but had stopped himself just in time. What could it possibly be?
Eptli had been a four-captive warrior: with this, his fifth capture, he could aspire to membership of the Jaguar or Eagle Knights, the prestigious elite of the army.
I was about to press Coatl further, when the entrancecurtain tinkled again. I started – surely Tizoc-tzin wouldn't search for us that soon – but instead a covered cage landed on the floor with a dull thud, startling whatever was inside so it gave a piercing, instantly recognisable cry.
I knelt and lifted the cover – to stare into the bleary, murderous eyes of a huge white owl, who loo
ked as though only the wooden bars prevented it from terminally messing up my face. It screeched once more, disdainfully.
Acamapichtli strode into the room, rubbing his hands together as if to wash away dust. "There you go. Living blood. You can use it." It wasn't a question.
"We're–"
"– certainly not going to wait for Tizoc-tzin to find us," Acamapichtli said. "He died of magic, didn't he? That's something serious."
"It might be," I said, carefully. I searched for a diplomatic way to say the words on my mind, and gave up. "What in the Fifth World are you doing here, Acamapichtli?"
"Why," his smile was sarcastic. "The same thing as you. Investigating a suspicious death."
Which, in and of itself was suspicious. Was this another court intrigue? I'd have thought that with the disaster of the previous one, Acamapichtli would have known better than to try causing another. "I don't think curiosity is enough to justify your presence here. Quenami made it quite clear we were angering Tizoc-tzin."
"You forget." He smiled, revealing rows of blackened teeth. "We're in disgrace. It can't really get worse."
I rubbed the mark on the back of my hand: the whitish trace of a fang, a reminder of a prison where it had been a struggle to think, a struggle to even breathe – a cage of beaten earth and adobe where Tizoc-tzin's enemies were reduced to drooling idiots. I'd spent only a few hours within, four months previously, accused of treason by Quenami – a handy excuse to keep me out of the way. I didn't want to go back there. "With all respect… I think it can."
Teomitl snorted. "You sound like an old couple." He didn't sound amused. "You have our permission." His voice made it clear it was the imperial "we", the one that put him on an almost equal footing with his brother Tizoc-tzin. As Master of the House of Darts, he was not only responsible for the armouries and for his quarter of the army, but also heir-designate – the one with the best chance of ascending to the Gold-and-Turquoise Crown, should Tizoc-tzin die.
Which, Smoking Mirror willing, wouldn't be happening for quite some time yet. There had been enough fire and blood in the streets with the death of the previous Revered Speaker.
Acamapichtli bowed. "As you wish, my Lord." Of course, he knew the lay of the land.
Teomitl was looking at the dead warrior, with an expression I couldn't place. Regret? The dead man hadn't perished in battle or on the sacrifice stone; his fate would be the same as anyone else's, the same as any priest or peasant: the long, winding road into the underworld, until he reached the throne of Lord Death and found oblivion.
Coatl, more pragmatic than any of us, was already kneeling by the dead man's side, examining him with the expertise of a man who had seen the aftermath of too many battles. "No wounds," he muttered, and set to removing the elaborate costume the man had worn.
In the meantime, I took the cage with the owl to a corner of the room, next to one of the huge braziers. Acamapichtli, I couldn't help but notice, hadn't brought back anything of his own – but he was watching the corpse as if considering his next best move.
I took one of my obsidian knives from my belt – even in full regalia, I never neglected to arm myself – and glanced at the owl, which looked even more ill-tempered than before. Why in the Fifth World hadn't Acamapichtli brought back spiders or rabbits?
Bracing myself, I opened the cage, grasped the owl by the head – and, ignoring the flurry of wings and claws, slit its neck just above the line of my hands.
Blood pooled out, red and warm, staining the tip of the knife, spreading to my fingers. I set the knife against the ground, and drew a quincunx: the five-armed cross, symbol of the Fifth World, of its centre and four points leading outwards – of the Fifth Age, and the four ages that had come before it. Then I chanted a hymn to my patron god Mictlantecuhtli, Lord Death:
"All paths lead to You
To the land of the Flensed, to the land of the Fleshless No quetzal feathers, no scattered flowers
Just songs dwindling, just trees withering
Noble or peasant, merchant or goldsmith,
Death takes us all through four hundred paths
To the mystery of Your presence."
A veil shimmered and danced into existence; a faint green light that seemed to make the room larger. I felt as if I were standing on the verge of a chasm – at the cenote north of the city, where glistening waters turned into the river that separated the living from the dead. A wind rose in the room, but the tinkle of the bells on the entrance-curtain seemed muffled and distant. The skin on my neck and wrists felt loose, and my bones ached within the depths of my body as if I were already a doddering old man. Gently, carefully, I turned back towards the room – moving as through layers of cotton.
In the gloom, Teomitl shone with a bright green light the colour of jade – not surprising, as his patron goddess was Chalchiuhtlicue, Jade Skirt, Goddess of Rivers and Streams. Acamapichtli was surrounded by the blue-andwhite aura of his own patron god. Around Coatl and the dead warrior though, the room pulsed with the same shadows I'd caught a glimpse of earlier. I saw faces, distorted in pain… and flailing arms and legs, all clinging to each other in an obscene tangle of limbs… and hands, their fingers engorged out of shape, and everything was merging into a final, deep darkness which flowed over the face of the dead warrior and into his body, like blood through veins.
It was like no curse or illness I had ever seen.
I closed my eyes, and broke the quincunx by rubbing a foot against its boundary. "I'd step away from the body, if I were you," I said.
Coatl leapt as if bitten by a snake. "You think it's contagious?"
"It's a possibility," I said, carefully.
Acamapichtli was leaning against the wall, his hand wrapped around something I couldn't see. Another of his little amulets, no doubt: he was in the habit of carving ivory and filling its grooves with the blood of sacrifices to make powerful charms. My hand still bore a whitish mark where one of them had touched me, the year before.
"So?" Teomitl asked.
Coatl shook his head. He'd stepped away from Eptli's body, letting us see quite clearly that although the warrior was covered with scars, there was indeed no wound whatsoever. Eptli had shaved his head, an odd affectation for a warrior, but it did mean we could see there was no wound there either.
Not that it surprised me. "It's some kind of illness," I said. I thought of the shadows again, and shivered. "Brought on by magic."
"Can you recognise the source?" Acamapichtli asked.
I shook my head. Every magical spell was the power of a god, called down into the Fifth World by a devotee, and it should have had a signature as recognisable as the light of Jade Skirt on Teomitl's face. "It's decaying." I would have knelt by the corpse, but what I'd seen of the light made me wary. "Breaking down into pieces, as if the Fifth World itself were anathema to it."
"That's not magic," Acamapichtli said, sharply.
"Star-demons?" Coatl asked. The star-demons were the enemies of the gods, destined to end the Fifth World by consuming us all in a great earthquake.
"I've seen star-demons," I said, slowly – my hands seized up at the thought, even though the event had been more than four months before. "This doesn't look anything like their handiwork."
Acamapichtli's grip on his amulet didn't waver. His eyes were cruel; amused. "I've seen it before."
"And?" Teomitl asked, when it was obvious Acamapichtli wasn't going to add anything further.
Acamapichtli had a gesture halfway between exasperation and pity. "If I remembered, don't you think I'd be telling you?"
"No," I said.
Acamapichtli shook his head, as if to clear out a persistent annoyance. "Let old grudges lie, Acatl. We're allies in this."
By necessity – and I still wasn't sure why. "Why the interest?" I asked.
The ghost of a smile. "Because I don't think you understand Tizoc-tzin. When his banquet is over and he wakes up and realises someone deliberately spoiled his wonderful ceremony, he is going
to want explanations. And right now, neither of us can afford to fail at giving them."
Footsteps echoed from the courtyard: the slow, steady march of guards. It looked as though our time alone with the corpse was drawing to a close. I hoped it wasn't Tizoctzin, but I didn't think we'd be so lucky.
Before leaving, I took a last glance at the body, lying forlorn and abandoned in the middle of the room, its rich clothes discarded at its side. One moment honoured by the Revered Speaker himself, on the verge of becoming a member of the elite – and the next moment this: cooling flesh in a deserted room, probed openly by strangers. From glory to nothingness in just a few moments… a cause for regret, if there ever was one.
But then again, I was a priest for the Dead and I knew we would all come to this… in the end.
TWO
Master of the House of Darts Page 2