Master of the House of Darts

by Aliette de Bodard

  Its very end, and the birth of the Sixth Sun. "When is that?"

  "Do you think I would tell you?" Amusement, again.

  I knew He wouldn't. He did not gloat, or put Himself or His knowledge forward: what use, since everything came back to Him in the end? "I don't owe You any favours," I said, slowly.

  "You never ask for any favours," Lord Death said, and He sounded almost sad. "I'll give you one nevertheless." Before I could say anything, He'd reached out, with fingers of tapered bone, and touched me on the shoulder. Cold spread from the point of contact, not slowly, but in a swift wave of intense pain that seemed to seize every muscle at once, sending me writhing to the ground.

  As I lay on the cold, packed earth, breathing dust with every spasmodic struggle to breathe, with darkness barely held at bay, I heard His footsteps: He was standing right by my side, watching. "A gift, keeper of the boundaries," and His voice grew and grew until it became the whole world, and I knew nothing more.

  I woke up gasping, in daylight, in a room which smelled of cold ashes and stale copal incense. My eyesight seemed to have returned, at least to some extent. I could see the adobe walls, and the frescoes, but everything was still slightly blurred. I couldn't remember if that had always been the case, or if some of the eye damage had persisted even beyond the events of the night.

  My shoulder ached, and I felt… odd, stretched, as if the protection spell had returned, and I lay cocooned in Lord Death's magic. But no, it wasn't quite that.

  Something was wrong. I reached out, wincing at the pain, willing all of it to Mictlantecuhtli Lord Death, an offering as suitable as blood, and rubbed the place where He had touched me in the dream.

  There were three thin raised welts on my shoulder, almost like the marks of a whip – save that nothing had bled and they did not ache. They were cold to my touch, with the familiar feeling of underworld magic, and they did not seem to have had any effect on me.

  Which was, to say the least, unlikely. If this hadn't been an ordinary dream – if Lord Death had been there with me, in this space out of the Fifth World – then He had given me something. A favour, a gift to His High Priest – dangerous, like all divine favours. It would be small, because things made in dreams couldn't endure for long in the Fifth World, but it wouldn't be innocuous.

  I dragged myself up once again and went out in the courtyard.

  Everything was deserted. The courtyard smelled of dried earth and packed ashes. Overhead, the Fifth Sun was descending towards the horizon, staining the sky with a deep scarlet colour like heart's blood. Using the cane, I made my slow way through the courtyard, and then through to another, and yet another, and they were all equally deserted – no, not quite, for there was the familiar, faint scent of death in the air; of corpses which had just started to cool. Through one entrance-curtain I caught sight of shapes stretched on a reed-mat, moaning and thrashing as if in the grip of a dream.

  The sick. The dying. The dead. And I among them, all but blind. What a great combination.

  Tlaloc had been afraid. Why – unless this was no ordinary sickness, but one that touched the very fabric of the Fifth World? I didn't like that. Gods were cruel and capricious, but not afraid. Never afraid – unless it was of something or someone more powerful than Them.

  Something…

  As I walked, fumbling my way through pillared porticoes, through empty courtyards – through the dry smell of dust and the moans of the sick – I slowly became aware that I was not alone. There were voices in my ears – faint at first, but growing in intensity until they seemed to fill the world. There was a smell like dry, stretched skin; and a wind that grew colder and colder; and ghostly shapes, walking by my side, as if exhaled by the underworld. They crowded around me, groping with cold hands, their faces obscured, their arms and legs translucent, like layers of water.

  Was this Mictlantecuhtli's gift – to make me see the souls of the slain? But no, I had spells which could do that. Why waste His time giving me something I could attain for myself?

  The ghosts didn't go away as I walked, but neither did they grow more solid. The voices wove in and out of my ears, and there was a hollow in my stomach, steadily growing and growing, even as the world wove in and out of focus – perhaps it was my eyes, but everything seemed to be spinning…

  With some difficulty, I reached the next courtyard – the last one – crossing over a ghostly river, and found myself face to face with two of the She-Snake's guards, whose spears barred my way out of the wing.

  "Look," I said, struggling, for behind the black-painted faces were ghosts, too – singing a wordless lament, whispering words of grief. "I need to get out. I am the High Priest for the Dead, keeper of the boundaries–"

  The feeling in my stomach was worse; I wanted to curl up, to close my eyes until it was all over. I–

  The boundaries.

  I remembered lying on a cold stone floor, with everything spinning in and out of focus, feeling the hollow in my stomach grow and grow until it seemed to swallow me whole. It had been in the instants after the designated Revered Speaker Tizoc-tzin had died – when everything had hung in the balance, and the Fifth World itself had been close to tearing itself apart.

  It had been worse, then. I had barely been able to stand up, and we had lain unprotected from the stardemons. Nothing like that here: the Fifth Sun was in the sky, and the star-demons' distant shadows cowering from His radiance.

  But still… there were ghosts abroad, and the whispers of the dead, and – soon, perhaps – the panting breaths of beasts of shadow on the prowl.

  Something was wrong with the boundaries.

  "I need to get out," I said, again, to the guards.

  They looked at me as if I were mad, with clearly no intention of letting me move more than a hand-span from them. "We have orders," they said.

  "Then get me the person who gave you the orders."

  They looked at each other, and then back at me. I saw ghosts drift between them, drawn like jaguars to a hearth-fire. My clothes were torn and slightly muddy from my visit into Tlalocan, but they were still the regalia of the High Priest for the Dead. "My Lord, we cannot…"

  "Get me Quenami," I said, softly.

  It might have been the tone, or the remnants of the regalia, but one of the guards left, looking distinctly worried.

  In the meantime, I leant against one of the coloured pillars, desperately trying to look nonchalant, but the ghosts still hung in the courtyard like a veil of fog, and the slight nausea at the back of my throat wasn't getting better.

  I'd expected Quenami to look smug or satisfied, but when he arrived, he merely looked harried. He wore his most ostentatious clothes – brightly-coloured feathers almost better suited for a Revered Speaker than for a High Priest – and his earlobes glistened with freshly offered blood. "Acatl. What a surprise to see you here." Even his sarcasm sounded muted.

  I wasn't in the mood to play the dance of diplomacy. "Look, Quenami. There is an epidemic out here, and I don't need to be confined with the dying."

  "Except that you might be sick yourself." His eyes were feverishly bright, his hands steady, but I could read the strain in his bearing.

  "Do I look sick to you?"

  "You never know. You might have it all the same."

  He looked too worried – even for someone who had suffered the debacle in the courtyard. "It's worse, isn't it? It's spreading, and you have no idea how to stop it."

  Quenami's head snapped towards me. "What do you know? You've been confined here since yesterday. I know you have. No one has seen you in that time; your own sister admits to knowing nothing of your whereabouts."

  "I know enough," I said, softly. Gods, Mihmatini had been looking for me the whole time? She was going to flay my ears the next time we met. "Tell me it's better, that you have it all under control."

  As Acamapichtli had; I hated that man's guts, but I had to admit he had a certain ruthless efficiency. Quenami was all bluster. "It's only a matter of time,"
Quenami said, haughtily. "The Empire is well protected, as you know."

  It was – against star-demons and the celestial monsters that would swallow us. But still… still, nothing prevented a resourceful sorcerer from sowing havoc. "You know the Southern Hummingbird won't protect us against a small thing like a plague." To a god, especially a war-god, hundreds of dead meant nothing. The great famine, the great floods, all had happened under the protection of a Revered Speaker. Huitzilpochtli the Southern Hummingbird only guarded from large-scale attacks which would annihilate the Fifth World or the Mexica Empire.

  "What do you want, Acatl?"

  "What I've told you. I want to get out, and I want to help. That's all. Is it really so hard to understand? I'm not working against the Fifth World."

  Unlike you, I wanted to say, but I knew it wasn't the best time for airing this particular grudge.

  Quenami looked at me, and back at the courtyard. "It's not safe…"

  "No," I said, with a quick shake of my head – I'd never seen him so uncertain, and I wasn't sure what it presaged. "But for all you know, you might have it as well. Tizoc-tzin might have it as well."

  "Very well," Quenami said at last. He made it sound like a special favour granted to me – as if he were Revered Speaker, and I a lowly peasant. "You may get out."

  I didn't need to be told twice: I walked past the two guards, and came to stand firmly on the side of the healthy, the cane warm in my hands. Quenami made no comment, but let me follow him through a few courtyards – enough for me to realise the palace had grown uncannily silent, as if a cloth had been throw over everything. The servants wove their way among ghosts – not seeing them, but not saying anything in any case – and the few noblemen who were still out hurried past us, intent on not staying out any longer than they had to.

  "How much worse is it?" I asked Quenami.

  He shrugged – a contained movement, but I could still feel his anxiety. "The She-Snake says he has every thing under control."

  Which wasn't the same thing as saying the problem was solved. "And what he has under control…"

  Quenami shook his head – of course he wouldn't allow himself to look embarrassed. "About a fifth of the palace has been affected, and it sounds like it's spreading through the city."

  "And you still think you can keep a handle on this?"

  "Tizoc-tzin thinks so," Quenami said.

  It was the closest he'd ever come, I guessed, to saying he didn't agree with his master. "And Tizoc-tzin still thinks it's a good idea to arrest the clergy of Tlaloc."

  Quenami looked away, and didn't speak. At length he said, in a much quieter voice. "Your sister's priests are with us, to find rituals to slow this down. It will suffice. It has to."

  But we both knew it wouldn't.

  I detoured through the kitchens to find some food since, in addition to being weak and still wounded, I hadn't eaten anything since before leaving for Tlalocan. Then I made my halting way out of the palace, to check on Mihmatini and on my own priests.

  The air was sweltering, wet and heavy, and the sky was an overbearing shade of blue, which promised no respite from the heat.

  The ghosts didn't leave, though they did grow fainter, at the same time as the numbness in my shoulder faded. Mictlantecuhtli's gift, whatever it had been, was slowly returning to its maker. But it had accomplished its purpose.

  A gift, keeper of the boundaries.

  There was something wrong with the boundaries. Acamapichtli had said they were weaker; he had thought the plague had weakened them. I wasn't so sure. The hollow, nauseous feeling in my stomach – the one that was now slowly receding to bearable levels – was the same I'd had much earlier, when the army had returned, long before the plague was set loose.

  There was something else, something we needed to work out with Ichtaca and the rest of the order.

  I was munching on my tamales, enjoying the solidity of the maize sliding into my empty stomach – something firmly of the Fifth World, and not of Tlalocan or Mictlan – and slowly heading out of the palace, when someone grasped my shoulder. "Acatl."

  If I hadn't been so bone-weary, I would have given a start. Nezahual-tzin moved within my field of vision. As usual, he was escorted by two Texcocan Knights, though he'd eschewed his regalia in favour of a more discreet cotton cloak and a simple headdress of mottled brown quail-feathers.

  "Going round in disguise?" I asked.

  His lips quirked up. "I could say the same thing about you."

  I shrugged. If he wanted to make me angry, attacking my dress was hardly the best way.

  "Your sister is waiting for you at the Duality House," Nezahual-tzin said.

  And I could guess she wouldn't be particularly happy. But I didn't want to say this to Nezahual-tzin – who was Revered Speaker of Texcoco, not my friend or equal. "Anything else I ought to know?"

  Nezahual-tzin shrugged. We'd started walking towards the palace entrance, the two warriors following us. "I might have a lead on why Teomitl survived the sickness."

  "A lead?" I said.

  "I asked the stars," Nezahual-tzin said. It was probably literal, too – his patron god Quetzalcoatl was Lord of the Morning Star among His other aspects. "Magic flowed towards the Duality House that night."

  "Hardly surprising," I said. With my healing, and our repeated attempts to heal Teomitl, the place must have been a riot of lights.

  "Actually," Nezahual-tzin said, "it was Toci's magic."

  That stopped me. "Grandmother Earth? Why would She–?" She was the Earth that fed the maize, that would take us back into Her bosom when the time came: an old, broken woman renewed with every offering of blood; a goddess born from the fragments of the Earth-Monster, eternally thirsting for human hearts and human sacrifices. And, in many ways, She was the opposite of the Southern Hummingbird, our protector deity: the incarnation of female fertility, the nurturing mother, whereas He was the virile, eternally young warrior. "Why would She want to heal Teomitl?" I asked.

  "I don't know," Nezahual-tzin said. "But I intend to find out. It seemed to come from a house in the district of Zoquipan." His youthful face was that of an artisan, nibbling away at a massive block of limestone until the sculpture at its core was revealed. "Care to join me?"

  I shook my head. "I have to get back to the Duality House." That, or Mihmatini was finally going to lose patience with me.

  Nezahual-tzin didn't look particularly disappointed. He did, though, walk with me up to the Duality House, claiming it was for my own safety. I wasn't sure of his motivations, but I welcomed the company, for I was none too steady on my feet.

  We parted ways amidst a crowd of pilgrims carrying worship-thorns and balls of grass stained with blood – ranging from gangly adolescents barely old enough to have seen the battlefield to old men walking with canes, wearing long cloaks to hide the scars they'd received in the wars.

  "Oh, one other thing," Nezahual-tzin said.

  I stopped, and painstakingly turned around. "What?"

  "You might be interested to know you're not the only one to have disappeared recently."

  Acamapichtli? "I'm not sure–"

  Nezahual-tzin's face was utterly impassive. "No one has seen your student since yesterday. Officially speaking, of course."

  Of course.

  "And you?"

  Nezahual-tzin shrugged, casually. "I haven't seen him, either. But I have it on good authority some of the warriors under his command have gone missing."

  He'd almost died. He'd said it to me, attempted to warn me: that he couldn't wait any longer for the things he thought were due to him. For the Mexica Empire to flourish under good leadership, and of course Tizoc-tzin's leadership was anything but brilliant. But surely he couldn't mean to… he couldn't want to sink us back into a civil and magical war…?

  "I did warn you," Nezahual-tzin said.

  And he had; I didn't want to hear it any more now than I'd wanted to hear it back then. "Yes," I said. "Thank you." And I pushed my way into the cr
owd of the Sacred Precinct without looking back.

  FIFTEEN

  Corpses and Curses

  Contrary to what Nezahual-tzin had told me, Mihmatini wasn't waiting for me at the Duality House.

  Instead, I found people grouped in the courtyard: mothers with children on their backs, entire families from the grandmother to the young toddlers, and quite a few warriors, who presented their emotions as an odd mixture of terror and annoyance – as if they were aware they should not have been so afraid of the supernatural. There appeared to be no sick people, but I strongly suspected those were being herded away by the priests of the Duality.

  After many enquiries, I finally managed to get hold of Yaotl, my sister's personal slave, who looked at me with his customary sneer and informed me that she'd left for the city, in order to take a look at some of the sick.