Master of the House of Darts

by Aliette de Bodard

  Yayauhqui shrugged. "We can argue politics for a while, but we'd both be bored."

  As usual, his perception of his opponent bordered on the uncanny. "Humour me," I said.

  "What do you want to know? Personally, I think Moquihuix-tzin was a fool." He must have seen the shock on my face, for he laughed. "He wasn't my brother or my uncle; just a distant cousin. And yes, most of us knew, or suspected what he was up to."

  "Which was? "

  "The plot." He snorted. "Moquihuix truly loved his city, and I can't blame him for that. But he always had delusions of grandeur – wanting to make us bigger than we could bear. In many ways, he was thinking too much like a Tenochca."

  I didn't react to the jab against us. Not that I approved of delusions of grandeur, in any case. "And he failed."

  "As I said." Yayauhqui shrugged. "He wanted us to take our place in the Triple Alliance, rather than remain subservient to you."

  "And you didn't approve?"

  "No, it was a great idea," Yayauhqui said. "But, as I said, it required planning, and strategy, and careful political manoeuvring. Moquihuix planned well, but he counted too much on people's loyalty – thinking everyone loved his city as he did. And he never really stopped to consider that the smallest thing could trip him up."

  "His wife?" I said.

  He shrugged. "It's old history, but she was no fool. Any man could have seen that, but Moquihuix was too wrapped up in his plans for the future. He had… a presence, something that made people agree with him regardless of what he said; he relied too much on that. You cannot influence people all the time. He saw us at the head of the Triple Alliance, raking in the tribute that went to Tenochtitlan. And of course, he never did listen to anyone who dared to tell him otherwise." His lips quirked up. "I'm afraid I made a poor warrior, Acatl-tzin. I fought for my city, but not for my ruler."

  Other people had done the same – were doing the same. But I didn't say so – didn't dare to acknowledge this. "It doesn't change–"

  "No, we're agreed." His gaze was almost mocking. "It doesn't change anything. You should recognise that."

  But I still couldn't quite resign myself to the idea.

  "I'll have payment for Tlatelolco, Acatl-tzin. But not upon mortals: upon the god who betrayed me."

  "That's–"

  "Blasphemy? Do you truly think I care?" He grimaced. "What can They do to me, that hasn't already been done?" His companions were carrying the baskets into the palace, under the wary eyes of guards.

  He looked intense and driven, but not, it seemed, by what preoccupied us all. Still… still, I didn't like the thought of him loose. "Can you stay around the palace for a bit?"

  His gaze was withering. "Until you've found out who causes the plague?"

  "I can ask more forcefully."

  "I have no doubt you can." He sounded almost placid. "Fine, for a bit. I'll be in the merchants' quarters."

  And he walked away, humming a song under his breath. I wasn't sure whether I'd successfully confined him, or merely given him a pretext to install himself in the palace.

  Ezamahual – who had been silent during the entire conversation – insisted on accompanying me all the way to my house, uncomfortably reminding me of the way Teomitl had nagged at me to get some rest.

  In truth, the last thing I wanted to do was rest. Thoughts chased one another in the confines of my mind, each one more panicked and incoherent than the rest. And when sleep finally came, I saw again Teomitl pooling his craft through the canals of Chalchiuhtlicue's country, and heard the hymn of the Blessed Drowned.

  "In Tlalocan, the verdant house,

  The dead men play at balls, they cast the reeds,

  Go forth, go forth to the place of many clouds,

  To where the thick mists mark the Blessed Land…"

  I woke up. The sky was still dark, but I couldn't sleep anymore. My back ached like that of an old woman, and I fought a twinge of pain when I hauled myself to my feet. The Fifth Sun wasn't yet up, but I nevertheless offered Him my blood, to sustain Him in His fight against the darkness, singing a low hymn under my breath.

  I got up, and dressed, finding by touch my wicker chest of clothes, and the spare grey cloak with owls that would mark me as High Priest for the Dead – and the mask lying on the ground after I'd discarded on the previous night. I left the mask hanging on my waist – tying it with a piece of rope – and set out into the Sacred Precinct.

  At this hour of the night, all but the most dedicated of pilgrims had left – though torches and braziers still lit up the night, showing the way for the novice priests running around the Serpent Wall. Ahead, on the shadowy mass of the Great Temple, sacrifices were still tumbling down, with the familiar thud of dead bodies coming to rest on the stone at the bottom of the steps. The smell of copal incense hung heavy in the air – and it seemed that everything was right with the world.

  If only.

  I made my way to my temple, which – of course – wasn't deserted, even this early: further supplicants had come, and offering priests stood in the courtyard, coaxing them into entering one of the examination rooms so they could have a quieter conversation. The pilgrims' faces were taut with fear, their bearing subdued, deliberately muted in order not to draw attention to themselves. I had never been so glad of my grey cloak, which disguised my identity as High Priest: a few of the more adventurous tried to seize me as I moved towards the centre of the courtyard, but I managed to gently direct them towards more available priests.

  I repaired to one of the smaller examination rooms, which was currently unused – no bringing the sickness into our own temple. Powdered dust lay thick on the altar, and the image of Mictlantecuhtli looked at me – hollow-eyed, and yet somehow drawing all the light to Himself. My shoulder itched, where He had touched me.

  A gift, keeper of the boundaries.

  He didn't grant favours, or magic; didn't choose an agent in the Fifth World, or play the power games of the other gods.

  And yet… and yet, knowing I was under His gaze was comforting – He was there, waiting for us to come down to Him in the end. He would always be there, and He would never judge, or strike at the unworthy.

  "My Lord," I said, aloud. "Thank You."

  There was no answer, but I felt a little better after that.

  I climbed to the shrine atop the pyramid temple – where, to my surprise, I found Ichtaca still there, sitting behind one of the pillars with the registers of the temple on his knees, staring at the coloured glyphs on the maguey paper as if he could coax them into speaking. He rose, hastily, when my cane scraped on the floor. "Acatl-tzin."

  "Did you stay up all night?" I asked.

  He shook his head. "I couldn't sleep."

  "You and me both," I said, sombrely. "Something is going on in the palace, on top of everything else." I explained, briefly, what I'd felt in the courtyard of the prisoners' quarters.

  When I was done, Ichtaca's face was grave. "Those are serious matters."

  "I know," I said. The Duality curse me, I knew all too well. "I guess you must have news."

  Ichtaca grimaced. "In many areas, yes. If we start by the smallest – I sent a couple of offering priests to the Duality House, to see if we could heal the sick."

  "And?"

  "I don't know. They haven't come back. I suppose it's a good thing."

  "I suppose so."

  "And the rest?"

  He wouldn't look at me. "I haven't gone very far, but I think you're right about the boundaries. They're weakened."

  "And am I right about the causes?" I asked, even though I already suspected the answer.

  Ichtaca didn't answer for a while.

  "Ichtaca, it's past time for respect. If it's my fault, I'd rather hear it now, than have you not say anything out of respect. That helps no one."

  He sighed. "It is as you said. There is a dead man among the living. This creates a hole."

  "But not what we had last year."

  "There is a Revered Speaker
," Ichtaca said. "He keeps us safe from star-demons. But his very existence…"

  It reminded me of an old story Mother had used to tell me, about a man clinging to a branch above an abyss – save that the branch was a tree-snake. He could haul himself up, but the moment he released the snake, the creature would wrap itself around him and choke him to death. Or he could, of course, let go, and fall into the chasm; in the end, he had to take the risk to be choked by the snake, for he wouldn't survive the fall. "By his very existence, he's weakening the boundaries," I said.

  "Yes." Ichtaca would not look at me, or at my sandals. "There is a door open, and ghosts are coming through, and the plague."

  I shook my head. "The plague is a spell, not a summoning. It's not coming from the weakened boundaries." But it might be spreading faster because of them: none of the usual barriers against spells were in place anymore. And the ghosts… the ghosts were an additional confusion we didn't need. "Doors can be closed," I said.

  "It would kill him."

  And, once more, leave us defenceless against stardemons, until weeks of bickering had passed and the council finally designated a new Revered Speaker. "Then left ajar," I said. "With a smaller opening. It's wide open right now, isn't it?"

  Ichtaca sighed.

  "It could be done," I said. If the plague didn't kill us first. "There are spells, in the codices…"

  "There might be. But they're going to require time."

  "Then let's take it. I don't much like the alternatives," I said.

  Ichtaca was silent, for a while. "I'll set the offering priests to researching the matter. Those who are not busy elsewhere."

  There was no sarcasm in his voice, though from where we sat, we could see the crowd in the courtyard, and hear the faint voices raised in argument.

  Ichtaca looked up at the night sky – at the stars, which were the eyes of monsters. "Something is going to happen, Acatl-tzin. I can feel it in my bones. Something in the palace."

  His tone was earnest, and I felt some of his unease. "We can't actually move on premonitions." If they'd been genuine visions, which were rare enough, it would have been another matter…

  My eye was caught by some movement near the entrance: it looked like priests from our order, struggling to go through the crowd. "Ichtaca?"

  He stared down. "Those are the priests I sent to the palace," he said. "Something is wrong."

  SEVENTEEN

  The Coward's Way Out

  When we arrived at the palace, I immediately felt the sense of wrongness. It wasn't the hushed quiet – which by now had become the norm – or the atmosphere of reverent fear, which suggested the sickness had propagated yet further. Rather, it was the sense of purpose: people were still hurrying through the courtyards and the corridors, but they were mostly going in one direction, and their faces were grim.

  "Acatl-tzin," Ichtaca started, but I shook my head. Whatever was going on, we'd find out soon enough.

  The flow of people was going towards the quarters of the Revered Speaker, though that particular courtyard appeared much the same as ever. We followed a stream of minor noblemen in cotton clothes to a smaller courtyard decorated with rich frescoes and elaborate carvings. The smell of pine needles hung in the air, but even from where we stood – pressed in a crowd of noblemen, warriors and officials – Ichtaca and I felt it. The passage of Xolotl, Taker of the Dead, always left a particular trace in the air.

  The crowd was thickest on the pyramid shrine at the centre of the courtyard. Without needing to glance at each other, Ichtaca and I sliced at our earlobes, and whispered an invocation to Lord Death, feeling the keening cold of the underworld spread over us like a mantle: the sharp touch of the Wind of Knives as He flayed the soul, the fear that seized the heart on hearing the howl of the beast of shadows; the dry, cold touch of Lord Death's skeletal hands.

  The crowd parted before us like a flock of quails, and we climbed the staircase easily, stopping, for a brief moment, at the entrance to the inner chambers before the blackclad guards of the She-Snake decided we were entitled to be there, and waved us in with a wave of their hands.

  Inside, the atmosphere was stifling, both because of the sheer number of people packed into such a small space, and because I could feel the death – taste it on my tongue like some rotten fruit, like something stuck across my windpipe, all but choking the life out of me.

  I'd never seen that – not at any death scene I'd attended, no matter how protracted or painful the agony had been. Beside me, I felt Ichtaca pause, his gaze roaming left and right, trying to understand what had happened. If I joined him and we pooled our forces, it would be child's play to work it out – to see what was fundamentally wrong, grating at me like a missing limb…

  No. I was High Priest, and my place wasn't at the back, but further ahead in the press, where the most important men would be in attendance.

  The people gathered around the reed mat were familiar: Tizoc-tzin and his sycophant, Quenami; the She-Snake, and the familiar, coolly relaxed countenance of Nezahual-tzin – in addition to several warriors who served as escorts, and two frightened slaves who were doing their best to look innocuous.

  In fact, it almost looked like the last time, save that the man in the centre – Pochtic – looked quite past any kind of help. Death had relaxed the muscles, so that the small obsidian dagger in his hand now lay half-across the stones of the floor. Like Acamapichtli, he'd used it to brutal efficiency – not slashing across his wrists, but digging deep inside to reach the arteries. The blood had spurted in great gouts, staining the floor underneath, but I could feel no magic, no latent power within. Either he'd offered it to a god as he died – which would have been odd, as he'd stated quite clearly the god he worshipped was Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror, a god of war who preferred human hearts as sacrificial offerings, and not something as cowardly as the slitting of wrists. Or…

  Or something else had been wrong with him. He could already have pledged himself as a sacrifice, been a dead man walking, like the council two months ago – a sacrifice in abeyance, payment for a task already performed.

  One thing was sure: his death wasn't making our Revered Speaker any happier. "I want to know who did this." Tizoc-tzin's face was livid. "I want them arrested, and punished – wood or stone, it wouldn't matter. I want them gone."

  The wood of executioners' maces, the stones cast at adulterers and murderers.

  The She-Snake was kneeling on the ground, his gaze fixed on the body. I'd expected to see Teomitl, but he still wasn't there. What in the Fifth World was he up to? Too much, I guessed. "By the looks of it, my Lord, I would say there aren't many people to punish," the She-Snake said.

  "What do you mean?"

  The She-Snake saw me approaching, and threw me a glance that was almost apologetic. "It was by his own hand."

  There was silence. "Coward," Tizoc-tzin said, voicing what everyone thought.

  I knelt by Pochtic's side, looking at the body. Neat cuts, without any flinching. I hadn't thought anyone could do that, but it certainly couldn't have happened in a fight. Nevertheless… there were ways and means to force compliance. But no, I couldn't feel any magic in the room.

  No… not quite. There was something: a thin thread of brown and a reddish-yellow colour, a twin invocation to Grandmother Earth and Tonatiuh the Fifth Sun. Odd. Joint magics were so rare as to be…

  Wait a moment. I stared at the face for a while, but saw nothing but the slackness of death. His earlobes, like mine, were covered in scar tissue from his many blood offerings, and there were more scars under the lip, but nothing…

  Gently, I tipped the head towards me – the rigidity of Xolotl's passage hadn't yet settled in, and I managed to open the mouth. The light of braziers glimmered on the congealed saliva within the palate, but the bulk of the cavity was occupied by the tongue, which had swollen to more than twice its normal size. My fingers caught on the raised trace of a wound: it had been a single hole at one point, but repeated passages of some
foreign object had enlarged the wound to a gaping hole–

  Penance. And a rather extreme form. If he had been a priest, it would have been normal, but he had been a warrior and an official. Which left the other explanation.

  I got up, brushing dust from my cloak, and turned around, taking in the scene. The brazier was piled with resinous wood, and the air still smelled faintly – not only of the acridity of copal incense, but also of a more unfamiliar mixture.

  "He saw a calendar priest, to speak to Tlazolteotl," I said, aloud.

  "To confess his cowardice." Tizoc-tzin's voice was scornful.