Master of the House of Darts

by Aliette de Bodard

  Nezahual-tzin – who hadn't said anything so far – looked sceptical. I felt much the same. Confession to Tlazolteotl, the Eater of Filth, served but one purpose: to void the justice of the Fifth World, by cleansing away the impurities of sin.

  "There are more pressing matters. Such as conspiracies within the palace."

  And the plague within the palace didn't matter, perhaps?

  "My Lord…" The She-Snake said cautiously, like a man crossing a bridge of frayed ropes. "Nothing so far has suggested that there is a conspiracy."

  "I can feel it," Tizoc-tzin hissed. "And so can he." He stabbed a finger in my direction.

  Every single pair of eyes – from the She-Snake to the councilmen – turned in my direction, making me wish I could open a portal and disappear into Mictlan. "I'm not sure what you mean," I said, cautiously.

  "You've been investigating. Tracking down the enemies of the Mexica Empire."

  Well, lost for lost… I found my voice from the faraway place where it had fled. "Pochtic took a bribe, my Lord. So did Coatl."

  There was a pause. "Ridiculous. You're mistaken, priest."

  "Those are serious accusations," the She-Snake said, gravely. "But it's not the first time they have been made, which I suppose lends them some credence. Nevertheless – I fail to see what this has got to do with anything."

  I had to admit he had a point – the Duality curse me if I could see what the bribe had to do with anything, either.

  A tinkle of bells: the entrance-curtain was lifted by a pale hand, and, to my utter surprise, Coatl entered, leaning on a cane and looking none too steady. He was followed by two of my priests, Palli, and a younger offering priest, Matlaelel.

  Ichtaca, who had been looking at the frescoes and muttering to himself – a sure sign that he had found something wrong – nodded to me when Coatl entered.

  "My Lord," Coatl said, bowing to Tizoc-tzin – and then to everyone else in turn. "I was informed of what happened."

  "You were sick," the She-Snake said.

  Coatl nodded. "Until I was cured." He was thinner than I remembered, his rich cotton cloak hanging loose on his shoulders, his hands shaking on the cane, showing the translucent shape of bones. In fact…

  I looked from Tizoc-tzin to him – pale faces, with the cast of the skull barely hidden under the stretched skin; the eyes shadowed, almost subsumed; the fingers almost too thin and sharp to be normal; leeched of colour like bleached bones.

  In fact…

  He looked as though he'd risen from the dead – which ought to be impossible. "What do you remember?" I asked.

  "Nothing."

  I continued to stare at him, until he finally gave in. "There was a dog, howling in the wilderness – if he caught me, I would be gone forever…" Every word seemed to come with difficulty, dragged from weak lungs, or a crushed throat. "And canals in sunlight, but I couldn't reach them, there was no time…" He stopped, then. "Why are you asking me this?"

  I shook my head. "I need to know–"

  "What we need to know is the truth." The She-Snake's voice was as cutting as broken obsidian. "Did you take a bribe, Coatl?"

  "A bribe?" he sounded sincerely surprised. Either he was a better actor than I suspected, or he was telling the truth. "No. I've never taken a bribe in my life." Again, the ring of truth – an answer coming neither too quickly nor too slowly, without perceptible hesitation, or the lifeless tone of things learned by rote.

  His gaze was on Pochtic – not on Tizoc-tzin or any of the other officials. "He's dead." He sounded utterly surprised. Had the healing – whatever it was – affected his memory?

  "It might have something to do with Eptli's death."

  "Eptli." His face darkened – in anger, in hatred? Whatever it was, it seemed to be directed at something beyond the dead warrior. "I remember Eptli. What a waste. And Pochtic–" His eyes narrowed and glimmered – one shaking hand went up to his face, wiped them clean. "This shouldn't have happened."

  "We're wasting our time," the She-Snake said. He looked from Pochtic to Coatl, and then back to Tizoctzin. "My Lord… if there is a conspiracy against you, I very much doubt it's here."

  For a moment, I thought Tizoc-tzin was going to argue, but then he shook his head. "You're right. Whatever he did, it wasn't against me. Let us go. We need to focus on more pressing matters."

  He swept out of the room, followed by Quenami and the other officials.

  I caught the She-Snake before he left. "Acatl," he said, His voice was courteous, suggesting, nevertheless, that I'd better have a good reason for disturbing him.

  "You'll want to keep a watch on the prisoners' quarters."

  "Will I?"

  For a moment, I thought of warning him about Teomitl – about what might be brewing in the palace at this very moment. But my stomach heaved at the thought of betraying my student on so little evidence. There had to be a reasonable explanation for his disappearance and odd behaviour. "There is a spell in the courtyard," I said. "Written in blood over the adobe – by someone with no love for the current Mexica Empire."

  "I see." He didn't argue with me, thank the Duality. "Who is casting the spell?"

  "I don't know. I'm working on it."

  The She-Snake grimaced. "I have far too few men as it is, with this whole business. But I'll put those I can spare on this."

  I bowed. "Thank you."

  He shrugged. "We both serve the same cause, Acatl. Now, was there anything else?"

  I hesitated, but still the words were out of my mouth before I could call them back. "What about – Acamapichtli and the clergy of Tlaloc?"

  This time, he wouldn't meet my gaze. "I don't know. Tizoc still thinks they might be guilty of something."

  Of many things, probably, knowing Acamapichtli, but that was missing the point. "We need them here – serving the same cause. You know that – a priest for the war-god, a priest for the weather and the peasants…"

  "And one for those who have moved on. Yes," the She-Snake said. "I know that."

  The implications of the sentence were clear. "Do what you can."

  "I will." He left with a nod of his head, not looking back.

  The room felt much less crowded once they'd gone, leaving me free to talk to Palli. "I'm impressed you managed to heal him," I said, with a jerk of my chin towards Coatl, who still stood, looking at Pochtic's body as if he couldn't quite believe what was happening. "But what did you do, exactly?"

  Palli looked nervous. "Is anything wrong?"

  I was about to say he hadn't taken a good look at Coatl – until I realised that only the higher orders of the clergy knew that Tizoc-tzin wasn't quite a man anymore, but something else, a soul held in the body only through the favour of the gods. "Never mind," I said. "I need to know what you did."

  Palli shifted uncomfortably. "Nothing wild, Acatl-tzin. Just calling on Toci's favour."

  "How?"

  He grimaced again. "Human sacrifice. We tried animals, but it was obvious there wasn't enough power."

  "You sacrificed a life to save a life?"

  "An important life." I hadn't seen Ichtaca creep up behind me – but suddenly he loomed behind me, as forbidding as a god. "I needn't remind you of who Coatl is."

  Deputy for the Master of Raining Blood, member of the war-council – moving among the turquoise and jade, the brightest lights and most shining mirrors of the Mexica Empire. "I know. I don't care. A life for a life is wrong."

  "Then what? Do you want us to kill him again? It won't regain the sacrifice's life. Besides," Ichtaca said, "he knew what he was doing."

  How could he be so high in the hierarchy of Lord Death, and fail to see the problem? "That's not the point. All lives are equal and weighed the same – separated only by the manner of their deaths." I felt like a teacher in the calmecac, repeating obvious truths to boys not old enough to have lost their childhood locks. To give one's life to the gods was the greatest sacrifice, but to do so in favour of another human being, to rank human lives by imp
ortance, like things…

  Ichtaca's lips pursed. His rigid sense of hierarchy – what had caused him to put Coatl ahead in the first place – wouldn't let him contradict me, his superior. "As you wish," he said.

  The Duality curse me if I let him have the last word. "It was good work," I said to Palli. "But I don't think it would make a viable cure."

  He looked disconsolate, and I couldn't think of anything that would change matters. "Look into it again," I suggested. "There might be a way around the human sacrifice."

  "I suppose."

  I wished I could offer more – but black was black and red was red, and he shouldn't have done that. I guessed my point had come across clearly enough. "Ichtaca?"

  "Yes, Acatl-tzin?" His face was smooth, expressionless.

  "There is a man you need to track down – someone who came here earlier. A calendar priest."

  "He will be under the seal of secrecy." He didn't say "you should know that", but it was abundantly clear.

  I shook my head. Yes, the priest wouldn't be inclined to reveal the contents of the interview. But still… a drowning man couldn't afford to be choosy about which bit of driftwood to cling to. "He might still give us something to understand Pochtic. It looks as though Pochtic did the prescribed penance, and then still committed suicide." Which, to be honest, made me wonder if the offence hadn't been too grave to be forgiven – which suggested either something large, or something that went against the will of a powerful god.

  "Hmm," Ichtaca was still looking at the walls – which reminded me that he'd been muttering earlier.

  "Something the matter? Here, I mean."

  His gaze suggested he thought more was the matter than a deserted room containing the body. "I don't think – something is odd in this room, Acatl-tzin. I can't quite pinpoint what, but…"

  I sighed – assessing my meagre resources. "Palli, can you see about tracking down the calendar priest?"

  Palli pulled himself straight, almost to attention. "Yes, Acatl-tzin!"

  I could feel Ichtaca's discontent as I moved into the room, leaning on my cane – Storm Lord's lightning strike me, I was looking the same as Coatl, though perhaps not quite so battered.

  Coatl still stood where we'd left him, looking down at Pochtic's body. His eyes, dark and shadowed, were all but unmoving, his gaze expressionless. But tears had run down his cheeks, staining the black face-paint. "That's not how it happens." His voice, too, was expressionless – too carefully controlled.

  "How it happens?" I asked.

  "We die in wars," he snapped. "Caught by spears and cut by obsidian, our souls taking wing on the courage of eagles, the ferocity of jaguars. We don't–" His hand rose towards Pochtic, faltered. "We don't just end it like this."

  "No," I said, at last. "I know it's not much, but I'm sorry you had to see this."

  He shrugged. "Doesn't matter now. You can't erase the memory of it, anyway. Was there anything else, Acatl-tzin?"

  I bowed my head, as gravely as I could. "Yes. I apologise for bringing this up," we both knew I wasn't sorry, not by a large margin, "but I need to know what you can remember about the sickness."

  The tremor in his hands was barely visible. "Not much. I… I couldn't breathe – as if I were in water or mud. And there were… bodies." He inhaled, sharply. "Dozens and dozens of bodies, all burning with fever. I've walked battlefields, but this was–"

  "Different."

  "Yes." Gently, he knelt by Pochtic's body, his fingers probing the wound that had slashed the arteries. "That's all there is."

  "I see." It was consistent with my own symptoms – with Teomitl's. And all consistent with Jade Skirt's involvement – water or mud, and the sensation of choking. But it was nothing new, though.

  "And Pochtic?" I asked.

  "I thought I knew Pochtic." His gaze was distant. "Obviously, I didn't."

  "So you don't know why he might have committed suicide." I was only stating the obvious there, in the hopes that it might help.

  "No," Coatl said. He rose, picked up his cane again – his breath fast, laboured. "He was a man who enjoyed life. Too much, perhaps. I don't think he understood what lay beneath as well as some."

  "You mean?"

  "He knew it was for the glory of the gods, for the Fifth Sun and Grandmother Earth. But I think, all too often, he saw his own glory first." He sighed, again, as if he were a calendar priest, closing the divination books on Pochtic's life. "Ah well. It doesn't matter, now. Never will again."

  Suicides, like the rest of the unglorious dead, went to Mictlan. Given enough time, we could summon the dead man's soul, find out what he had known.

  I suspected we didn't have that kind of time.

  "If you didn't take a bribe…" I said, slowly.

  He looked up, with a brief spark of anger in his eyes – nothing unnatural or false there. He may have been acting, but I'd interviewed him earlier and had seen that, while he might have many talents, subtle acting wasn't among them. "How many times will I need to tell you I didn't?"

  "It's not that," I said, throwing up both hands like a shield. "My point is that someone still accused you of taking it."

  "Who?"

  Judging by the gleam in his eyes, I wasn't sure I ought to tell him. But still, he'd find it easily enough. "A sacred courtesan, Xiloxoch. And it looks like several of you were approached with this. By Eptli."

  "Eptli." Coatl's voice was bitter. "He's been a worse companion dead than alive, I have to say."

  I had to agree there. "And you don't remember this, either?"

  Coatl shrugged. "I know what you want." For the first time, there was anger in his gaze. "Eptli was one of my men, and whether he's dead or not, I won't see his name being soiled by chaff and straw. If I have nothing to say against him, I won't invent calumnies."

  "Look," I said. He'd just been healed from the sickness, and he couldn't possibly have understood how everything had gone wrong. "Chipahua and his household are dead. The Master of the House of Darts has vanished. We have further warriors with the illness, and someone has been writing threats against the Mexica Empire in the prisoners' quarters." Gods, put like that, it became rather overwhelming.

  "And you see me sorry for it," Coatl said, "but there is nothing much I can do to help you."

  I could recognise obstruction when I saw it. "Fine," I said, stifling a sigh. "If you can think of anything that would shed light on those matters, keep me in mind."

  "Of course," he said, but we both knew he was lying.

  EIGHTEEN

  The Dead Man's Confession

  Palli caught up with me as I was walking out of the palace – we'd left Ichtaca with Pochtic's body, still mumbling to himself. I wasn't sure how much of it was sheer annoyance at my position on the healing ritual, and how much was his detecting a genuine problem.

  Never mind. We could both argue until we ran out of breath, but I wouldn't change my position. I had the uncomfortable feeling Ichtaca wouldn't, either.

  "Acatl-tzin," Palli said. "I know you asked me to track down the calendar priest, but it's likely he'll be at his temple. We can go together, if you want."

  I glanced at the sky: the hour of Xochipilli the Flower Prince, with the Fifth Sun at His zenith. Palli was right: most of them would be having lunch. "Let's have a look."

  We stopped for a quick lunch, buying spiced tamales from a vendor and eating the warm food with relief.

  The calendar priests had their own temple, a low complex with a small pyramid shrine. As Palli and I walked in, a priest was busy directing a painter to add day-signs to a fresco; others were carrying copies of the sacred calendars back to storage rooms, while novice priests ground pigments in the huge stone mortars. A few more sat cross-legged, annotating horoscopes and pondering favourable dates for their supplicants' endeavours. The air smelled of fried maize more than copal smoke, an odd change after the atmosphere of the Sacred Precinct.

  The first calendar priest we found directed us to his superior – who di
rected us to his superior in turn, until we found ourselves facing the head of the order, a portly man with a stern face, who looked as displeased by our request as by the prospect of being disturbed at his lunch.

  "Acatl-tzin." He managed to radiate disapproval even over his utterance of my name. "I'm told you're looking for a calendar priest."

  I nodded, and wasn't surprised when he launched into a speech on confession. "As you're well aware, the priest is but the vessel through which confessions are made to the Eater of Filth. He may not repeat the words, for they haven't been spoken in the Fifth World…"