Master of the House of Darts

by Aliette de Bodard

  She fought better than I'd expected, but it was clear that they were mismatched. Her opponent was a warchief and a sorcerer; Mihmatini's only experience with weapons must have been in the Duality House. Her stance was purely defensive – it was a dance to her, I realised, and she sidestepped the blades, but couldn't bring herself to break the pattern by stabbing her partner – surely she had to realise she couldn't hold – surely she had to shift her stance?

  Neither of them looked up to the dais – they flickered in and out of existence, and I was beginning to suspect that they couldn't see us at all. Within a god's world, the gods made the rules – and Lord Death could alter reality as it suited His whim.

  The Storm Lord's Lightning strike me, where was Neutemoc when you needed him?

  "Guests," Mictlantecuhtli said, behind me. "What an odd thing to bring here." He sounded genuinely puzzled.

  I needed – I needed Nezahual-tzin awake, to complete his part of the ritual – if Mihmatini had managed to speak with him at all, before they tumbled into Mictlan. I needed Acamapichtli – as I thought this, the scene in front of me wavered, and I stood once more in a dusty courtyard, watching an ahuizotl leap straight for me. With an effort, I shifted – making the beast vanish as if into smoke – and shifted again.

  The courtyard was shrouded in greenish mist, but as I stood within the gate, I saw Acamapichtli standing within the circle, hefting his blade thoughtfully. Besides him, Neutemoc and the Consort Cozolli were fighting two ahuizotls, albeit with difficulty. "Acatl!" Acamapichtli said.

  I made a gesture with my left hand. "I'm working on it."

  "You'd better work fast."

  I didn't brother to protest. Instead, I banished the scene again, and turned back to Mictlantecuhtli – who stood watching me as if nothing had happened.

  "You warned me the boundary was broken," I said, slowly.

  "A favour." He smiled – revealing teeth as yellow as corn, and stars caught within his throat. "For you, who never asked for any."

  "I don't understand."

  "You're our High Priest," Mictecacihuatl said. She stretched out a bony hand, to point at the dead. "Most people in your place would scheme and intrigue."

  Why was She telling me this? "But that's not what you need," I said, slowly.

  "That's not what you can give us, either." Mictlantecuhtli waved a dismissive hand. "We don't ask worship. We ask for you, as our High Priest, to keep the boundaries. Do you know why?"

  Was this really the time for childish questions? "Because the Fifth Word will end if they're not maintained."

  I heard a sound, then, a clicking like bones rubbing together, and it was a while before I realised He was laughing. "Oh, Acatl. Have you learned nothing? We ask you to keep the boundaries because there is no life without death, and no death, either, without life. What is Our dominion, if the dead can come back into the Fifth World when they will it?"

  "Then…" I said, slowly, "then… you don't approve of this, either."

  The combatants flickered into existence again – Mihmatini had lost the shorter blade; she clung to the other one in bleeding hands, holding it in front of her like a shield.

  "Of the plague?" Mictecacihuatl asked.

  Of what I had done, bringing Tizoc-tzin back, I thought, but could not voice the sentence aloud. Mictlantecuhtli's face was turned towards me, but I wouldn't look at the shadowed eye-sockets.

  "Acatl," He said gently. "Do not torment yourself. We do not stand against the will of the Southern Hummingbird."

  "But–" But that wasn't what I wanted to know. I realised I'd meant to ask Him if we'd made the right decision, but stopped myself in time. He would have had words, and they would have been wise and detached. But the truth was, it was past time to be selfish and worry about my conscience, or dwell on things I could not take back. A course had been set, and we would not turn back.

  Mihmatini blocked a strike that would have decapitated her; her eyes were wild, looking right and left, as if she expected to see me.

  Time to end this. I took a deep breath. Even if Nezahualtzin woke up, he wouldn't be able to do his part in the ritual, not while Mihmatini was still pressed by the fight.

  The fight needed to end, first. Moquihuix-tzin needed to die. And for that…

  "My Lord," I said, slowly. "I ask for no favours; merely for things to take their course. I want what should happen here, on the ninth level of the underworld, to happen." For the dead – the defeated – to find oblivion at Mictlantecuhtli's feet.

  "Why?" Again, genuine puzzlement. "Would you put your sister in danger?"

  He was a god – had been mortal, once, in the beginning of the Fifth Age, before He gave his blood to move the Fifth Sun across the Heavens. He couldn't understand us, not any more – couldn't understand fear and hope and despair, and the knowledge that I needed to bargain for this now before knowing who would win the fight – that I needed to put my own sister's soul in the balance, agree to consign her to Mictlantecuhtli's oblivion if she lost the battle – so that the Mexica Empire could be great, could follow the destiny set by the Southern Hummingbird – guzzling human hearts and captives like a glutton, taking in riches from the northern deserts and the southern jungles until it choked on them.

  I–

  "Acatl?"

  They were shadows again – the fight a hint, like a painting hidden underneath a layer of maguey paper – and all I could do was guess, and hope against all hope – and do what was needed.

  "My Lord." I kept my voice steady, focusing on the polished bones of the dais, on the musty smell of earth and dry corpses. "A soul that comes before Your throne finds oblivion."

  "That is truth." I felt Him shift, high above me – waiting as He always waited, for everything to come to an end.

  "I–" The words caught in my throat – I kept my thoughts away from the fight, focusing them on the memory of the dead and the wounded – of Tapalcayotl, of Chipahua, of Acamapichtli. "What of a soul who dies before Your throne?"

  There was silence – flowing like the calm after a successful birth. At length, Mictlantecuhtli made a sound I couldn't interpret – a bark of laughter, of anger? "Look at Me, Acatl."

  "I–"

  "You're asking for no favours. You never do. You merely want Me to take my due as I have always done. You know as well as I do that there is no ceremony in Mictlan."

  Slowly, carefully, I pulled myself up – how was Mihmatini doing? Could she hold out for that long? – and looked him in the eye.

  His face was smooth, polished bone, His cheekbones spattered with drops of blood; His headdress was of owl feathers and paper offerings; His teeth were white, and as sharp as those of a jaguar. His eye-sockets weren't empty like those of a skull, but rather filled with a soft, yellow light, like the Fifth Sun at the end of the afternoon.

  "Few have asked this. Your need must be pressing." Between His teeth glittered light, too – a hundred stars, caught in His throat, in His empty rib-cage, imprisoned there to keep the Fifth Sun safe.

  "I do what I must." The words were ashes in my mouth.

  "For the Fifth World?"

  I could have said the Empire, but it would have been a lie – I wasn't sure I could believe in that anymore, not with our current Revered Speaker. Or perhaps I needed to believe in it – in the idea rather than the man, to make it all somehow palatable. "For balance, and our survival. And justice." For the warriors and the crippled clergy of Tlaloc, and all those dead before their time.

  "I see." His eyes were – no, not warm, for He was death, and would ever be cold – but there was sadness in them, and sympathy, and for a bare moment, as we looked at each other I had the feeling that He encompassed me, and weighed me, and understood me better than anyone ever would, and it was a thought as bitter as raw cacao. "I said it before, Acatl, it is not a favour – mainly an extension of rules."

  "Then You agree?"

  He was silent, for a while. "It sets an uncomfortable precedent. But you are My high priest, a
nd I know your need. So go, with My blessing." He smiled – a bare uncovering of the stars that whirled within Him. "For what it's worth, Acatl."

  Something shimmered and tightened in the air. When I turned around, the fight had stopped shivering in and out of reality, and had become entirely real.

  "We shall meet again, Acatl." They were fading away, leaving me on an empty dais – with a sense of odd warmth running through me.

  Not a promise; a mere statement of fact. Almost all the Dead were His.

  I didn't move. I couldn't, for I stood on the threshold of the gateway, and I couldn't enter one world or another, lest the ritual fail. I kept my eyes on the fight ahead – Mihmatini was moving yet more awkwardly, stumbling every other step. On Coatl – Moquihuix-tzin's – face was nothing but sheer determination. He had lost his sword, but wielded the axe with the ease of one of Chalchiuhcutlicue's devotees – thank the gods he couldn't use his magic, not here in the underworld where Lord Death's wards were at their strongest.

  I called up the courtyard, briefly, and met Acamapichtli's exasperated eyes. The ahuizotls seemed to be all dead, though Neutemoc was limping, and Cozolli held her arm awkwardly. "Any time you feel like starting the ritual…"

  "We still have – a problem," I said. "Hold on, will you?"

  In the underworld, Nezahual-tzin was stirring, dazedly pulling himself up – and they were all so far away, stuck as if behind a pane of glass, neither of them seeing me – I would have screamed, but even as I shifted, Moquihuix-tzin sent Mihmatini's dagger flying – and closed in for the kill.

  "Mihmatini!" The scream was torn out of me before I could think, fear and rage mingling in one primal, unstoppable force that seemed to take its substance from my wrung lungs. "Mihmatini!"

  At the last moment she sidestepped and, for a moment, her eyes met mine, and saw me. She smiled, shaking her head – that same expression she had whenever I tried to mother her.

  Oh, Acatl. You're such a fool sometimes.

  It happened in an eye-blink – she rolled to the ground, avoiding the axe stroke which would have split her skull; her outstretched hand met Nezahual-tzin's, and she rose, holding something sharp and white – the aura of Duality magic around her flaring like the hood of a snake, an expenditure of power that must have utterly drained her – and, grasping the axe in one hand, used the other to drive her weapon into Coatl's chest.

  He gasped, and collapsed like a felled tree, while Mihmatini stood over him, her face expressionless, her hand dripping blood from the deep wound she'd taken from seizing the axe.

  She smiled up at me, then turned to Nezahual-tzin and pulled him towards the dais. I couldn't hear them at first – my sister seemed to be whispering furiously, and Nezahual-tzin, still dazed, mostly nodded – a fact which must have pleased her no end.

  At last, they stood below me. Nezahual-tzin smiled up at me. "As timely as ever, I see."

  I shook my head – now wasn't a time for jibes. "Are you–?" I asked Mihmatini. "I thought he was going to kill you." I thought I was going to lose her forever, that I'd bargained for nothing but one more death. "I–" It hurt, to breathe.

  "Oh, Acatl." Her voice was pitying. "Have more faith."

  I said nothing – I couldn't think of any smart answer to this. Instead, I turned to Nezahual-tzin. "Have you–?"

  He nodded, brusquely. "Let's get to it, shall we? I don't know how long I can stay upright."

  The courtyard shimmered into existence again – except that I stopped it halfway through, before it became fully material. I could see Nezahual-tzin, slowly breathing – calling down the Feathered Serpent's power until his skin glowed with pulsing magic – and Acamapichtli, his blind eyes thrown back, looking up at the sky, which slowly filled up with storm clouds. There was a noise like wings unfurling, and the distant rumble of thunder.

  And I – I, who belonged in neither of those worlds – felt the touch of Mictlantecuhtli spread from the marks on my shoulder, a cold that seized my bones and muscles, and then my heart until I could no longer feel it beat. My hands curled up into claws, my skin reddening against the cold.

  "I stand on the boundaries,

  On the edge of the region of mystery, on the edge of the house of the fleshless,

  I stand on the boundaries,

  On the edge of the gardens of flowers, of the expanses of grass…"

  And, as I spoke the words of the hymn – as Acamapichtli and Nezahual-tzin joined me – light slowly appeared, washing us all in a radiance that was neither the harsh one of the Fifth Sun, nor the green mouldy one of Mictlan, but something that had been there for the birth of the Fifth World, something that would always be there, underpinning the order we kept.

  "We stand for sickness, in the house of the living,

  For the breath of the wind, in the region of the fleshless,

  For life and death, caught on the threshold…"

  And there was… something, like a tightening, as if a loose garment had just readjusted itself: the world knitting itself back together. My gate wavered and shrank, and the nausea that I'd carried with me all this time finally sank down to almost nothing.

  "With this we will stand straight,

  With this we will live,

  Oh, for a while, for a little while…"

  And then the feeling was gone, and I sagged to my knees like a wounded man whose feverish rush of energy had just worn off. "Acatl!"

  "I'm fine, I'm fine," I said, but I could barely pull myself to my feet. I shouldn't have left the cane behind us. I turned back, to stare at Moquihuix's body – and, to my surprise he stared back at me, his face clouded with the approach of death. The weapon Mihmatini had used to stab him – a sharp reed which shone as if it had been dipped in gold – was still embedded in his chest.

  He didn't look like Coatl at all, but like his true self, a Revered Speaker lying in the dust of Mictlan. "Priest." His voice still carried far, as if he were addressing the crowd from atop his pyramid temple. His lips curled up, in a smile that was painful. "It is Tenochtitlan's destiny, indeed, to rule over the valley of Anahuac, to expand into the Fifth World and make everything theirs. I wish you joy."

  "Wait!" I said, but his eyes had closed, and his body was already shimmering out of existence, his limbs growing fainter and fainter, followed by his torso, and, last of all, the turquoise cloak which had marked him as a Revered Speaker and his quetzal feather headdress, crumbling into a fine powder which mingled with the dust.

  A wind rose, carrying a faint, familiar smell – rotting maize, or leaves – and his soul rose upon it; not the faint memory of a human, but a bright radiance made of hundreds of people: the people of the plague, the dead that he carried with him. He rose towards the dais, and was lost to sight.

  When I turned around, Nezahual-tzin and Mihmatini had both joined me on the dais. Nezahual-tzin was binding Mihmatini's wound, with a mocking smile. She was glaring at him, daring him to make a comment.

  "You'll be fine?" I asked.

  She shook her head. "Of course I'll be fine, Acatl. Don't fuss like an old woman. It doesn't become you."

  "Sorry," I said. "It's just that–" I saw, then, that her free hand was shaking, her back slightly arched, and I could only guess at the effort she used to hold herself upright. "Never mind. Let's go back."

  We came back to the Fifth World in the same courtyard we'd left from. It was bathed in sunlight, the corpse of Matlaelel and the bloody remnants of a few ahuizotls the only signs of the battle. And another corpse, too, shrivelled like a dried fruit, who might have been Coatl, who might have been Moquihuix-tzin: it was hard to tell anymore, with the decay.

  I'd expected a crowd of noblewomen, irate at our intrusion upon their lives – who were, I was beginning to understand, neither as weak nor as defenceless as I'd allowed myself to think.

  I hadn't expected the warriors: an army large enough to fill the place, their macuahitl swords glinting in the sunlight – and, at their head, the old woman and Teomitl – and my bro
ther Neutemoc and my offering priest Palli, standing in their path with the desperate assurance of doomed men.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The Revered Speaker

  We'd appeared behind Neutemoc and Palli – which meant that the warriors saw us first, and, as their faces widened in incredulity, Neutemoc turned round to face me. "Acatl!"

  He looked exhausted – his jaguar's furs bloodied, his helmet split with a blow that must have narrowly avoided cleaving his skull. Palli himself was holding himself with easy, casual aloofness, as befitted both his position and the situation, but beneath it all, he had to be no less tired than my brother. "What in the Fifth World…?"

  I looked for Acamapichtli – who had withdrawn between the pillars, and was on his knees, helping his Consort bandage her wound. His gaze was mild, sardonic: it said, quite clearly, that he would take no part in this, that, Master of the House of Darts or Revered Speaker, it made no difference to him at all, and that the Fifth World would endure as it always had.