Mahuizoh smiled without joy. “And a hero’s life. Yes. I can certainly see why Coaxoch wouldn’t forget him in a hurry.” His voice was bitter, and I thought I knew why: he had hoped to gain a place in Coaxoch’s heart, but had always found a dead man standing before him.
“Tell me about Papalotl,” I said.
“Papalotl . . . could be difficult,” Mahuizoh said. “She was willful, and independent, and she left the clan to focus on her art, abandoning our customs.”
“And you disapproved?”
His face twisted. “I didn’t see what she saw. I didn’t live through a war. I didn’t have the right to judge—and neither had the clan.”
“So you loved her, in your own way.”
Mahuizoh started. “Yes,” he said. “You could say that.” But there was a deeper meaning to his words, one I could not fathom.
“Do know Tecolli?”
Mahuizoh’s face darkened, and for a moment I saw murder in his eyes. “Yes. He was Papalotl’s lover.”
“You did not like him?”
“I met him once. I know his kind.”
“Know?”
He spat the words. “Tecolli is a parasite. He’ll take everything you have to give, and return nothing.”
“Not even love?” I asked, seemingly innocently.
“Mark my words,” Mahuizoh said, looking up at me, and all of a sudden I was not staring at the face of a frail computer programmer, but into the black-streaked one of a warrior. “He’ll suck everything out of you, drink your blood and feast on your pain, and when he leaves there’ll be nothing left but a dry husk. He didn’t love Papalotl; and I never understood what she saw in him.”
And in that last sentence I heard more than hatred for Tecolli.
“You were jealous,” I said. “Of both of them.”
He recoiled at my words. “No. Never.”
“Jealous enough to kill, even.”
His face had grown blank, and he said nothing. At last he looked up again, and he had grown smaller, almost penitent. “She didn’t understand,” he said. “Didn’t understand that she was wasting her time. I couldn’t make her see.”
“Where were you this morning?”
Mahuizoh smiled. “Checking alibis? I have very little to offer you. It was my day off, so I went for a walk near the Blue Crane Pagoda. And then I came here.”
“I suppose no one saw you?”
“No one that would recognise me. There were a few passers-by, but I wasn’t paying attention to them, and I doubt they were paying attention to me.”
“I see,” I said, but I could not forget his black rage, could not forget that he might have lost his calm once and for all, finding Papalotl naked in her workshop, waiting for her lover. “Thank you.”
“If you don’t need me, I’ll go back,” Mahuizoh said.
I shook my head. “No, I don’t need you. I might have further questions.”
He looked uncomfortable at that. “I’ll do my best to answer them.”
I left him, made my way through the crowded restaurant, listening to the hymns blaring out of the loudspeakers, inhaling the smell of maize and octli drink. I could not banish Coaxoch’s words from my mind: I will tell you what I remember: brother turning on brother, and the streets black with blood . . .
It was a nightmare I had left behind, a long time ago. It could neither touch me nor harm me. I was Xuyan, not Mexica. I was safe, ensconced in Xuya’s bosom, worshipping the Taoist Immortals and the Buddha, and trusting the protection of the Imperial Family in Dongjing.
Safe.
But the War, it seemed, never truly went away.
I came back to the tribunal in a thoughtful mood, having found no one to confirm either Mahuizoh’s or Coaxoch’s alibi. Since we were well into the Eighth Bi-Hour, I had a quick, belated lunch at my desk—noodle soup with coriander, and a coconut jelly as a dessert.
I checked my mails. A few reports from the militia were waiting for me. The timestamp dated them earlier than my departure for The Quetzal’s Rest, but they had been caught in the network of the bureaucracy and slowed down on their way to the tribunal.
Cursing against weighty administrations, I read them, not expecting much.
How wrong I was.
Unit 7 of the Mexica District Militia had interviewed the left-door neighbour of Papalotl: an old merchant who had insomnia, and who had been awake at the Third Bi-Hour. He had seen Tecolli enter Papalotl’s flat a full half-hour before Tecolli actually called the militia.
Damn. There was still a possibility that Tecolli could have found the body earlier, but if so, why hadn’t he called the militia at once? Why had he waited so much?
Disposing of evidence, I thought, my heart beating faster and faster.
I should have arrested Tecolli. But instead I had clung to my old ideals, that torture was abhorrent and that a magistrate should find the truth, not wring it out of suspects. I had been weak.
Now . . .
I had him watched. He had been making phone calls. It was only a matter of time before he had to make some kind of move.
I sighed. Once a mistake had been made, you might as well drain the cup to the dregs. I’d wait.
It was a frustrating process. The afternoon passed and deepened into night. I attempted some Buddhist meditations, but I could not focus on my breath properly, and after a while I gave this up as a lost cause.
When the announcement came, I was so coiled up I knocked down the handset trying to pick it up.
“Your Excellency? This is Unit 6 of the militia. Target is on the move. Repeat: target is on the move.”
I grabbed my coat and rushed out, shouting for my aircar.
I met up with the aircar of Unit 6 in a fairly seedy neighbourhood of Fenliu: the Gardens of Felicity, once a middle-class area, had sunk back to crowded tenements and derelict buildings, sometimes abandoned halfway through their construction.
I had a brief chat with Li Fai, who was heading the militia: Tecolli had left the Black Tez Barracks and taken the mag-lev train which crisscrossed Fenliu. One of the militiamen had followed Tecolli on the mag-lev, until he alighted at the Gardens of Felicity station, making his way on foot into a small, almost unremarkable shop on Lao Zi Avenue.
Both our aircars were parked at the corner of Lao Zi Avenue, about fifty paces from the shop—and Tecolli had not emerged from there.
I looked at the three militiamen, checking that they had their service weapons, and drew my own Yi Sen semi-automatic. “We’re going in,” I said, arming the weapon in one swift movement, and hearing the click as the bullet was released into the chamber.
I stood near the closed door of the shop, feeling the reassuring weight of my gun. At this late hour the street was almost deserted, and any stray passers-by gave us a wide berth, not keen on interfering with Xuyan justice.
Li Fai was standing on tiptoe, trying to look through the window. After a while he came down, and raised three fingers. Three people, then. Or more. Li Fai had not seemed very certain.
Armed? I signed, and he shrugged.
Oh well. There came a time when you had to act.
I raised my hand, and gave the signal.
The first of the militiamen kicked open the door, yelling, “Militia!” and rushed inside. I followed, caught between two militiamen, fighting to raise my gun amidst memories of the War, of pressing myself in a doorway as loyalists and rebels shot at each other on Tenochtitlán’s marketplace—
No.
Not now.
Inside, everything was dark, save for a dimly-lit door; I caught a glimpse of several figures running through the frame.
I was about to run through the door in pursuit, but someone—Li Fai—laid a hand on my shoulder to restrain me.
I remembered then that I was a District Magistrate, and that they could not take risks with my life. It was frustrating, but I knew I had not been trained for this. I nodded to tell Li Fai I’d understood, and watched the militiamen rush through the door.
Gunshots echoed through the room. The first man who had entered fell, clutching his shoulder. A few more gunshots—I could not see the militiamen; they’d gone beyond the door.
A deathly silence settled over the place. I moved cautiously around the counter, and stepped through the door.
The light I had seen came from several hologram pedestals, which had their visuals on, but not their audios. On the floor were scattered chips—I almost stepped on one.
In the corner of the wood-panelled room was the body of a small, wizened Xuyan woman I did not know. Beside her was the gun she’d used. The militia’s bullet had caught her in the chest and thrown her backwards, against the wall.
Tecolli was crouching next to her, in a position of surrender. Two militiamen stood guard over him.
I smiled, grimly. “You’re under arrest.”
“I’ve done nothing wrong,” Tecolli said, attempting to pull himself upright.
“Sedition will suffice,” I said. “Resisting the militia is a serious crime.” As I said this, my gaze, roaming the room, caught one of the images on a hologram pedestal, an image that was all too familiar: a Chinese man dressed in the grey silk robes of a eunuch, gradually fading and being replaced by thirteen junks on the ocean.
Papalotl’s holograms.
Things that should not have been copied, or sold elsewhere than in Papalotl’s workshop.
I remembered the missing chips in Papalotl’s pedestals, and suddenly understood where Tecolli’s wealth had come from. He had been stealing her chips, copying them and selling the copies on the black market And Papalotl had found out—no doubt the reason for the quarrel.
But for him it was different: he was an Eagle Knight, and subject to harsher laws than commoners. For a crime such as this he would be executed, his family disgraced. He’d had to silence Papalotl, once and for all.
He’ll suck everything out of you.
Mahuizoh could not have known the truth behind his words, back when he had spoken them to me. There was no way he could have known.
Tecolli’s eyes met mine, and must have seen the loathing I felt for him. All pretence fled from his face. “I did not kill her,” he said. “I swear to you I did not kill her.” He looked as though he might weep.
I spat, from between clenched teeth, “Take him away. We’ll deal with him at the tribunal.”
______
Yi Mei-Lin, one of the clerks, entered my office as I was typing the last of my preliminary report.
“How is he?” I asked.
“Still protesting his innocence. He says he found her already dead, and only used the extra half-hour to wipe off any proof that he might have tampered with the holograms—removing his fingerprints and wiping the pedestals clean.” Yi Mei-Lin had a full cardboard box in her hands, with a piece of paper covering it. “These are his things. I thought you might want a look.”
I sighed. My eyes ached from looking at the computer. “Yes. I probably should.” I already knew that although we’d found the missing chips in the black-market shop, the swan hologram’s audio chip had been nowhere to be found. Tecolli denied taking it. Not that I was inclined to trust him currently.
“I’ll bring you some jasmine tea,” Yi Mei-Lin said, and slipped out the door.
I rifled through Tecolli’s things, absentmindedly. The usual: wallet, keys, copper yuans—not even enough to buy tobacco. A metal lip-plug, tarnished from long contact with the skin. A packet of honey-toasted gourd seeds, still wrapped in plastic.
A wad of papers, folded over and over. I reached for it, unwound it, and stared at the letters. It was part of a script—the swan’s script, I realised, my heart beating faster. Tecolli had been the voice of the hummingbird, and Papalotl’s script was forcefully underlined and annotated in the margins, in preparation for his role.
The swan—Papalotl’s voice—merely recited a series of dates: the doomed charge of the Second Red Tezcatlipoca Regiment during Xuya’s Independence War with China; the Tripartite War and the triumph of the Mexica-Xuyan alliance over the United States.
And, finally, the Mexica Civil War, twelve years ago: the Xuyan soldiers dispatched to help restore order; the thousands of Mexica fleeing their home cities and settling across the border.
The swan then fell silent, and the hummingbird appeared. It was there that Tecolli’s role started.
Tonatiuh, the Fifth Sun, has just risen, and outside my cell I hear the priests of Huitzilpochtli chanting their hymns as they prepare the altar for my sacrifice.
I know that you are beyond the border now. The Xuyans will welcome you as they have welcomed so many of our people, and you will make a new life there. I regret only that I will not be there to walk with you—
Puzzled, I turned the pages. It was a long, poignant monologue, but it did not feel like the other audio chips I’d heard in Papalotl’s workshop. It felt . . .
More real, I thought, chilled without knowing why. I scanned the bottom of the second-to-last page.
They will send this letter on to you, for although they are my enemies they are honourable men.
Weep not for me. I die a warrior’s death on the altar, and my blood will make Tonatiuh strong. But my love is and always has been yours forever, whether in this world of fading flowers or in the god’s heaven.
Izel.
Izel.
Coaxoch’s fiancé.
It was the Third Bi-Hour when I arrived at The Quetzal’s Rest, and the restaurant was deserted, all the patrons since long gone back to their houses.
A light was still on upstairs, in the office. Gently, I pushed the door open, and saw her standing by the window, her back to me. She wore a robe with embroidered deer, and a shawl of maguey fibres—the traditional garb of women in Greater Mexica.
“I was waiting for you,” she said, not turning around.
“Where’s Mahuizoh?”
“I sent him away.” Coaxoch’s voice was utterly emotionless. On the desk stood the faded picture of Izel, and in front of the picture was a small bowl holding some grass—a funeral offering. “He would not have understood.”
She turned, slowly, to face me. Two streaks of black makeup ran on either side of her cheeks: the markings put on the dead’s faces before they were cremated.
Surprised, I recoiled, but she made no move towards me. Cautiously, I extended Tecolli’s crumpled paper to her. “Papalotl stole the original letter from you, didn’t she?”
Coaxoch shook her head. “I should have seen her more often, after we moved here,” she said. “I should have seen what she was turning into.” She laid both hands on the desk, as stately as an Empress. “When it went missing, I didn’t think of Papalotl. Mahuizoh thought that maybe Tecolli—”
“Mahuizoh hates Tecolli,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Coaxoch said. “I went to Papalotl, to ask her whether she’d seen it. I didn’t think.” She took a deep breath to steady herself. Her skin had gone red under the makeup. “When I came in, she opened the door to me—naked, and she didn’t even offer to dress herself. She left me downstairs and headed for her workshop, to finish something, she said. I followed her.”
Her voice quavered, but she steadied it. “I saw the letter on her table—she’d taken it. And when I asked her about it, she told me about the hologram, told me we were going to be famous when she sold this, and the Prefect’s Office would put it where everyone could see it . . .”
I said nothing. I remained where I was, listening to her voice grow more and more intense, until every word tore at me.
“She was going to . . . sell my pain. To sell my memories just for a piece of fame. She was going—” Coaxoch drew a deep breath. “I told her to stop. I told her it was not right, but she stood on the landing, shaking her head and smiling at me—as if she just had to ask for everything to be made right.
“She didn’t understand. She just didn’t understand. She’d changed too much.” Coaxoch stared at her hands, and then back at the picture of Izel.
“I couldn’t make her shut up, you understand? I pushed and beat at her, and she wouldn’t stop smiling at me, selling my pain—”
She raised her gaze towards me, and I recognised the look in her eyes: it was the look of someone already dead, and who knows it. “I had to make her stop,” she said, her voice lower now, almost spent. “But she never did. Even after she fell she was still smiling.” There were tears in her eyes now. “Still laughing at me.”
I said at last, finding my words with difficulty, “You know how it goes.”
Coaxoch shrugged. “Do you think I care, Hue Ma? It ceased to matter a long time ago.” She cast a last, longing glance towards Izel’s picture, and straightened her shoulders. “It’s not right either, what I’ve done. Do what you have to.”
She did not bend, then, as the militia came into the room—did not bend as they closed the handcuffs over her wrists and led her away. I knew she would not bend on the day of her execution either, whatever the manner of it.
As we exited the restaurant, I caught a glimpse of Mahuizoh among the few passers-by who had gathered to watch the militia aircar. His gaze met mine, and held it for a second—and there were such depths of grief behind the spectacles that my breath caught and could not be released.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “Justice has to be done.” But I did not think he could hear me.
Back at the tribunal, I sat at my desk, staring at my computer’s screensaver—one of Quetzalcoatl’s butterflies, multiplying until it filled the screen. There was something mindlessly reassuring about it.
I had to deal with Tecolli, had to type a report, had to call Zhu Bao to let him know his trust had not been misplaced and that I had found the culprit. I had to—
I felt hollow, drained of everything. At last I moved, and knelt before my small altar. Slowly, with shaking hands, I lit a stick of incense and placed it upright before the lacquered tablets. Then I sat on my knees, trying to banish the memory of Coaxoch’s voice.
I thought of her words to me: It ceased to matter a long time ago.
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