Servant of the Underworld

by Aliette de Bodard

  The Storm Lord smite him, surely he hadn't dared? "Neutemoc–"

  His lips had gone white. "You asked, Acatl. You wanted to know why I was here tonight. I had an assignation. She… she flirted with me, quite ostentatiously."

  And he'd gone to her rooms. "You gave in?" I rose, towered over him. "You were stupid enough to give in?"

  "You don't understand."

  "No," I said. "You're right. I don't understand why you'd endanger all you've got for a pretty smile." Eleuia was no longer a sacred courtesan: to sleep with her was adultery. And for that, they would both be put to death. And then… No more quetzal feathers, no more showers of gold brought to his luxurious home; no more calmecac education for his sons or his daughters, or for our orphaned sister.

  I said, haltingly, "For the Duality's sake! You've got a family, you've got a loving wife." Everything – he had everything my parents had wished for their children: the glory of a successful warrior – and not the poverty-ridden life of a measly priest, barely able to support himself, let alone take care of his aged parents…

  Neutemoc smiled. "You're ill-informed, brother. Huei and I haven't talked for a while."

  I blinked. "What?"

  He shrugged. "Private matters," he said.

  "Such as your sleeping with a few priestesses?" I asked, rubbing the salt on his wounds. If he had indeed been unfaithful, Huei would have kept silent: if not for his sake, then for the sake of their children.

  He finally opened his eyes to stare at me, and his gaze was ice. "I haven't committed adultery. Even tonight, though that was rather unexpected." He laughed, sharply, sarcastically. "I know what you think. What a man I make, huh?"

  "Don't push me. Or I might just leave you in peace."

  "You've already done too much as it is." Neutemoc's hands clenched again.

  "You were the one who brought me into this, all because you were incapable of resisting a woman's charms," I snapped.

  Neutemoc was silent for a while, looking at me with an expression I couldn't interpret. "You're right. I shouldn't have said that. I apologise. Can we go back to where we were?"

  I had been bracing myself for a further attack; this extinguished my anger as efficiently as water poured on a hearth. Struggling to hide my surprise, I nodded. "So you came to her rooms with the promise of a pleasurable evening. I assume you got in by pretending you were here to see your daughter?"

  He shrugged. "It was before sunset. Nothing wrong with my visiting her."

  "But you didn't."

  "No," Neutemoc said. "I– Eleuia had told me where her rooms were. I went there and found her waiting for me. She poured me a glass of frothy chocolate, with milk and maize gruel – good chocolate, too, very tasty. That's the last thing I remember clearly. Then the room was spinning, and…" His hand clenched again. "There was darkness, Acatl, deeper than the shadows of Mictlan. Something leapt at her. I tried to step in, but everything went dark. When I woke up, I was alone, and covered in her blood."

  It still sounded as though he was leaving out parts of the story – probably Eleuia's seduction of him, which I didn't think I was capable of hearing out in any case – but this version sounded far more sincere than the first one he'd given me. Which, of course, didn't mean it was the truth. If he and Eleuia had consummated their act, he could have panicked and decided she was a risk to him while she still lived. I didn't like the thought, but Neutemoc was a canny enough man, or he wouldn't have risen so high in the warrior hierarchy.

  "You could at least have had the intelligence to get out as soon as you could," I said. "What about the furniture?"

  He stared at me. "Furniture? I… You know, I don't quite remember about that. I think I must have wanted to make sure I hadn't left any trace of my passage."

  Not a sensible thing to do. But then, would I be sensible, if I woke up in a deserted room, covered in blood, with no memory of what had happened?

  "Very well," I said. "Do you have anything that can prove your story?"

  Neutemoc stared at me, shocked. "I'm your brother, Acatl. Isn't my word enough?"

  He was really slow tonight. "We already went through that, remember?" I tried to keep my voice as calm as possible. "Your word alone won't sway the magistrates."

  "Magistrates." His voice was flat.

  "It will come to trial," I said.

  I'd expected him to be angry. Instead, he suddenly went as still as a carved statue. His lips moved, but I couldn't hear any word.

  "Neutemoc?"

  He looked up, right through me. "It's only fair, I suppose," he said. "Deserved."

  My stomach plummeted. "Why did you deserve it?"

  But he wouldn't talk to me any more, no matter how many times I tried to draw him out of his trance.

  Ceyaxochitl was waiting for me in the corridor, talking to Yaotl. He threw me an amused glance as I got closer.

  "So?" Ceyaxochitl asked.

  I shrugged. "His story holds together."

  "But you don't like it," she said, as shrewd as ever.

  "No," I said. "There's something he's not telling me." And my brother had tried to sleep with a priestess; had tried to cheat on his wife. I was having trouble accepting it. It did not sound like something that would happen to my charmed-life brother.

  "Where does the world go, if you can't trust your own brother?" Yaotl asked, darkly amused.

  As far as I knew, Yaotl, a captive foreigner Ceyaxochitl had bought from the Tlatelolco marketplace, had a wife – a slight, pretty woman who seldom spoke to strangers – but no other family. At least, not the kind that lived close enough to get him embroiled in their troubles. Lucky man.

  "What about the nahual trail?" Ceyaxochitl asked.

  "It vanishes into thin air, halfway up a wall no animal could jump."

  "Hum," Ceyaxochitl said. "Odd. We've searched every room, and the nahual isn't here."

  "They don't just vanish," I said.

  "I know," Ceyaxochitl said. She frowned. "We're no nearer finding Priestess Eleuia than we were one hour ago. I'll instruct the search parties to cast a wider net."

  She waited, no doubt for my acquiescence. It was an unsettling thought to be in charge of the investigation. Eleuia had been about to become Consort of Xochipilli. This meant that she would have been connected to the Imperial Court, in one way or another. Given the political stakes, I had better be very careful of where I trod; and politics had never been my strength. "Shouldn't you be back at the palace?" I asked her.

  Ceyaxochitl snorted. "I can spare one night to help you start. But only one."

  I nodded. She'd been clear enough on that. I couldn't fault her for her frankness, even if sometimes she wounded me without realising she did so.

  If the blood in the room and on Neutemoc's hands had indeed belonged to Eleuia, time was against us.

  "Send them out," I said. "I'll go and talk to Zollin."

  THREE

  Dancers

  When I arrived, the courtyard was deserted again, and the entrance-curtain to Eleuia's room hung forlornly in the breeze. But from the other set of rooms – Zollin's – came light, and the slow, steady beat of a drum. Music, at this hour?

  I pulled aside the curtain, and took a look inside.

  In a wide room much like Eleuia's, two young adolescents went through the motions of a dance. One was tall, her hair cascading down her back, and the seashell anklets she wore chimed with each of her slow gestures. The other wove her way between the tall one's movements, like water flowing through stone. It was not all effortless: beads of sweat ran down the first dancer's face, and the other one kept whispering under her breath, counting the paces.

  The drum-beater was older than either of her dancers: her seamed face had seen many a year, and she kept up her rhythm, even though her eyes were focused on the girls. Smoke hung in the room: copal incense, melding with the odour of sweat in an intoxicating mixture.

  I released the curtain. The chime of the bells crashed into the music, a jarring sound that
made both dancers come to a halt. The drum-beater laid her instrument on the ground, and looked at me, appraising me in a manner eerily reminiscent of Ceyaxochitl. It was very uncomfortable.

  "Priestess Zollin?" I asked her. "I am Acatl."

  The drummer nodded. She turned, briefly, to the girls, "That was good. But not enough. A dance should be done without thinking, in much the same way that you breathe." She waved a dismissive hand. "We'll practise again tomorrow."

  The girls remained standing where they were, staring at me in fascination.

  The older woman's full attention was on me. "The High Priest for the Dead, I suppose. Come to question me. I've had the Guardian already, you know, and you've already arrested a culprit. I don't see what good it will do."

  She was sharp. Used to getting her own way, to the point of discarding Neutemoc as of no importance to her. Already, I longed to break some of that pride. She was also singularly unworried, if she could dispense music lessons in the middle of the night, with one of her priestesses missing, or killed.

  "One of your priestesses has vanished," I said. "Doesn't that–"

  She shrugged. "Why should it interfere with the running of this house? I grieve for Eleuia" – that was the worst lie I'd ever heard, for she made no effort to inflect any of those words, or to put sadness on her face – "but she was only one woman. The education we dispense shouldn't halt because of that."

  "I see," I said. "So you think she's dead." I closed my eyes, briefly, and felt the magic hanging around the room like a shroud, clinging to the frescoes of flowers and musical instruments: not nahual, not quite, but something dark, something angry. Zollin was clearly powerful.

  "There was so much blood," the tallest dancer said suddenly. Her face was creased in an expression that didn't belong: worry or fear, or perhaps the first stirrings of anger.

  "Cozamalotl," Zollin snapped. The girl fell silent, but she still watched her teacher. Her younger companion hadn't moved. A faint blush was creeping up her cheeks.

  "Eleuia could still be alive," I said.

  "Then go look for her," Zollin said. She was truly angry, and I had no idea why. "Do your work, and I'll do mine."

  The Duality curse me if I was going to let her dominate me. "My work brings me here," I said, softly. "My work leads me to ask you why you're not more preoccupied by the disappearance of a priestess in your own calmecac."

  Zollin watched me. "She never belonged to this calmecac. It was only a step on her path to better things."

  "Becoming Consort?" I asked.

  "Whatever she could seize," Zollin said.

  Cozamalotl spoke up again, moving closer to Zollin as if she could shield her. "Everyone knows Eleuia grasped at power the way warriors grasp at fame."

  The younger dancer did not answer. She was shaking her head in agreement or in disagreement, though only slightly. It seemed that Cozamalotl wasn't only Zollin's student, but her partisan. If Eleuia was indeed dead, or incapacitated, Cozamalotl would have her reward, just as Zollin would.

  The Southern Hummingbird blind my brother. How in the Fifth World had he managed to embroil himself in such a bitter power struggle?

  I probed further. "So you think someone didn't like what Eleuia was doing?"

  Zollin snorted. "No one did. It's not seemly for a woman."

  Hypocrite. She condemned Eleuia for her ambition, but she still wanted that office of Consort for herself. I liked Zollin less and less as the conversation progressed, though I couldn't afford to be blinded by resentment if I wanted to solve this.

  "Women have few paths open in life," I said, finally, thinking of my own sister Mihmatini, who would be coming of age in a few months, and would either join the clergy or look for a husband of her own.

  "But we know our place," Zollin said. "Eleuia's behaviour was hardly appropriate. Flaunting herself before men with her hair unbound and her face painted yellow – red cochineal on her teeth, as if she were still a courtesan on the battlefield–"

  "When did she come here?" I asked, knowing I had to regain control of the conversation if I wanted to find anything to help Neutemoc.

  Zollin looked bewildered for the first time. "Nine, ten years ago? I'm not sure."

  "And how long have you been here?"

  "A long time," Zollin said.

  "Long enough to feel you should have been Consort, instead of Eleuia?" I asked.

  She looked at me with new eyes. Yes. I might look harmless, but I could still wound.

  When she answered, some of the acidity was gone from her voice. "Some of us," she said, "take what we have. And we do the tasks we were charged with, and do them well for years. Eleuia was young and inexperienced. But she was alluring. And men like that in a woman."

  Of course they did – the warriors, and maybe even some of the priests, though they shouldn't have. And the men, as she had no need to remind me, held the power: the clergy of Xochiquetzal was subordinate to that of her husband, Xochipilli.

  "She had power," Zollin went on. "A great mastery of magic, and a reputation won on the battlefield. But all that doesn't make a good Consort of Xochipilli."

  "Then what does?" I asked.

  "Dedication," Zollin said shortly. "Eleuia's heart wasn't in the priesthood. You could see it was only her pathway to something larger."

  "I see," I said. She was only repeating herself. But her final assessment of Eleuia sounded more sincere than everything she'd said before. A woman bent on power – and wouldn't Neutemoc, with his status as a Jaguar Knight, have been a good embodiment of that power? My hands clenched. I wouldn't think about Neutemoc, not now. I couldn't afford to. "What were you doing tonight?"

  "None of your concern."

  Had she and Neutemoc decided to act together to vex me? "I've had my share of foolish excuses for tonight," I said. "Tell me what you were doing."

  It was the dancer Cozamalotl who answered. "She was with us," she said. "Teaching us the proper hymns for the festivals."

  Given the slight twitch of surprise on Zollin's face, that was clearly a lie.

  "I see," I said, again. "Would you swear to that before the magistrates?"

  She gazed at me, defiant, but it was Zollin who spoke. "Cozamalotl," she said. "The penalty for perjury is the loss of a hand. Don't waste your future."

  Cozamalotl did not look abashed, not in the slightest. Her young companion, though, was bright red by now, and looked as if she wanted to speak but couldn't get the words past her lips. I would have to talk to her later.

  "I–" Cozamalotl started.

  Zollin cut her. "I was alone. In my rooms. And I can swear that I had nothing to do with that."

  "But you hated Eleuia," I said.

  "I won't deny that."

  "Tell me," I said. "What day were you born?"

  She looked surprised. "That's no concern of yours."

  "Humour me."

  "Why should I?"

  "It's only a date," I said. "What are you afraid of?"

  "I'm not a fool," Zollin said. "There's only one reason you'd be asking for it. I didn't summon the nahual, Acatl-tzin."

  "But you could have."

  She watched me, unblinking. At length: "You'll go to the registers anyway. Yes. I was born on the day Twelve Jaguar in the year Ten House."

  She'd been quick to react. Too quick, perhaps, as if she'd had prior knowledge? She'd been in the room: it was conceivable she'd have recognised the scent of nahual magic, though highly unlikely. It wasn't a widespread craft among priestesses.

  I said nothing. "Will that be all?" she asked, drawing herself to her full height. "I have offerings to make."

  "That will be all," I said. "For now." I caught the eye of the younger dancer, who was still standing unmoving, her face creased in worry. She nodded, briefly, her chin raising to point to the courtyard outside.

  I exited the room, and waited for the girl there. She did not come immediately: an angry conversation seemed to be going on inside, between Zollin and her two students. Bu
t try as I might, I couldn't make out the individual words, not without re-entering the room.

  Two things worried me. The first was Zollin's singular unconcern for the summoning of a nahual, and the spilling of blood in her own calmecac school; the second, the sheer incongruity of teaching girls how to dance at this hour of the night.