Servant of the Underworld

by Aliette de Bodard

  "You shouldn't be here," the first guard said to Neutemoc.

  A faint, dangerous smile stretched Neutemoc's lips. He spread his hands, palms up, as if to show he had no weapon. "I'm still a Jaguar Knight," he said. "And I'm entitled to be here."

  The second guard growled. "You haven't set a foot in here since your arrest, and now you come back."

  "It's the coming back that matters," Neutemoc said. He was hiding his anger, his sense of betrayal, very well, but I saw it in the slight tremor of his hands. "I want to see the commander."

  The first guard laughed, his fingers tightening around the shell-grip of his spear. "As if he'd see you at this hour?"

  Neutemoc's voice was slow, deadly. "Ask him," he said.

  The second guard looked at Neutemoc, clearly trying to decide whether he was jesting.

  "Ask him," Neutemoc said, "about Priestess Eleuia."

  I had been carefully folding the crumpled maguey paper into a small square. By the guards' blank faces, they'd obviously not been involved in Eleuia's abduction. Time to pass a discreet message to Commander Quiyahuayo, then. There was no reason to drag the guards into the shame of Eleuia's murder.

  "Tell him we found this on her body," I said, handing my folded paper to the first guard.

  He wasn't long gone. When he came back, his face was set in a frown. "He'll see you," he said.

  The Jaguar House was almost deserted at this early hour: a few Knights were playing patolli in one of the courtyards, and all the unmarried Knights were in their dormitories – some, by the noises wafting through the entrance-curtains, still engaged with various courtesans.

  Neutemoc didn't speak until we were a long way in. "I'd hate to be trapped here," he said.

  I shrugged. "You shouldn't have come, then." The dice were all Quiyahuayo's in this House, anyway. At least, if I didn't come back, Ceyaxochitl and Yaotl would know who held me.

  It was a meagre consolation, but it sustained me until we reached Quiyahuayo's room.

  A delicate entrance curtain, adorned with images of the great Tezcatlipoca slaughtering the enemies of the Mexica, opened to reveal a wide room lit by two braziers. Lord Death and His wife faced each other in the frescoes on the walls. The god and His consort sat on Their thrones of linked bones, with the Wind of Knives a small, sharp shadow in the background. It was… wrong. They shouldn't have been there. It wasn't their place.

  The only furniture was a reed mat, and four large wicker chests. One of the chests, I saw, held piles of folded codices, laid on top of each other. Even from this distance, I could tell what they were: books of prayers to Mictlantecuhtli, detailed indexes to the minor gods of the underworld, spells to summon them and bind them to one's will.

  Altogether, it painted a picture of a man's obsession with Mictlan: a trait ill-suited to a commander of the Jaguar Knights, a man who should have been sworn to the Hummingbird. It was clear, though, why he had chosen to use a beast of shadows to abduct Eleuia.

  Commander Quiyahuayo, in full Jaguar regalia, was sitting on the reed mat, surrounded by discarded codices and by broken writing reeds. He held a clay tablet, which he used as a support to write on maguey paper. His gestures were slow, but precise.

  He raised his eyes when we came closer. "My latenight visitors," he said, seemingly amused. "Leave us, will you?" he asked the guard – who nodded, and exited the room.

  Commander Quiyahuayo put down his writing reed, and tilted the tablet towards us. He'd been writing on the paper I'd sent him: he had drawn a circle around the symbol, like the shape of a signet ring.

  He knew.

  I glanced at the entrance-curtain. The guard was standing just behind it. I couldn't tell with certainty, but there was probably a second guard as well. No choice, then; no way back; but I had known that before entering the room.

  "So," Commander Quiyahuayo said. "Do sit down."

  Neutemoc had been watching him with a mixture of horror and fascination. "Going through your pretence of politeness?"

  Commander Quiyahuayo bowed his head. The quetzal tail-feathers on his headdress followed his motion, bending like stalks in the wind. "The proper gestures, at the proper time," he said. "Incidentally, don't even think of trying to attack me, physically or otherwise." He said the last with a quick nod in my direction, having seen my hand tighten around one of my obsidian knives. "It would only make things more painful. And believe me, I have no wish to do so."

  He sounded sincere, and in many ways that was the worst. "More painful than you made them for Eleuia?" I asked.

  "Ah," he said. "Eleuia. Do sit down," he repeated.

  "I'd rather remain standing," Neutemoc snapped. "Since you judge that what happened to me was just an inconvenience?"

  "A minor thing," Commander Quiyahuayo said. He set his clay tablet aside carefully. "Compared to the stakes."

  "What stakes?" I asked, wondering what kind of man would speak of human lives as if they were part of some vast game. Not a man I would like.

  Commander Quiyahuayo's smile was ironic. "Why, the Fifth World. What else do we play for?"

  "I don't understand," I said, just as Neutemoc snapped, "Are you going to toy with us all night? Or just do to us as you did to Eleuia?"

  Commander Quiyahuayo's smile slowly faded. "You still care for the bitch," he said, surprised. "Why? She tried to kill you."

  If Neutemoc was shocked at this, he didn't show it. "So did you," he said.

  Commander Quiyahuayo shrugged. "Hazards of combats."

  This was obviously leading nowhere. Neutemoc was right: Commander Quiyahuayo was toying with us until he became bored. "What's your interest in Eleuia?" I asked. "Does it have anything to do with her child – the one she had in the Chalca Wars, in a temple dedicated to the Storm Lord?"

  Commander Quiyahuayo recoiled visibly, though he soon recovered.

  "Tell me what is going on," I asked. "We know about the child. We unearthed his bones. We know something is wrong with them." I couldn't help shivering as I said this.

  "You've been busy, I see," the commander said.

  "Yes," I said. "But I still don't–"

  He cut me with a frown. "You're a priest, Acatl. Don't you know what those bones are?"

  Eerie, was my first thought. I remembered the feeling I'd had when holding them, the same feeling as

  in Tlaloc's shrine. "Powerful," I said.

  Commander Quiyahuayo shook his head. "Power."

  "I–"

  Gently, Commander Quiyahuayo rested his hands on the reed mat. "Power incarnate."

  "The Storm Lord's power?" I asked.

  He shrugged. "The gods' powers are constrained in the Fifth World. That's why They find human agents." He probed at the clay tablet on the ground as it were an aching tooth. "But agents are tricky. Unreliable. They have a will of their own. Some gods desire a vessel that is more… pliant, shall we say?"

  I stared at him, my contempt forgotten. Surely… "Tlaloc made a child?" I asked. "He fathered a child with Eleuia?"

  Commander Quiyahuayo smiled with the pleased expression of a teacher who had just managed to pass on knowledge. In the flickering light of the braziers, the fangs of the jaguar maw framing his head shone: a second, far more dangerous smile. "The Storm Lord wanted a child who would hold the full extent of His powers. To create life with those constraints is hard, more so when one is a god with no idea of where to start." His voice was grim. "Hence the stillbirth."

  It was a fascinating story he was telling me, but I couldn't trust him. Every one of his words was a lie. This was the man who had arranged Eleuia's abduction. "Why should I believe you?" I asked. "You tortured her. You killed her."

  "I didn't kill her. The bitch escaped." Commander Quiyahuayo sounded angry. "As to why you should believe me… That, I'm afraid, is your own problem. If you don't, it won't change many things for me."

  He was right: either way, he had us at his mercy. I ought to have felt frightened. But I'd entered the Jaguar House knowing what I was doin
g. I wanted explanations.

  Commander Quiyahuayo spread his hands. "Think of Eleuia. Of the kind of woman she was."

  The problem was that for a lie, it rang true, too much in keeping with Eleuia's character. Bearing a child would earn her the Storm Lord's favour: an easy way to rise through the hierarchy, borne on the god's powers. And what better way to be safe from hunger than to have the favour of the God of Rain – He who made the maize flowers bloom?

  "I still don't understand," I said slowly, to give me time to compose my thoughts. "The child is dead. Whatever Tlaloc wanted to do, it wouldn't have worked."

  From outside came shouted orders and the sound of footsteps, running in the distance. Commander Quiyahuayo shook his head in distaste. "My, they're noisy tonight. Pay no attention. Where were we? Ah yes. The child." He smiled. "You see, there was a second child. And this one survived his birth."

  I stared at him, incredulous. "That's why you tortured her?"

  The shouting had moved away from us, and the sounds of running men were gradually dying down. A breeze stirred the curtain. Neutemoc cursed, and moved away from the draught.

  "No," Commander Quiyahuayo said. "I knew there was a child, made jointly by Xochiquetzal and Tlaloc, and borne in Eleuia's womb. I know that it was given to a family of peasants, to raise as their own."

  By Xochiquetzal and Tlaloc. Of course. Xochiquetzal had brought the expertise about childbirth; and the Storm Lord the raw power. That was why the Quetzal Flower had lied to me about Mahuizoh and Eleuia. What a fool I'd been.

  Commander Quiyahuayo went on, "And I also knew this: that this year is the year the child comes of age. The year Tlaloc can transfer His powers into him. What I wanted to know from Eleuia was where she'd hidden him."

  A god-child. A child invested with immeasurable powers, loose in Tenochtitlan, with no constraints placed on his magic. The living extension of the will of a capricious, angry, cruel god…

  I shivered.

  "I fail to see what the Storm Lord could want," Neutemoc said. He was clearly uncomfortable with the thought of the gods directly interfering in the Fifth World.

  I was more used to the idea. And there was only one thing that Tlaloc could want. Xochiquetzal Herself had told me.

  He moves up into the world, becomes the protective deity of your Empire. And We – the old ones, the gods of the Earth and of the Corn, We who were here first, who watched over your first steps – We fade.

  Xochiquetzal and Tlaloc had both been displaced by Huitzilpochtli's rise to power.

  "They want revenge," I said.

  "Not revenge," Commander Quiyahuayo said. "Faith."

  Another draught lifted the curtains, and spilled rain onto the floor – and the world seemed to grow still.

  "Acatl," Neutemoc said, sharply.

  Commander Quiyahuayo was still sitting on the reed mat, but now he was staring at two bloody gashes opening on his chest. Even as I turned towards him, more wounds opened, blossoming like obscene flowers.

  Even without the true sight, I could guess at the mass of shapeless, frenzied things that would be fighting to reach his veins. The creatures were back.

  EIGHTEEN

  Season of Rain

  As Commander Quiyahuayo stared back at us, his blood dripping on the reed mat, pooling in meaningless patterns, Neutemoc pulled at my cloak.

  "Come on," he said, dragging me towards the door. "Let's get out of here."

  I threw a glance at Commander Quiyahuayo. His eyes were glazed. The terrible numbness of the creatures' wounds would already be coursing through his whole body. He'd stay there, helpless, until they'd fed to satiety. And then the Duality knew what they'd do. Turn on us?

  "I–"

  "There's nothing you can do for him," Neutemoc snapped. "Remember? We can't kill those things. Besides, he's a murderer."

  I wasn't so sure about that. Commander Quiyahuayo had admitted to torturing Eleuia easily – indeed, as if it didn't matter at all – and I didn't think he'd lied when he said he hadn't killed her. It did leave open the question of who had killed Eleuia, and why.

  With a terrible knot of guilt in my stomach, I sprang to my feet. Neutemoc was standing near the entrance curtain. "Come on!" he said.

  The air seemed to have turned to tar. I ran towards Neutemoc, but it seemed to take an eternity for me to reach him.

  "Let's leave." Neutemoc opened the curtain: outside, a thin drizzle veiled the courtyard. A blast of wind splattered rain into my face.

  There had been guards, I thought, struggling to think. There had been…

  The guards lay in the muddy earth, their faces drained of colour, their jaguar uniform rent open to reveal chests criss-crossed with claw-marks. I remembered the noises of men running, and of fighting, moving away from us. Not, it seemed, moving away from us: merely ending with the death of all the fighting men.

  The Jaguar House was all but silent. Only the soft patter of the rain on the terraces broke the terrible stillness. Rain. The Storm Lord's rain.

  "He's come into his powers," I said.

  "Because you believed that bastard's lies?" Neutemoc screamed. He was running towards the courtyard's exit. His face through the drizzle was that of a man who realises the ground has shifted under him, bringing the yawning chasm that much closer.

  Commander Quiyahuayo's story had sounded too complicated to be invented on the spur of the moment; and it fitted, chillingly, with the evidence we already had. "Why else would someone kill Commander Quiyahuayo?" I asked.

  Not someone. Something. The creatures, the same which had tried to kill Neutemoc. The servants of Tlaloc.

  Neutemoc didn't answer. He was ahead of me now, making his way through the maze of courtyards and rooms as if they were his own home. Of course, this was the House of his Brotherhood. Everywhere, the same stillness: the patolli boards abandoned on the ground, pelted by rain; and the bodies beside them, pale and unmoving.

  Through the open door of a dormitory, I caught a glimpse of a warrior lying in a courtesan's arms: both bloodless bodies curled together in a grotesque parody of life. The same sense of wrongness as in the cave was rising in me, slowly, steadily, like a vessel filling up. I looked up at the rain, and felt the magic coiled at the heart of the clouds, coming down with each drop. The rain wasn't normal, either. As if we needed this.

  "They're catching up," I said. I couldn't keep up with Neutemoc. I'd lost track of how many courtyards we'd run through.

  "I know!" Neutemoc shouted, without turning around.

  Would Mihmatini's spell protect him – or would it would yield under the creatures' repeated assaults?

  A child. Nausea was rising in me, sharp, demanding. A living child, somewhere in the teeming mass of Tenochtitlan, sending the creatures like puppets to destroy Commander Quiyahuayo and his men, who might still have thwarted the Storm Lord's plans.

  At the entrance, the two warriors no longer stood guard. But the gates were wide open; and beyond them, sharply outlined through the curtain of rain, lay the pyramids of the Sacred Precinct, and the safety of the Duality House.

  Neutemoc was already running through. Not being as agile or as lithe as my brother, I did my best to follow him. As I passed under the gates, something clawed at my cloak: the cloth tore with a ripping sound, and flapped loose in the wind.

  I didn't turn. I wouldn't see anything. I just ran on. But the next claw-swipe went for my back. A fiery trail opened on the left side of my spine. Numbness spread from the wound, slowing down my rush of panic until I felt nothing at all. Just the wounds, opening one by one, and the strange, pleasant feeling of drifting away…

  At the edge of my vision, Neutemoc had stopped, wondering why I wasn't following.

  I had to… Grimacing, I forced myself forward. It was like moving through thick honey. I lifted my leg, laid my foot on the ground – once, twice – but neither the gates nor Neutemoc grew closer.

  More wounds, in my back. Blood, trickling down, a warm, steady flow washed away by th
e rain. But everything was as it should be: I would be at peace for ever in Tlalocan, and I would have no need to prove myself any more…

  Light blazed across the gates: a radiance so strong it hurt my eyes. For a moment, I hung suspended in time, the numbness burning away like paper crinkling in the fire, before slamming back into my own body.

  Every wound in my back hurt. But it was pain; it was keeping me alive…

  I tottered forward. My feet slid into the mud, and somehow I found myself on one knee, fighting dizziness.