Nebula Awards Showcase 2012

by James Patrick Kelly

  Here's the thing: she's not sure how long she can last.

  It was Jaguar Captain Palli who gave her the teonanácatl—opening his hand to reveal the two black, crushed mushrooms, the food of the gods, the drugs of the lost, of the doomed—she couldn't tell if it was because he pitied her, or if it's yet another trap, another ambush they hope she'll fall into.

  But still…She took them. She held them, wrapped tight in the palm of her hands, as the guards walked her back. And when she was alone once more, she stared at them for a long while, feeling the tremor start in her fingers—the hunger, the craving for normality—for oblivion.

  The mind wanders—backwards, into the only time worth remembering.

  The picture lay on the table, beside Onalli's bloodied worship-thorns. It showed a girl standing by a stall in the marketplace, holding out a clock of emerald-green quetzal feathers with an uncertain air, as if it would leap and bite at any moment. Two other girls stood silhouetted in the shadows behind her, as if already fading into insignificance.

  It wasn't the best one Onalli had of Xochitl, by a large margin—but she'd been thinking about it a lot, those days—about the fundamental irony of it, like a god's ultimate joke on her.

  “Having second thoughts?” Atcoatl asked, behind her.

  Onalli's hand reached out, to turn the picture over—and stopped when his tone finally sank in.

  She turned to look at him: his broad, tanned face was impassive—a true Knight's, showing none of what he felt.

  “No,” she said, slowly, carefully. “I'm not having second thoughts. But you are, aren't you?”

  Atcoatl grimaced. “Onalli—”

  He was the one who'd helped her, from the start—getting her the encrypted radio sets, the illicit nanos to lower her body temperatures, the small syringes containing everything from teonanácatl inhibitors to endurance nanos. More than that: he had believed her—that her desperate gamble would work, that they'd retrieve Xochitl alive, out of the madness the Jaguar House had become…

  “This is too big,” Atcoatl said. He shook his head, and Onalli heard the rest, the words he wasn't saying.

  What if we get caught?

  Onalli chose the easiest way to dispel fear: anger. “So you intend to sit by and do nothing?”

  Atcoatl's eyes flashed with a burning hatred—and no wonder. He had seen the fall of his own House; his fellow Eagle Knights, bound and abandoned in the burning wreckage of their own dormitories; the Otter and the Skulls Knights, killed, maimed, or scattered to breathe dust in the silver mines. “I'm no coward. One day, the Revered Speaker and his ilk will pay for what they've done. But this—this is just courting death.”

  Onalli's gaze strayed again to the picture—to Xochitl's face, frozen in that moment of dubious innocence. “I can't leave her there.”

  “The resistance—” Atcoatl started.

  Onalli snorted. “By the time the resistance can pull the House down, it will be too late. You know it.” There had been attacks: two maglev stations bombed; political dissidents mysteriously vanishing before their arrest. She didn't deny the existence of an underground movement, but she recognised the signs: it was still weak, still trying to organise itself.

  Atcoatl said nothing; but Onalli was Jaguar Knight, and her training enabled her to read the hint of disapproval in his stance.

  “Look,” she said, finally. “I'm the one taking the biggest risk. You'll be outside the House, with plenty of time to leave if anything goes wrong.”

  “If you're caught—”

  “You think I'd turn on you?” Onalli asked. “After all they've done to Xochitl, you think I'd help them?”

  Atcoatl's face was dark. “You know what they're doing, inside the House.”

  She didn't—but she could imagine it, all too well. Which was why she needed to pull Xochitl out. Her friend hadn't deserved this; any of this. “I'm Jaguar Knight,” she said, softly. “And I give you my word that I'd rather end my own life than let them worm anything out of me.”

  Atcoatl looked at her. “You're sincere, but what you believe doesn't change anything.”

  “Doesn't it? I believe the Revered Speaker's rule is unlawful. I believe the Jaguar House had no right to betray its own dissidents, or interrogate them. Isn't that what we all believe in?”

  Atcoatl shifted, and wouldn't answer.

  “Tell me what you believe in, then,” Onalli said.

  He was silent for a while. “Black One take you,” he said, savagely. “Just this once, Onalli. Just this once.”

  Onalli nodded. “Promise.” Afterwards, they'd go north—into the United States or Xuya, into countries where freedom was more than a word on paper. They'd be safe.

  She finished tying her hair in a neat bun—a habit she'd taken on her missions abroad—and slid her worship thorns into her belt, smearing the blood over her skinsuit. A prayer, for whoever among the gods might be listening tonight; for Fate, the Black One, the god of the Smoking Mirror, who could always be swayed or turned away, if you had the heart and guts to seize your chance when it came.

  Atcoatl waited for her at the door, holding it open with ill-grace.

  “Let's go,” Onalli said.

  She left the picture on the table—knowing, all the while, why she'd done so: not because it would burden her, but because of one simple thing. Fear. Fear that she'd find Xochitl and stare into her face, and see the broken mind behind the eyes—nothing like the shy, courageous girl she remembered.

  Outside, the air was clear and cold, and a hundred stars shone upon the city of Tenochtitlan: a hundred demons, waiting in the darkness to descend and rend all life from limb to limb. Onalli rubbed her worship thorns, trying to remember the assurance she'd always felt on her missions—why couldn't she remember anything, now that she was home—now that she was breaking into her own House?

  Six months ago

  The priest of the Black One sits cross-legged across the mat—facing Xochitl and pursing his lips as if contemplating a particular problem. His hair is greasy and tangled, mattered with the blood of his devotions; and the smell that emanates from him is the rank one of charnel houses—with the slight tang of bleach. He's attempted to wash his hands before coming, and hasn't succeeded.

  Amusing, how the mind sharpens, when everything else is restrained.

  Xochitl would laugh, but she's never been much of one for laughter: that was Onalli, or perhaps Tecipiani.

  No, she musn't think of Tecipiani, not now—must remain calm and composed, her only chance at surviving this.

  Mustn't ask herself the question “for what?”

  “I'm told,” the priest says, “that you started a ring of dissidents within this House.”

  Xochitl remains seated against the wall, very straight. The straps cut into her arms and ankles, and the tightest one holds her at the neck. She'll only exhaust herself trying to break them: she's tried a dozen times already, with only bruises to show for it.

  The priest goes on, as if she had answered, “I'm told you worked to undermine the loyalty of the Jaguar Knights, with the aim to topple the Revered Speaker.”

  Xochitl shakes her head, grimly amused. Toppling him—as if that would work…The burgeoning resistance movement is small and insignificant; and they have no reach within the House, not even to Xochitl's pathetic, shattered splinter group.

  But there's right and wrong, and when Xolotl comes to take her soul, she'll face Him with a whole face and heart, knowing which side she chose.

  The priest goes on, smug, self-satisfied, “You must have known it was doomed. This House is loyal; your commander is loyal. She has given you up, rather than suffer your betrayal.”

  Tecipiani—no, mustn't think of that, mustn't—it's no surprise, has never been, not after everything Tecipiani has done…

  “Of course she has given me up,” Xochitl says, keeping her voice steady. “Jaguar Knights aren't interrogators. We leave that to you.”

  The priest shifts, unhurriedly—and, wit
hout warning, cuffs her, his obsidian rings cutting deep into her skin. She tastes blood, an acrid tingle in her mouth—raises her head again, daring him to strike again.

  He does—again and again, each blow sending her head reeling back, a white flash of pain resonating in the bones of her cheek, the warmth of blood running down her face.

  When he stops at last, Xochitl hangs limp, staring at the floor through a growing haze—the strap digging into her windpipe, an unpleasant reminder of how close asphyxiation is.

  “Let's start again, shall we?” His voice is calm, composed. “You'll show me proper respect, as is owed an agent of the Revered Speaker.”

  He's—not that—he's nothing, a man of no religion, who dares use pain as a weapon, tainting it for mundane things like interrogation. But pain isn't that, was never that. Xochitl struggles to remember the proper words; to lay them at the feet of the Black One, her song of devotion in this godless place.

  “I fall before you, I throw myself before you

  Offer up the precious water of my blood, offer up my pain like fire

  I cast myself into the place from where none rise, from where none leave,

  O lord of the near and nigh, O master of the Smoking Mirror,

  O night, O wind…”

  She must have spoken the words aloud, because he cuffs her again—a quick, violent blow she only feels when her head knocks against the wall—ringing in her mind, the whole world contracting and expanding, the colours too light and brash—

  And again, and again, and everything slowly merges, folding inwards like crinkling paper—pain spreading along her muscles like fire.

  “With icy water I make my penance

  With nettles and thorns I bare out my face, my heart

  Through the land of the anguished, the land of the dying…”

  She thinks, but she's not sure, that he's gone, when the door opens again, and footsteps echo under the ceiling—slow and measured, deliberate.

  She'd raise her head, but she can't muster the energy. Even focusing on the ground is almost too tiring, when all she wants is to lean back, to close her eyes and dream of a world where Tonatiuh the sun bathes her in His light, where the smell of cooking oil and chilies wafts from the stalls of food-vendors, where feather-cloaks are soft and silky against her hands…

  The feet stop: leather mocassins, and emerald-green feathers, and the tantalising smell of pine-cones and copal incense.

  Tecipiani. No, not the girl she knew anymore, but Commander Tecipiani, the one who sold them all to the priests—who threw Xochitl herself to the star-demons, to be torn apart and made as nothing.

  “Come to gloat?” Xochitl asks; or tries to, because it won't come out as more than a whisper. She can't even tell if Tecipiani hears her, because the world is pressing against her, a throbbing pain in her forehead that spreads to her field of vision—until everything dissolves into feverish darkness.

  Onalli took the ball-court at a run, descending from the stands into the I-shape of the ground. On either side of her loomed the walls, with the vertical stone-hoops teams would fight to send a ball through—but it was the season of the Lifting of the Banners, and the teams were enjoying a well-earned rest.

  It did mean, though, that only one imperial warrior guarded the cordoned-off entrance: it had been child's play to take him down.

  One thing people frequently forgot about the ball-court was that it was built with its back against the Jaguar House, and that the dignitaries’ boxes at the far end shared a wall with the House's furthest courtyard.

  That courtyard would be guarded, but it was nothing insurmountable. She'd left Atcoatl at the entrance, disguised as an imperial warrior: from afar, he'd present a sufficient illusion to discourage investigation; and he'd warn her by radio if anything went wrong outside.

  The boxes were deserted; Onalli made her way in the darkness to that of the Revered Speaker, decorated with old-fashioned carvings depicting the feats of gods: the Feathered Serpent coming back from the underworld with the bones of mankind, the Black One bringing down the Second Sun in a welter of flames and wind.

  The tribune was the highest one in the court; but still lacking a good measure or so to get her over the wall—after all, if there was the remotest possibility that anyone could leap through there, they'd have guarded it to the teeth.

  Onalli stood for a while, breathing quietly. She rubbed her torn ears, feeling a trickle of blood seep into her skin. For the Black One, should He decide to watch over her. For Tonatiuh the Sun, who would tumble from the sky without His nourishment.

  For Xochitl, who'd deserved better than what the fate Tecipiani had dealt her.

  She extended, in one fluid, thoughtless gesture: her nails were diamond-sharp, courtesy of Atcoatl's nanos, and it was easy to find purchases on the carvings—not thinking of the sacrilege, of what the Black One might think about fingers clawing their way through His effigies, no time for that anymore…

  Onalli hoisted herself up on the roof of the box, breathing hard. The wall in front of her was much smoother, but still offered some purchase as long as she was careful. It was, really, no worse than the last ascension she'd done, clinging to the outside of the largest building in Jiajin Tech's compound, on her way to steal blueprints from a safe. It was no worse than endless hours of training, when her tutors had berated her about carelessness…

  But her tutors were dead, or gone to ground—and it was the House on the other side of that wall, the only home she'd ever known—the place that had raised her from childhood, the place where she could be safe, and not play a game of endless pretence—where she could start a joke and have a dozen person voicing the punch-line, where they sang the hymns on the winter solstice, letting their blood pool into the same vessel.

  Her hands, slick with sweat, slid out of a crack. For one impossibly long moment she felt herself fall into the darkness—caught herself with a gasp, even as chunks of rock fell downwards in a clatter of noise.

  Had anyone heard that? The other side of the wall seemed silent—

  There was only darkness, enclosing her like the embrace of Grandmother Earth. Onalli gritted her teeth, and pushed upwards, groping for further handholds.

  Two years ago

  Commander Tecipiani's investiture speech is subdued, and uncharacteristically bleak. Her predecessor, Commander Malinalli, had delivered grandiloquent boasts about the House and its place in the world, as if everything was due to them, in this Age and the next.

  But Tecipiani says none of that. Instead, she speaks of dark times ahead, and the need to be strong, and the need to endure.

  She doesn't say the words “civil war,” but everyone can hear them, all the same.

  Xochitl and Onalli stand near the back. Because Onalli arrived late and Xochitl waited for her, the only place they could find was near the novices: callow boys and girls, uneasily settling into their cotton uniforms and fur cloaks, still too young to feel their childhood locks as burdens—still so young and innocent it almost hurts, to think of them in the times ahead.

  After the ceremony, everyone drifts back to their companies, or to the mess-halls. The mistress of the novices has organised a mock battle in the courtyard, and Onalli is watching with the same rapt fascination she might have for a formal ball-game.

  Xochitl is watching Tecipiani: the Commander has finished shaking hands with her company leaders, and, dismissing her bodyguards, is heading straight towards them. Her gaze catches Xochitl's—holds it for a while, almost pleading.

  “Onalli,” Xochitl says, urgently.

  Onalli barely looks up. “I know. It had to happen at some point, anyway.”

  Tecipiani catches up with them, greets them both with a curt nod. She's still wearing the full regalia of the Commander: a cloak of jaguar-fur, and breeches of emerald-green quetzal feathers. Her helmet is in the shape of a jaguar's head, and her face pokes out from between the jaws of the animal, as if she were being consumed alive.

  “Walk with me,
will you?” she asks. Except that she's not asking, not anymore, because she speaks with the voice of the Black One, and even her slightest suggestion is a command.

  They don't speak, for a while—walking through courtyards where Knights haggle over patolli gameboards, where novices dare each other to leap over the fountains: the familiar, comforting hubbub of life within the House.

  “I wasn't expecting you so soon, Onalli—though I'm glad to see you have returned,” Tecipiani says. Her words are warm; her voice isn't. “I trust everything went well?”

  Onalli spreads her hands in a gesture of uncertainty. “I have the documents,” she says. “Williamsburg Tech were making a new prototype of computer, with more complexity. A step away from consciousness, perhaps.”

  Xochitl wonders what kind of intelligence computers will develop, when they finally breach the gap between automated tasks and genuine sentience—all that research done in military units north of the border, eyeing the enemy to the south.

  They'll be like us, she thinks. They'll reach for their equivalent of clubs or knives, claiming it's just to protect themselves; and it won't be long until they sink it into somebody's chest.

  Just like us.

  “The Americans have advanced their technology, then,” Tecipiani says, gravely. It's the House's job, after all: watching science in the other countries of the Fifth World, and making sure that none of them ever equals Greater Mexica's lead in electronics—using whatever it takes, theft, bribery, assassination.

  Onalli shakes her head impatiently. “This isn't something we should worry about.”

  “Perhaps more than you think.” Tecipiani's voice is slightly annoyed. “The war won't always last, and we must look ahead to the future.”

  Onalli says, “The war, yes. You made an interesting speech.”

  Tecipiani's smile doesn't stretch all the way to her eyes. “Appropriate, I felt. Sometimes, we have to be reminded of what happens out there.”

  Onalli says, “I've seen what's out there. It's getting ugly.”

  “Ugly?” Xochitl asks.

  Onalli's eyes drift away. “I saw him at court, Xochitl. Revered Speaker Ixtli. He's—” her hands clench “—a maddened dog. It's in his eyes, and in his bearing. It won't be long before the power goes to his head. It's already started. The war—”