Harbinger of the Storm (15 page)

”And?” I asked, but I had remembered, too. I knew what Lord Death had told him, nothing more, nothing less than what I had already known.

If Axayacatl-tzin still had a mouth, he would have smiled. “The Smoking Mirror is the Sixth Sun. It is His destiny to climb into the sky and take His place as supreme god of the new age.”

And His desire, perhaps, to see the Fifth Age, the age of the Fifth Sun Tonatiuh and the Southern Hummingbird Huitzilpochtli, end much sooner than it should.

”I see,” I said. The cold was in my bones and in my heart. “I see. Thank you, Axayacatl-tzin.”

When I opened my eyes, I was back in the Fifth World within my blood-quincunx, the potency of which was slowly leeching away. Axayacatl-tzin’s corpse still sat facing me, but something seemed to have gone out of him, some bright, subtle light that even death had not extinguished. His soul – his heart, the divine fire which animates us all – had passed into Mictlan, never to return.

But what he had left me with was troubling. I had forgotten that the Sixth Sun was Tezcatlipoca, and that the devotees of the Smoking Mirror would therefore have ample motivation for ushering in chaos – a chaos that would lay the ground for their god’s rise to power. They might not worship She of the Silver Bells, but did it matter, as long as they could control the star-demons?

But still, that would require the devotees of both gods to be in collusion. It wasn’t uncommon. The previous year I’d uncovered a plot between Xochiquetzal, the Quetzal Flower, Goddess of Lust and Desire, and Tlaloc, the Storm Lord. But it still seemed a very complicated conspiracy, if conspiracy there was.

I sighed. The light that filtered through the entrance-curtain was the pale, grey one before dawn. as expected, the ritual had taken all night. There would be time, later, to reflect on the consequences of what I had learnt. What I needed now was rest.

I made it home just in time for the blast of conch-shells and drums that announced the rise of the Fifth Sun, did my offerings of blood; and fell on my sleeping mat.

When I awoke, the sun was slanting towards the horizon, bathing everything in the room in warm, golden light. I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts.

Outside, I half-expected to find Teomitl waiting for me, but though there was someone in my courtyard – which could hardly be called “private” anymore given the sheer flow of visitors that came through it – it wasn’t my student.

”Yaotl?”

Ceyaxochitl’s slave was still dressed sumptuously and his eyes shone with a resolution I’d seldom seen, though his face was haggard beneath the makeup. The eagle feathers of his headdress drooped, as though he’d walked through a squall; and his embroidered cotton cloak was slightly askew on his shoulders. Any humorous remark I might have made about his intrusion died on my lips.

”What observation skills,” he said. It started bitingly, and then became toneless as he remembered the seriousness of the situation.

”Any news?”

He shook his head. “The physician said that she might live if she can survive the next day. Her body might purge the poison on its own.”

One day. Fourteen hours. We both knew this wouldn’t happen. Though she lived and breathed, Ceyaxochitl was as dead as the Revered Speaker.

“You haven’t come here for that,” I said.

A shade of the old sarcasm shone in his eyes. “No. I came to tell you we know what poisoned her.”

”So?” I asked.

He raised a hand. “All in good time.” There was a gleam in his gaze that suggested that what he had to tell me was of much more import than the nature of the poison – Storm Lord blind him, this wasn’t a time for his usual equivocations.

”Yaotl–”

”It’s obscure,” Yaotl said. “The physician looked through all his notes, and finally found a case that was similar.”

”You’re enjoying this, aren’t you.”

He looked up at me, and let me see for the first time what lay beneath the mask of irony – an anger that possessed him to the bones. “She’s as good as dead, Acatl-tzin. Doomed. Gone from the Fifth World. She took me from the marketplace, and turned me from a slave into her assistant. She gave me status and riches. And you think I don’t want her murderer punished?”

”She helped me too,” I said.

Yaotl’s face clearly said that I couldn’t understand – that I’d been a priest long before Ceyaxochitl took an interest in me. He had been a captive destined for a life of drudgery. He breathed in, once, twice. I could almost feel the air trembling in his lungs. “It’s a newt. A fiery-looking critter with a red-belly and stripes across the back. Rather distinctive. They secrete a poison that acts that way, shutting down the muscles one after the other.”

A newt. I thought, uneasily, of all the times in the palace I’d eaten one. Why, I had taken some from the kitchen only a few hours ago. “That wasn’t all you had, was it?”

Yaotl’s smile was like the rising of a star, as red as blood and as bent on causing chaos. “They’re uncommon. Finding them takes work. Except–” he brought both hands together with the finality of a book closing. “Except that they flourish on the lake shore near Texcoco. Xahuia-tzin asked for them specifically last week. She said it was for cosmetics.”

And what interesting makeup those would make.

Yaotl, predictably, was eager to take a troop of Duality warriors into the palace and bodily arrest Xahuia.

I, on the other hand… I could remember Xahuia’s spell, and the aura of power that hung around Nettoni, enough to make me a lot less eager than Yaotl. “Tlaloc’s lightning strike you, I need to think! We can’t possibly barge in there that way.”

”Why not?”

Because… Because, if Axayacatl-tzin was right, the SheSnake might be complicit, or at the very least sympathetic. Because Xahuia and Nettoni, between them both, had enough power to level this palace twice over.

”There’s too much at stake,” I said. “This is going to be a declaration of war against Texcoco.”

Yaotl shrugged. His stance said, very clearly, that if I cared about such trifles I was an ungrateful fool.

I could guess what Tizoc-tzin’s reaction would be, if we brought him the news. Sarcasm, and perhaps even a declaration that he cared little about the Guardian’s fate. But we needed allies, and they were in short supply. We needed someone to give us their support.

”We need Manatzpa,” I said. This was political and if we had it wrong, if Yaotl’s guesses and my circumstantial evidence gathered from Axayacatl-tzin’s vague memories were just coincidences, then the Triple Alliance would tear itself apart for nothing.

That is, if we survived the arrest at all. I doubted Xahuia or Nettoni would go down peacefully.

”That’s not his place,” Yaotl said, sharply.

”This is a princess of Texcoco. Not just some grubby little summoner in a peasant’s hut in the Floating Gardens.” I hated politics, but I could see the shape of the game, all too clearly.

Yaotl watched me for a while, and relented. “Fine. But if you’re not here at the Hour of the Earth Mother, my men and I will go in regardless.”

• • • •

For once, I was lucky. Manatzpa and Echichilli were both in the council room, going over some papers.

”See, the province of Cuahacan hasn’t delivered their tribute of jaguar pelts,” Manatzpa was saying.

”I think it was waived this year,” Echichilli said, his wrinkled face creased in thought. “Let me see…” He reached for some of the other papers in the pile, and stopped when I entered in a tinkle of bells. “Acatl-tzin?”

 He looked up when I came in, genuinely surprised. “Acatl-tzin?”

”We need your help,” I said.

”Our help?” Manatzpa sounded sceptical.

”I know who poisoned Ceyaxochitl.”

”That’s a grave accusation,” Echichilli said. “Do you have evidence?”

”Yes.” I outlined, briefly, what had led us to this.

When I finished, Echichilli did not look satisfied. “It’s scant. Too scant.”

”The Guardian was poisoned,” I said.

”But if you’re wrong… It will mean war with Texcoco.”

”I know.” I wanted to scream, but I had more decorum than that. “But we can’t let that kind of thing go unpunished. Otherwise, who knows what else might happen?”

Echichilli looked at Manatzpa for a while. At length, the younger councillor set aside his writing reed. “I think it’s enough,” he said. “It’s a presumption, to be sure, but we can find a way to apologise if it doesn’t turn out the right way. The presence of a strong sorcerer inside the palace at this juncture is enough to be suspicious.”

”You were always good with words.” Echichilli sounded sad. “See how we can tear ourselves apart.”

”I wasn’t the one who started.” Manatzpa sounded angry. He rose, wrapping his cloak around his shoulders. “I’ll go with you, Acatl-tzin.”

He and Echichilli both looked polished and clean, their ornaments from embroidered cloaks to feather-headdresses impeccable, suited to attending the imperial presence. Manatzpa himself would be all but useless in a fight, merely giving us his support, but little else.

I needed Teomitl. “We’ll need to collect someone first,” I said.

The palace was a big place, and it seemed even bigger when searching for someone. We headed straight to Teomitl’s rooms, a small courtyard by the side of where Tizoc-tzin was holding court, where the entrance-curtain fluttered orange in the breeze, the same colour as Teomitl’s cloak. Unlike Tizoc-tzin’s, the room was on the ground floor, but then, Teomitl had never cared overmuch about pomp. He applied his own exacting standards to himself, and the opinions of his peers mattered little to him.

At least, that was what I’d thought before Tizoc-tzin started teaching him.

”Teomitl?”

No answer came from within. I’d expected guards, or at the very least a slave, but nothing moved beyond the curtain. I debated whether to enter, and finally settled for silently drawing the curtain aside, to make sure that Teomitl was not sleeping inside.

I had been in the courtyard outside those rooms, but in the year I’d taught him Teomitl had never invited me inside. The room was decorated with rich frescoes in vivid colours, depicting our ancestors in Aztlan, the fabled heartland of Huitzilpochtli’s strength. Fish and leaping frogs filled water as clear as that of a spring, and little figures withdrew nets under the gaze of the god and of His mother Coatlicue, a wizened, harsh-looking woman wearing a dress of woven rattlesnakes, her large breasts obscured by a necklace of human hands and hearts.

The furniture, however, was at odds with the wealth of the decoration. A single, thin reed mat lay in the furthest corner, turned yellow by age. A stone box, a shallow vessel in the shape of an eagle, a three-legged clay pot with a chipped rim and two worn wicker chests completed the furniture. It would have seemed almost unlived in, save for the three grass balls pierced through with bloody thorns.

Carefully, I released the curtain; I couldn’t help feeling embarrassed at discovering more of Teomitl’s intimacy that he’d ever revealed to me.

Well, he was not here, that was certain. Where in the Fifth World could he have hidden himself?

I cast a hesitant glance towards the south, where the redtinged silhouette of Tizoc-tzin’s chambers towered over Teomitl’s small courtyard. Could he be at Court with his brother? If that was the case, we were lost. I couldn’t risk coming back, not on such stakes.

The hollow in my stomach wouldn’t close, an unwelcome reminder of how anchorless the Fifth World had become with the death of the Revered Speaker.

Manatzpa had been waiting politely for me at the entrance to the courtyard. He bent his head towards the sky, where the sun was climbing into its apex, a graceful way of suggesting we needed to hurry without actually saying the words.

We walked out again, and attempted to locate the youths of imperial blood.

I found them lounging at the exit of steam-baths, lazing in courtyards over
patolli
games, listening to slaves playing rattles and drums. None of those I questioned – smooth-faced and careless, with the easy eyes of people who had never had to wonder about their next meal – could tell me where Teomitl was. And time, through it all, kept steadily passing, each moment bringing me closer to Yaotl’s deadline.

At length, a fist of ice closing around my heart, I headed back towards the entrance, Manatzpa in tow.

As I passed the House of Animals, I caught a glimpse of orange in the darkness.

I slid inside, unsure whether I had truly seen anything. The House of Animals spread over several gigantic courtyards, cages of woven reeds held rare or beautiful animals, from emerald-green quetzal birds to the graceful, lethal jaguars; from web-footed capybaras munching on palm leaves to huge, slumbering armadillos curled against the bars.

The flash of orange came again, in the direction of the aviary, where the Revered Speaker kept the birds with precious plumage that could be turned into feather regalia. I crossed the arcades of a gallery, and found myself facing a couple of quetzal birds and, through the bars of their cage, Teomitl, who stood watching them with the intentness of a warrior on a reconnaissance mission.

”Acatl-tzin?” He sounded shocked and not altogether pleased. But our grievances could wait.

I raised a hand to forestall him. “I need your help,” I said. “To prevent Yaotl from getting into trouble.”

”Trouble?” Teomitl’s face focused again on the present.

”Arresting a sorcerer,” I said, curtly.

”But surely Ceyaxochitl–”

”Ceyaxochitl is dying,” I said. This time, my voice did not quiver. I felt terrible, as if uttering the words to him finally made them reality.

Teomitl’s gaze hardened. “Who? The sorcerer?”

I nodded.

He wrapped his cloak around his shoulders, casting a last, regretful glance at the birds. “I’m coming.”

When we reached the entrance neither Yaotl nor the Duality warriors were there.

”Acatl-tzin?” Teomitl’s voice was slightly resentful, as if he expected me to apologise for the disturbance.

The Storm Lord strike me if I gave in, though. This was not a time for indulging his pride. “They’re inside,” I said. “If we hurry…”