Harbinger of the Storm (30 page)

I looked up, into the clear sky. The stars were pinpoints, barely visible unless one knew that they were here. Two days, eh? And three or four more, for the ritual of coronation to take place. Perhaps we had a chance. Perhaps we could stand until then.

My mind came back to Quenami, and to more mundane matters. “He knows about the vote, no question.” I thought again on what he had asked me. “He wanted to make sure where I stood.”

”And?” Teomitl asked.

”I told him that I would stand by whoever was elected Revered Speaker.” As I said this, I thought of the scene I’d seen the previous night. If my worst suspicions were right, then I had just made it clear to Quenami that I was a liability, a man they needed to neutralise, and fast. “We need to go back to the palace.”

”Of course,” Teomitl said.

”And to see Nezahual-tzin.”

Teomitl’s face froze. “That’s a bad idea, Acatl-tzin.”

”He made me an offer I couldn’t refuse,” I said. I explained, as best as I could, during the time it took us to cross the Sacred Precinct. It was early morning, and the crowds were there as usual, carrying offerings and worship thorns and leading sacrifices to the pyramid temples as if nothing were wrong. I caught sight of a woman with an embroidered cotton skirt who looked up at the Great Temple, her face frozen in cautious hope. Her earlobes were bloody, and she was whispering the words of a prayer.

As I expected, Teomitl’s first reaction to my story was hardly enthusiasm. “I see. And you believed him?”

”I think he’s honest.” I was suddenly glad I hadn’t had time to get into the details of my meeting with the She-Snake. “As long as it suits him to be, of course.”

”I’m not surprised,” Teomitl said. “He thinks too much of himself, that one.”

”You seem to have developed a liking for him,” I said, dryly.

”I’ve seen enough.”

”From one meeting?”

”You forget,” Teomitl said. “He was here, for a while.”

They were much the same age; but somehow, it had never occurred to me that they could have met. From Teomitl’s sombre tone, it must have been more than that. “You were still a child when he left Tenochtitlan, and so was he. People change.”

Teomitl shook his head. “I doubt he has.”

Clearly I wasn’t going to be able to make him change his mind, and I didn’t feel like arguing at this juncture. What I needed to do was understand who was doing what in this palace – and fast, before I stopped being able to work out things at all.

One of Nezahual-tzin’s men met us at the entrance of the palace, by the red-painted columns, and directed us, not towards the boy-emperor’s chambers, but to the sweatbaths.

We found Nezahual there in one of the bigger baths, seated on one of the low stone benches. Three attendants stood by his side. The firebox at his feet was already warm, and the feathers of his headdress drooped in the growing heat. His face was mottled, a dark shadow against the vapour, and his arms and legs bore the wheals of the rushes and of the blades of cutting grass the attendants had struck him with: thin raised welts, with blood barely pearling up through the broken skin.

His eyes were closed, and he didn’t move when we came in. “Ah, Acatl.”

”Impressive,” I said. He was deep into his meditation, his eyes still closed; but obviously he saw on another plane than the Fifth World.

”A trick, as the She-Snake would call them.” His voice was deprecating. “I see the pup is with you.”

I didn’t have to turn round to guess Teomitl’s hands would have clenched. “Let’s try to be civil here,” I said, ignoring the fact that I was talking to one Revered Speaker and a man who could very well become one in the future. “As you said, the Fifth World is at stake. Whatever quarrels you have can wait.”

Teomitl glowered at Nezahual-tzin, but he said nothing.

”I’m surprised to find you here,” I said. “Sweatbaths don’t belong to Quetzalcoatl.” Several gods and goddesses took an interest in those places of purifications, not least among Whom was Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror, Quetzalcoatl’s eternal enemy.

Nezahual-tzin smiled. The vapour swirled around him, coalesced into the shape of a huge serpent, so much clearer than the one I’d seen in his rooms that I could count every feather, every jewelled scale on the huge body wrapped around the boy-emperor. “Enemy territory is where you prove yourself, where you’re most sharply defined against what you’re not, what you’ll never be.”

”Interesting,” I said. “Nezahual-tzin, there is something I need to ask you about Tizoc–”

He shook his head. “After the ritual. It can wait.”

I wasn’t sure it could.

”We’re not here to talk.” Nezahual-tzin leant back against the wall of the sweatbath. The serpent leant with him, growing larger and larger, its outline sinking into the wall, gaining colour and texture until it seemed a living fresco.

“Into the place of the fleshless, away from the abode of life

You came, You descended

Into the region of mystery

For the precious bones, for men to inhabit the earth…”

The serpent was growing larger; the world was receding, fading into insignificance, the city a child’s map, spread on the ground far, far below us, the Fifth Sun so close we might touch it.

“You came, You ascended

Into the gardens of the gods, into the place of the Duality

You came, You made them whole

The broken bones, made whole through Your penance…”

Abruptly, everything faded out and I came to in the vapourfilled room, the unpleasant prickle of an obsidian blade against my back.

The attendants had retreated, Nezahual-tzin had risen, regal and wrathful. “What is the meaning of this?”

”You can’t possibly–” Teomitl said.

I turned, slowly. Three warriors stood with their
macuahitl
swords pointed at me; and Quenami was with them, smiling from ear to ear. “I don’t understand,” I said, though I did perfectly. My time had just run out. “Teomitl is right. You have no authority.”

”Oh, I don’t do this on my authority,” Quenami said. He smiled even more widely. I hadn’t thought that was possible, but the son of a dog managed it. “Tizoc-tzin is the one who gave the order.”

”On what motive?” I asked.

Quenami jerked his chin in Nezahual-tzin’s direction. “Conspiracy with foreigners against the good of the Mexica Empire should do, for the moment.”

Meaning there was another reason, and that, given enough time, he’d find a way to present it before the judges, whoever they might be. “I see.” I threw a glance at my two companions who now stood apart, as if to make it clear they’d have nothing to do with each other. It might have been amusing in other circumstances.

Teomitl was working himself up to a speech; I silenced him with a brief shake of my head, and hoped to the gods he’d have the wits to remain silent. It was highly doubtful anyone would arrest Nezahual-tzin, who was Revered Speaker of an allied city, but Teomitl did not have such protections. I didn’t think Tizoc-tzin would want any harm to come to him, not unless the fool spoke up for me.

Luck must have been with me, for Teomitl remained silent, his eyes wide in his dark face, as if not quite sure what had happened.

”Oh, don’t look so glum, Acatl,” Quenami said as the guards took me away from the sweatbath. “We should have a new Revered Speaker to decide your fate.”

Oh yes. And we both knew what he would be, and what he would decide.

SIXTEEN

In Enemy Territory

The cell was small, a square of beaten earth surrounded by four adobe walls, with barely enough space for me to lie down, and a mangy reed mat as its only furniture.

But still, as far as cells went, it was comfortable. A year ago my brother Neutemoc, a respected Jaguar Knight, had awaited his judgement in a wooden cage on the platform before the palace, out in the midday sun. At least I was in the shade, and they had even given me a few maize flatbreads.

The ground under my feet was slightly warm, impregnated with a magic I wasn’t quite sure where to place, faint and distant, like the echo of something vast.

The first thing I tried after they’d drawn the entrance-curtain closed was to cast a spell. The remnants of that were still on the ground, my blood a duller shade than the earth, stubbornly refusing to quicken. It was as if something were blocking me – perhaps the other High Priests? I hadn’t imagined they had that much power.

With nothing much to do, I sat against the wall furthest from the entrance, watching the quincunx I’d drawn on the ground recede further into the shadows as the blood sank into the earth.

Everything seemed to grow fainter as time passed. Emptiness crawled across my limbs – a terrible sensation of dislocation like a maize stalk uprooted from the field. I tried moving my fingers, and it was as if my body no longer knew how to answer.

The flatbreads. Was that the same poison that had killed Ceyaxochitl? But no, I was a paranoid fool. Manatzpa had admitted to that, the only thing he had turned out to be responsible for, in the long string of magical offences that had brought me here.

But still…

Still, I felt as if I was rising in and out of consciousness – sleeping a restless sleep, waking up gasping and no longer quite sure of where I was, as if whatever they had put in here was eating at me, gnawing at my spirit little by little.

With faltering hands, I reached for my obsidian knife, hoping for the comfort of Lord Death’s power arcing through me, the aching, stretched emptiness that was my province, but they had taken that away from me, too.

The Duality curse me, I needed to focus. I couldn’t let it end like this, not with the star-demons the gods knew where, not with Teomitl still vulnerable against the intrigues of his brother. I needed to–

My hand fell back on the ground, limp, and somehow I couldn’t muster the strength to lift it again. Shadows flickered at the edge of my vision, like the smoke of the She-Snake’s ritual, slowly spreading to cover the world.

There is a temple, in the Sacred Precinct, the walls of which are
painted black…

I needed to get up, I needed to…

The name of that temple is Tlillan. Darkness.

Just one moment. A moment’s rest, that was all that I needed, a moment with my eyes closed, thinking of nothing but the bare walls, a moment here on the earth, warmed up by its touch. I needed…

The entrance-curtain was drawn aside with a jarring sound. I knew that sound, I thought, but it seemed too far away to be recovered, too much of a struggle to retrieve; like lifting my hands, like clenching my fingers. Like…

Footsteps echoed on the beaten earth, and a dark silhouette came to stand over me, its features moving in and out of focus in the shadows.

”Well, aren’t you a sight. Pathetic, Acatl.”

Acamapichtli? I’d expected Quenami with more accusations, or promises of what punishments Tizoc-tzin would push for; but why Acamapichtli? He hadn’t even been in the palace recently. He was in disgrace, according to the She-Snake. Why?

Dimly, as if from a great distance, I saw him bend over me. Something glinted in the darkness, coming to rest by my side and gradually, as the fog across my vision lifted, I made out its shape – a polished jaguar fang, carved with images of seashells and frogs, shimmering with the blue-green magic of Tlaloc the Storm Lord. A slim piece of paper wrapped around it, steeped in a dark, pulsing colour I knew all too well – fresh blood.

Acamapichtli had withdrawn, was once more towering above me. “I inscribed this with the blood of a human sacrifice before coming here. It won’t last. But at least we’ll have a more coherent conversation.”

I struggled to bring my mind back from the boundaries of the Fifth World, where it seemed to have fled. “I don’t understand–”

”You’re a fool,” Acamapichtli said. “That’s all there is to say.” He did not move, watching me pull myself into a more upright position. Saliva had run down my chin, staining my cloak and I tasted blood in my mouth. I must have bitten my tongue as I sank into oblivion.

”Tlaloc,” I said. My thoughts seemed to be a hundred scattered shards, the pieces of a broken mirror. “Lord Death. I–” I had been stretched out, as thin as though I was deprived of sustenance – dying, perhaps? If they left me longer in here, I would come out a drooling idiot. “What is this place?”

”Finally.” In the dim light, I guessed more than saw his smile, as predatory as that of his god. “No longer the Fifth World, Acatl.”

A god’s world. A land where both my magic, which came from Lord Death, and that of Acamapichtli, which came from the Storm Lord, were uninvited guests. “The Southern Hummingbird,” I said. “This is land consecrated to Him.”

”Not quite. It’s His land, Acatl, a portal into a small part of His heartland. Whatever you’ve done, they want to make sure you remain silent, badly enough to spend so much power on your prison.”

The heartland. The seven caves. Aztlan, the White Place where we had all come from, the centre of Huitzilpochtli’s power. “I have done nothing,” I said, still struggling to reorder my thoughts. “Yet.” Too late, I remembered the snatches I’d heard in Tizoc-tzin’s rooms, about removing the opposition. I should have thought a little more on who they’d consider against them.