Harbinger of the Storm (45 page)
”But you’re my brother, and there will be no war between us.”
Because he couldn’t afford it, or because he loved Teomitl? I couldn’t tell, not any more, what those two felt for each other. It seemed to me that something had broken in the hours before my arrest, when Tizoc-tzin had cast doubts on Mihmatini’s reputation, something had come apart then, a mask broken into four hundred pieces, and things would never be the same.
Teomitl stood straight, as if to attention. “Thank you.”
Tizoc-tzin scowled. “But you’re getting the other appointment as well. Don’t flatter yourself. It’s time you took part in imperial affairs.”
”I know,” Teomitl said. He bowed, very low, a subject to his Revered Speaker, but I could feel the impatience brimming up in him.
”That will be all,” Tizoc-tzin said. “You may leave.”
“Don’t look so sad,” Acamapichtli said, as he raised the entrance-curtain in a tinkle of bells. We walked down the steps into the courtyard – deserted at this hour of the afternoon – almost companionably.
”I’m not,” I said, stiffly. “We got what we wanted, didn’t we?”
He looked at me, a smile spreading on his face. “Of course. Because we worked together.”
I wasn’t in the mood for a moral, especially coming from him. “It’s not an experience I’m anxious to repeat too often. Still, I suppose I don’t have a choice.”
Acamapichtli smiled. “You’re learning.” He clapped me on the back, like an old friend. “We’ll meet again.” And then he was gone, striding down the stairs as if nothing had happened, ready to play his little games once again.
Learning? I supposed, in a way, that I was, but not lessons he’d ever have understood.
Teomitl caught up with me at the exit to the courtyard under a fresco of butterflies and moths, a stream of souls rising up from the ground towards the huge face of the Fifth Sun. Nezahual-tzin fell in with us, casually and innocently, though he never did anything without cause. “So, I take it I’m invited to the wedding?”
Teomitl scowled, an expression reminiscent of Tizoc-tzin at his best. “You’re the Revered Speaker of Texcoco. I don’t think I could leave you out if I tried.”
”How nice,” Nezahual-tzin said. “I’ll come with pleasure.”
”I have no doubt.” Teomitl shook his head, as if to scare off a nagging fly. “Acatl-tzin –”
”Yes?”
”He hasn’t changed, has he?”
I shook my head.
”People seldom change,” Nezahual-tzin said. We passed the imperial aviary where the birds pressed themselves against the bars of their huge cages, the quetzal-birds and the parrots, the herons and the quails, everything laid out for the Revered Speaker’s pleasure. “They think they do, but in the end most change is an illusion. Perhaps the greatest one put in the Fifth World.”
I knew. I knew that Quenami was going to continue grating on my nerves, that Acamapichtli would support me only as far as his own interests, that I would never be able to rely on them.
But, the Duality protect us, I was still going to work with them. “He’s granted you a wife,” I said finally. “Don’t ask for more than that.”
”It would be arrogant to. Not to mention out of place.” Teomitl puffed his cheeks thoughtfully. “He’ll deal with you, though, in the end. Quenami will convince him to.”
”He has what he wanted,” I said. “The Turquoise-and
Gold Crown. He should be more amenable now.” So long as we didn’t contradict him in anything. It was going to be a difficult reign. Thank the Duality I had the rest of my clergy with me.
”I guess so,” Teomitl said, but he sounded unconvinced. “I’m not sure–”
”He’s your brother. And the Revered Speaker.”
”I know. I guess… I guess he’s not who I thought he was.” He smiled, suddenly carefree, pure Teomitl. “But it’s not so bad, in the end.”
This from a man who had just become heir-apparent to the Mexica Empire. I stifled a smile. “I’m sure you can live with it. Come on. Let’s find Mihmatini and tell her the good news, and then I’ll go back to the Duality House and finish Ceyaxochitl’s vigil.”
We strolled out of the Imperial Palace, past the Serpent Wall, and into the familiar crowd of the Sacred Precinct. The Fifth Sun was overhead, beating down upon us, the heavens bright and impossibly blue. Blood ran down the steps of the Great Temple, going underground to settle into the grooves of the disk, sealing again and again the prison of She of the Silver Bells, and the star-demons were gone. Everything was right with the world, or as right as it could be.
Except…
Except that, at the edge of the sky, I could see them, the same storm clouds as in the heartland, slowly closing in, grey and swollen and angry, a reminder of the god’s presence. And I didn’t need Mictlan’s magic to see the skeleton beneath Tizoc-tzin’s skin. We had put a dead man on the throne, an empty husk, animated only by magic and the blessing of a god.
When Huitzilpochtli’s blessings and magic ran out – and they always did – what would happen then?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
No novel is written in a vacuum, especially a research intensive one like
Harbinger of the Storm
. Accordingly, I would like to thank the livejournal communities
ancient_americas,
ask_a_historian
and
little_details
for helping me narrow down the date of Axayacatl’s death. Traci Morganfield, as usual, was a stupendous help, both with sources and with general support – her continued faith and enthusiasm for the series was a great help to keep me going through the terrible middle of this volume. Likewise, Marion Larqué’s enjoyment (she read both books in record time) kept me writing throughout.
Dave Devereux, whom I met in 2009 at Eastercon in Bradford, turned out to be a dab hand at murder methods, and provided me with several poisons for causing the symptoms I wanted for Ceyaxochitl’s death (though I do wish to note that I find his expertise slightly worrying and am not entirely sure I want to have dinner with him, in spite of his obvious culinary skills).
Justin Pilon read both the synopsis and the novel, and provided awesome feedback on both – not to mention provided awesome advertising for book one. Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, in addition to being a fabulous writer herself, provided me with much-needed space to unwind and fascinating discussions on culture and cultural identity.
The writers of the Villa Diodati workshop provided interesting conversations on novel writing, novel promotion and general brainstorming, as well as great food and great company: Deanna Carlyle, Nancy Fulda, Stephen Gaskell, Sara Genge, Floris Kleijne, Chance Morrisson, Ruth Nestvold, John Olsen, Ben Rosembaum, and Jeff Spock.
The members of my writing group Written in Blood read the second draft of this and helped me fix several broken moments, as well as cut down on the number of characters involved in court intrigues. Many thanks to Keyan Bowes, Dario Ciriello, Janice Hardy, Doug Sharp, Juliette Wade and Genevieve Williams for making this a smoother and easier read.
A humbling number of people promoted book 1 online and offline (in addition to those mentioned above): Kevin J Anderson, Elizabeth Bear, Lauren Beukes, Blackwatch, Dave Brendon, Tobias Buckell, Stephanie Burgis and Patrick Samphire, Seb Cevey, Andy Cox, Electra aka starlady38, Emmanuel Chastellière, Tom Crosshill, Pat Esden, Roy Gray, Dave Gullen, Rob Haines, Colin Harvey, Caroline Hooton, Chris Kastensmidt, J. Robert King, James Maxey, Lucas Moreno, Cara Murphy, Nik aka Loudmouthman, Gareth L. Powell, Stefan Raets, Julia Reynolds, Roxane aka edroxy, Angela Slatter, M.J. Starling, Rob Weber (alias Val online), Sean Williams, Russell Wilcox, Maria Zannini at Online Writing Workshop, the T-Party writers’ workshop, Danie Ware and the Forbidden Planet staff involved with my signing and bookselling there, and to everyone else who talked about the book, reviewed it, or was kind enough to let me blather about my writing in their corner of the web. In the promotion department, special thanks go to Janice Hardy, who in addition to having a sharp eye for structure and conflict, is also an awesome graphic designer and provided me with
Servant of the
Underworld
bookmarks and business cards.
As always, many thanks to the AR crew, Marc Gascoigne and Lee Harris, and to my agents John Parker and John Berlyne at Zeno Agency for the enthusiasm, the responsiveness, and for putting up with my more naive questions on the world of publishing and deadlines.
And finally, to my family: to my paternal grandparents, whose house was always a treasure-trove of books; to my maternal grandmother, my
bà ngoai
, who took care of me as a child, and still does; to my parents, for always being there; and to my sister, who promoted the book to all and sundry across Europe, from Spain to Finland. And, last but not least, thanks to my husband Matthieu, who, not content with being dragged to London to see a (wonderful) exhibition on the Aztecs, cheerfully suggested suspects, brainstormed rituals and plotted bloody murders with me, in addition to reading the first draft of this with his usual critical eye.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
French by birth, Aliette de Bodard chose to write in English – her second language – after a two-year stint in London. Though she has trained as an engineer (graduating from Ecole Polytechnique, one of France’s most prestigious colleges), she has always been fascinated by history and mythology, especially those of non-Western cultures. Her love of mysteries gave her the idea to write a series of crossgenre novels which would feature Aztecs, blood magic and fiendish murders.
She is a Campbell Award finalist and a Writers of the Future winner. Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in venues such as
Interzone
,
Realms of Fantasy,
and
Fantasy magazine
, and has been reprinted in
The Year’s
Best Science Fiction
. She is now hard at work on her third novel – the next in the
Obsidian and Blood
series.
She lives in Paris, where she has a job as a computer engineer.
Extras…
AUTHOR’S NOTES
As I mention in the afterword to
Servant of the Underworld
, writing a book set in Aztec times carries with it a number of challenges, not the least of which is reconstituting a history we know little about. As usual, any egregious mistakes are my own, and not those of the sources I consulted.
The other challenge is how to make the civilisation intelligible for modern readers. Most Aztec names are long; for the longer the name was, the most prestigious it was. They are also replete with a number of phonemes barbarous to English ears such as “tz” or “tl”. Accordingly, I took the decision to simplify matters somewhat. The inhabitants of the city of Texcoco are in fact the Acolhuas (much as those of the city of Tenochtitlan are the Mexica-Tenochca); but given how little they were referred to, I used the word “Texcocan”, which has the merit of having a clear common root with “Texcoco”.
Similarly a number of names were simplified. I chose to refer to the She-Snake by his title rather than by his name, the rather long and unwieldy “Tlilpopoca-tzin”; and Nezahualtzin’s full name is in fact “Nezahualpilli-tzin”, quite a mouthful. Most other names chosen were deliberately short, useful for us but something that would have been highly disrespectful in Aztec times.
I twisted history in several respects, perhaps the most notable being the addition of the High Priest for the Dead to the highest level of religious hierarchy. The histories only mention the High Priest of Tlaloc and the High Priest of Huitzilpochtli as supreme religious authorities, but I needed a triumvirate in order to justify Acatl’s presence at Court.
And, while it is true that the Great Temple, the centre of religious life in Tenochtitlan, was rebuilt and enlarged multiple times (one of the most notable expansions being the one started by Tizoc and continued by his successor Teomitl), the huge disk I describe underneath the temple was not, in fact, in this location. The disk, which showed the dismembered body of Coyolxauhqui, She of the Silver Bells, was in fact set at the bottom of the Great Temple steps. The bodies of the sacrifices would tumble down the steps, and fall onto the disk, re-enacting the primal sacrifice of She of the Silver Bells, and ensuring Huitzilpochtli remained dominant.
Harbinger of the Storm
is set a year and a half after its predecessor,
Servant of the Underworld
. It concerns itself with the matter of the imperial succession, a thorny problem in a society which had no formal system of inheritance and relied instead on a group of elders and important noblemen (the council) to designate the man they thought fit to rule the Mexica Empire.
We have little record of what actually happened around Axayacatl-tzin’s death, save that the year of his death coincided with a total eclipse of the sun. I chose to situate the eclipse in the days following his death, which puts his death in the winter season, towards the end of the Aztec year. Obviously, given the symbolism of the Revered Speaker as representative of the Southern Hummingbird Huitzilpochtli, and the latter’s ties with the Fifth Sun, the proximity of an eclipse to his death would have seemed deeply ominous to the Aztecs.
The She-Snake is worth a brief mention here; he was part of the duality which underpinned most Nahuatl thought. Just as most gods had a female counterpart, the Revered Speaker, the representative of Huitzilpochtli, had his counterpart in the
Cihuacoatl
, the She-Snake. The former was in charge of what we would call external policy, such as making war; the latter handled internal matters like order in the city, the Sacred Precinct and the palace. This is the same duality we find at the lowest level between husband and wife, the husband taking care of external affairs like going to war and taking care of the fields, while the woman was the one responsible for running the household. At the time of the Spanish conquest, the She-Snake had his own palace, I chose to have Axayacatl’s She-Snake take his quarters in the Imperial Palace in order to keep him closer to the plot.