Aztlan: The Courts of Heaven (8 page)

Now I knew why she had been so insistent on having me meet her there exactly at noon. But where was she? I took out my chronometer and noted the time.

Two minutes late
. I wouldn’t have found that observation quite so worrisome if I weren’t in the worst part of District Two, and if Calli hadn’t told me she was
never
late.

Two more minutes went by. And two more. I invoked the gods beneath my breath and pulled my radio out of my pouch.

At the same time, I heard something. A scraping sound—the kind a shoe might make in the dirt.

As I turned, hoping it was Calli, I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I got a vague impression of a mask, a knife—and not much more. But that was enough.

I’d always had good reflexes. They’d been an asset in the ball court, keeping me one step ahead of the other team. I was even more grateful for them now.

Instead of taking a knife in the gut, I slid sideways and let the blade cut empty air. Then I grabbed my assailant’s wrist with one hand and chopped down on it with the other.

He cried out as his wrist bones cracked, forcing him to drop his knife. But he still had one good hand, which he used to sock me in the face.

I reeled, but only for a second. As he came at me again, I kicked him in the belly. He doubled over, and I made use of the opening to deal him an uppercut.

He staggered back a few steps and bounced off the hunk of wall behind him. Still, I got the impression he wasn’t done. I thought for sure he was going to put his head down and rush me.

But he didn’t. He just crumpled to the ground.

I was ready to congratulate myself—until I realized the guy might have attacked Calli before he attacked
me
. I had begun to call her name, my hand already dipping into my pouch for my hand stick, when I felt a stab of fire in my back.

It told me that the guy I’d put down wasn’t alone.

Fighting through the agony just inside my shoulder blade, I flung an elbow at what I judged would be my attacker’s head. It hit something hard enough to make him grunt in pain.

I whirled, my hand stick in my fist. I was hoping to follow the elbow with a shot to the guy’s face.

Usually, I restrained myself from using my hand stick that way. But the lizard turd had put a knife in my back—I wasn’t going to treat him like my Aunt Xoco.

Unfortunately, the guy was faster than I was. He grabbed my wrist, preventing me from using my hand stick, and slugged me in the jaw with the hilt of his knife.

I took a step back to regain my balance but my foot slipped on some debris and shot out from under me. The next thing I knew, I was lying on my back empty-handed, and my adversary was on top of me. I grabbed his knife hand but he got a shot in with his other one.

Then he pulled his fist back to hit me again—but I managed to roll out of the way this time. As a result, he hit the ground instead of me. It must have hurt because he stopped trying to pound me senseless and clutched his hand to his chest instead.

I took advantage of the respite to belt him in the teeth. It sent him spinning off me, as I’d intended. But he still had a knife in his fist, and the pain in my back was getting worse by the second, and I was starting to get a little lightheaded from loss of blood.

As far as I knew, the other guy’s knife was lying on the ground, and so was my hand stick. But I didn’t know where and I didn’t have time to look for them. It was all I could do to scramble to my feet and brace myself for my assailant’s next attack.

He had just raised his knife when I heard the screaming. It echoed throughout the remnants of the pyramid, making it sound like there were many people screaming instead of just one.

Instead of just
Calli
.

The guy looked around. No doubt, he would have liked to make the screaming stop. But he couldn’t.

Not that it mattered. There was no one around to hear it, no one who would come running over to lend me a hand. And the first guy who had attacked me—the one I had knocked out—was getting up.

It was going to be two against one.

Except the guy with the knife didn’t go after me as I figured he would. Instead, apparently more perturbed by the screaming than I thought he would be, he grabbed hold of the other guy and started dragging him away.

I had a crazy thought about going after them. Then I came to my senses. The gods had smiled on me. The last thing I wanted to do was encourage them to reconsider their generosity.

Only when the masked guys were gone did the screaming stop. A moment later, Calli swung around one of the wall fragments and came running into my arms.

Which would have been just fine if I hadn’t been stabbed so recently in the back. Unable to help myself, I let out a curse.

She let me go, her eyes widening. “What’s the matter?”

I showed her my back.

“Gods, Maxtla, you’re bleeding!”

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” I grunted.

“Good, she said, trying her best to keep her composure. “Because if it were, you’d be dead.” Then she took her shawl off, folded it over, and pressed it against my wound.

“By the way, nice job,” I rasped.

“Job . . . ?”

I jerked a thumb in the direction in which the masked guys had taken off. “You scared them away.”

She pulled in a tremulous breath. “That can’t be.”

It seemed unlikely, all right—if the masked guys were members of the Knife Eyes, as I’d sort of assumed at first. But what if they weren’t?

Either way, I had to let my chief know what happened. “My radio,” I said.

I didn’t have it on me any longer. And a quick scan of my surroundings didn’t produce any sign of it.

“I’ve got mine,” said Calli. “Who should I call?”

I gave her Necalli’s code. She tapped it in, then handed me the radio.

A moment later, Necalli asked, “Who’s this?”

“Me, “I said, “Colhua.”

“Everything all right?”

I guess I didn’t sound so good. “I need somebody to check out the rail line between Nanahuatl Street and Coatepec Street in District Two. A pair of guys wearing dark clothing. I got in a few good shots, so they’ll be a little beat up. And listen—they may have knives in their pouches.”

“Hang on,” said Necalli.

I could hear him giving orders. He got back on the link a few moments later.

“You know,” he said, “if they decided to escape on foot, we’ll never catch them.”

“I know,” I said.

There wasn’t much of a police presence in that part of Aztlan. But then, police only showed up when the neighborhood clamored for them, and it had been a long time since anyone did any clamoring in District Two.

“Need someone to come get you?” asked Necalli.

I knew my two sparring partners might still be out there, and I didn’t want Calli to get hurt. But it would be more dangerous waiting there for help than trying to make our way back to the rail station.

“We’ll be all right,” I said.

But we would be careful as we approached the station. After all, we might find our pals waiting on the platform.

“It’s your funeral rite,” said Necalli.

“Stay with the link, though,” I told him. I was a fool, but I wasn’t
that
big a fool.

I handed Calli back her phone and said, “Let’s go.”

“You can walk?”

I nodded. “Sure.” Not that I was looking forward to it.

Calli started to pull my hand over her neck so I could lean on her, but she stopped when she saw the look on my face. “That would hurt,” she said, “wouldn’t it?”

“It would,” I confirmed.

Frowning, she wrapped her arms around one of mine instead, and we started to make our way through the ruins. “Gods,” she said, “I’m so sorry, Maxtla. I never should have brought you here.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

Suddenly she stopped and, ever so gently, turned my face toward hers. Then she kissed me.

I couldn’t argue with that either.

A
s it turned out, Calli and I didn’t see our assailants again—either on the way to the rail station or after we got there. In fact, we didn’t see
anybody
until we got off at the medical center in District Eleven.

While Calli and I were waiting for the physician, I had time to think. And the more I thought, the more certain I was that my assailants weren’t Knife Eyes.

The way they had run away, their choice of weapon, their style of masks . . . none of it jibed. The question at that point was: Who
else
would want to go after me?

The obvious answer: Coyotl’s abductors.

Which meant they knew I was on the case. But my assignment hadn’t been made public knowledge. I started making a list in my head of who knew I was looking for Coyotl.

I was still making it when the physician called me in.

It turned out that the guy’s knife hadn’t dug too deep. The physician gave me a painkiller, put a bandage around me, and told me to stay out of fights for a while.

I told him I would do that. It was a promise I hoped to keep.

This time, Calli took
me
home. But like me, she couldn’t stay—she had a business meeting later in the day.

Necalli sent Takun and Izel to the place where I’d been ambushed. They found a knife. Also my radio.

After they brought it to me, Necalli asked if I wanted someone else to take over the case. “No way,” I told him. “I do my best work after I’ve been beaten up a little.”

He knew it wasn’t a joke.

On the other hand, the painkiller had made me sleepy. With Necalli’s permission, I decided to work from home the rest of the day. I was sitting on my couch in a new set of clothes, trying to stay awake, when my radio buzzed.

Figuring it was Necalli, I took it out of my pouch, put it up to my ear, and said, “Colhua.”

“It’s Nagual,” came the response. So I had figured wrong. “I was thinking about Coyotl and something else came to me. Something I thought you’d want to know.”

He sounded like he still had that cold. His voice was thick and he was slurring his words.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Coyotl . . . he liked to have some laughs with the ladies.”

“That’s not exactly news,” I said. Women admired ball court players—something Nagual knew as well as anyone—and Coyotl was at the top of the heap.

“Not just
any
ladies,” Nagual continued, as if he had read my mind. “Chocolate drinkers.”

“Nobility?” I asked, just to make sure we were talking about the same thing.

“That’s what I’m saying. One in particular. They had a regular thing, she and Coyotl, every few nights for the last cycle or so. At a hotel, I think.”

“I see,” I said. “That could be helpful.” Especially since the Malinche lead hadn’t gone anywhere yet. “You wouldn’t happen to know this chocolate drinker’s name, would you?”

He didn’t.

“That’s all right,” I said. “Say, are you taking anything for that cold? I think you sound worse than before.”

“Don’t worry about me,” said Nagual. “Just find our friend Coyotl. Gods smile on you, Maxtla.”

“And on you,” I told him. Then he cut the connection.

I sat back and thought about what Nagual had told me.

It put Coyotl’s disappearance in an entirely different light. Not that it was unheard of for nobles to have affairs with common people, even in ancient days. It was an oddity, sure, but it happened.

But if the woman had something to do with Coyotl’s disappearance, I would have to find her, maybe even go after her—and no Investigator had ever gone after a noblewoman before.

The painkiller was making it hard to think, but I decided Malinche had to remain my priority. At least in her case, I had a name to work with. I started making a list of all the
octli
houses in the Merchant City—or rather, the ones listed on the Mirror—thinking a young woman might be inclined to frequent one or two of them.