Aztlan: The Last Sun (10 page)

“Can I get you something?” he called to me, his speech distorted by a brown tobacco stick protruding from his mouth. “Some cane water?”

I waved away the suggestion. “No, thanks.”

“No problem,” he said. He beckoned. “Come back this way. It’s quieter.”

I did as he asked. When I reached him, he extended his hand. “Colhua, is it?”

“Yes. Thanks for seeing me on short notice.”

“Looks like you walked into something,” Molpilia observed of my face.

“Occupational hazard.”

“I don’t envy you guys.” He took out his tobacco stick and pointed with it. “Come on, I’ll show you something.”

He opened one of the doors, then stood aside so I could walk past him. I found myself in a sprawling, windowless room in which Molpilia had laid out Aztlan to scale, district by carefully ordered district, its biggest buildings almost as tall as we were. There was just enough space separating the districts for us to walk single file between any two of them.

As a child, I had seen a motion picture about a monster bigger than any pyramid. It had emerged from the Eastern Ocean and torn up Aztlan in its search for its lost offspring. As I towered over Molpilia’s model of the city, I felt a lot like that monster.

“What do you think?” the developer asked.

“Impressive,” I said.

“And necessary, if I’m to be effective at what I do. There are things I can see in this room—opportunities and pitfalls alike—that I can’t see when I’m out walking the streets.” He surveyed his miniature Aztlan a moment longer. Then he said, “So what can I tell you that will help you bring those cultists to justice?”

“What if it’s not the cultists who committed those murders?” I asked.

Molpilia smiled around his tobacco stick. “Who else would it be? I don’t want to do your job for you, Investigator, but aren’t they the ones with the motive?”

“That’s the question,” I said. “Is there anyone you’ve offended lately? Anyone who might hate you enough to kill in order to de-sanctify a couple of your pyramids?”

The developer puffed on his tobacco stick for a moment, considering the notion. But in the end he said, “No one comes to mind.”

“What do the other developers think of your good fortune?”

He shrugged. “They envy me.”

“Enough to want to hurt your business?”

“Absolutely,” said Molpilia, “if they thought for even half a moment that they could get away with it. But they’re too scared of guys like you to take that kind of chance.”

“Is there anyone
else
who might have reason to take a shot at you? A former employee perhaps? Someone who swore to get back at you after you fired him?”

He laughed. “You think I remember everyone I ever fired?”

“Maybe one of them stood out. One who was a little angrier than the others.”

He studied his tobacco stick for a while, then made a face. “I can’t think of anyone like that.”

“A former partner, then? An old girlfriend?”

“My old girlfriends are all well taken care of,” said Molpilia. “They have nothing to be bitter about. And I’ve never had any partners. Land of Death, I can barely stand working with
myself
.”

He laughed again. I laughed a little as well.

“There must be someone,” I said. “Everyone’s got enemies.”

He shook his head. “Not me. At least, not the kind who would break the Emperor’s Law.”

I couldn’t tell if he was being truthful or just obstinate. And it was getting late. I had to get to Aunt Xoco’s.

“Give it some more thought,” I told the developer. “It may help our investigation—and save the life of the next victim.”

“Sure,” said Molpilia. “No problem, Investigator. Have a blessed holiday.”

I wished him the same.

I was halfway to the rail line when I passed the window of a large flower shop. I had intended to bring Aunt Xoco a bouquet from the store down the block from her building, but a ceramic container full of trumpet-shaped
mixitl
caught my eye.

I didn’t think I had ever seen
mixitl
that purple, or that big, or that delicate. And there in the Merchant City, prices were always better than in Aztlan proper.

I was about to go inside and make a purchase when I saw something in the window—not something on the other side of the glass, but the reflection of something
behind
me, way on the other side of the street.

It was
him
. The guy with the pony tail I had seen by Zolin’s street cart.

Sometimes you get a glimpse of someone and you think it’s someone you know. Then you take a second look and realize it isn’t him or her at all. I forced myself to consider the possibility that my mind was playing that trick on me.

But the more I studied the guy’s reflection, the more certain I was: It was definitely
him
.

And he had been following me since I left the Interrogation Center. Otherwise, how would he have known I would go to see Molpilia? Yet I hadn’t caught sight of him until just that moment.

Pretty good, I thought.

He didn’t seem to know that I’d spotted him, but he would if I stood there long enough. So I went into the shop to buy some time if not some flowers.

The owner approached me to see what he could sell me, but I waved him away and said, “I’m an Investigator.”

“Of course,” he replied, his smile fading, and obediently returned to his place behind his counter.

Keeping my back to the guy with the pony tail, just in case he crossed the street for a closer look, I took out my buzzer and called Necalli.

“I’m half a block from Molpilia’s office on Oaxaca,” I said, “in a flower shop between Texcoco and Tiacopan. There’s a guy with a pony tail across the street. I want him taken.”

“Done,” said Necalli.

I looked back over my shoulder. The guy with the pony tail was still there.

There were a couple of hundred police officers stationed in the Merchant City. It wouldn’t take more than a few minutes to put one at either end of the block.

That is, as long as the guy in the pony tail cooperated. And it looked like he would.

Good, I thought. I couldn’t wait to find out why he was on my tail. Was he the killer? I could only hope.

My buzzer sounded. “Colhua,” I said, putting it to my ear.

“
Maxtla
Colhua?”

The voice was tinny, difficult to make out, and the number on my buzzer screen was untraceable. “Who’s this?” I asked.

“Never mind that. I have information for you.”

“Information,” I repeated.

“That’s right. The information you need to solve your case. You want to do that, don’t you?”

Before I could respond, I saw the owner of the floral shop point in the direction of his window. “He’s getting away,” he said.

I whirled and saw that he was right. The guy with the pony tail was walking off down the street.

I didn’t know what had tipped him off, or if he had just gotten nervous standing in one place for so long. But he was on his way, and I hadn’t heard from Necalli that there was anyone positioned at the end of the block to stop him.

Cursing under my breath, I thrust my buzzer into my pouch. Then I shoved the shop door open and ran outside.

Whoever had called would have to wait. The guy with the pony tail was my priority at the moment.

He was still walking, obviously trying not to draw attention to himself. I didn’t have that concern so I broke into a run. A moment later, he started running too.

I was still stiff from the night before, but that didn’t keep me from closing the gap, and more quickly than I would have thought. Obviously, the guy didn’t move as well as I remembered.

We crossed the intersection at Tiacopan and headed for Culhuacan. I was feeling confident. Some time soon, a police officer would materialize up ahead of us, and the chase would be over.

That is, if I didn’t catch Pony Tail on my own, which was looking more and more like a possibility.

I was just about to bet on the latter when my prey darted to his right and vanished. An alleyway, I thought. The Merchant City had millions of them.

Cursing beneath my breath, I ran even harder. I wasn’t going to let the guy elude me a second time. Not if there was even a
chance
he was the murderer.

Maybe ten seconds after he swung into the alley, I did the same. I leaned into the turn as hard as I could, hoping to catch a glimpse of Pony Tail
before
he ducked through the back door of some shop.

Which was why I didn’t see what he
hit
me with until it was too late.

The next thing I knew I was lying on my back, the metallic taste of blood thick in my mouth, a trash can lid lying on the concrete beside me—and Pony Tail was making his way down the alleyway.

My head was swimming, but I got to my feet and lurched after him. Surprisingly, I managed to catch up. He wasn’t just slow, I realized. He was hurt, maybe worse than I was.

I grabbed him by the shoulder, spun him around. He swung at me and I ducked. Seeing my opening, I uppercut him.

Hard
.

His head snapped back and he fell into the alley wall. I went after him, thinking I might end it then and there. But as I took another shot at him, he moved his head enough to make me miss.

Somehow, we ended up grappling. I had his wrist in my left hand and he had mine in his. That was when I saw the tattoo on his forearm—just for a second, before his sleeve slipped down again to cover it. But it was long enough for me to realize I had seen its like before.

I must have been thinking too much about the tattoo and not enough about Pony Tail, because he twisted his wrist free and slugged me in the chin. It wouldn’t have been so bad except the back of my head hit something behind me.

Everything went black for a second. By the time I recovered, Pony Tail was gone.

Using the wall behind me, I pulled myself to my feet. Suddenly, I heard someone shout.

Looking back over my shoulder, I saw a police officer appear in the mouth of the alley. He was wearing the red vest of the Merchant City and he had a hand stick in his fist.

For a moment, he looked ready to grab me with his free hand. Then he must have seen the bracelet on my wrist.

“Investigator?” he asked.

“Colhua,” I said. I pointed to the far end of the alley. “He went that way. But you won’t find him.”

The officer pelted past me anyway.

After a few minutes, I felt better. Battered, but better. By then, the police officer had come back empty-handed. Pony Tail had gotten away—not just from me, but from the Merchant City police.

Unfortunately, my mysterious caller was no longer on the line.

Well, I thought as I buzzed Necalli to tell him what had happened,
that
could have gone better.

I had a lead, though. And maybe more, if the guy I had rushed off the phone decided to forgive me and call back.

Most large cities in Mexica had two or three prison houses. They were featureless, red-brick buildings relegated to the least desirable parts of town.

Aztlan had only
one
prison house—a fact on which we prided ourselves. What’s more, it had been built just four cycles earlier with private money—that of a grateful citizen, whose identity had been withheld from the time the project was announced.

One rumor said the citizen was Lolco Molpilia.

In any case, the Aztlan Prison House was one of the nicest-looking structures in District One, made of pale, rough-hewn sandstone with greenish-blue bands of copper separating each level from the one above it. A real treat for the eye, especially at dawn and dusk, when the sun’s rays turned the sandstone a soft pink.

But inside, where the inmates were, Aztlan’s prison house was like any other, stark and gray with row upon row of individual cells, each one barred and windowless. Not the kind of place one would want to find oneself for any length of time.

As an Investigator, I found myself there a lot. There was always an inmate who could supply information for a price—usually a token reduction in his or her sentence, which it was in my power to grant—and I took advantage of the resource as often as I could.

Sometimes such information turned out to be useless. But on more than one occasion I had broken open a case with it, which was why I went straight to the prison house from my little adventure with Pony Tail in the Merchant City.

Escorted by a guard, I passed through the
petlacalli
—the outermost cell blocks, set aside for those who had committed relatively minor offenses like illicit gambling, public drunkenness, and chocolate trafficking. The maximum for someone in the
petlacalli
was three and a half cycles but the sentence was often less, depending on the generosity of the judge who presided over the case.

Moving deeper into the prison house, my escort and I passed through the
teilpiloyan
, the layer of cell blocks occupied by Aztlan’s debtors—men and women who owed money either to the Empire’s tax collectors or to other citizens, and couldn’t or wouldn’t pay up. If they changed their minds or found the wherewithal to take care of their debts, they would be released. If not, they would find themselves in the prison house for a long time.

When debtors owed money to the nobility, it was a different story. Then they wound up in the innermost block of cells, called the
cuauhcalli
—what had been known in ancient days as Death Row. Of course, hardly anyone was executed anymore—few, even, of the murderers, rapists, and seditionists incarcerated there alongside the debtors, though most people thought they should be.

The Emperor decided most things in Mexica, including how severe to make a penalty for criminal misconduct. And like his father before him, he was the merciful sort.

It was because of the Emperor’s mercy that Ichtaca Nochtli was still alive. Nochtli was one of the leaders of the First Sun cult that had cropped up during the last Fire Renewal—the one that marked the end of the Fourth Sun—and terrorized the people of Aztlan.

Like Ancient Light, First Sun had been a religious cult. And like Eren’s people, they had harkened back to a more primitive way of honoring the gods.