Aztlan: The Last Sun (14 page)

Eren studied my face. “That didn’t happen just now, did it?”

“No,” I said. “Two days ago.”

She frowned. “You should have buzzed before you came. We’re all on edge. We’ve gotten a lot of threats.”

“I’m not surprised,” I said.

“Neither were we. And we’re not going to let them stop us.”

“Because the gods will protect you?” I asked, unable to resist the gibe.

“Because if we die,” she said, apparently unperturbed by my remark, “we’ve died doing the right thing.”

“Always a praiseworthy idea. But it’s better to live.”

She tilted her head to one side. “So you came here to talk theology with me?”

I bit my lip. Why did I let her get under my skin? Unfortunately, I knew the answer.

“No,” I said. “I came to talk about a buzz I got the other day. From an unidentified informant. It was you, wasn’t it?”

Eren didn’t reply. She didn’t have to. I could see the answer in her eyes.

“Where did you get your information?” I asked.

“I can’t say,” she told me. “People would lose their jobs. Maybe more than their jobs.”

“How do you know these people? From the capital?”

She smiled, despite herself. “Good guess.”

“It wasn’t much of a guess. You lived there a long time. And there’s no record of the work you did there. Which suggests—”

“That I worked for the Emperor. Which I did.”

“Until you met some people who belonged to Ancient Light, and decided you would better serve society by teaching it to honor the gods.”

“Not
some
people,” she said, reddening a little. “Just
one
. But yes, I felt a calling.”

I felt a pang of jealousy, but I managed to put it aside. “Well, for what it’s worth, your friend Molpilia is awaiting an audience with a judge as we speak. But I’m not convinced that he or the people who work for him committed the murders.”

“Why is that?”

“Because there’s no hard evidence that they did it. The story you told me about his gambling problem certainly sounds plausible. But until I have something more tangible, I’m not going to be able to pin a murder charge on Molpilia.”

“So why is he going to stand before a judge?” Eren asked.

“Another charge,” I said. “One I can’t talk about.” For any number of reasons, I had to keep my business with the Knife Eyes to myself.

She seemed to find that hard to accept. Finally, she asked, “So who do you think
did
commit the murders?”

Olintecke maybe.
And the Knife Eyes were still in the running, with or without Molpilia.

But what I said was, “I was hoping you could help me with that. After all, you knew about Molpilia. If there’s anything else, anything at all . . .”

Eren thought for a while. Then she shook her head. “Nothing I can think of.”

“Well,” I said, “it was worth a try. Thanks anyway.” And I left her before I was tempted to say anything else.

I had already opened the back door to the lobby when Eren called my name. As I turned, I saw her coming after me. To my surprise, she had what looked like tears in her eyes.

“I just wanted you to know,” she said, “that I had a crush on you. When we were kids, I mean. I thought you were the handsomest, smartest, most wonderful boy on Earth.”

It was nice to hear, I said. “But why tell me now?”

“Because,” she said, “I don’t think we’re ever going to see each other again.”

I did something stupid then: I kissed her. Me, an Investigator of the Empire, working a murder case in which Eren Nacatl was still, technically, a suspect. And I kissed her.

“I wondered what that would be like,” she said.

“So did I,” I confessed, “when you weren’t slugging me in the face.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I slugged you . . . ?”

“I can tell you the day and time.”

“It must have been . . . memorable.”

So was this.

I ran my fingertips along her cheek. It was as soft as I’d always imagined. “I’ve got to go,” I told her.

“Then go,” she said.

She had barely gotten the words out when my radio buzzed. Taking it out of my pouch, I said, “Colhua.”

It was Necalli. “You know the call you put out on Olintecke? They found him.”

My heart beat faster. “Where?”

He told me.

“I’ll be right there,” I said.

Eren looked at me. “Something?”

“Yes,” I said. “But not what I hoped.”

“Max,” she said, “I hope I’m wrong. I mean about never seeing you again.”

“So am I,” I said.

Then I really
did
leave her.

As it turned out, Olintecke lived in District Two, in one of the older pyramids there. Even older, I believed, than the one in which Eren and her friends had taken up residence.

When I got to his apartment, there was a police officer at the door. I showed him my bracelet and he let me in.

The place was a mess. There were food wrappers and cardboard cups everywhere I looked, and it smelled faintly like dog urine though there weren’t any animals in evidence.

The only other living person there was a doctor, sitting on a chair in the eating room and making notes. She looked up as I joined her.

“Colhua?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “He’s in there.”

Following her gesture, I went through the doorway and saw a man sprawled on the floor, facing away from me. I could tell by the ponytail that it was Olintecke.

“Gods of Judgement,” I muttered.

The doctor had followed me into the room. “You know him?” she asked.

“I know who he
is
,” I said.

But then, at that point the doctor had to know that too.

I knelt beside the body. The officers who had found Olintecke had cut him down and removed the rope from his neck to see if they could revive him, though in fact there hadn’t been any chance of their doing so. His face was dark and bloated, and the way his eyes popped made him look like the last thing he had seen was a big surprise.

Maybe it was, if the stories about seeing the Lands of the Dead in one’s last living moments had any truth to them.

“How long ago?” I asked.

“Not long. A few hours, maybe. Any idea why he did it?”

I shook my head. “None at all.”

I also didn’t know why he had been following me. And with Olintecke silenced, it looked like I never would.

“Anyone we should notify?” the doctor asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Sorry.”

“That’s all right. We’ll figure it out.”

Olintecke’s pouch was lying beside him, still tied to his belt. I removed it and checked its contents.

He had carried the usual things—a radio, a handful of spending beans, a metal identification card. Also a piece of paper, neatly folded in quarters. I unfolded it and saw that there was a list written on it.

Three names.

The first was Patli’s. The second was Mazatl’s.

The third was
mine
.

I took a breath, let it out. It was chilling to see my name on Olintecke’s list, written in his own handwriting. More chilling, even, than seeing his reflection in the window of that flower shop.

And where had the names
come
from? We hadn’t yet released them to the public. Sure, Mazatl’s neighbors knew what happened to him, but Patli hadn’t
had
any neighbors.

So was Olintecke connected to the Knife Eyes after all? As Investigators, they could have given him not only the victims’ identities but mine too.

Most disturbing of all was the question of what Olintecke planned to
do
with his list. Had he simply been following the case, and therefore also been following
me
—the Investigator assigned to it? An innocent subject of the Empire, curious to see how it would all turn out?

I didn’t think so.

More likely, the names were those of his intended victims. He had already killed Patli and Mazatl. And if he’d had his way, I would have been next.

As if that would have kept Olintecke from being caught in the long run. If he had killed me, Necalli would only have put another Investigator on his trail.

Except . . . that next Investigator might have been one of the Knife Eyes. And if Olintecke was aligned with them . . .

I closed my eyes and massaged the bridge of my nose. It was all just speculation: Was Olintecke the murderer? Would I have been next? Was he in league with the Knife Eyes?

And what under heaven had made him kill himself?

I might get some answers at some point, but not from Olintecke. For better or worse, he was with the gods.

I got to my feet, the list still in my hand. The most bizarre thing about it was that Olintecke had written it at all. Was he afraid that he would forget the names—all
three
of them?

Bizarre.
But I was talking about the mind of a serial killer. It didn’t get any more bizarre than that.

I took another look at the paper in my hand—at how neatly it had been folded, how carefully the names had been rendered. Olintecke might not have kept his apartment very clean, but he was obviously meticulous when it came to
some
things.

Then I noticed something else: Mazatl’s name had another one written above it. It was scratched more than written, as if Olintecke had been in a hurry when he wrote it. But I could still make it out . . .

Acacitli.

Some names could be either first names or surnames. But Acacitli? That was just a first name.

What did it mean? Was there someone named Acacitli who was also on the murderer’s hit list? Had Olintecke gotten that guy as well? If he had, we would find out eventually—when the body turned up.

But if he hadn’t, we would never know which Acacitli he meant. In Aztlan alone, there were hundreds of them. Maybe thousands.

So many that even if I’d gotten hold of the list right after Mazatl was killed, I couldn’t have warned the guy. I could just see the force sending out an advisory over the Mirror:
Be careful if your name is Acacitli. There’s a serious nut job out to get you.

But why, I wondered, had Acacitli been listed by his first name when the others were listed by their last names? Was it just the way Olintecke thought of the guy? Did it have any significance whatsoever?

Maybe not.

And then again . . .

spent the better part of the afternoon on my monitor at work,
pursuing a hunch. It was a good thing. It kept me out of the streets, where Aztlan’s panic over the end of the calendar was finally starting to show through.

One elderly man, wearing a lizard head and painted yellow head to toe, went for a swim in the sacred river and nearly drowned. Another guy killed his pet rabbits—all fourteen of them—with poisoned darts and an antique blowgun. And a couple of women, lovers apparently, tried—unsuccessfully—to push a police officer into the path of the oncoming rail carriage at the Tlaloc Street stop before leaping onto the rail themselves.

Two hours before sundown, the frequency of such cases began to increase. There were hundreds of them, even more than I had expected. Investigators were sent out to supplement the efforts of the police. I too would have been assigned to an incident if not for my invitation from Itzcoatl.

After all, Necalli didn’t want me snubbing the High Priest of Aztlan. How would that have looked for
him
?

Eren’s people were out in full force as well. But Necalli didn’t ask me to watch them either.

So I sat in front of my monitor and searched the Mirror, and finally found some of those answers I had been looking for.

An hour later, with the last of the afternoon ebbing away and the High Priest’s ceremony beckoning, I found myself sitting on a wooden bench in the center of a stately, grey-marble chamber, holding the stoppered urn that contained my father’s ashes.

The chamber was one of several in Aztlan’s Hall of the Fallen, where those who died in service to the city were entombed. It was the smallest pyramid in the district—maybe in
any
district. But then, fallen public servants were few and far between, and ashes didn’t take up much space in any case.

I remembered the day my father was cremated. I was nine. I didn’t see the procedure, of course, but I spent the day hiding under my bed nonetheless. My mother had to talk me out of there as if she were cajoling a jumper off a ledge.

When my father’s ashes arrived, I was scared of them. I wouldn’t even look at the vase that contained them. It was my mother who told me my father still loved me as much as ever. It wasn’t his love that had changed, she said, it was just the form the gods had chosen for him.

Of course, it wasn’t only my father’s ashes in the vase, though my mother didn’t choose to mention that fact at the time. The vase held a dog’s ashes too.

In ancient days, it would have been a living dog that was sacrificed to lead the deceased through the often-confusing landscape of the afterlife. However, the Empire had become more civilized since that time, adopting the practice of freezing dead dogs and burning them instead.