Aztlan: The Last Sun (3 page)

By dawn, we had every last one of them packed into the lobby of the City Interrogation Center, a squat, black building with turquoise inlay that sat squarely in the heart of Aztlan. We had only twelve interrogation cells, including the eight below ground, so we had officers shuttling the cultists from the lobby to the cells and back again non-stop.

In accordance with the Emperor’s New Law, we told them we were investigating a murder, but we didn’t share any of the details. Naturally, they claimed to a man—and a woman—that they were innocent. They only sacrificed animals, they said, not people.

It was their right to say whatever they wanted. It was ours, as Investigators, to see if we could wring a different truth from them.

As I questioned one tattooed cultist after another, their voices gradually merging into a single shrill chorus in my head, I tried not to remember how my father had died. I was an Investigator, after all. There was no room in my work for personal feelings.

Early in the morning, seven other people appeared, identifying themselves as more of the cultists. When I got the word, I emerged from the depths of the Interrogation Center and had the newcomers arrested as well.

It was at that juncture, as they were discovering the inadvisability of their showing up, that I heard someone call my name.

“Maxtla . . . ?”

It was a female voice. A really nice one.

I turned in response. At first, I didn’t recognize the cultist standing in front of me there in the brightly lit lobby. She was too out of context. Then my brain clicked and I said, “Eren . . . ?”

She was drawn, weary-looking. It was understandable. She had dragged herself out of bed in the middle of the night.

But in spite of all that, she was beautiful. Her eyes were black and almond-shaped, her lips full, her chin small and pointed. Altogether, a very appealing combination. It was the look against which I had measured other women my entire adult life.

But then, I had grown up with Erendira Nacatl—Eren for short. She was, incidentally, the only girl who had ever punched me in the face. But that hadn’t stopped me from from developing a crush on her that lasted all the way through first school and well into second.

When I was fifteen, she and her family had moved to the capital. It was a black day, if I remembered correctly. Dark, stormy. Twists of rain in the streets.

I hadn’t seen her since.

“I heard you had become an Investigator,” she said, her voice like pipe music. I had forgotten how much I loved that voice. “Congratulations, Max.”

I was pretty sure I heard a hint of irony in that word, but I ignored it. “What are you doing with these people?” I asked, indicating the other cultists with a gesture.

“You sound angry,” she said.

“I have reason.”

She tilted her head, eyes narrowing. It was an expression I had seen many times before. “Reason . . . ?”

“My father,” I said.

Then she got it, and her expression softened. “Maxtla, I cried when that happened. You
know
that. I cried as if he were my
own
father. But we’re not like the people who killed him, not even a little.”

“I heard,” I said. “You only kill animals.”

Her brows came together over the bridge of her perfectly chiseled nose. “You make it sound like we go around destroying them whenever and however we feel like it. That’s not the way it is. We do it only at the prescribed times and in the prescribed ways, and only for the right reasons.”

“To honor the gods,” I said. I glanced at her tattoo, which was all too visible on her bare forearm. “I’m sure the gods are very appreciative.”

“You mock them?” she asked.

“I have some doubts that they want animal sacrifices. This is the Fifth Sun, after all.”

“That’s right,” she said. “I forgot. The gods don’t have the same place in the world, not anymore. Now they’re only fit to decorate cereal boxes and the walls of ball court arenas, and street signs, and children’s toys.”

There was fire in her eyes, a fire I used to love. It made it hard to ignore what she was saying.

“They’re no longer the gods of old, Maxtla, the ones who demanded our grandfathers’ awe and devotion. The priests you protect have let them fall into disrepute. But we—the people you see assembled here in your interrogation center—we want to restore the gods’ glory. We want to give them back their power.”

I nodded. “Of course you do. That’s why you try to desecrate the pyramids erected in their honor.”

“The pyramids,” Eren spat, throwing away all pretense of polite debate, “are erected so their builders can honor their money pouches. The gods have nothing to do with it.”

I smiled. “That’s how
you
see it.”

“That’s how
anyone
would see it,” she insisted, “if he even once bothered to open his eyes.”

I was about to reply when I felt a meaty hand on my shoulder. “Is there a problem, Investigator?”

I turned and looked into the square-jawed face of Eloxo Necalli, Chief Investigator for the Fourth Sector. A short, stocky man with bowed legs and the thickest forearms in the Empire, Necalli prided himself on protecting his employees from the bureaucratic abuses of the higher-ups. The only question, of course, was who would protect us from
Necalli’s
abuses.

I shook my head from side to side. “No problem at all.”

“That’s good,” said Necalli. He shot a look at Eren. “I like it to be nice and peaceful here. A placid environment helps us serve the public more efficiently.”

Eren frowned at him, but didn’t hit back. Seemingly satisfied, he moved away.

“Serve the public, Maxtla,” Eren said, watching Necalli go. She turned back to me. “In your way. And I’ll do the same in mine.”

Then she left me so she could stand in solidarity with the other cultists. Obviously, she found their company less objectionable than that of an old friend.

I should have gone back to an interrogation cell and gotten on with my work. But I didn’t. I stood there staring at Eren, old feelings rising to the surface like bubbles in a hot, spicy stew.

Until I heard a voice in my ear. It belonged to Quetzalli, one of the female Investigators.

“Don’t get drawn into an argument with them,” she told me. “They’ll talk you blind. They’re good at that.”

I nodded. “So they are.”

“Go finish your interrogations,” she told me. “File your reports. Go home.”

I assured Quetzalli that I would do that. After all, it was long into the night.

With a last glance at Eren, I returned to the interrogation cell where I had been working, thinking I had liked her better when all she had done was punch me in the face.

I went home eventually, got some sleep, and woke up in the middle of the day, the golden disc of Tonatiuh streaming through the window into my eyes. For a moment, I thought I had played a ball game in the Arena the night before. Why else would I be waking up at such an odd time of day? Then my head cleared and I remembered.

I didn’t play in the Arena anymore. I was an Investigator.

I sat down at my monitor to see if there was anything on the Mirror about Ancient Light. There was—live coverage, in fact. The cultists were demonstrating at one of the other newly erected pyramids, way on the other side of Aztlan, coiling around the sun-painted building the way a snake coils around a fat, huffed-up toad. I tried to spot Eren among them but I couldn’t, so I turned off the monitor.

I was used to eating my morning meal at home but it wasn’t morning anymore, and I didn’t feel like eating honey tamales. So instead I got off the rail line halfway to work, at Xipe Totec Street, and walked the block and a half past the
octli
shops to One-Eyed Zolin’s street cart.

Even this early in the day, there was a line of people. Naturally, they were all standing downwind of the cart.

For me, there were more convenient places to pick up a meal in Aztlan. But I was a sucker for Zolin’s deep-fried salamander, and had been for a long time. It had gotten to the point where I couldn’t let two days go by without getting off the rail line at Xipe Totec Street.

And, of course, I wasn’t the only one.

Had Zolin been serving food and nothing else, the line would have moved a lot more quickly. But his wit, as well-seasoned as his maize batter, was part of the experience. So the line crawled and Tonatiuh climbed up the sky.

Finally, it was my turn. “My friend Zolin,” I said.

“It’s a blessed day when I get a visit from a Colhua,” he replied, his one good eye twinkling in the sunlight.

“You flatter me,” I said, savoring the smell of the batter frying in hot oil. “Business is good, apparently.”

“Thriving, as always. That is why I live in the Twenty-third District, among the priests and the champions of the ball court. Soon I will be so rich they will make me a nobleman.”

I laughed, though—technically—he had committed an offense against the Empire. Citizens were forbidden to mention the noble caste in public.

“That’s good to hear,” I said.

He leaned closer to me. “Don’t worry. When I own the Eagles, which will be any day now, I will make sure you have a seat overlooking the corridor. A place of honor.”

“You’re too kind,” I said.

“Of course, for me to become that rich my customers must be very hungry. Are you hungry, Colhua?”

“As famished,” I said, “as if I had never eaten a bite in my entire life.”

“Then you have come to the right place.”

I ordered two fried salamanders, watched him pull them out of the hot oil as deftly as if both his eyes worked perfectly, and held the waxed-paper bag for him to fill. Then I paid him, wished him well with his aspirations to nobility—such a wish also being an offense against the Empire, strictly speaking—and made my way back to the rail line.

I ate in the carriage, as people do. By the time I got back to the interrogation center, the cultists had all been released. That was fine with me. I had more important things to do than grill people who knew less than I did about the murder at Centeotl.

It took me several hours of hunting on the city’s Mirror system, but I finally found a match for the corpse’s fingerprints. Normally, it would have taken a fraction of that time to identify someone. But a couple of cycles earlier, it seemed, the deceased had slipped off the face of the Earth.

In Aztlan, there’s a job for everyone. That is, for everyone who wants to work. For reasons difficult to fathom, an otherwise sane and coherent person sometimes chooses not to do so.

Such people lose their possessions because they can’t pay the taxes on them. They lose their homes because they stop paying rent to the Empire. Their families, appalled at their lack of industry, eventually turn their backs on them.

In effect, these individuals cease to be subjects of the Emperor. They walk the streets like ghosts, untracked and unaccounted for, without privileges or responsibilities. For all intents and purposes, they are invisible.

Yaretzi Patli was such a person.

He hadn’t always been that way. According to our files, he was forty-two cycles old when he gave up his job as a sandal salesman in District Twenty. He was allowed to live in his apartment for another two months before his landlord, obviously a patient man, finally kicked him out.

Patli had only one blemish on his record. We had booked him about ten cycles earlier for gambling illegally in District Twelve—in other words, in an establishment that wasn’t sanctioned by any of the noble families.

That was it, though. No other missteps. And no obvious reason for anyone to want to gut him and light a candle inside him.

I called up the pictures we had taken of the corpse before it was removed from Centeotl. Once again, I was struck by the victim’s expression—so calm, so accepting.

I leaned back in my chair, closed my eyes, and massaged the bridge of my nose. My gut told me there was more to this atrocity than met the eyes. I was just missing it.

I was so focused on Yaretzi Patli, I didn’t hear the sound of approaching footsteps on the marble floor until they were almost on top of me. But even with my eyes closed, I could tell to whom they belonged. There was only one person in my office who chewed gum laced with cinnamon.

“Takun,” I said, “what are you doing here? Scavenging for raw meat?”

He chuckled, rasping like a saw cutting through pinewood. “You look tired, Colhua. Why don’t you take a nap?”

Takun wasn’t charming—or particularly hygienic, for that matter—but he got the job done. That made him worthy of respect in my estimate, and I wasn’t alone in that regard.

“I would,” I said, “if I thought you could pick up the slack. But as we all know, you can’t locate your ass with both hands and a map.”

Takun pointed to my screen with a thick forefinger. “The guy is dead, gods look kindly on us. That’s not going to change no matter how long you stare at him.”

“I’m just trying to figure out why someone killed him. Last time I looked, that was my
job
.”

“You’re wasting your time,” Takun told me. “The cultists did it. There’s no question.”

I looked back over my shoulder at him. “What makes you so sure?”

He grunted. “You’d be sure too if you weren’t thinking so hard about the one with the nice eyes.”

“Who told you
that
?” I asked.

“Who
didn’t
?”

I turned back to my screen. “She’s got nothing to do with it.”

“Right,” said Takun. “And if you believe that, I’ve got an irrigation ditch in District Two I want to sell you.”

“Funny,” I said.

“Good luck with your investigation, Colhua. Me, I’m going home to a nice cup of
octli
.”

“Have a drink for me,” I said.

“Get your own,” said Takun. Then he was gone.

I sat there a while longer, studying Patli’s corpse. The open chest, the splintered ribs, the pool of white wax. I tried to picture someone doing that to another human being. I couldn’t.

But I wasn’t going to get anywhere staring at the victim on a Mirror screen. Takun had a point in that regard, at least. So I left the office and went back to Centeotl.