Master of the House of Darts (15 page)

No. He wouldn't. He was more intelligent than that. He had to have absorbed some of what I'd taught him about magic – about the Fifth World being held by a thread until Tizoc-tzin was confirmed.

Surely he wouldn't…

"He's a clever man," Nezahual-tzin said, thoughtfully – as if he had read the tenor of my thoughts. When he saw my face, he smiled. "I didn't use magic, Acatl. You're an easy man to read."

"I don't dissemble," I said, curtly. My relationship with Teomitl might not be wholly private – because of our respective positions – but the Revered Speaker of Texcoco certainly had no business prying into it to satisfy his thrice-accursed curiosity.

Nezahual-tzin ventured nothing. At length, when I didn't speak, he shrugged – a falsely careless gesture, and went downstairs. "I'll see you around, Acatl."

I remained for a while – not because I found the view beautiful, but because I wanted to be sure that he was gone. We'd only had two deaths – a tragedy by some standards, insignificant in the larger frame – and already the fabric of the imperial palace was unravelling.

As if I'd needed further proof that we remained fragile, as the Empire slowly rebuilt itself from the mess of the year before… This wasn't the most auspicious of times for a sorcerer to move against us. I would have prayed for this to bring us together against a common enemy, but deep down I already knew it wouldn't.

• • • •

I walked to my house alone, amidst the looming shapes of the temples. Even at this late hour, the Sacred Precinct was busy: priests sang hymns and made penances, and circled the Serpent Wall, offering their blood at regular intervals. From within the temples came a grinding sound, as novice priests ground the pigments which would be used on the following day to paint faces and arms for religious ceremonies.

My temple was still lit; I entered briefly, to reassure myself that all was well, and to check a few examinations. Ichtaca had made no progress on tracking down information about the merchant Yayauhqui; hardly surprising, since I'd only asked him a handful of hours ago.

I went to bed praying to Chicomecoatl to look favourably upon us – and to bless us with Her luck, to better unravel this skein of magic.

I woke up sore, as if I'd spent the entire day and night walking. My head throbbed, and for a brief moment, as I pulled myself to my knees, the world seemed to spin.

I closed my eyes for a brief moment. The spinning went away and the soreness seemed to recede, but the feeling remained. The onset of the sickness? We should–

Stay inside like old men? No, I couldn't. I had work to do.

Nevertheless… it would have been highly irresponsible to go further without some kind of precaution. Mihmatini's spell had its uses, but, as much as the Duality was arbiter and source of the gods, They were not the ones to whom I owed my allegiance, and Their protection would not be the most effective I could call on.

I made my offerings of blood to the Fifth Sun and to Lord Death, singing the hymns for the continuation of the Fifth World, and pulling my worship-thorns through my earlobes.

On my wicker chest were two sets of clothes: one was a simple grey cloak, appropriate for a priest for the Dead; the other was the ornate, owl-embroidered monstrosity of my regalia complete with skull-mask and feather headdress. The grey cloak was far more comfortable, likely to be far less noticed, but the days when I could have worn it had all but passed. Ichtaca was right: I needed to show myself, and this included wearing the regalia. With a sigh, I folded the simple cloak back into the chest, putting it under the folded codices I was working on. It was, after all, unlikely I would need it in the days to come.

I walked into the Sacred Precinct in full regalia.

The dizziness did not return, though I watched for it. The world remained crisp and clear, the sky above the Sacred Precinct a brilliant blue, with the familiar smells of copal incense smoke, underlain by the rank one of blood. Ahead, atop the Great Temple, the sacrifices went on unabated: a body tumbled down the steps, coming to a rest in the grooves that surrounded the pyramid's base – the painted white skin spattered with blood.

Everything seemed well: the Empire strong, the gods watching over us, a Revered Speaker about to be confirmed in a burst of glory, and his coronation war a resounding success.

How I wished I could be fooled by such appearances.

Ichtaca met me at the temple entrance. I could tell that he was either preoccupied or in a hurry, for the black streaks on his cheeks were slightly curved instead of straight, as if he'd applied them with shaking hands. "Acatl-tzin."

"I presume something has happened."

Ichtaca grimaced. "Teomitl-tzin sent word. Pochtic – the Master of the House of Darkness – has regained consciousness, but there are two further warriors affected. One of them is dead."

Dead already? The sickness was spreading – I rubbed the tips of my fingers together, as if I could wash it away from my skin. How was it contracted? "And the others? The ones Acamapichtli had in confinement?"

"I've heard no news."

Well, there was nothing for it. "Send priests for the funeral rites, and remove the bodies. We need to examine them in an isolated spot. Did they die in the palace?"

Ichtaca shook his head. "I think at the House of Youth, but I'll check."

A group of grey-clad novices passed by us. By the reed-brooms in their hands, it looked they were going to sweep the courtyard, cleansing it in honour of Lord Death. "Do check," I said. "Nothing else?"

Ichtaca spread his hands. His nervousness was palpable. "The merchant: I did find which god he worshipped, but–"

I sighed. Ichtaca had always been a staunch believer in Mexica superiority, and the past few months had hit him badly. "Tell me," I said, gently.

"Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror."

Lord of the Near, Lord of the Nigh; god of war and youth, protector of sorcerers. Nothing too surprising there, sadly – even the viciousness of Yayauhqui's punishment was characteristic.

"Does it help?"

I couldn't lie to him. "I'm not sure. It certainly doesn't put him at the forefront of suspects: the epidemic seems to be coming from Tlaloc."

"Again?" Ichtaca asked.

Two years earlier, the Storm Lord and a splinter group of His priests had attempted an elaborate plot to unseat Huitzilpochtli's dominance – using the Revered Speaker's weakness to raise up an agent in the Fifth World. They would have succeeded, too, but for our order.

"He's a god," I said, slowly. "The Duality only knows what He's plotting." I paused, then.

"What is it, Acatl-tzin?"

"The Flower Quetzal," I said slowly. Xochiquetzal had been the Storm Lord's ally – as interested as He had been in the end of the Fifth World.

"You think She's involved in this again?"

I thought of Xiloxoch. "I don't know. But it's a possibility."

One I didn't care much for. A scheming deity was bad enough, but an alliance of gods…

I nodded. "Before I go, I need a ritual performed."

"Which one?"

I'd had time to mull it over on my way to the temple. Mictlantecuhtli, Lord Death, was seldom invoked for defensive magic – unless one counted summoning creatures such as the Wind of Knives or the Owl Archer from the underworld. But this particular sickness, it seemed, was under the auspices of Tlaloc the Storm Lord. And the magics of the underworld and of Tlalocan cancelled each other out.

"It's not a ritual," I said at last. "At least, not per se. I just need you to provide a little… help."

We repaired to one of the examination rooms, under the hollow gaze of Mictlantecuhtli. As I'd asked, Ichtaca had gathered only offering priests for this – the novices would have been all too glad to take part in something like this, but they hadn't yet learned the fundamental lesson of the priesthood: that magic might be awe-inspiring, but that the heart of our devotions lay elsewhere. That Lord Death did not give us more than was needed, or grant us our prayers, but that we could rely on Him to stand by His rules, that he was not cruel or capricious, but merely there, awaiting us all.

And it was my role – and Ichtaca's – to teach them the importance of the small things, of the devotions at night, of the examinations of corpses with knives and small spells, of the offerings that came day and night to give their lives the rhythm of faith.

At the feet of each priest lay a pile of quetzal feathers, and a single lip-plug made of jade. On Ichtaca's signal, they cut a thin line across the back of their hands, and let the blood drip onto the feathers and jade.

Ichtaca – who was part of the circle, started chanting a hymn to Lord Death:

"Only here on earth, in the Fifth World,

Shall the flowers last, shall the songs be bliss,

Though it be feathers, though it be jade,

It too must go to the region of the fleshless."

Where the blood touched the feathers, they gleamed – a dark hue of green, the miasma of the underworld. A cold wind was blowing across the room, making the priests' grey cloaks billow like the wings of some gaunt and skeletal bird.

"It too must go to the region of mystery,

Only once do we live on this earth,

We came only to sleep, only to dream,

Only once do we live on this earth."

I took a deep breath, and tightened my grip on my obsidian knife. I had offered no blood, but that did not matter. To call on what I intended, I needed no offerings, merely my presence, there in the very centre of Lord Death's largest temple – I, who had been consecrated High Priest, invested with the breath of the underworld.

I felt it rise within me: the lament of the dead, the grave voice of the Wind of Knives, the careless smile and wide eyes of the Owl Archer, the hulking shapes of beasts of shadows – and everything that presaged Mictlan in the Fifth World: the old folk laid out on their reed-mats, struggling to breathe for yet another day; the peasants feeling the first aches in their backs, the first creaks of their joints; the women in the marketplace with their wrinkled faces and streaks of white in their hair; the children, learning that no year resembled the one past, and that time had caught them all, more surely than a fisherman's net; all those on the road to the throne of Lord Death – and to oblivion.

"In the house of the fleshless,

In the house with no windows,

We go, we disappear,

Only once do we live on this earth."

The world contracted. A cold feeling ran over my entire body, as if I'd just put on chilled clothes after some time standing before a brazier. And the feel of the underworld, instead of abating, continued unchanged. I saw the skulls under the faces of the priests – smelled the coming rot, and the blotches that would spread over their skins as the blood stopped flowing within their bodies.

I wouldn't be able to maintain it for long, for it took its toll on my own energy. I'd expected to be frightened, or disgusted, but I wasn't. Cocooned in a power as familiar to me as the taste of maize, I felt… at ease, relaxed even for the first time in days. I had lived with the awareness of death for years – not as a distant event in the future, but as real as the blank eyes of corpses, as the blotches on pallid hands.

It would have to do.

I crossed the Sacred Precinct as if in a dream. A cold wind blew around me, reducing the bustle of the crowd to the silence of the grave and the crackle of flames on a funeral pyre. Indistinct faces brushed past me, and the only things that seemed real were the shadows of the temples, from the round tower of Quetzalcaoatl the Feathered Serpent to the familiar pyramid shape of the Great Temple dwarfing the Sacred Precinct.

I didn't feel quite ready to face Teomitl yet – what would I have flung at him, save worries I couldn't quite substantiate?

Instead, I made my own way to the quarters of the Master of the House of Darkness and found him awake, tended to by his personal slave. One of the She-Snake's guards was at the entrance; he let me pass, though I knew he would soon be reporting my coming to his master.

The Master of the House of Darkness looked, if anything, worse than on the previous day – his raw skin shining in the morning sun, glistening with the particular glint of pus and scabs. His torn eyelids had puffed up, all but hiding his eyes. With my new, sensitive eyesight, I could trace the incipient rot in every streak on his forehead and cheeks and smell the swelling pus, a rancid odour that threatened to overwhelm the smoke of copal incense.

"My Lord," I said. "I am Acatl, High Priest for the Dead."

"I know who you are." The voice sounded slightly peeved. "I might be on my mat, but I'm no invalid, and certainly not at Mictlan's gates yet."

I wasn't entirely sure I agreed, but I didn't say anything. I sat cross-legged in front of him – an honoured visitor – and spoke as if nothing were wrong. I prayed his diminished eyesight wouldn't let him see the way my gaze wandered downwards – of that, if he did see, he would misinterpret it as a sign of respect.

"So," Pochtic said after a while. "Here to investigate the attack on me, then?"

"Among other things," I said, carefully. He was obviously used to be being in charge – which wasn't surprising, given his high position in the army. "Can you tell me more about what happened? I found the mask on the ground."

Pochtic's ruined face did not move. "He was waiting for me in my chambers. I never did get to see his face – before I knew it, he had me pinned, an arm locked around my neck. And then he slid the mask on." He gave a shudder – the act of memory itself was too painful. "I don't remember anything except waking here, afterwards."