Master of the House of Darts (44 page)

"We stand for sickness, in the house of the living,

For the breath of the wind, in the region of the fleshless,

For life and death, caught on the threshold…"

And there was… something, like a tightening, as if a loose garment had just readjusted itself: the world knitting itself back together. My gate wavered and shrank, and the nausea that I'd carried with me all this time finally sank down to almost nothing.

"With this we will stand straight,

With this we will live,

Oh, for a while, for a little while…"

And then the feeling was gone, and I sagged to my knees like a wounded man whose feverish rush of energy had just worn off. "Acatl!"

"I'm fine, I'm fine," I said, but I could barely pull myself to my feet. I shouldn't have left the cane behind us. I turned back, to stare at Moquihuix's body – and, to my surprise he stared back at me, his face clouded with the approach of death. The weapon Mihmatini had used to stab him – a sharp reed which shone as if it had been dipped in gold – was still embedded in his chest.

He didn't look like Coatl at all, but like his true self, a Revered Speaker lying in the dust of Mictlan. "Priest." His voice still carried far, as if he were addressing the crowd from atop his pyramid temple. His lips curled up, in a smile that was painful. "It is Tenochtitlan's destiny, indeed, to rule over the valley of Anahuac, to expand into the Fifth World and make everything theirs. I wish you joy."

"Wait!" I said, but his eyes had closed, and his body was already shimmering out of existence, his limbs growing fainter and fainter, followed by his torso, and, last of all, the turquoise cloak which had marked him as a Revered Speaker and his quetzal feather headdress, crumbling into a fine powder which mingled with the dust.

A wind rose, carrying a faint, familiar smell – rotting maize, or leaves – and his soul rose upon it; not the faint memory of a human, but a bright radiance made of hundreds of people: the people of the plague, the dead that he carried with him. He rose towards the dais, and was lost to sight.

When I turned around, Nezahual-tzin and Mihmatini had both joined me on the dais. Nezahual-tzin was binding Mihmatini's wound, with a mocking smile. She was glaring at him, daring him to make a comment.

"You'll be fine?" I asked.

She shook her head. "Of course I'll be fine, Acatl. Don't fuss like an old woman. It doesn't become you."

"Sorry," I said. "It's just that–" I saw, then, that her free hand was shaking, her back slightly arched, and I could only guess at the effort she used to hold herself upright. "Never mind. Let's go back."

We came back to the Fifth World in the same courtyard we'd left from. It was bathed in sunlight, the corpse of Matlaelel and the bloody remnants of a few
ahuizotls
the only signs of the battle. And another corpse, too, shrivelled like a dried fruit, who might have been Coatl, who might have been Moquihuix-tzin: it was hard to tell anymore, with the decay.

I'd expected a crowd of noblewomen, irate at our intrusion upon their lives – who were, I was beginning to understand, neither as weak nor as defenceless as I'd allowed myself to think.

I hadn't expected the warriors: an army large enough to fill the place, their
macuahitl
swords glinting in the sunlight – and, at their head, the old woman and Teomitl – and my brother Neutemoc and my offering priest Palli, standing in their path with the desperate assurance of doomed men.

TWENTY-FOUR

The Revered Speaker

We'd appeared behind Neutemoc and Palli – which meant that the warriors saw us first, and, as their faces widened in incredulity, Neutemoc turned round to face me. "Acatl!"

He looked exhausted – his jaguar's furs bloodied, his helmet split with a blow that must have narrowly avoided cleaving his skull. Palli himself was holding himself with easy, casual aloofness, as befitted both his position and the situation, but beneath it all, he had to be no less tired than my brother. "What in the Fifth World…?"

I looked for Acamapichtli – who had withdrawn between the pillars, and was on his knees, helping his Consort bandage her wound. His gaze was mild, sardonic: it said, quite clearly, that he would take no part in this, that, Master of the House of Darts or Revered Speaker, it made no difference to him at all, and that the Fifth World would endure as it always had.

Not unexpected, sadly.

Teomitl moved, as fluid as a knife through human flesh – kneeling by the charred body of Coatl-Moquihuix, which lay between the warriors and us. "He's dead," he said. He wore rich garb – not quite that of the Master of the House of Darts, not quite that of a Revered Speaker, as if he were still uneasily caught between both functions. But his attitude was regal.

The old woman inclined her head. "Good. That leaves only one thing."

Teomitl pulled himself up. His gaze was unreadable; his face turned away from me or Mihmatini. "I know."

I heard Mihmatini's breath quicken. She looked from Neutemoc to Teomitl. For a moment, anguish was written on her face, but then her hands clenched, and she wrenched herself from her immobility. She bypassed Neutemoc before he could stop her, and came to a stop in the centre of the courtyard – standing under the warm gaze of the Fifth Sun, which shimmered on the hundreds of wards she was weaving around her. "We won't let you pass." Her voice shook, but her hands were utterly steady.

"We?" the old woman's voice was sarcastic. "I can't see anyone with you, girl."

Mihmatini flinched – I couldn't see Teomitl's face, but never mind, it was too late for that; far too late. Slowly, with as much dignity as I could master, I walked in my sister's wake, ignoring the sharp glance Neutemoc threw at me – and came to stand by her side – blood to blood, brother to sister.

The old woman cocked her head. "Two doesn't make an army."

"Listen to me," I said. "This is foolishness, Teomitl. You can't possibly–"

"We've already had this conversation." He still wouldn't look at me; his voice was low, emotionless, instead of the anger I'd expected. "This is what the Empire needs."

"You know it's not."

The old woman smiled. "You know he has a destiny, priest. You can feel it, hanging over him."

Right now, all I could see was the jade cast to his features, the living remnants of Jade Skirt's magic, which had given us so much pain. "Yes, he would rule the Mexica, and rule them well. But not now. Destiny is for fools to manipulate."

"He'll never be this ready."

"What do you gain?" I asked.

She laughed – low and without joy. "Tizoc is no better than his brother. They both used me and discarded me without a second thought. Now I grow old in the shadow of Mictlan, and I would see the better brother made Revered Speaker."

As I had thought – an imperial princess playing at politics – and she was saturated with the magic of Grandmother Earth, probably what had aged her until she seemed old enough to be a generation above Teomitl.

"As Guardian of the Sacred Precinct, I won't let you pass," Mihmatini said. She masked her hesitation well, but I wasn't sure whether it would be enough – the old woman was a canny practitioner.

"Mihmatini…" Teomitl looked straight up, but his eyes were as shadowed as Coatl's had been, and I could read nothing from him. The Duality curse me, when had I ceased to understand him? "You have to understand."

"I… I understand, but I don't approve. You'll break the Fifth World, Teomitl, worse than anything he's ever done." Her hands swung, pointed to the charred body on the ground. "And he hated us – hated us so much…" She couldn't quite repress the shiver that ran through her. "All that for what? To grasp a toy you can't have now, like a spoiled child?"

"You know Tizoc," Teomitl said. "You know his mere presence opens up the breach, that there will be more demons in the streets, more beasts of shadows taking people." He swung to look at me, and the light of the Fifth Sun dispersed the shadows over his eyes, letting me see the anguish in them. "You know this, Acatl-tzin. You know he'll kill us slowly, take us apart piece by piece. You know there's no other choice."

"This will break us," I said, finally. What did he want from me? My approval? I was no longer his teacher; that much had been made abundantly clear. "You know it will."

"I know." His voice was an anguished cry. "But there is no other way!"

The old woman said nothing; she merely stood, looking smug.

"I have to do this," Teomitl said, slowly, carefully. His voice gained strength as he spoke – becoming once again the confident one of a man who moved in the highest circles of power. "This is right." He hefted his
macuahitl
sword, holding it as if he could draw power from within the obsidian. His skin had the greenish cast of jade, of underwater algae, and his aura of magic had grown stronger.

But I knew he had doubts, that there was a crack. I could – no, I might find it, but I needed to find it fast.

"You have to step aside."

"I can't."

"You–" His face twisted. "Why do you keep involving yourself in this, Acatl-tzin?"

Because… because it was the Fifth World, because I knew it would collapse if Teomitl did this. And something else – as usual, in the end, it is the smallest and pettiest things that define us. "You're my student. Whatever you do is what I taught you."

"Do you truly believe that?"

"I–" He was my beloved son, as akin to me as the blood of my blood; he made my face widen with pride, gave me the satisfaction I would never have as a childless priest. Neutemoc had said children went astray, but most children didn't end up endangering the safety of the Fifth World. It was his pride, his accursed pride, and his desire to do what he believed was for the good of the Mexica – regardless of whether it actually was good for them.

But…

He did have doubts. I had seen them. There was a crack.

Tizoc-tzin. He did all this because of Tizoc-tzin – because the man he had admired, the man who had taught him politics and tactics, had turned out to be such a disappointment. He did it because he didn't want Tizoc-tzin to rule us.

"There was someone else who reached for the Turquoise and Gold Crown in a time of turmoil," I said, slowly. "Someone who thought it had been denied to him for too long, and grasped it before he was ready."

Teomitl paused – his hand frozen in the act of lifting up his blade.

"If you do this, if you seize power now, when we're most vulnerable, then you'll be just like him. Just like Tizoc-tzin – throwing the Mexica Empire in disarray just for the sake of something you think should be yours."

"Don't listen to him." The old woman's voice was low and fierce. "He doesn't know what he's talking about. He's a priest who won't join the heights of the powerful; a poor, sad little dove who keeps looking down at the ground whenever an official passes him, doomed to always be carried in someone's arms, like a child wrapped in a mother's mantle."

Teomitl turned, halfway, to look at both of us. In the warm light of the afternoon, his haughty profile had never looked more like Tizoc-tzin's. "You're wrong," he said – not slow or stately, he'd never been much for either. "Both of you. I… I do it because there is no other choice. Because Tizoc will lead us into ruin." He turned, to look at me – his eyes wide, his face ordinary again, with no trace of Jade Skirt's magic, but his gaze as piercing as a spear. "Don't you believe this, Acatl-tzin?"

"You know what I think."

"No," Teomitl said. "I know you think the Fifth World can't take another change of Revered Speaker, not so soon. But what do you think of Tizoc?"

"I–" I was taken aback at the question – and the only thing that occurred to me was the truth. "He killed the clergy of Tlaloc, as surely as if he'd cast the spell himself." Over and over, we had seen evidence of his growing paranoia, of his instability.

"And you believe he should rule, until such time as he dies?"

"No." The truth, out of my mouth before I could call it back. "But I can't condone this, Teomitl. I can't – one doesn't become Revered Speaker or receive the blessing of the Southern Hummingbird by feats of arms."

"Ask the coyote's son," Teomitl said, with a small curl of his lips. I could feel Nezahual-tzin's presence behind me, but he was silent – as if this were merely between Teomitl and I. He had said, many times, that he wouldn't interfere. "He who came to his mat borne on the shoulders of Tenochtitlan's warriors."

"That's–" I took in a deep breath. He – I thought of Tizoc-tzin again, of the paltry forty prisoners, who hadn't even been sacrificed; of the confirmation that wouldn't even have the semblance of a real war, coming on the heels of a failed coronation war and a failed investiture ceremony. But I was High Priest; I served the Mexica and the Revered Speaker – it had been one thing to oppose Tizoc-tzin when he had been Master of the House of Darts, but now that he was Revered Speaker my loyalty was to him, and, like the She-Snake, I might disagree with his actions, and try to steer him back to the right path, but to conspire in order to depose him? It would have been against any order, any balance that I served. Teomitl was wrong: this was no way to solve the problem.

"I–"

I thought of the star-demons; of the plague; of Moquihuix-Coatl and the chaos in the city. Did I really want this – more souls creeping back through the cracks in the world, creatures of the underworld amongst us? I kept the balance – which was my duty, my destiny.

Just as ruling the Mexica Empire was Teomitl's destiny.

As he had said, there was no solution – no clean, clearcut way out of this tangle we'd worked ourselves into. Seeking to preserve the balance had led us to opening the rift, and this in turn had led to the plague.

We did it, Acamapichtli had said. I'd said we'd done the right thing, and not believed a word of it. Teomitl wasn't blameless, but it was also our insistence on preserving the balance at all costs, our fear of breaking the Fifth World's equilibrium, which had led us to this.