Obsidian & Blood (121 page)

  I gestured for Ezamahual to hurry – we crossed the last few steps to the dais in what seemed an eternity, and dropped more than deposited Nezahual-tzin in his chair. Then we withdrew as fast as possible.

  For a few moments, it seemed as though nothing would happen. The snake continued to solidify, somewhat haphazardly – lidless eyes taking the place of Nezahual-tzin's grey ones; fangs appearing within the maw, as white as pearls fished from the depths. And then it reared up – not leaving the confines of Nezahual-tzin's body as I'd thought it would, but instead jerking the body upwards like a children's doll – there was a distinct crunch made by bones cracking, and Nezahual-tzin's head bent backwards at an angle that should have been impossible to maintain for a live human being. His eyes opened – and they were white, opalescent as a distant star, and his mouth was peppered with fangs, glistening with venom, the feathers of his headdress flaring outwards like a flower blossoming. He screamed, arms flailing and then falling down abruptly, released from the pressure that had held them – and then he crumpled like a rag on the dais, the snake fading away to nothingness. 

  I let out a breath I hadn't even been aware of holding. "My Lord?"

  His breath again, loud, ragged. Gently, slowly, he pulled himself upright, his face paler than usual, but regaining colour with every passing moment until it was once more the dark of cacao beans. His eyes narrowed, the vulnerability gone in a moment, dispelled by a supreme effort of will. "Acatl. I see."

  I didn't think he did. Ezamahual and I had both witnessed his weakness, and no amount of pretence would remove that fact. "Can you tell us what happened?"

  Nezahual-tzin grimaced. "Not in so many words, no."

  "You were in trance in front of a fountain," I pointed out. I glanced at Ezamahual; he had thrown himself facedown on the ground. Oh, gods, I should have remembered – Ezamahual was peasant through and through, and he'd walked with enough reticence through the palace. "Ezamahual, get up," I said.

  "He's Revered Speaker…"

  "And you're a priest of the Mexica. You don't answer to him."

  "Not quite, but as a ruler of the Triple Alliance, I do appreciate the respect," Nezahual-tzin said. I threw him a warning glance strong enough to sear the feathers of his headdress, and he smiled back at me. "But Acatl is right. We can't possibly have any kind of conversation with you lying flat on the floor. Also, you did carry me from the fountain." He paused on "fountain", looking at me again, expecting further explanation.

  I shrugged. "I don't have much to add. I met you earlier in the palace and you wanted to track down the user of Toci's magic."

  "I remember that." Nezahual-tzin's voice was considered. "Not senile yet, you know. Quite the reverse, in fact."

  As befitted a devotee of the Feathered Serpent, god of Wisdom and Knowledge. I doubted he'd ever have many memory problems. But, if another goddess had interfered…

  "You lost two warriors," I said. "I suspect they were sacrificed to put the spell on you."

  "I see." He raised his hands, looked at them in the light. His face had gone hard. "And what are you doing in the palace?"

  "Looking for Xiloxoch," I said, as bluntly as he'd asked. "And for Teomitl."

  "You'll have gathered there are better places to be, in the current context."

  I would have pointed out that he'd stayed within – but of course he was Quetzalcoatl's agent, and probably immune to the plague altogether. "My sister told me Xiloxoch would be in the palace, but I couldn't find her."

  "I'm not surprised." Nezahual-tzin's voice was curt. "I can enquire after her."

  I shook my head. I'd already stumbled up the stairs of Tizoc-tzin's private chambers with the Revered Speaker of Texcoco – a man I'd been accused of collusion with a few months before. The last thing I needed in this time of paranoia was more fuel for that particular accusation to surface again.

  Though it might be too late for that. "Don't bother," I said. "We'll find her ourselves, if she's in the palace." 

  Nezahual-tzin frowned. "I dislike unpaid debts."

  Which might or might not be true; I didn't know him well enough to say. He probably had an interest in investigating all of this, though I couldn't why – and we wouldn't find out until it suited him to reveal his intentions. "Well," I said – half-suspecting I would end up regretting this, "you can look for Teomitl." 

  Nezahual-tzin's grimace was almost comical – but then what he was saying sank in. "I can't involve myself with this." 

  "Why not?"

  His gaze was level. "You know why, Acatl. I gave fair hints, but I can't do more. Tizoc-tzin is Revered Speaker of the Mexica, my peer in the Triple Alliance. What I think of him – doesn't play a part." 

  "You're not saying–"

  "I'm saying what we all know. Teomitl has always been frustrated by his brother's behaviour. I wouldn't blame him for attempting to displace him, but I can't condone the attempt."

  "I can't either," I said. "I want him stopped before this foolishness takes its course." I wasn't even sure if that was the reason he had disappeared; if my worst fears were true and he had finally set himself irrevocably on this – at odds with the safety of the Fifth World – and with me. I–

  "As I said–" Nezahual-tzin shook his head. "I can't take part in this."

  Because – because, when and if the dust settled, and we had a new Revered Speaker, he needed to have remained neutral in order to ingratiate himself to whoever it turned out to be. "You have neither face nor heart." The words – the insult – were out of my mouth before I could think.

  Nezahual-tzin watched me, and said nothing. "Will that be all?" 

  Why had I ever thought he could help in anything? I bowed, sarcastically, before my temper could fray any further. "That will be all, my Lord."

 

I was so annoyed by the conversation with Nezahual-tzin that we went through several courtyards before I became aware the world was swimming again around me.

  Oh no, not again. What was wrong with me? This time, Lord Death hadn't touched me, and there were no shadows nearby. 

  And yet… I had the same hollow in my stomach, the same slight sense of nausea, as if the Fifth World would tear itself apart at any moment – as if we danced on the brink of the abyss, unaware that the slightest step out of place would send us all tumbling down into darkness.

  Ezamahual seemed unconcerned – in all likelihood, he wasn't sensitive enough; he hadn't been there last year atop the Great Temple, when the hole in the Fifth World had gaped open, and I'd almost collapsed.

  But why here, of all places?

  Xiloxoch was not among the young warriors laughing and lounging near the steambaths. For that matter, neither was Teomitl, though the startled looks I got when asking about them looked slightly too guilty for my own peace of mind.

  One warrior, though, remembered Xiloxoch had come by, and had walked off in the direction of the prisoners' quarters – which was a better lead than no lead at all.

  As we walked back to the prisoners' quarters, leaving behind the bustle of the various courts, the sense of oppression didn't diminish. If anything, it became worse, pressing against my chest, making the air in my lungs sear. I felt as if my skin were sloughing off, coming away in flakes and whole pieces, and there was a vague sense of something, just beyond the borders of my perception – something huge and unspeakable that would swoop in at any moment, taking me with it. 

  "Ezamahual?" I asked through gritted teeth.

  His face swam out of the darkness, eyes wide open in concern. "Is something wrong, Acatl-tzin?"

  Yes. No. Why was I the only one to feel this? "Yes. I need – to – stop for a while."

  I staggered into the nearest courtyard – which was next to the book-house and, at this late hour of the day, filled only with a few astronomers, staring thoughtfully at papers laid on the ground. 

  "Forgive my imprudence," I said to the one who seemed the eldest – a wizened old man who was tracing glyphs within the grid of a calendar. "I need to cast a spell." Even the cane felt heavy in my hand. "It's – somewhat pressing."

  He looked up at me. "To Lord Death?" I nodded. "Just do it away from the book-house, will you?"

  We walked away from the book-house, to a relatively quiet part of the courtyard. One of the astronomers got up, throwing me a sympathetic glance, and went to sit closer to his companion. 

  I laid the cane aside for the spell; to my surprise, I could stand well enough without it, with barely a tremor in my legs. Then I slashed my earlobes with my obsidian knife, and carefully drew a circle on the ground in my own blood, calling on Lord Death to bless this place – where my blood met the ground, the stone hissed like a scalded jaguar – the magic of Mictlantecuhtli Lord Death meeting that of the Southern Hummingbird.

 

 

  Silence seemed to spread from within the circle, along with a green, sickly light which oozed from beneath the ground, like sulphur from the cracks of a volcano. And when it touched me – when it wrapped itself around me, cocooning me in a magic as familiar as my own blood, my own skin – I breathed in a sigh of relief. 

  We set out from the courtyard. I was still leaning on the cane for support, but I found it much easier to breathe. The familiar magic of the underworld wrapped around me, as intoxicating as
peyotl
or
teonanacatl
– stretched, dry emptiness I'd known all my life, the hollow taste of grief, the sharp tang of our own mortality, a gulf in my stomach.

  Even so, the pressure remained: a thickening of the air, a slight buzzing in my ears that got worse as we approached the prisoners' quarters.

  Within, the atmosphere – reverent, distant – remained the same; the prisoners watched us warily, as if our mere presence was enough to shatter the peace. One of them was playing the flute, a simple, haunting sound which climbed higher and higher like a cry of devotion.

  All of this lasted for no more than a handful of breaths – and then the piece was shattered by loud voices. A man and a woman – the woman was Xiloxoch, but I couldn't place the second voice, though I knew I'd heard it before. They both came from within a building – in fact, the very building that had hosted the unfortunate Zoquitl; the conversation sounded… animated, to say the least. 

  "I know my rights." Xiloxoch's voice was low and almost toneless. "You should go away."

  "And why would I do that?" The man's voice whipped through the air like a sword's blade.

  If there was an answer, I didn't wait to hear it. I flung open the entrance-curtain with as much force as I could muster – gods, I hated melodramatic entrances, but I had to concede they weren't without effect.

  They both turned, then, to look at me. One, as I had known, was Xiloxoch, wearing a drab tunic and skirt like a demure housewife; the other was Pochtic – Master of the House of Darkness, his face still swathed in bandages, his skin sallow against the vibrant colours of his feather headdress.

  "Well, well." His voice was deeply mocking. "Our High Priest for the Dead. You're too late; they've taken the corpse away."

  "I was aware of that," I said, but didn't elaborate. "What are you doing here?"

  Xiloxoch shook her head. "I know my rights," she said, again. In her hands was a golden trinket, shaped in the likeliness of the Fifth Sun.

  The things of the dead man: taken by the courtesan who had ministered to him and thus customary for sacrifices. "Only if you slept with him," I said. "Did you?"

  "I brought him comfort," Xiloxoch said. Her hands tightened around the trinket. What was so important about it?

  And, more pressingly, what was Pochtic doing here? "The work of the Master of the House of Darkness," I said, very slowly, "doesn't include the care of prisoners."

  Pochtic threw me a pitying glance. "A prisoner died, and both I and Coatl were attacked."

  "Coatl is ill," I said, slowly. "It's not quite the same."

  "He's right." Xiloxoch's voice was malicious – the trickster, closing people's eyes with burning coals, stirring up filth and ashes. "You shouldn't be here. Neither you nor Coatl." She spat the word. "Not after what you did." 

  "I can't speak for Coatl, but you're mistaken–"

  "Am I?" Xiloxoch opened her hands, angling them so that the light coming in through the entrance curtain glimmered on the gold, so that, for a moment, everything shone as yellow as the Fifth Sun. "Gold and jade; precious stones, precious stones. Was that all it took, my Lord?"

  Pochtic's bandages shifted; his lips tightened in pain. "You will not speak to me like this."

  "Why not?" Her voice was mocking. "Will you call me a whore and despise me, like they all do? I am a priestess, too." She threw her head back, her long hair shifting like a cascade of crows' feathers; for a moment, she was bathed in a warm, pulsing radiance that wasn't hers – something that smelled of the jungle, humid and primal, the odour of churned earth, of rutting beasts, and of jaguars slithering in the shadows, just out of sight.

  Even through the bandages, I saw Pochtic's eyes narrow. "Your – goddess–" he spoke the term as if it were an insult "doesn't frighten me."

  Xiloxoch smiled, licking her lips, her teeth wide, and as black as obsidian. "Pity. Try another god, then. Itztlacoliuhqui."

  The Curved Point of Obsidian, god of frost and ice, and of blind justice – of victims lashing out in pain, back at their tormentors. "You have nothing," Pochtic said. He brushed off some invisible dust from his clothes, and walked out without a word for either of us.