Obsidian & Blood (126 page)

  That stung. "You're the one who sent Nezahual-tzin back, weren't you? 'He's coming.' He said what you told him to say." 

  "A warning you'd do well enough to heed." She rose – I could feel her more than see her, but she moved with a grace and fluidity uncanny for her age. Her shadow fell over me, and she seemed so much larger than she ought to have been – the room smelled of dry earth, of rotten leaves, and the hand she laid on my shoulder was curved claws, pricking my skin to the blood. "You have little idea of what you're playing with, priest." I heard a sound, a breath coming in rapid gasps – and it was mine, it had always been mine… 

  Far, far away, someone pulled an entrance-curtain, the tinkle of bells a muffled sound that could not impinge on her presence, on the five fingers laid on my shoulder, each a sharp, painful touch on my exposed skin. 

  "He's mine."

  "Yours?" The hand withdrew; the presence, too. My heart thudded against my chest, begging to be let out of its cage of ribs. 

  "Of course. Aren't you, Acatl-tzin?"

  Slowly, carefully, I rose – for I knew the voice, as well as my own, all too well…

  Teomitl stood framed in the doorway, his feather headdress of quetzal plumes, his cloak a deep, almost turquoise blue, and with jewellery shining at his throat and wrists. Clothes fit for a Revered Speaker; the old, thoughtless arrogance transfigured, too, into deliberate authority.

  "You–"

  He waved a dismissive hand, and the air seemed to tighten with each sweep of his fingers. "Not here, Acatl-tzin. Come. We need to talk." 

  Did we indeed. I brushed dirt and dried blood from my cloak, stood as straight as I could – not shaking, not shouting, standing with a calmness I didn't feel, not one bit…

  "Teomitl-tzin…" There was someone else behind him – a calendar priest, judging by his garb. Our missing priest, Quauhtli. And something about him…

  Teomitl shook his head. "I've got all I need. Thank you."

  Quauhtli's face lit up, far too fast and too strongly to be a natural feeling. "It was my duty, Teomitl-tzin." His eyes were open slightly too wide; his gestures, as he moved into the room, were those of a drunken man, and I didn't need true sight to see Jade Skirt's magic etched in every limb and every muscle. 

  "You–" I started, but Teomitl shook his head. 

  "I told you. Not here. Let's go out."

  I thought we'd be alone, but two warriors followed us at some distance – close enough to hear everything. Teomitl made no remark, merely accepted their presence with the same ease Nezahual-tzin accepted his own bodyguards. He looked – leaner, somehow, more dangerous than he had, as if something had broken irremediably within him.

  "We've been looking for you," I said. It seemed like such an inadequate way to express the turmoil within me.

  He shrugged. "I had things to do. To safeguard the Empire."

  "Such as suborning calendar priests?" I shouldn't have antagonised him this early in the discussion, but I couldn't help it. 

  Teomitl's face set in a grimace. "We've already had this talk, Acatl-tzin. I'll do whatever is necessary to protect the Mexica." 

  Go on, I thought. Say it. Teomitl was, if nothing else, scrupulously honest; these… evasions ill-suited him. "And you think you know better than your brother?"

  He grimaced again. "Tizoc? We can dance around like warriors at the gladiator-stone, and it won't change the truth. My brother is a sick man."

  "Unfit to rule," I said, slowly, softly. "Is that what you think, Teomitl?" I knew it was; I just hadn't thought he would voice it, much less act on it.

  "Isn't that what you think?" His voice was fierce, as cutting as obsidian shards. "Don't look so surprised. I've seen you, Acatl-tzin. You brood like a jaguar mother over a lame cub. You wonder if you were right to bring him back."

  "No," I said. "I brought him back with the Southern Hummingbird's sanction, with the blessing of Izpapalotl, the Obsidian Butterfly. You can't change the truth, Teomitl. I'm a priest, and when the gods speak, I obey." 

  "They're not your gods."

  "They're the gods of the Mexica Empire." Didn't he understand anything? "The ones who protect us, who bring us victory after victory, who gather in all the tributes from the hot lands and the deserts. What I think of them doesn't intrude. It shouldn't intrude." 

  "Then you're a fool." 

  Was I? "If I am, it's no place of yours to tell me."

  "Because I'm your student? No longer."

  I thought of the calendar priest's vacant gaze; of Teomitl's voice, a lifetime ago.
Do you think me wise, Acatl-tzin? Wise enough to handle
Chalchiuhtlicue's magic?

  "No," I said. "I should think you've made it abundantly clear." I raised a hand to forestall his objection, and miraculously, he stopped. "Listen to me – as a parting gift, if nothing else. The Empire dances on a knife's edge, with a Revered Speaker half-back from the land of the dead. And you – you'd think to replace him, as easily as you spend breath. Except you can't. You just can't. We've barely recovered from one disaster already, and to depose the Revered Speaker will cause an upheaval we're not equipped to deal with." 

  "Still the same." Teomitl's lips were two narrow lines, as pale as those of a drowned man. "You're too cautious, Acatl-tzin. Moments should be seized; opportunities should be wrestled into fruition. I'll not wait in my brother's shadow for years on end, wondering when he'll have the decency to complete his journey into the world beyond. I will act now."

  One Revered Speaker deposing another was bad enough – "And what – kill him?"

  His gaze didn't waver. "As you said: he's already halfway there."

  To kill his own brother… But then I remembered that they'd never been close; that Tizoc-tzin's persistent mocking of Mihmatini had driven the final wedge between those two. 

  "You're mad."

  "Desperate," Teomitl said. "It's not the same."

  "Fine." I said it more acidly than I meant it. "But you can't count on me."

  His gesture was dismissive – as if he'd never counted on me at all. How dare he?
  "I have all I need here."

  "You have a wife." Again, more acidly than I meant to. "Do you think she would approve?"

  For the first time, I saw doubt in his face – swiftly quashed. "She's Guardian. She knows that I only act in the best interests of the balance."

  "If you say so. Do tell her that – because I most certainly won't." And I could guess how Mihmatini would react – enough to make sure I was some distance away when she got the news. 

  Again, that small, dismissive gesture – a curt brush off, a judgment that I could offer nothing of value. "You've made your position clear. Will that be all, Acatl-tzin?"

  He stood, just a few paces from me, decked with finery fit for a Revered Speaker; escorted by warriors in his own house, doing the Duality knew what with his magical practitioners. I wanted to scream at him not to do anything foolish – not to break us more than we already were, to pay attention to the magical currents he so casually ripped through – but, as he had said, I had already made my position clear.

   I could have asked him what the priest had said, but then I would have been party to his violation of the divine secrets.

  "No," I said. "You're right. There is nothing more I can do here."

 

I did go to see Mihmatini – after dropping off Palli at my temple. I had no idea what he'd seen or heard while I was away, but he wouldn't stop shivering, and every time his eyes strayed to the ground he would give a little start, as if waking from a nightmare.

  I found the Duality House much like the air before a storm: very little activity, but every gesture charged with a meaning and import I couldn't decipher – and, throughout, a leaden weight, a sense of something large and unpleasant about to happen, lodged in my throat and chest. Mihmatini was in her rooms with Yaotl. She was staring at a divination book, impatiently turning pages as if each of the hollow-eyed deities had offended her.

  "Acatl." She looked up, a smile starting to tease the corners of her eyes, and then her face fell. "You haven't found him." 

  I took the coward's way out, and said nothing; it must have been answer enough for her. "You look tired," I said, sitting by her side. 

  She waved a hand – in a gesture eerily reminiscent of Teomitl. "I've been busy." She stabbed the paper. "I have to do something, or I'll burst. So I've been looking into matters. It's not good, Acatl." "Not good?" I hadn't thought my stomach could be colder.

  "Chalchiuhtlicue's power has been increasing these past weeks," Mihmatini said. "It is the Ceasing of the Waters: a time for propitious sacrifices."
  "You think–"
  "Something is going to happen. Something bad."
  "The prisoners," I said.

  "The She-Snake moved them to different quarters; we've warded them pretty tightly." Mihmatini puffed her cheeks, thoughtfully. "I don't think they'll go that way. It's like water – they'll find the path of least resistance."

  Which, by definition, we wouldn't have considered. Great.

  Mihmatini tapped the book again. "I just wish – there's something about this that should be obvious."
  "The date?" I asked, a tad too sceptically.

  "Most priests consider dates important. And I'm pretty sure most High Priests, too."

  "What can I say; I've never been a good candidate for the position." 

  "We'd got that," Yaotl said – mocking and sarcastic, as always. 

  Mihmatini looked up again, frowned. "You're the one who looks tired. Don't get me started again on the skeletal look."

  It was a running joke between us – usually when I hadn't got enough sleep or food: I was High Priest of Mictlantecuhtli, not Lord Death himself.

  I could just shake my head, pretext fatigue after the illness – and take the coward's way out. It would be so easy – just a few words, a nod in the right place…

  And I'd never dare to look her in the face again, if I did that. 

  "I found Teomitl."

  In the silence that followed, you could have heard maize bloom. 

  Mihmatini's face had gone as flat as polished obsidian. "And it didn't occur to you to tell me before?"

  "I'm telling you now." If you'd told me, a year ago, that Yaotl, always so ready with a jest, would be coming to my rescue… 

  "Where is he?"

  I picked my words carefully. "There are some things you need to hear first."

  "No. I need to see him first," Mihmatini said.

  "Look," I said, slowly, aware that every new word was another weapon I handed her. "You know he's never liked Tizoc-tzin – and with the failure of the coronation war…"

  Mihmatini's face had gone as brittle as obsidian. "He wouldn't. Teomitl wouldn't…"

  I spread my hands, wishing I could make another answer – heard her breathe, slow and even, her face growing more still and unmoving each time, as if someone were leeching all humanity from her. "Where is he?" she said at length.

  "A house in Zoquipan," I said. Mihmatini was still watching me, with an odd expression in her eyes – anger, tenderness? Something halfway between the two. "Look." I took a deep breath. "Promise me something?"

  She cocked her head, like a bird about to fly – an eagle, not a timid sparrow or a harmless turkey. "It depends." 

  "Take Yaotl," I said. "And two priests."

  "Why?" And then she worked it out. "Acatl, you're a fool. He wouldn't harm me."

  "He wouldn't, no," I said, finally – though he had changed much. "But he's not alone in this." The old woman, whoever she was, the warriors of his entourage, and whoever else in court might be supporting this little power-grab, or whatever else he might have planned. 

  The Duality curse me, I should have asked him for more information – no, I couldn't have done that, not manipulating my own student into admitting the truth.

  Mihmatini folded the calendar, carefully. "Right. I'll see him," she said. She took a deep breath and for a moment, an achingly familiar moment, she seemed to loom larger, her arms spread wide enough to hold the Fifth World – no longer my younger sister, but a reflection of the gods she served – a living reminder of her predecessor Ceyaxochitl, who had been small and frail, except in moments such as these.

  It wasn't until Mihmatini took a step forward that I became aware of the burning sensation in my throat. Ceyaxochitl had been dead a few months, and grief still caught me at odd times, hooking me like a barbed spear. "Be careful," I said.

  "Thank you for the advice, but I don't think I need it," Mihmatini said. She cast a glance around the room and picked up a vivid blue shawl, which she held against her chest, thoughtfully, then folded it back again on top of the reed chest. "Let's go."

  Yaotl followed his mistress out of the room without demur – which left me alone in my sister's deserted apartments, with a folded calendar and nothing useful to do.

  I took a look at the calendar out of sheer conscientiousness. I was no calendar priest, but I could see the same things as Mihmatini. Jade Skirt's influence was rising throughout the month, and it was culminating today, on the Feast of the Sun.

  Something bad was going to happen, but I couldn't see what. Something to do with the prisoners – neither the She-Snake nor I were infallible, and there had to be something we hadn't thought of. Another outbreak of the epidemic? We couldn't afford to sacrifice a life for a life. If more people fell ill in the palace, what would we do? 

  No, I knew what they would do. Both Tizoc-tzin and Quenami, who thought themselves so much above the common folks – they would order us to heal the sick noblemen, not the peasants or the merchants. That wasn't the question. The real question was, what would I do?