Aztlan: The Courts of Heaven (12 page)

I liked it.

“Sit,” Calli told me, indicating a long, buffalo-skin couch. “Can I get you some
octli
?”

I shook my head. “The painkiller.” It didn’t make a good mix. Besides, I had to go back to work after dinner.

“Right,” she said. She slapped her forehead with the heel of her hand. “What was I thinking? Juice, then? I’ve got apple, orange, grapefruit . . ."

“Grapefruit.”

She served me my drink in a wooden cup the color of clay. Such vessels were rare in the Empire. But then, I’d already guessed that her family had some beans.

The grapefruit wasn’t bad either. It seemed fresher, somehow.

“Nice?” she asked.

I nodded. “Nice.”

Calli smiled.

Despite her veneer of sophistication, she seemed to enjoy playing hostess as much as the next woman. Fortunately, I liked being catered to as much as the next man.

“Stay here,” she said.

“I will,” I assured her.

A moment later, she came out with a wooden platter that matched the cups. As she got closer, I could see an array of small grey fillets in a pale yellow sauce. Their smell was sharp and sweet at the same time.

“What are they?” I asked, never having seen such a dish before.

“Herring. They’re fish.”

“Never heard of them.”

“Try one.”

I forked one of the fillets onto my plate. Then I picked it up and turned it around so I could get a better look at it. “There are little green spots in the sauce,” I noted.

“Pieces of chopped dill,” Calli explained.

I hadn’t heard of dill either. Where had she gotten such things?

“Don’t you trust me?” she asked.

“I do,” I said.

Nonetheless, I bit off only a little of the fillet. The yellow sauce was sharper than I had expected, though not nearly as sharp as a good hot pepper.

Calli smiled at me. “Like it?”

To my surprise, I
did
. Somehow, the fishiness and the sharpness and the sweetness came together. “Where did you get them?”

“The Scandinavian Peninsula.”

“You’ve been to Europe?” I was surprised.

“Yes. Last winter. I toured the place from top to bottom.”

“You got permission from the Emperor?”

“I was part of a trade delegation. There were twelve of us, each representing a different business.”

“And which one were
you
representing?”

“A tunic manufacturer. A man my family knows.”

“What do the Euros want with tunics?”

“They love them. In fact, they love everything about the Empire.”

“I don’t blame them.”

“It’s not because they know anything about us. In fact, it’s because they
don’t
know anything about us. We’re mysterious to them, and mysterious equals exciting.”

“Did you have bodyguards?”

“Actually, it’s quite safe over there.”

I couldn’t tell if she was serious. “Really? How could that be? They’re constantly at war with each other.”

“They’re not really wars, Maxtla.”

“They’re not harvest festivals.”

“People don’t die in them. Not anymore. Governments just flex their muscles a little.”

“That’s not what I hear.”

“It’s not what I heard either. But now I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”

“You sure you were on the right continent?” I asked her.

“Pretty sure. Europe’s not what people make it out to be. In some ways, it’s better there than what we have here in the Empire.”

I didn’t believe it. “Name one thing that’s better.”

“They have a lot more freedom.”

I laughed. “Freedom from what? From peace of mind? From a place to live? From a full belly?”

“Sometimes,” she conceded. “And of course, those are the problems the Emperor likes to dwell on when he talks about Europe or Pacifica. But outside the Empire, people don’t need to ask permission to do what they want. If they feel like gambling, they gamble. If they feel like eating chocolate, they eat chocolate.”

“So do we,” I said. “Nobody’s been busted for possession of chocolate since before we were born.”

“It’s still a law,” said Calli, “isn’t it? They haven’t gotten rid of it. In fact, the nobility can conscript human sacrifices if they want. That’s still a law too.”

Technically, she was right. But I had no problem with the nobility. “They’re a little pompous, sure. But they’ve always dealt fairly with us, as far as I can tell.”

“What’s
fair
, Maxtla? Unless you’ve seen the alternative, fair is whatever the nobility says it is.”

“The system works,” I said. “It’s worked for a long time. Everyone has a job if he wants one. Everyone gets medicine. Everyone gets an education.”

“That’s strange,” she said, “coming from the guy who took down Itzcoatl. Before that, people probably said the institution of the priesthood was working too.”

“That was different,” I said. “The problem was Itzcoatl, not the office of the High Priest.”

“Maybe we’ll be saying that about one of the nobles someday. The problem wasn’t the institution of nobility, you know, it was
him
. Or
her
.”

“What would you like us to do?” I asked. “Overthrow them? Turn society over to the masses?”

“You make it sound so crazy. It’s what people have done everywhere else in the world, in one way or another.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

She looked like she was thinking about it.

“All right,” I said, “so if you like the rest of the world so much better than Mexica, why did you come back?”

Calli frowned. “Are you kicking me out of my own country?”

“It’s a legitimate question.”

“Because this is where I was born. This is where my people are. I don’t want to leave Mexica, Maxtla. I just wish it could be more like other places. I wish it could be
free
.”

“It
is
,” I insisted.

We had come full circle, like a snake trying to eat its tail. And though I hadn’t lost the argument, I saw that I had inadvertently lost something more precious along the way.

Because Calli wasn’t looking at me anymore. She was staring out the window, as if she had found something there that she couldn’t take her eyes off.

“I’ve got a bad feeling,” I said, “that I’ve just talked myself out of a wonderful evening.”

She turned back to me, the light gone out of her eyes. “It’s my fault. I’ve been getting into these political discussions ever since I got home.”

“Maybe you just need some time to acclimate.”

“Maybe,” she conceded.

“Should I see myself to the door?”

She shook her head. “Of course not. You haven’t finished your dinner.”

So I stayed. But it wasn’t the same between us after that. We talked, we laughed . . . but not with the same enthusiasm. And when I finally did leave, an hour later, the only kiss I got was on the cheek.

“Thanks for dinner,” I said.

Calli nodded. “Take care of yourself, Investigator.”

Investigator
.

Good going, I thought, as her door shut behind me.
If you’d been that smooth in the ball court, you wouldn’t have lasted past the first intermission
.

Halfway to the office, it was dark already. I was watching the sacred river glitter like gold in the reflected light of a pyramid when I got a call from Necalli.

“I’ve got good news and bad news,” he said.

He could be a child sometimes. “All right,” I asked, “what’s the good news?”

“Coyotl isn’t missing anymore. You want to hear the bad news?”

I didn’t have to. Necalli had played this game with me before. “He’s dead.”

As I said the words, a chill climbed the rungs of my spine. This wasn’t just business, after all. Coyotl had been a ball court player.

It didn’t matter if he’d been a good man or not. He’d bled in the Arena the same way I had. He’d felt the same surge of triumph when he saw his ball go through the ring. We were brothers.

And he was dead.

“We found him in District Four,” said Necalli, “in an alley.” He gave me the location. “See you there.”

I looked out the window at Aztlan, at its proud, bright buildings shouldering the night and the awakening stars. The city wasn’t going to accept Coyotl’s death with equanimity.

There would be trouble.

E
ven in death, Coyotl looked like a god. Lands of Death, I had known
living
men who looked worse.

Except for the trickle of dried, black blood at the corner of his mouth, of course. That made it clear his days among the living were behind him.

“Hard to believe,” said one of the six District Four officers assigned to guard the body. “He was my favorite player. He was
everybody’s
favorite player.”

I agreed. Coyotl belonged in the Arena, not in a dark, dirty alley.

“He couldn’t have been killed very long ago,” said the same officer, a man who looked like he had seen a few bodies in his time. “He’s not even cold.”

So someone had kept him somewhere since he disappeared. And then, for some reason, that someone had killed him. And dumped him. At least, that was the way it looked.

“Who discovered the body?” I asked.

The officer tilted his head to indicate a back door. “A chef. He was taking out the garbage when he saw someone lying here. But he didn’t think the guy was dead until he turned him over.”

“Must have been a shock,” I said.

I knelt beside Coyotl. His black shirt, an expensive one made of the finest linen, was cut to pieces.

“Twelve wounds,” said the officer. “Apparently, all with the same knife.”

“Did you find it?” I asked.

“The murder weapon? No. But we’re still looking.”

“Any witnesses?”

He shook his head. “Not yet. And, of course, we’ve got to be careful what questions we ask.”

“Of course,” I said. We didn’t want it to get out that Coyotl had been killed. At least not yet.

I heard the scrape of footfalls and turned to see Necalli come walking down the alley. “Took me longer than I thought it would,” he snarled. “Damned carriage moved like a sick tortoise.”

He looked down at Coyotl and shook his head. Then he turned to the guy from District Four. “Secure the scene and get him out of here.”

The officer nodded. “Yes, Chief.”

Necalli turned to me. “I’ll get Chief Zayanya to call the Mirror people. Under the Emperor’s new information policy, we can’t keep this a secret from them.”

“But we can get some warning before they run the story.”

“One would hope.” Necalli studied Coyotl again. “He was the luckiest guy on the face of the Earth, Colhua. Now you and I are luckier. What does that say?”

“I don’t know. That we shouldn’t envy fame and fortune?”

“Maybe. I don’t know either.”

Despite the painkiller, I stayed awake that night for the Eagles’ road game against the Salamanders of Xoconochco, the worst team in the league. With Coyotl, Aztlan would have won with its eyes closed. Without him, it would be a match.

This time, it was the much-maligned Chipaua who staked the Eagles to an early lead. Darting between two defenders, he intercepted a pass and kicked the ball in for a score. But it was easy to see that the advantage wouldn’t last long.

Aztlan was just out of sync. Every pass was a bad one. The defense had too many holes. It came as no surprise to anyone when Xoconochco tied the match at one, or when the Salamanders followed with a second goal. But no one expected the match to get out of hand—which is what happened.