Aztlan: The Courts of Heaven (4 page)

“Mictlan is a little like
them
,” said Axaya Xochipilli, who had still looked trim and bright-eyed at the age of eighty-four. He pointed a wrinkled finger at the geese. “He starts out doing an effective job but often leaves a mess in the end.”

He spoke to me as if I were a fellow nobleman and not the low-born son of an Investigator. I felt honored. I might have been a star in the
tlachtli
, the ball court, but I never forgot that I was still an employee of someone much richer and more powerful than I was.

I recalled the note of reason in the elder Xochipilli’s voice that day as he brought up the subject of my contract. “Well,” he said, “you’ve been with the team a cycle and a half now, Maxtla, and you’ve established yourself as one of the best players in the league—both statistically and in the opinion of people who know the game. Fans come to see you as much as they come to see the outcome of the match. Fair to say?”

I could hardly argue.

“On the other hand,” Axaya Xochipilli continued, “the Eagles’ fortunes in the ball court have been declining of late. Last cycle, we came close to winning the championship. This cycle, we’ve fallen back to the middle of the pack—and a player is only as valuable as his team’s record. Also fair to say?”

I said it was.

I didn’t know which position Xochipilli would take. As it turned out, he took neither of them.

“I could offer you a contract based on your first cycle,” he said, “but that might be unfair to one of us. Or I could offer you a contract based on this second cycle, in which the Eagles have struggled, but that might be unfair as well. So what I’m going to do is base your contract on your third cycle—the one in which you’re going to bring me a championship.”

“A championship . . . ?” I said.

“That’s right,” he said, and handed me a two-cycle contract worthy of the star on a championship team.

That next season, my third in the league, I got Xochipilli his championship. It was in my fourth cycle, as we seemed headed for our second first-place finish in a row, that I saw my career come to an end.

My contract, like all Sun League agreements, said that the team could cut me at any time for any reason, and discontinue my salary. Axaya Xochipilli paid me anyway.

Later I heard a story that one of the old man’s ancestors had played in the ball court in ancient days, and that he had played so long and so well, by the standards of some arcane point system, that he was finally elevated to the level of the nobility. Of course, that was just a story. But if it had any truth to it, it could have explained his sympathy for me.

“Here we are,” said my driver, a police officer from District Seven.

Putting my memory of the nobleman aside, I peered out my window at his house. It stood at the top of a long green slope, a brilliant, white-marble structure so massive that it seemed to bear the weight of the sky.

Of course, it no longer belonged to the elder Xochipilli, except maybe in the most poetic sense. He had died a couple of cycles earlier of a massive brain hemorrhage, leaving his only heir the owner of all he possessed—including the Eagles.

“Some place,” said my driver.

“Some place,” I agreed.

We pulled into its stone courtyard, in the center of which rose a three-tiered fountain. Its cascades glittered playfully in the sunlight, each of its basins encrusted with enough turquoises and fire opals to pay my rent for the next thirteen cycles.

The carriage negotiated a path around the fountain and stopped by the front doors. They were taller than I was by half, made of dark oak bound with copper. Round, white columns rose on either side of them like the legs of gigantic sentinels.

Yes, it was some place all right.

As I got out of the carriage, the door on the right opened outward, propelled by a slave in the traditional ocher-colored livery of House Xochipilli.

“Welcome,” said the slave, a young man with carefully clipped hair and a broad smile.

“Thanks,” I said. “I’m here to see—”

“My master, of course. He is expecting you.” He gestured inside. “Come. I’ll show you to his study.”

I followed the slave through the dark marble foyer, up a majestic set of stairs, and into a long, airy gallery with tall windows on either side. At the far end of the room stood a carved wooden table surrounded by six matching chairs.

Mictlan Xochipilli was sitting at the table bent over a portable Mirror unit, his startlingly blue quetzal-feather earring dangling over the keyboard. He didn’t look up until his slave announced my presence. Then he stood, took a moment to run his hands over the rich, green fabric of his tunic, and finally met me with his eyes.

“Colhua,” he said. “Please, join me.”

I negotiated the length of the gallery. As I got close to Xochipilli, he extended his hand.

I grasped it and said, “Thank you for agreeing to see me, Your Excellence.”

“Anything to help,” said Xochipilli. Light glinted off the elaborate gold pendant on his chest. He seemed to notice the cut under my eye but he didn’t say anything about it. “It’s a bad thing, what’s happened to Coyotl.”

“Not
too
bad, we hope. If you don’t mind, I would like to ask you some questions.”

“Whatever you like,” said the nobleman. But he didn’t invite me to sit down anywhere, so I knew my conversation with him was going to be a short one.

At first, I asked him the same questions I had asked Ichtaca and the Eagles—about Coyotl’s finances, friends, and health. Not that I expected Xochipilli to know the answers better than anyone else. After all, he and Coyotl would hardly have buzzed each other on a daily basis.

Then I got to the questions the nobleman
could
answer better than others. “As far as you know,” I asked, “was Coyotl happy with his place on the Eagles?”

“Happy?” Xochipilli echoed. “I have no reason to believe otherwise. Why do you ask?”

I didn’t feel compelled to tell him about the Rabbit Run bag I’d found. Noblemen were notorious for talking too much, and I wanted to keep that evidence to myself for a while.

“You have a new coach,” I said, “a new attack scheme. Sometimes star players balk at those kinds of changes.”

He shrugged. “As far as I know, Coyotl has the utmost respect for his coach. In fact, when I mentioned to him that I was considering hiring Ichtaca, he was all for the idea.”

It was unusual for an owner to share his plans with a player. I said as much.

Xochipilli smiled. “Coyotl is not just any player, Investigator. I think you know that as well as I do. And I did not give him veto power over the move. I simply shared my thoughts with him.”

“What about his contract?” I asked. “Any disappointment at all on Coyotl’s part?”

“Coyotl’s contract reflected—and will continue to reflect—his value to the Eagles, which is considerable.” It was the kind of statement I could have gotten from the team’s fan affairs director.

“So your relationship with Coyotl has been a good one?”

“As good as any between owner and player.” Xochipilli’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “If you don’t mind my asking, what has this to do with his abduction?”

“People do things when they’re unhappy that they wouldn’t do otherwise. They talk to people they wouldn’t normally talk to. If Coyotl was doing that, I need to identify those people and see if they can shed some light on what happened to him.”

Xochipilli nodded. “I see.”

“But you didn’t get the idea that Coyotl was disgruntled in any way?”

“None.” He smiled again. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” I said. “I couldn’t have been happier when I played for your father. It’s good to see that Eagle players can still feel that way.”

I thought I saw a shadow fall across his eyes at the mention of the elder Xochipilli. Apparently, I had probed a sore spot.

“What else can I tell you?” asked the nobleman.

His tone had changed. It told me that he had devoted as much time to me as he cared to.

“Nothing else,” I assured him. “You’ve been a great help.”

“I’m glad,” he said. “If you’re hungry, my kitchen slave can provide you with a snack for your trip back to the city.”

“Thanks, but I ate before I left. Gods favor you, Your Excellence.”

“And you, Colhua.”

The words had barely escaped his mouth before he turned and went back to his Mirror unit. At that point, I might as well have been a mote of dust floating on the air as far as Xochipilli was concerned.

I didn’t hold it against him. Most noblemen were more like him than like his father.

• • •

When I emerged from Xochipilli’s house into the bright, early afternoon sunlight, I saw my auto-carriage waiting for me in the courtyard. But the driver wasn’t alone. Someone in a blue tunic was standing next to him, leaning on the vehicle.

As I approached, he stood up and turned to face me.

“Colhua,” he said.

Acama, I thought.

He looked every bit as powerful as when he played for Yautepec in the Sun League. And every bit as arrogant if the turd-eating grin on his face was any indication.

The rumors I’d heard were true, then. He had been hired as Xochipilli’s new bodyguard.

For nine cycles Tez Acama had played for Yautepec, wreaking havoc with opposing players—Xochipilli’s Eagles among them. In fact, he had played some of his bloodiest games against Aztlan.

A fan would have remembered that and held it against him, but not a nobleman.

“Get what you needed?” Acama asked, his grin widening.

I wanted to wipe it off his face, but I couldn’t. Not in the courtyard of Mictlan Xochipilli. And as an Investigator for the Empire, I knew that smirking wasn’t a crime.

“His Excellence was most helpful,” I told him.

“How’s your knee?” he asked.

“How are your teeth?” I replied, knowing they’d been kicked in by a vengeful center in Malinalco.

“Better than ever,” he assured me, and tapped one of the new ones with his fingernail. It made a tik-tik-tik sound.

I opened the door to the auto-carriage, got in, and let my driver know I was ready to go. But as we pulled out of the courtyard, I felt a familiar twinge in my knee and knew that, once again, Acama had gotten the best of me.

C
uetz Oxhoco was Coyotl’s agent. When I buzzed him on my way back to Aztlan from Xochipilli’s estate, he said he’d meet with me any time, anywhere, as long as our conversation helped bring Coyotl back to the Eagles a little sooner. He sounded worried.

Then again, Oxhoco took a percentage of Coyotl’s earnings. If Coyotl wasn’t playing, there
were
no earnings. And with Coyotl’s contract expiring at the end of the season, an even bigger payday was in jeopardy.

So I wasn’t surprised that Oxhoco was worried. If I’d had beans riding on Coyotl, I would have been worried too.

Like all agents, regardless of whether they represented the most highly paid ball court players or Mirror writers or jewelry designers, Oxhoco had an office in the Merchant City.

I told him that I would meet him in half an hour. Of course, it would have been more convenient for me to see him in my own office at the City Interrogation Center. But if I had learned anything in my cycles as an Investigator, it was that people were more forthcoming when they were questioned in familiar surroundings—and I needed Oxhoco to be forthcoming.

I had barely hung up with him when I got a call on my radio. It was Pactonal.

“What is it?” I asked.

He sounded like he wanted to tell me something, but all I heard was a long, drawn-out yawn.

“Up late?” I said.

“Sorry, I couldn’t sleep. Not after that beating we took from Yopitzinco. All I could think about was Coyotl and how much we could have used him in the corridor.”

I doubted that he was the only one who had lost sleep over that match. Aztlan had a lot of fans.

“Did you think of something?” I asked.