Master of the House of Darts (2 page)

Tizoc-tzin's face darkened, but he stuck to ritual, starting a lengthy hymn to the glory of the Southern Hummingbird.

I'd have been listening, even though I wasn't particularly fond of the Southern Hummingbird – a warrior god who had little time for the non-combatant clergy – but something caught my attention on the edge of the crowd. A movement, in those massed colours? No, that wasn't it. Something else…

The nausea in my gut flared again. Gently, carefully, I reached out to my earlobes, and rubbed the scabs of my blood-offerings until they came loose. Blood spurted on my hands, warm with the promise of magic.

My movements hadn't been lost on everyone: my student Teomitl was staring at me intently under his quetzal-feather headdress. He made a small, stabbing gesture with his hand, as if bringing down a
macuahitl
sword, and mouthed a question.

I shook my head. The spell I had in mind required a quincunx traced on the ground – hardly appropriate, given the circumstances. I rubbed the blood on my hands and said the prayers nevertheless:

"We all must die

We all must go down into darkness

Leaving behind the marigolds and the cedar trees

Nothing is hidden from Your gaze."

The air seemed to grow thinner, and my nausea got worse – but nothing else happened. The spell wasn't working. I should have guessed. I'd made a fool of myself for nothing.

Tizoc-tzin had finished speaking; now he took a step backwards, and said, "Welcome back your children made men, O Mexica."

The war-council stepped aside as well, to reveal three rows of warriors in quilted cotton armour and colourful cloaks, the feather insignia over their heads bobbing in the wind.

There were so few of them – so few warriors who had taken prisoners. It looked like Acamapichtli's sources were right: there couldn't be more than forty of them before us, and many of them were injured, their cloaks and quilted armour torn and bloody. Many of them were veterans, with the characteristic black cloaks with a border of yellow eyes; many held themselves upright with a visible effort, the knuckles of their hands white, the muscles of their legs quivering. Here and there, a younger face with a childhood-lock broke the monotony of the line.

"Beloved fathers, you have come at last, you have returned

To the place of high waters, the place where the serpent
is crushed

Possessors of a heart, possessors of a face,

Sons of jaguars and eagles…"

There was something… My gaze went left and right, and finally settled on a warrior in the front row, near the end of the line – not among the youngest, but not grizzled either. He wore the orange and black cloak of a four-captive warrior and the obsidian shards on his sword were chipped, some of them cleanly broken off at the base. His face was paler than his neighbours, and his hands shook.

But it wasn't that which had caught my attention: rather, it was the faint, pulsing aura around him, the dark shadows gathered over his face.

Magic. A curse – or something else?

The warrior was swaying, his face twisted in pain. It wouldn't be long until–

"My Lord," I said, urgently, my voice cutting through Tizoc-tzin's speech.

Tizoc-tzin threw me a murderous glance. He looked as though he were going to go back to what he was saying before. "My Lord," I said. "We need to–"

The shadows grew deeper, and something seemed to leap from the air into the warrior's face – his skin darkened for a bare moment, and his eyes opened wide, as if he had seen something utterly terrifying. And then they went expressionless and blank – a blankness I knew all too well.

He collapsed like a felled cactus: legs first, and then the torso, and finally the head, coming to rest on the ground with a dull thud.

Teomitl moved fastest, heading towards the line and flipping the body over onto its back – but even before I saw the slack muscles and empty eyes, I knew that the man was dead.

I made to move, but a hand on my shoulder restrained me: Quenami, looking grimly serious. "Let go," I whispered, but he shook his head.

Ahead of us, two warriors were pulling the body of their comrade out of the crowd. Teomitl stood, uncertainly, eyeing Tizoc-tzin – who pulled himself up with a quick shake of his head, and went on as if nothing were wrong.

Something crossed Teomitl's face – anger, contempt? – but it was gone too fast – and, in any case, Tizoc-tzin was moving, his elaborate cape and feather headdress hiding my student from sight.

"To the place where the eagle slays the serpent

O Mexica, O Texcocans, O Tepanecs…"

Surely he couldn't mean to…

Behind me, Quenami was taking up the chant again, his lean face suffused with his customary arrogance and a hint of contempt, as if I'd been utterly unable to understand the stakes.

The other officials and the warriors had looked dubious at first, but who could not be swayed by the will of the Revered Speaker, and of the leader of High Priests? They took up the hymn, hesitantly at first, then more fiercely.

"To the place of the waters, the island of the seven caves

You come back, o beloved sons, o beloved fathers…"

"A man is dead," I whispered as the hymn wound to a close, and Tizoc-tzin approached the warriors, bestowing on them, one by one, the ornate mantles appropriate to their new status. "Do you think this is a joke?"

Quenami smiled. "Yes. But the war has been won, Acatl. Shall we not celebrate, and laugh in the face of Lord Death?"

Having met Him numerous times, I very much doubted Lord Death was going to care much either way – He well knew that everyone came to Him in the end, no matter what they did.

"It's a lie," I said, fiercely, but other hymns had started, and Quenami wasn't listening anymore.

The morning dragged on, interminable. There were chants, and intricate dances where sacred courtesans and warriors formally courted each other, reminding us of the eternal cycle of life and the order of the Fifth World. There were drum beats and the distribution of maize flatbreads to the crowd, and songs and dances, and elaborate speeches by officials. And through it all presided Tizoc-tzin, insufferably smug, as puffed up as if he'd been one of the captive-takers.

I stood on the edge, mouthing the hymns with little conviction – my mind on the warrior and on his fall. People did collapse naturally: from weak hearts, or pressure within the brain that couldn't be relieved; reacting to something they'd eaten, or the sting of some insect. But there had been magic around him, strong enough for me to feel it.

I doubted, very much, that it had been a natural death.

After the ceremony, the officials of the city went into the palace, where a formal banquet was served: elaborate maize cakes, roast deer, white fish with red pepper and tomatoes, newts with sweet potatoes… Tizoc-tzin, as usual, ate behind a golden screen; Teomitl was sitting with the other members of the war-council, around the reed mat of the highest-ranked, the closest one to the window and the humid air of the gardens. Beside him was Mihmatini, my younger sister – as his wife, she should have been sitting at a separate mat, but she was also Guardian of the Sacred Precinct, agent of the Duality in the Fifth World and keeper of the invisible boundaries, enough to give a headache to any protocol master. Beneath her elaborate makeup, her eyes were distant: she didn't like banquets anymore than I did, though she could hardly afford to ignore them.

Between them was a thin line I could barely see – a remnant of a spell they'd done together, a magic which kept them tied even though the spell had ended.

Though Teomitl was obviously glad to see Mihmatini, I could see him fidget even from where I sat between Quenami and Acamapichtli, doing my best to avoid speaking to either of them. I could feel his impatience – which mirrored my own.

Further down, several Jaguar Knights were sitting around their own reed mats – among them was my elder brother Neutemoc, smiling gravely at some joke of his neighbour. It looked as though the campaign had enabled him to re-establish ties with his comrades, and other things besides. He looked plumper, and the jaguar body-suit no longer hung loosely on his slender frame: perhaps he was finally getting over his wife's death.

I let my gaze roam through the room, waiting for the banquet to finish. Amidst the colourful costumes, the faces flushed with warmth and the easy laughter there was something else, the same undercurrent of unease tightening in my belly. The atmosphere was tense: the laughing and smiling Jaguar Knights carefully avoided looking at the golden screen, while the warriors clustering around Tizoc-tzin – richly dressed noblemen, with barely a scar on their smooth legs – huddled together, talking as if they were in the midst of enemy territory.

All was not right with the world.

As soon as the last course of the banquet was served, I got up.

"Leaving so soon?" Quenami asked.

"I want to see the body," I said.

Quenami raised a perfectly-plucked eyebrow. "Always the High Priest, I see. Forget it, Acatl. The man had a sunstroke."

I shook my head. "Magical sunstrokes don't exist, Quenami. Someone cast a spell on him."

I expected Acamapichtli to say something, but he had remained worryingly silent – as if lost in thought. Probably thinking of how he could turn the situation to his advantage.

Quenami smiled. "Look at you. Such wonderful dedication." His voice took on a hard edge. "Nevertheless… today we celebrate our victory, Acatl – the return of the army, and the confirmation of our Revered Speaker. Tizoc-tzin needs his High Priests here."

An unmistakable, utterly unsubtle threat. But I'd had enough. "This isn't the confirmation," I said. "As you said – today we celebrate our victory. I don't think the absence of one person is going to make a difference." Especially not one High Priest with dubious loyalties, as far as Tizoctzin was concerned. "I don't stop being High Priest for the Dead when we celebrate."

Quenami made a slow, expansive gesture – one I knew all too well, the one which suggested there were going to be unpleasant consequences and that he'd done all he could to warn me.

And, of course, the moment I had my back turned, he was going to go to his master and denounce us.

At least I knew where I stood with him.

The dead warrior had been taken deep within the Imperial palace – on the outskirts of Tizoc-tzin's private apartments. The sky above us had the uncanny blue of noon, with Tonatiuth the Fifth Sun at his highest.

A slave took me to a small, dusty courtyard with a dry well – I'd expected it to be deserted, but to my surprise two people were waiting for me there. The first was Teomitl, still in full finery, looking far older than his eighteen years. Next to him was a middle-aged man, whom I recognised as another member of the war-council. Though he wore rich finery, the lower part of his legs was uncovered, revealing skin pockmarked with whitish scars. He nodded curtly to me – as an equal to an equal.

"I didn't see you leave," I said to Teomitl.

He grinned – fast and careless – before his face arranged itself once more in a sober expression, more appropriate to the Master of the House of Darts. "We were right behind you."

"Tizoc-tzin–" I said, slowly.

"Tizoc-tzin can say what he wants," the other man interrupted. "I have no intention of abandoning one of my own warriors."

"This is Coatl," Teomitl said, shaking his head in a dazzling movement of feathers. "Deputy for the Master of Raining Blood."

And, as such, in command of one quarter of the army. "I see," I said. I pulled open the entrance-curtain in a tinkle of bells, and slipped inside.

It was dark and cold, in spite of the noon hour: the braziers hadn't been lit, and the dead man lay huddled on the packed earth, abandoned like offal – an ironic end for one who had worshipped Huitzilpochtli, our protector god: the eternally youthful and virile Southern Hummingbird.

Automatically, I whispered the words of a prayer, wishing his soul safe passage into the underworld, for his hadn't been the glorious death of a warrior, the ascent into the Heaven of the Fifth Sun, but rather small and ignominious, a sickness that doomed him to the dark, to the dryness of Mictlan.

"You knew him," I said to Coatl.

He made a curious gesture – half-exasperation, halfcontempt. "Eptli. Yes. I knew him."

"Did he have any enemies?"

"Eptli was one of the forty honoured warriors, out of an army of eight thousand men. I'd say there would be strong resentment against him."

"Yes," I said. "But why single him out? Why not any of the others?"

Coatl spread his hands. "I knew Eptli because he was under my orders, but no more than that. His clan-leader was responsible for his unit."

There was something – not quite right in the tone of his voice, as if he was going to say more, but had stopped himself just in time. What could it possibly be?

Eptli had been a four-captive warrior: with this, his fifth capture, he could aspire to membership of the Jaguar or Eagle Knights, the prestigious elite of the army.

I was about to press Coatl further, when the entrancecurtain tinkled again. I started – surely Tizoc-tzin wouldn't search for us that soon – but instead a covered cage landed on the floor with a dull thud, startling whatever was inside so it gave a piercing, instantly recognisable cry.

I knelt and lifted the cover – to stare into the bleary, murderous eyes of a huge white owl, who looked as though only the wooden bars prevented it from terminally messing up my face. It screeched once more, disdainfully.

Acamapichtli strode into the room, rubbing his hands together as if to wash away dust. "There you go. Living blood. You can use it." It wasn't a question.