Citlali was still raving, but Atl’s attention was on the carved bird in his pouch. It seemed to rustle, as if it were alive and flapping its wings in panic. He opened the leather flap, reached in. Yes, the thing was moving. It went still in his hand as he took it out, and as he did, he heard, unmistakably, Niente’s voice.
“Tototl is returning to the ships. You must go too! The Long Path is here.”
“Taat?”
There was no answer. Atl dropped the bird from fingers that had lost their strength. He watched it tumble to the ground, to be lost among the stalks of grain that the armies had crushed into the dirt. His taat’s voice had sounded so weak, so lost, and there came to him a certainty that he would never hear it again.
“Tecuhtli,” Atl called. “We must retreat and find the ships. We have no magic. We’ll have none until we can rest again.”
“No!” Citlali spat. “I will have the city today.”
“It’s not possible now,” Atl said.
“How would you know?” Citlali scoffed. “Nothing you have told me has been true. You are no longer Nahual. I’ll find another. I’ll make Niente Nahual again.”
Citlali raised his sword against Atl as if he were about to strike, and Atl lifted his spell-stick uselessly.
Someone called toward them in the tongue of the Easterners, and a warhorse broke through the ring about Citlali and Atl, bearing a warrior covered in blood and dirt, his helm lost, a notched sword clutched in his hand. He bore down directly toward Citlali, and the Tecuhtli turned from Atl to parry the the man’s stroke. Steel rang against steel, and Atl saw a shard of Citlali’s blade fly away, spinning. As their warhorses came close, Citlali pushed hard at the Easterner, and the man fell from his saddle. Citlali laughed. “You see?” he said. “You see how easily they fall? And you tell me to retreat?”
The Easterner was struggling groggily to his feet, favoring one leg. He seemed barely able to lift his weapon. All around them, Atl could see the black-and-silver and blue-and-gold uniforms of the Easterners, though the three of them stood alone in a quiet nexus of the chaos. Warriors were falling under the press, and their spellcasters hurled their magic with the nahualli unable to respond. Citlali jumped from his horse; Atl saw his boot crush the carved red bird into the muddy, torn ground. The Tecuhtli lifted his sword again. The strike, Atl saw, would take the Easterner’s head.
Atl lifted back his empty spell stick. He brought it down hard on Citlali’s skull. The sound was strangely quiet, like a stick thumping a ripe melon, but Citlali fell senseless at the Easterner’s stunned feet. The Easterner looked at Atl, who stared back. For a breath, neither of them moved, then-as Atl watched from his horse, the Easterner lifted his sword. He brought it down through Citlali’s neck. “The Tecuhtli is lost!” Atl called out loudly so that the warriors nearest him could hear. “The Tecuhtli is lost. Retreat! Back to the ships!”
As the warriors began to respond, as they began to disengage and fall back, as the Easterners shouted in triumph, Atl stared down at the Easterner. The man leaned on his sword, still buried in Citlali’s neck. Atl nodded to him.
Then he jerked the reins of his horse and began the long flight westward.
The Dawn
They were pursued by the army of blue and gold and the army of black and silver, hounding them as they retreated toward the river and the waiting ships, but not hotly. The stragglers had been picked off, but the main armies had never reengaged. It was apparent that the Easterners were content to chase them from their land, but they would not demand their extermination if the Tehuantin were willing to leave.
The army had seen the masts of their fleet the second day, ten miles upriver from Nessantico, and they’d boarded as quickly as they could. Tototl, now calling himself Tecuhtli, had boarded the Yaoyotl, and he had turned the fleet westward as soon as the surviving warriors and nahualli were aboard. The empty boats-far too many of them-he’d scuttled in the middle of the river to discourage any of the Holdings’ navy from pursuing them.
They sailed down the A’Sele, moving quickly with its current toward the sea.
Toward home.
Atl, aboard the Yaoyotl, stared into the green mist of his scrying bowl. Tototl watched him carefully, the warrior’s skull painted now with the red eagle pattern that would soon be tattooed permanently on his flesh.
The myriad futures spread out before Atl, no longer blanketed and dim as they once had been. It was as if Axat had lifted a veil from before his face. He could see far more clearly than he’d ever seen before, all the uncertainties that had shrouded things for so long blown away like passing storm clouds. The futures were open before him, all the possibilities.
What he saw made him gasp. The Long Path… This was the future that Taat saw, that he always said was there. He realized then that Niente had known what that Long Path would cost: that to achieve it he must die; that Tecuhtli Citalali would be killed as well if this future was ever to rise; that a multitude of warriors would die as well. How long did you keep this secret, Taat? Did you know before we even left?
Atl suspected that he had. It explained so much. It explained why Niente had never wanted him to use the scrying bowl himself. That had been the act of a protective father, not that of a jealous Nahual. The realization made Atl regret the harsh words they’d exchanged.
“Will I return here?” Tototl asked Atl harshly, interrupting his thoughts and making the green mist waver as he exhaled so that he almost lost the vision. “Will I avenge our defeat?”
Atl could see that future as well: their ships loaded again with an army, one yet larger than Citlali’s, returning a third time to those shores. Only this time, the armies of the Holdings were one, and they descended upon them furiously and early, the bulk of them armed with terrible weapons like the ones that Tototl and Niente had witnessed during their battles. The warriors of the Tehuantin were cut down like wheat with a scythe and the earth drank their blood.
It was a terrible future, but it was one that could easily come to pass.
But the other… the one stretching out until the mists swallowed it. That one was also possible if Atl could direct Tototl that way. It would take skill, and it would demand sacrifice, but it was there and he could see Niente’s hand upon it.
“You will do better than that, Tecuhtli,” Atl told him. “You will one day bring us to peace with the Easterners. Your name will be honored everywhere in our land. All the Tecuhtli who come after will compare themselves to you. You will be forever the Great Tecuhtli.”
The mists were failing now, and Atl took the bowl and threw the water within it over the side of the ship. He handed the bowl to one of the lesser nahualli. “Clean this,” he told the man, “and put it back in my cabin.” He could feel the weariness of the X’in Ka hammering at him, and his left eye twitched uncomfortably. Atl squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again. Tototl was watching him.
“Peace?” he said. “How does a warrior find honor in peace? How does one become great without war and victory?”
Atl took a long breath. He looked westward, toward the smoke and fumes of Nessantico, toward the place where Niente’s body would forever lie. “I will show you,” he told Tototl. “Together, we will keep to that path.”
“Watch me,” she told Nico. “Then I want you to try it yourself. Are you watching? See, you loop one string like this, then take the other and go around the bottom of the loop once, and…”
There was a knock on Varina’s bedroom door as she was tying the laces of Nico’s boots. “A’Morce?”
“Come in,” Varina said, and Michelle entered, carrying Serafina in her arms. The baby was bundled in lace, and Michelle held the child protectively as she glanced warily at Nico, who sat on the bed. His guileless face turned to look at Michelle.
“Is that Serafina?” he asked Varina, his voice eager.
“Yes,” she told him.
He looked down, almost shyly. “May I… May I hold her?”
Michelle was shaking her head slightly, but Varina smiled at him. “Just for the tiniest bit,” she told him. “And you must be very careful with her.” Varina nodded to Michelle; still frowning, the wet nurse came forward and placed the baby in Nico’s outstretched hands. “Make sure you hold her head,” Varina told him. “Yes, like that. That’s good…”
