She turned back to me. “Xka’ nan’ech lo’mob kutz,” she said. “Smoke faster than the flies can bite.” It was sort of a casual jokey leave-taking salutation, like “Be good.” She left. The commotion behind her guards picked up, the Ixian Rattler’s Children shouting questions at her in this sort of respectful howl, asking for predictions on the score like she was a combination of the Dalai Lama and Nick the Greek, which, in fact, she basically was. I thought she was going to ignore it, but all of a sudden she turned inside her semitransparent screens and spoke through Coati:
“Now, 10 K’atun, 1 Deer, 11 Thought,” he/she said,
“Before the thirteenth ball rolls up the green,
Look out for ingrown blue hair knots in your walls.”
(33)
There was a trough between the waves of shouting and then a higher crest as the people started reacting to it and asking what she meant. I didn’t get what the carajo she was talking about either. It was like, ease up on the Delphic Sybil trip, babe.
I watched her turn and lead her escort back down the walkway, around the east end zone of the court, and up a side ramp onto the south platform, through hundreds of hostile-looking Ocelot princes in jaguar skins and emerald-green feather spikes, all of them probably waiting for the signal to grab her and rip her into bite-sized morsels. They saluted her and she had to salute back like we were totally honored to be with them. Ocelot guards moved her forward toward the lip of the court, to where the Ixian Rattler-adder was standing at the coveted second rank. Lady Koh and the Rattler Adder greeted each other in public sign language. I pictured little thought-balloons bubbling out of each of their heads saying I’m going to kill you.
She was totally isolated up there. If a fight started, our bloods would have to roll down into the playing trench, claw their way up the slick bank to the opposite platform, and try to grab Koh before the Ocelots behind her pulled her backward. They’d never make it.
Nobody seemed to be watching me. I bent down like I was messing with my sandal, tore open the nine- layered tortilla with my teeth, and pulled out something I recognized, a whitish, double-bladdered bag. The earthstar compound. I dusted some cornstarch off the bag and handed it behind me to Armadillo Shit. I pointed to my hip padding and he reached in through the quilted layers, positioned the bag in the hollow on the left side of my groin, and tied it down with slack ends of weasel gut from my yoke harness. I stood up and Armadillo Shit whisked some bits of offering-confetti and torn-up betting contracts and morning-glory blossoms and dyed feathers and crap out of my helmet.
A long “Eeeee,” a sort of performatively awed gasp, spread through the stands and away into the city. The Ocelots’ hazing team had just brought out a captive harpy eagle, and some of the Harpies in the stands tried to get down to the court to rescue it and had to be held back. Meanwhile Harpies’ mockers had brought out a baby ocelot, and from what I could hear they were starting to yank it around on its leash and poking at it with skewers. I’d say the audience went bananas except that’s not a menacing enough fruit. Torturing specimens of each other’s totems was basically a declaration of war. This thing wasn’t ending with the last goal.
DOOOONG.
It was a note like a chord of D, C, and F sharp way down on the black keys at the left end of an old Boesendorfer, and it came from a slit-gong made from a cedar tree the size of the body of a 707. Hun Xoc walked past me, his waist yokes swinging in opposition to his steps, forward into the playing trench, and took his marker. Only three players from each side were allowed on the court at one time, but including the coaches there were six people on each team. Everyone on our team had a name with the word red in it, so our coach “Teentsy Bear” was really named 3 Red Pine, and Hun Xoc’s full name was 1 Red Shark. Red Beak was going to be our other starting striker, or forward, and then 5 Red Wedge-we called him 5-5-would be our starting “zonekeeper,” which was like a goalie. Red Cord and I were going to be on the bench at first and then substitute in when they needed us.
On the Ocelot side, Emerald Feral Dog-the coach-was going to start Emerald Immanent-a giant, who must have been at least five six-and Emerald Howler-the one we called “Fat Monkey-Bitch”-as strikers. Their starting zonekeeper was going to be Emerald Snapper-“Fatter Monkey-Bitch”-and Emerald Screecher and Emerald Jog were the bench. Emerald Immanent was making not-quite obscene gestures up at the Harpy stands. I’m going to pop you, you fat fuck, I thought. Up in the stands the drivers were chasing away a vendor hung with gourds of hot honeyed and salted pine-tea and sweet cacao. A couple of independent bookies hopped acrobatically through the stands taking last-minute side bets on individual players. I checked my personal inventory, the same little pre-ball- game ritual I always did. I felt the weasel-gut cords holding my knee- and elbow-padding. I untied my main torso harness, loosened it slightly, and retied it. If it was too tight it could cut you. An insei came by with a charger full of rosin and ashes and I dipped my hands in it and spread it over my arms while he rosined my feet. From here I could see most of the Ocelots’ emerald mul past their end zone, and beyond that a bit of the eastward curve to the mainland, and above that and to the right a glimpse of the wall-and-platform complex that surrounded the Ocelots’ sacred Great Cistern.
Maybe it really could be done, I thought. Stranger things had happened. It’d be totally unexpected. Surprise. Surprise, like that Ana Vergara said. Surprise is your copilot I noticed everything had gone completely silent.
9 Fanged Hummingbird’s music started, a single giant flute, getting nearer and nearer. The crowd in the Ocelot stands parted and a tetrahedral box floated into the center of the stands on the shoulders of dwarf bearers. The box was covered with iridescent emerald-green hummingbird feathers, like something that had dropped from a Platonic heaven onto the shoulders of 9FH’s two attendants. He could see clearly through the screen, but to us on the sunlit side it looked as opaque as enameled metal. As they set the box on the mat-throne at the highest riser the shrill cheer-chord rose again, each side repeating its chorus over and over, off-rhythm with the other side, trying to drown them out: the Harpies chanting, “ Ch’ uchu’ b’aj, jab k’eseic k’uul, ch’ uchu’ b’aj, jab k’eseic k’uul, ” We shine up high, we tear off your jaws, we shine up high, we tear off your jaws, we shine up high, we tear off your jaws, and the Ocelots chanting, Chupa’yal bak, chuyu’baj tox, We flash bright-dark, we chew on your hearts. Down on the court we saluted him:
“You far over us,
Lord of the Razor,
You far over us,
Lord of the Javelin,
You far over us,
Closest to One Hurricane,
You far over us,
Dearest to Iztam Na,
You far over us,
Ruby-browed Captor of Eleven Wind of Motul,
You far over us,
Sun-eyed Captor of Sideways Coatimundi of Caracol,
You far over us,
Avenger of the capture of Sixteen Ocelot,
You far over us,
Retriever of the skull of Four Ocelot,
You far over us,
Captor of eighteen times four hundred bloods and sixty-one bloods,
You far over us,
Subjugator of twenty times twenty cities,
You far over us,
Lord of the Twice Four Hundred Cities,
You far over us,
Overlord of four hundred times four hundred towns,
You far over us,
