'What other symptoms have you seen?'
Yaotl thought for a while. 'She was rubbing at her face before the numbness came. And having some difficulty walking, as if she'd been drunk, but Mistress Ceyaxochitl never drinks.'
Indeed not. She might have been old enough to be allowed drunkenness, but she'd always seen that as a sign of weakness. She'd always been strong.
Gods, what would we do without her?
'Something she ate, then, in all likelihood,' the physician said.
'Something?' I asked. Surely things hadn't degenerated so fast at the palace that food and drink couldn't be trusted anymore? 'Can't you be more precise?'
'Not without a more complete examination,' the physician said. His voice was harsh. 'But I think you'd want me to see if I can heal her first.'
'Yes,' Yaotl said. 'But I also want to make sure that the son of a dog who did this does not get away with it.'
The physician looked at Ceyaxochitl again and scratched the stubble on his chin. 'I seem to remember a similar case some time ago. I'll send back for my records, to see if anything can be inferred from it. In the meantime the best we can do is keep her warm.'
And breathing. It didn't take a physician to know that if the paralysis was progressing, the lungs would stop functioning at some point, not to mention the heart.
I moved my hand from Ceyaxochitl's hands to her chest, feeling the heart within fluttering like a trapped thing. 'I know you can hear us. We'll find out who did this. Stay here. Please.'
Please. I knew we'd had our dissensions in the past, our disagreements on how to proceed, but they had been spats between friends, or at least between peers. To think that she was dying, that she might not see the next day…
The Flower Prince strike the one who had done this, with an illness every bit as bad and as drawn-out as the poison that now coursed through Ceyaxochitl's veins. 'Did she say anything?' I asked Yaotl. 'Any clues?' Anything we could use…
He shook his head. 'Not that I can remember. She complained about the whole afternoon having been a waste of her time.'
But she must have seen something, or suspected something after the fact. Otherwise why take the risk of poisoning her? The penalties for such a crime would have been severe, death by crushing the head, at the very least.
'Nothing at all?'
The physician, who was lifting the entrance-curtain in a tinkle of bells, stopped, and then turned back towards me. 'When I was first called, the paralysis hadn't quite reached everywhere. She managed to say something, for what it's worth.'
'Yes?'
'Well, her lips were already half-paralysed, but I think it was something about worshipping bells.'
Yaotl and I looked at each other. 'Acatl-tzin?'
Bells. Silver Bells. Huitzilpochtli's sister Coyolxauhqui, She of the Silver Bells, who waited under the Great Temple for Her revenge.
'I don't know if it makes any sense,' the physician said.
I withdrew my hand from Ceyaxochitl and carefully stood up. 'It does make sense. Thank you.'
'Not to me,' Yaotl said.
'Silver Bells. She's been poisoned by a devotee of Coyolxauhqui,' I said, and watched the pallor spread across his face.
Our enemies were indeed in our midst. One person, or several, were worshippers of She of the Silver Bells; summoners of star-demons, harbingers of chaos, determined to sow destruction among us.
The only question was who.
I ate a sparse lunch in my temple with my priests: a single bowl of levened maize porridge, flavoured with spices. Then, instead of going straight back to the palace, I detoured through the Wind Tower, the shrine to Quetzalcoatl. Like the other shrines it stood on a platform atop a pyramid; unlike the other shrines, which were squat and square, the Wind Tower was made of smooth black stones and completely circular, offering no sharp angles or purchase. For Quetzalcoatl was the Feathered Serpent but also Ehecatl, the Breath of Creation, and to hinder Him in His passage through His own shrine would have been an unforgivable offence.
And He was the Morning Star and the Evening Star, our only ally in the night skies in those dangerous times.
I could have prayed to Lord Death in Ceyaxochitl's name, for He was the only god I claimed, as familiar as a wife to a husband or a digging stick to a peasant. But, somehow, it felt wrong to appeal to Him to keep a soul out of His dominion.
I stood for a while on the inside of the shrine with pilgrims crowded around me, unsure of what to say. I did what I had always done. Kneeling, I pierced my earlobes with my worship thorns, and let the blood drip onto the grass balls by the altar. The Feathered Serpent took no human sacrifices, but only our penances and our gifts of flower and fruit. He had given us the arts and the songs. He had once descended into the underworld for the bones of the dead, had braved death and darkness so that humanity might be recreated.
I wished I could say that He'd been listening, but the shrine remained much the same as ever. I was not His priest, I did not have His favours. My prayer was no doubt lost among the multitude.
