Obsidian & Blood

  I raised a hand to forestall him. 'I need your help,' I said. 'To prevent Yaotl from getting into trouble.'

  'Trouble?' Teomitl's face focused again on the present.

  'Arresting a sorcerer,' I said, curtly.

  'But surely Ceyaxochitl–'

  'Ceyaxochitl is dying,' I said. This time, my voice did not quiver. I felt terrible, as if uttering the words to him finally made them reality.

  Teomitl's gaze hardened. 'Who? The sorcerer?'

  I nodded.

  He wrapped his cloak around his shoulders, casting a last, regretful glance at the birds. 'I'm coming.'

  When we reached the entrance neither Yaotl nor the Duality warriors were there.

  'Acatl-tzin?' Teomitl's voice was slightly resentful, as if he expected me to apologise for the disturbance.

  The Storm Lord strike me if I gave in, though. This was not a time for indulging his pride. 'They're inside,' I said. 'If we hurry…'

  But, even as we ran towards the women's quarters, the sounds of battle cut through the courtyard. We were going to be too late.

NINE

Fire and Blood

Teomitl, Manatzpa and I took the courtyards at a run, heedless of the hissing noblemen who barely made an effort to move out of our way. The sound of fighting got closer all the while – obsidian striking wood, obsidian striking obsidian, the familiar cries of the wounded and of the dying.

  By the wall that marked the boundaries of the women's quarter, a guard in the She-Snake's black uniform lay choking in his own blood. Teomitl knelt by his side, assessing the wounds with an expert gaze. He shook his head. His face was still, strangely frozen in a moment between human and divine, half brown skin, the colour of cacao, half the harshness of jade, hovering on the verge of taking over.

  '…by surprise…' the guard whispered. Froth bubbled up from between his lips. His gaze rose towards Tonatiuh the Fifth Sun who hung over the courtyard, swollen with the red of evening light.

  'Spare your effort.' Teomitl's voice was curt, an order that could not be refused. 'Acatl-tzin?'

  I shrugged. 'We go in.' I reached up, and fingered the wounds in my earlobes. The scabs easily came off, and my fingers came with blood pooling at their tips.

  I knelt by the dying man, and drew the glyph for a dog on his forehead, whispering the first words of a litany for the Dead, to ease his passage into the underworld.

'As grass becomes green in spring

Our hearts open and give forth buds

And then they wither

This is the truth

Down into the darkness we must go…'

  Teomitl watched me in silence, though his whole stance was that of a snake coiled to strike, eager to draw blood.

  'Let's go,' I said, with a curt nod.

  Inside, every courtyard was deserted, the entrance-curtains drawn. From time to time the pale faces of women peered at us through the cotton. The sounds of battle were dying out. Whatever had happened, it was over.

  As we approached the courtyard where Xahuia had received me, the air became tighter, as if we were tumbling down a mountain towards denser climates – and magic saturated the air, an unhealthy, suffocating tang that crept over my whole field of vision. I could have extended my priest-senses, but I already knew what it was – Tezcatlipoca's touch, a miasma that rose from the deep marshes, from corpses and from rotten plants.

  Teomitl's face seemed to be made of jade now, as he ran forward.

  But, in the last courtyard, all that we found was an exhausted Yaotl, standing over three bodies. Two were Duality warriors, and the third I would have known anywhere, even without the aura of sorcery that hung around him.

  Something had changed with the courtyard. It took me a while to realise that a new entrance-curtain had appeared where there had been only a frescoed wall. It opened in the midst of a fresco depicting the Southern Hummingbird. As the curtain fluttered in the breeze I saw that it was only the start of a series of holes pierced through several walls, a path that led through courtyard after courtyard, until…

  'Where does it go?' I asked.

  Yaotl nodded, grimly. 'I sent the remaining warriors to check, but I would think outside.'

  Manatzpa bowed, briefly, to Yaotl, and wandered near the entrance-curtain to get a better look.

  'Of course it goes outside.' Nettoni's voice was a spent whisper. 'Don't be a fool like them, Acatl.'

  I knelt by his side. He had no wounds, and the strength of his magic was still gathered around him, potent enough to give me nausea. And yet… his face was as pale as muddy milk, his mouth curled back, showing the blackness of his teeth. 'That's where you sent Xahuia.'

  His lips moved, as much a grimace of pain as a smile. 'I told you. I was privileged to serve her.'

  Axayacatl-tzin had told me otherwise; that they only served each other because their goals lay in the same direction. But he could have been wrong.

  Nettoni grimaced again. 'Not much point, in any case. You'd have caught me easily enough. Sometimes, you