about duty. About how I was being so impressively dutiful, but that duty had killed Echichilli, and that he was done with duty himself.'
Echichilli? I tried to remember who he had favoured. No one, as far as I could recall. He had been the oldest member of the council, aggrieved that no arrangement could be reached. 'Duty to whom?'
'He didn't say,' Teomitl said. 'I'd guess either the She-Snake or… ' He paused for a moment, and went on, 'My brother. They're the only two to whom Echichilli could possibly have a duty.'
Xahuia did seem like a pretty unlikely candidate. But we would gain nothing by being too hasty. And I had yet to understand how duty to anyone could have led to a star-demon killing Echichilli.
Unless he had been doing someone else's dirty work?
But no, he couldn't be the summoner of the star-demons, or, like Manatzpa, he would have been able to banish the one that had killed him. Instead, he had bowed to the inevitable….
'He knew something, too,' I said. 'Whatever it was. And he was killed for it.'
'That doesn't really help, does it?'
'It might,' I said. So far, I'd assumed the killings of the council had been random, intended to throw us all into chaos. But if both Manatzpa and Echichilli had been killed to silence them, then something else was going on. It was no longer exclusively a matter of making sure the council wouldn't select a Revered Speaker. There was something else going on; something much larger. 'There has to be a reason behind the sequence of the killings. Something we're missing.'
Teomitl grimaced again. 'And?'
'I don't know.' I was feeling increasingly frustrated. 'All the dead men have been taken by star-demons. They're out of Mictlantecuhtli's dominion. I can't even hope to summon them and make them talk.'
The usual way to get the ghosts of people who did not belong to Lord Death was to go into the lands of the god to whom they belonged, either Tlaloc the Storm Lord, or Tonatiuh the Fifth Sun. However, with star-demons, that was the epitome of foolhardiness. There was no way in the Fifth World I would elect to go into the empty spaces of the Heavens where they roamed, or into the prison the Southern Hummingbird had fashioned for His sister.
'Anything else?' I asked. It looked as though Itzpapalotl had done Her work well, we would not find any evidence left behind by Manatzpa.
'He said he wasn't the one summoning the star-demons, but that one seems obvious,' Teomitl said, biting his lips to the blood. 'No, not much else.' He paused, his face unreadable. 'He said other things, too.'
He would not look at me; and given how Manatzpa had felt about Tizoc-tzin, I could guess what he had told Teomitl; something about being his own man, about stopping listening to his brother's voice.
To be honest, I doubted it would work. Teomitl might be thrown off for a while, bewildered by what appeared sincere admiration, but the fact remained that Manatzpa had been trying to take apart the Mexica Empire. Teomitl loved his country, and he would never forgive Manatzpa for that.
'I see. And Xahuia?'
Teomitl's face fell. 'I didn't have time to broach that subject, Acatl-tzin…'
I raised a hand to cut him off. 'No matter. You did great work. Come on. It's time to get some sleep.'
TWELVE
When we came back, late in the following morning, the palace was still in shambles. The She-Snake's guards strode in the corridor, trying very hard to look in charge but only managing a particular kind of extreme bewilderment. They looked at Teomitl as though he might have the answers to their aimlessness; but Teomitl glared at them, and even without the
I probed at the wards on my way in. They still seemed solid and reassuring, but there was something, some yield to them, like pushing against taut cotton. They might hold, but they could be torn.
Ceyaxochitl could have woven more, but she was dead, and Quenami had made it clear he couldn't or wouldn't help.
'Where to?' Teomitl asked.
I shook my head. 'Manatzpa's rooms. I'll met you there. I have something else to check first.'
What I did was brief: I merely checked with Palli that the search was progressing as foreseen – and that the She-Snake's promised guards had indeed arrived. There were more of them than I expected, though most of them were young, callow youths who still seemed to remember the feel of their childhood locks.
I guessed the She-Snake had a sense of humour.
'I've had better subordinates,' Palli said with a sigh. 'More respectful, too. But I guess I shouldn't complain.'
'We'll take everything we can,' I said, finally. 'Everyone else seems to have other priorities at the moment.' I hadn't seen my fellow high priests in a few days. I couldn't say I missed their company exactly, but imagining what else they might have done did go a long way towards making me nervous.
Palli spread his hands, in a gesture that seemed an eerie mirror of mine. 'We'll make do, Acatl-tzin.'
And I had to be content with that.
'On another subject,' Palli said, 'I've found something about the tar.'
'The stains on the floor?' I asked, suddenly interested again. They seemed to fit into the larger puzzle, though I wasn't sure how.
'Yes,' Palli said. 'Tar isn't exactly common in the palace.'
I couldn't even think of where the nearest tar pit might be, or what they would use it for. 'And?'
Palli grimaced. 'You know Echichilli-tzin?'
The dead councilman? What had he got to do with it? 'Yes, but…'
'He was the one who asked for it, about fifteen days ago. And…' He grimaced again, a nervous tic. 'He
