asked for a lot of it, Acatltzin.'
A lot of things hadn't made sense lately, but this was firmly near the top of the list. 'A lot?'
'Ten full jars,' Palli said.
My mind balked at the mental picture. It did have cosmetic uses, but ten whole jars seemed excessive. 'And what happened?'
'They came in. Echichilli-tzin sent his slaves to collect it. I've asked them. All they know is that it was brought here to the Revered Speaker's room.'
'While he was still alive.'
'Presumably with his consent.'
'Hmm,' I said. 'Thank you. This is… intriguing.' To say the least. 'Let me know if you can find out more.' Where had those jars gone, and what had they been used for? The only use that came to mind was seal the hull of a boat, and the thought of building a boat right in the Revered Speaker's rooms was absurd.
What was going in this palace? Whatever it was, it had started before the Revered Speaker's death, and it looked like we were the ones caught up in the consequences.
I fully intended to make sure the consequences weren't drastic.
I found Teomitl outside Manatzpa's rooms, in conversation with a stern, middle-aged woman who introduced herself as Manatzpa's wife. They'd had five children, the two eldest of whom were away, educated in the
The gods were decidedly not on our side.
We made a cursory examination of the rooms which didn't yield anything useful, and moved onto Manatzpa's private quarters.
In daylight they seemed much smaller than in my fevered imagination. They did wrap around two courtyards, but even the largest of them barely covered the surface of the Imperial Chambers. They had loomed much larger in my frantic flight of the night before.
As I had already noticed, the rooms were bare, with few ornaments. Manatzpa might have been a nobleman, but he had not believed in pomp any more than Teomitl. A few wicker chests and a few circular fans, carelessly tossed in corners where the feathers had creased, their colours all but faded; thin and simple reed mats, serving as little more than places to sit; and two unlit braziers.
I opened the wicker chests to find piles of vibrantly-coloured codices, ranging from lists of rituals to the tribute of the provinces. In the chest after that was poetry, carefully re-transcribed. Pride of place was given to a volume collecting the poetry of Nezahualcoyotl, the previous Revered Speaker of our neighbouring city Texcoco. The codex had been well-thumbed, but the glyphs were intact with no markings on the paper, the treasured possession of a man who seemed to have had few of them.
Altogether they painted the picture of a man whose interests had
been broad, a scholar, an intellectual whose curiosity extended to everything and anything. A man I might have appreciated, more than I ever had Quenami or Acamapichtli, had the circumstances been otherwise.
Teomitl was rummaging through another chest, shaking his head as he discarded clay vessels and worship thorns. At length he crossed his arms over his chest. 'This is pointless, Acatl-tzin.'
I couldn't help shaking my head in amusement. Teomitl might have had the raw power and the fighting spirit, but the minutiae of investigations would always be beyond him. 'Have a little patience,' I said, pulling aside a third chest to reveal treatises on medicine. 'Whatever he left behind, he wouldn't have wanted us to find it. It's likely well hidden.'
Teomitl frowned and moved to stand against one of the frescoes, his head at the level of Huitzilpochtli's angry face. 'We're wasting our time while they move against us.'
I lifted an almanac on plants and their uses, and moved to the rest of the pile. 'The problem is that we don't know who 'they' are.'
'Too many suspects?' Teomitl shook his head.
'Too many agendas,' I said. It was a given that everybody was dabbling in magic or planning political moves against their opponents. The question was whose moves included star-demons. Manatzpa had sworn it wasn't him; and his death tended to prove it. But Xahuia was still on the loose; not to mention those who still remained within the palace compound.
And, the Duality curse me, I still had no idea of how it all intersected or made sense. A plot to bring the star-demons down shouldn't have had this many complications, this many people dying to prevent them from talking. Whatever else I might have said about She of the Silver Bells, She'd always been straightforward, much like Her brother. No tricks, just fire and blood and war.
'I see.' Teomitl was silent for a while. 'Acatl-tzin, I wish to apologise.'
I turned, genuinely surprised. 'What for?'
'For the other night.'
It took me a while to see what he was referring to. Ages seemed to have passed since that night when he had walked away from me in the wake of our interview with Tizoc-tzin. 'Don't mention it. We have bigger problems on our hands.'
'It's the little cracks that break obsidian. The flaws that undo jade,' Teomitl said. He looked me in the eye – proud, unashamed, his was as unlikely an apology as I had ever seen, and yet oddly touching. 'You have your opinion about my brother, and I have mine.'
'Yes,' I said, cautiously. I wasn't quite sure of what opinion to have about Tizoc-tzin anymore, except that we were still at each other's throats.
'Let it remain that way.' Teomitl made a small, dismissive gesture, a command that could not be denied. 'Let's not talk further about this, or we'll disagree.'
Probably, but I didn't say this. 'As you wish.'
I lifted another medicinal codex. I was almost at the bottom of the pile now, and still had nothing to show for my labour. The Southern Hummingbird blind us, it looked like Manatzpa had been prudent to excess.
Wait.
