A quick, intelligent man would have made a snide remark to let Nezahual-tzin know that his manipulation had not succeeded. A smarter man would have smiled, enjoying the same secret joke.
I was neither fast on my feet, nor smart, nor dishonest. I simply gaped, looking for words that seemed to have fled.
'It has been a long time, Acatl-tzin,' Xahuia said.
Nezahual-tzin had retreated slightly, standing near the wooden bridge leading back to the palace, his hand carelessly wrapped around the hilt of his
Teomitl spoke first, his face as harsh as newly-cut jade. 'You said you hadn't found her.'
Nezahual-tzin smiled. 'I would have hated to waste a good ritual. Wouldn't you?' He inclined his head in a way that implied disagreeing with him would be foolish.
'I think a little honesty would have served us all better,' I said, more sharply than I'd intended – cutting Teomitl mid-sentence, before he could say something irreparable. Perhaps it was a good thing, after all, that he was far removed from the imperial succession; or he and Nezahual-tzin would tear what remained of the Triple Alliance apart.
'Perhaps,' Nezahual-tzin just smiled that smug, annoying smile of the superior. He looked every bit the warrior parading through the streets. 'Won't you talk to her, Acatl?'
'I don't see why I should. You've already learnt everything you need to.'
'You're assuming I spoke to him,' Xahuia said. She threw a glance at her brother that was– no, not hatred, but something more complex, a mixture of reluctant admiration and determination. 'I don't see why I should.'
It occurred to me that someone was missing from the family reunion. 'Your son–'
'My own business,' Nezahual-tzin cut in. 'Talk to her, Acatl.'
Like his suggestion for the ritual, it was an order from a Revered Speaker in his own right. One day, I'd get used to the fact that the person speaking in such a composed, authoritarian tone was a boy, barely old enough to have left
But then again… I might as well make use of the opportunity before me, before he did whatever he'd intended to do with us all along. 'I'm not sure you'll want to talk to me,' I said to Xahuia.
She lifted her head and there was still, in spite of everything, a hint of the same attractiveness I'd seen back in the palace, in another life. Her eyes met mine, held my gaze for a while.
'I'll speak to you,' she said. 'Alone.'
Nezahual-tzin's shoulders moved, in what might have been a shrug. 'As you wish. Teomitl?'
Teomitl glared back at him, but they stepped back onto the shores of the islands, unconcernedly.
I remained alone with a woman I wasn't quite sure how to deal with. Her only crime, as far as I knew, had been ambition, but it would have led her to worse if we hadn't intervened. Her sorcerer would have stopped at nothing to get her the Turquoise-and-Gold Crown.
'Things have changed, haven't they?' Her gaze took in her surroundings – the coiled power of Quetzalcoatl the Feathered Serpent, the ground under us, the throbbing stone mass that was composed of living snakes – no, better not to think about that. There were visions I wasn't quite ready for, at least not until I was back on dry land.
'They have.' I crouched on my haunches, coming to rest at her level. 'They could have turned out another way.'
She shook her head. 'Very differently, perhaps. And then you'd have been the one coming to me as a supplicant.'
'Am I not?'
The corners of her mouth twitched, a little. 'So it is that even prisoners and slaves have power, in the form of knowledge.' Her hands clenched. 'That's what Nezahual would say, at any rate.'
'He's not always right.'
'He's right in too many things.' Her gaze drifted again, coming to rest on Teomitl and Nezahual-tzin, standing side by side like two comrades, if one didn't know any better. 'Enough small talk, Acatltzin. You have questions. Ask them.'
'I'm not sure why you'd answer them,' I said, carefully.
'What difference, as long as you have the answers?'
'I'd know how true they were likely to be.'
That made her laugh, sharp, bitter, joyless. She had changed indeed, away from power. 'Fine. I'm not a fool. I know when to swim into stormy waters, and to stop before
I looked at her; she returned my gaze, her eyes steady, not a muscle of her face moving. I had heard the same thing so many times, from so many different people; and they had all been sincere. The problem was the line between reasonable risk and endangering the Fifth World, a line everyone seemed to place much further out in their minds than it really was.
'Fine,' I said, finally. 'Let's say I believe you. For the moment. What did your sorcerer do?'
'Nettoni?' She looked surprised. 'He was my bodyguard.'
'Bodyguard?'
'As you no doubt saw, it wasn't a safe place to be after dark.' Her voice held the lightest touch of irony.
'Yes,' I said. 'You employed him before the murders started, though.'
'One can never be too careful.' Her smile was bright, and just the tiniest bit forced, not quite spreading to her eyes.
'I don't think it's that,' I said. I was carefully dancing around the subject. What I truly wanted to know was
