Obsidian & Blood

  If Acamapichtli saw what was going through my mind, he said nothing of it.

  Footsteps echoed beside me. Nezahual-tzin, out of breath, had just finished crossing the platform. He leant against the largest altarstone, the one dedicated to the Southern Hummingbird, his eyes rolling up, shifting to the white of nacre. No-one paid him more than a cursory glance. My stomach lurched, and I fought off a wave of unease. I felt like a fisherman's boat adrift in a storm, the shore masked by veils of rain and fog, and no other landmarks than the heaving waves rising to drown me. Nothing was right, not anymore.

  'There has to be something we can do,' I said. 'Something to–'

  'Crowning a new Revered Speaker would take days. There's nothing we can do, not in so little time.' Quenami looked at Tizoctzin's body, the flesh of his face heaving up as if he was about to retch. 'Nothing, Acatl. We played and lost.'

  You played and lost, the Storm Lord's Lightning strike you. Your own fault…

  No. No. That wasn't the way forward. I needed to think, to find a solution.

  But I had spent most of the journey to Tenochtitlan trying to think of precisely that, and found nothing.

  'I fail to see the difficulty.' Acamapichtli's voice was harsh and cruelly amused.

  'He can send the star-demons any time–' Teomitl started.

  'Silence, whelp,' Acamapichtli snapped.

  Teomitl's face contorted. 'You–'

  'I am High Priest of the Storm Lord.' Light was coalescing around him, a soft grey radiance like a torch seen through the gloom. 'One of the three highest powers in the Mexica Empire.'

  'You're nothing.'

  'Teomitl!' I snapped. 'Now isn't the time. What do you see that's so amusing, Acamapichtli?'

  He smiled again. 'As I said. I fail to see the difficulty. The Southern Hummingbird has withdrawn His favour from the Mexica Empire, and taken the life of our Revered Speaker into His lands. All we have to do is convince Him to relent.'

  Convince Him to– 'You're mad,' I said. Even a hint of the heartland had been enough to tear me to pieces; surely he wasn't suggesting that we go down into it. 'He's a war god. They're not known for their forgiveness.' Not many gods were, to be honest, but I very much doubted the Southern Hummingbird had any mercy at all.

  'It's not forgiveness. It would be in His best interests.' He said it as though it was just a matter of strolling into a garden to speak with a senile relative. And, with a stomach-churning flip, I saw that Quenami's head had snapped up, like that of a man being offered a lifeline.

  'It wouldn't achieve anything,' I said.

  Acamapichtli laughed, a hollow, mirthless sound that grated on my nerves. 'We're the high priests of the Mexica Empire, the keepers of the universe's order. If there is a chance, any chance, that we can achieve something, shouldn't we try?'

  He'd have had a point, I might have felt shamed, even, if he hadn't been spending so much of his time angling for personal gain. 'You've both taken far too many risks with the Empire as it is.'

  'They might have,' the She-Snake's voice was deceptively soft. 'But still… Quenami?'

  Quenami had risen, his face turned away from the bloody mass on the threshold, his eyes narrowed to give him the air of a vulture considering a kill. 'Acamapichtli is right. There is still a chance.'

  'You tried this once,' Teomitl said, taking the words from my mouth. 'Remember, when you sacrificed the whole council as a price of passage? It didn't work.'

  I should have been arguing with them. But, as time passed, I found myself more and more ill at ease, nausea welling up in my gut, a strange, acrid taste filling my throat and mouth, as if I were going to retch. Unsteadily, I walked to Tizoc-tzin's remains, and, laying my hand in the warm blood, whispered the first words of a litany for the Dead, the familiar words a reassuring anchor to the Fifth World.

'We leave this earth

This world of jade and flowers

The quetzal feathers, the silver…'

  I was on the floor, doubled over in pain The She-Snake's face loomed over me, swimming out of the darkness, mouthing words I could barely make out, something about funeral rites and evening falling…

  'Acatl-tzin?'

  I could feel it, the growing hole in the Fifth World, the yawning chasm waiting to devour us all – darkness and fire and blood, and everything out of kilter, everything as wrong as flowers in the underworld.

  'Acatl-tzin!!' Hands steadied me as I rose. Teomitl, his face distorted by fear.

  'It's nothing,' I said. Acamapichtli was watching me with an ironic smile, and now that I knew how to look for it, I saw the slight tremor of his hands, the grimace of pain on Quenami's features, swiftly hidden as he turned his gaze away from me.

  'You're right,' I said, each word coming out like a stone, cold and heavy on my lips. 'We need to go into the heartland.'

  'You said–'

  I pulled myself up, fighting another wave of nausea. 'I know what I said. But Acamapichtli is right, it's going to get worse un less we do something. The Fifth World is stretched to breaking point already.'

  Teomitl's lips worked soundlessly for a while. 'Then I'm coming with you.'

  'You're not. There has been enough imperial blood shed as it is.'

  Teomitl's eyes narrowed. 'And what will you do when you're in the heartland, Acatl-tzin? Someone needs to plead Tizoc's case. Someone needs to make apologies. I'm his brother.' He said it simply, with no arrogance, and yet it carried an authority worthy of a Revered Speaker.