'You're my student,' I said. 'I can't…' I stopped. We'd already had this conversation so many times. Ceyaxochitl had been right, he was an adult, and this was his own family at stake, and the Empire he might one day rule. I couldn't keep him forever. 'It's not my decision to make.'
'Then I'll come.' His smile was like a rising sun, the same one, I thought with a pang of regret, he had displayed when I'd taken him as a student and given him permission to court my sister.
'You should take me as well.' In the gloom, Nezahual-tzin's skin shone the same milky colour as his eyes, and the mane of the Feathered Serpent spread around him like a cloak.
'Out of the question,' Quenami snapped. 'This is a desperate attempt, not a wedding banquet.'
Nezahual-tzin's eyes narrowed. 'I am the representative of Texcoco, and wield the Feathered Serpent's magic in the Fifth World. Do you think it's wise to set me aside?'
'You're also under suspicion of interference in Mexica affairs,' Quenami said. 'And there's nothing we want of the Feathered Serpent now.'
Oh, but we did: knowledge and safety, and compassion, all that gods like the Southern Hummingbird or the Storm Lord would never understand. But, nevertheless, there were far too many of us as it was, and this didn't concern Nezahual-tzin any more.
'I don't make it a habit to offer advice,' Acamapichtli said, 'but I'd follow Quenami's lead, if I were you. This is a Mexica problem.'
Nezahual-tzin's white gaze moved up, towards the heavens. 'Not any more.'
'Then we'll need you here,' I said. 'To hold things together.' I didn't say 'if we fail', but the words hung in the air all the same.
Nezahual-tzin grimaced.
'There are far too many of us going to the slaughter as it is,' I said.
He wavered, looking at me and Quenami and Acamapichtli, and at the She-Snake, who had remained silent all the while. 'I suppose.' He didn't sound as if he believed much of it.
'Then it's settled.' Quenami looked at us as if we were foolish subordinates, and I fought an urge to strangle him. 'Shall we go?'
I'd expected Quenami to take us to the Imperial Chambers, the place where the council's journey had started. But instead, he took us downwards, to the small room under the pyramid where She of the Silver Bells was still imprisoned.
'There's a wound in the Fifth World,' Acamapichtli said, almost conversationally. He'd changed out of his finery, into clothes sober enough to belong to a peasant, though he still bore himself regally enough to be Emperor. 'The star-demons come here to drag souls back to their master. The door's been thrown open, which makes it much easier to reach on our side.' He sounded amused. 'A good thing. Sacrificing two dozen people for this would have taken too much time.'
And been a waste. I bit down on a sarcastic comment, and rubbed instead the amulet around my neck, a small silver spider blessed by Mictlantecuhtli, with the characteristic cold, stretchedout touch of Lord Death and of Mictlan. I'd sent to my temple to retrieve it rather than trust Acamapichtli to provide me with one.
Quenami was going around the room, around the huge disk that featured the dismembered goddess, mumbling under his breath, dipping his hands into the blood that dripped down from the altars high above us. The air shimmered with power, and a palpable rage, a deep-seated desire to rend us all into shreds, a feeling I wasn't sure any more whether to attribute to She of the Silver Bells or to Her brother, the Southern Hummingbird.
'Here is what we're going to do,' Quenami said at last, turning back towards us. 'You'll stand here in the circle, and not move until this is over.'
Acamapichtli shrugged in a decidedly contemptuous way, and moved to stand on the stone disk, right over the torso of the goddess. Teomitl, who had remained uncharacteristically silent the entire time, moved to join him. Something shifted as they crossed the boundary of the disk – a change in the light or some indefinable quality that made their faces appear harsher, closer to stone than to flesh.
When I stepped onto the stone I felt a resistance, like the crossing of a veil, and my skin started to itch as if thousands of insects were attacking me. The pendant around my neck became warmer, pulsing slowly like the heart of a dying man.
Quenami was on his knees, smoothing out the blood to create a line around the stone circle. Unlike Acamapichtli he still had his full regalia, the yellow feathers of his headdress bobbing up and down as he worked, the deep blue of his cloak in stark contrast to the blood dripping in the grooves and pooling in the hollows of the disk.
The blood spread, slowly covering the distorted features of the goddess until nothing was left. Under our feet the earth trembled, once, twice, and a deep, huge heartbeat echoed under the stone ceiling, growing faster and faster with every word Quenami spoke.
Quenami withdrew to the centre of the disk, still chanting. In his hands he held a small maize dough figure of a man which he carefully laid on the ground. Blood surged up to cover it from the legs up, as if sucked into the flesh. Quenami withdrew and the manikin seemed, for a brief moment, to dance in time with the quivering all around us, standing on tottering, reddening legs before the pressure became too much, and it flew apart in a splatter of red dough.
