And then the crowd parted, and Tizoc-tzin was standing in front of us.
He wasn't a tall man either, though he held himself with the casual arrogance of warriors. His hawkish face could not have been called handsome, even if he'd been in good health. As it was, his usually sallow skin was so taut it was almost transparent, and the shape of a skull glistened beneath his cheeks.
So the war hadn't improved him – I hid a grimace. We'd made the decision to heal him three months ago, as High Priests; but clearly some things couldn't be healed.
Behind him was his war-council: two deputies, his Master of the House of Darkness, and his Master of the House of Darts – Teomitl, imperial prince and my student.
'She-Snake,' Tizoc-tzin said. 'Priests.' He said the last with a growl: he'd never been fond of the clergy, but lately his opposition had become palpable. 'Tonatiuh the Fifth Sun has taken us up, shown us the way to glory. Tezcatlipoca the Smoking Mirror has smiled upon us, enfolded us in His hands.'
The She-Snake bowed, holding the position slightly longer than necessary – he was a canny man, and knew how susceptible to flattery Tizoc-tzin was. 'Be welcome, my Lord. You have graciously approached your water, your high place of Tenochtitlan, you have come to your mat, your throne, which I have briefly kept for you. The roads have been swept clean, the mats have been spread out; come, enter into your palace, rest your weary limbs.'
Tizoc-tzin's face darkened, but he stuck to ritual, starting a lengthy hymn to the glory of the Southern Hummingbird.
I'd have been listening, even though I wasn't particularly fond of the Southern Hummingbird – a warrior god who had little time for the non-combatant clergy – but something caught my attention on the edge of the crowd. A movement, in those massed colours? No, that wasn't it. Something else…
The nausea in my gut flared again. Gently, carefully, I reached out to my earlobes, and rubbed the scabs of my blood-offerings until they came loose. Blood spurted on my hands, warm with the promise of magic.
My movements hadn't been lost on everyone: my student Teomitl was staring at me intently under his quetzal-feather head dress. He made a small, stabbing gesture with his hand, as if bringing down a
I shook my head. The spell I had in mind required a quincunx traced on the ground – hardly appropriate, given the circumstances. I rubbed the blood on my hands and said the prayers nevertheless:
The air seemed to grow thinner, and my nausea got worse – but nothing else happened. The spell wasn't working. I should have guessed. I'd made a fool of myself for nothing.
Tizoc-tzin had finished speaking; now he took a step backwards, and said, 'Welcome back your children made men, O Mexica.'
The war-council stepped aside as well, to reveal three rows of warriors in quilted cotton armour and colourful cloaks, the feather insignia over their heads bobbing in the wind.
There were so few of them – so few warriors who had taken prisoners. It looked like Acamapichtli's sources were right: there couldn't be more than forty of them before us, and many of them were injured, their cloaks and quilted armour torn and bloody. Many of them were veterans, with the characteristic black cloaks with a border of yellow eyes; many held themselves upright with a visible effort, the knuckles of their hands white, the muscles of their legs quivering. Here and there, a younger face with a childhood-lock broke the monotony of the line.
There was something… My gaze went left and right, and finally settled on a warrior in the front row, near the end of the line – not among the youngest, but not grizzled either. He wore the or ange and black cloak of a four-captive warrior and the obsidian shards on his sword were chipped, some of them cleanly broken off at the base. His face was paler than his neighbours, and his hands shook.
But it wasn't that which had caught my attention: rather, it was the faint, pulsing aura around him, the dark shadows gathered over his face.
Magic. A curse – or something else?
The warrior was swaying, his face twisted in pain. It wouldn't be long until–
'My Lord,' I said, urgently, my voice cutting through Tizoc-tzin's speech.
Tizoc-tzin threw me a murderous glance. He looked as though he were going to go back to what he was saying before. 'My Lord,' I said. 'We need to–'
The shadows grew deeper, and something seemed to leap from the air into the warrior's face – his skin darkened for a bare moment, and his eyes opened wide, as if he had seen something utterly terrifying. And then they went expressionless and blank – a blankness I knew all too well.
He collapsed like a felled cactus: legs first, and then the torso, and finally the head, coming to rest on the ground with a dull thud.
Teomitl moved fastest, heading towards the line and flipping the body over onto its back – but even before I
