The scar on the back of my hand ached. The previous year, in the chaos that had followed the previous Revered Speaker's death, we'd uncovered a sorcerer working for foreigners. In his deaththroes, he had opened up a passageway, allowing his employer to escape into the city.
'It was supposed to be sealed up.'
'It was,' Teomitl said. 'But I got them to make me a key.'
The women looked away as we walked past, though not all of them. Some were smiling at Teomitl – whether because he was an attractive youth or because his uniform marked him as Master of the House of Darts, I didn't know. But Teomitl, lost in his current task, didn't even appear to notice them.
As for me… I'd been sworn to the gods since I was old enough to walk; and the women didn't even raise the ghost of a desire in me. A goddess had once accused me of being less than human, but she'd been wrong. I saw them as people – not for what they could bring me in bed, or the status they symbolised, but merely as the other half of the duality that kept the balance of the world.
At length, we reached another courtyard, which was entirely deserted. Teomitl breathed a sigh. 'Good. I hate throwing women out of here. They always make such a fuss.'
The building at the back of the courtyard was a low, one-storey structure, an incongruity in a palace that almost always had the coveted two floors. Columns supported its roof, creating a pleasant patio for summertime, though we were barely out of winter and most trees were bare.
In the centre was a patch of clearer adobe, clear of all frescoes: Teomitl reached out for it, and I felt more than saw the discharge of magic leap to his hand, the jade-green glow characteristic of his goddess. The adobe lit up from within, as if exhaling radiance – and then it seemed to sink back onto itself, receding until it revealed a darker entrance. The air smelled of that peculiar sharp smell before the rain.
'It's not the same passageway, is it?' I asked. The one I remembered all too well had torn through the neighbouring quarters: looking through it had merely revealed a succession of courtyards and quarters.
Teomitl grimaced. 'I… used an opening in the wards, to keep it simple. Come on, Acatl-tzin.'
He laid his hand on my shoulder as I entered, and a tingle went up my arm – like a mild sting by an insect, moments before it started itching.
That feeling, too, I knew – not the exact same one, but close enough. 'Your shortcut is through Tlalocan.' Tlalocan, the land of the Blessed Drowned; the territory of Tlaloc and his wife Chalchiuhtlicue, Jade Skirt, Teomitl's patron goddess. A land anathema to me, the power of which ate away at my body and my magical ability.
'Yes.' Teomitl said.
'Do you have any idea–'
'–how dangerous it is? Please, Acatl-tzin, I don't need a lecture.'
That wasn't what I'd wanted to say. If he'd cast the spell and the Fifth World had still failed to collapse on us, then he'd got the tunnel contained. And he hadn't breached any boundaries – strictly speaking, the breach had been made by the original creator of the passageway. Sophistry, but the gods that guarded the boundaries, such as the Wind of Knives and the Curved Obsidian Blade, thrived on such rules.
'You have a passageway into the palace,' I said, following him through the tunnel. It was dark and damp, and reminded me of too many unpleasant things – I knew too well the tightening in my chest, the growing dizziness, the gradually blurring field of vision. 'Do you have any idea what Tizoc-tzin would do if he found out?'
I guessed more than saw him grin in the darkness. 'Unpleasant things,' he said. 'My brother's paranoia hasn't improved.' He sounded cold. His relations with his brother had always been as complex as mine with my own brother, but they hadn't been good for a while.
The pressure against my chest grew worse as we went deeper – the tunnel was dark and murky, as if we were at the very bottom of Lake Texcoco, and there were things moving in the darkness, shadows that would vanish as soon as I focused on them. The air smelled of mould and mud, and greenish light played on the back of my hands and on Teomitl's clothes, washing everything into monochrome insignificance.
Ahead was a thin beam of light, which didn't seem to grow any closer – and I was finding it hard to breathe, struggling to put one foot after the other; it was if I were moving through thick sludge, as if I breathed in only mud…
'Acatl-tzin!'
I trudged on. Teomitl's silhouette wavered and danced within my field of vision, and – just when I thought I couldn't take it any longer, that I would have to sit down and recover some of my strength – the light abruptly flared, and grew larger – and I stumbled out, into a world washed orange by the late afternoon sun.
We were in a street I didn't recognise: the back of the palace; not the Sacred Precinct, just an expanse of dirt with a canal running alongside it. It was deserted, both the canal and the streets, with not a boat or a pedestrian to be seen.
'Let's – not – tarry – here,' I said. Each word hurt like a burning coal in my throat.
'Get your breath back.' Teomitl was scanning the street. 'Curses. I was hoping there'd be a boatman.'
'So you could commandeer it?' I asked. 'That would be hardly discreet.'
'If we're going to your brother's, it's quite likely Acamapichtli will figure it out sooner or later.'
'I'd rather it were later,' I said. 'It would give me time to ask questions.' I'd forgotten, in the months when the army was gone, Teomitl's tendency to rush in first and ask questions later. It was all well and good for the battlefield, but elsewhere it tended to be a little less efficient, and a little more likely to hinder us, or make us enemies.
Teomitl sighed. 'As you wish. We can walk.'
• • • •
Since neither I nor Teomitl had changed out of our regalia, we made an imposing sight on the way: about half the people we crossed stopped, unsure whether to bow. As we went deeper into Moyotlan, one of the four districts of Tenochtitlan, I reflected somewhat sadly that for once he'd been right. Acamapichtli would likely find out where we'd gone in a heartbeat.
However… it was approaching evening, the streets slowly growing darker and the first parties of night- visitors coming out with lit pine-torches, going to a banquet, or a celebration of a birth, of a wedding, or even a party for the return of the warriors. The first snatches of flute music filled our ears, along with voices raised in speeches, and the distant beating of temple gongs in the clan-wards. With the sun gone, the weather was markedly colder and I was glad for the thick cloak of my High Priest's regalia. Teomitl, of course, barely seemed to notice anything so trivial as the change in temperature.
