I took a deep breath, and tightened my grip on my obsidian knife. I had offered no blood, but that did not matter. To call on what I intended, I needed no offerings, merely my presence, there in the very centre of Lord Death's largest temple – I, who had been consecrated High Priest, invested with the breath of the underworld.
I felt it rise within me: the lament of the dead, the grave voice of the Wind of Knives, the careless smile and wide eyes of the Owl Archer, the hulking shapes of beasts of shadows – and everything that presaged Mictlan in the Fifth World: the old folk laid out on their reed-mats, struggling to breathe for yet another day; the peasants feeling the first aches in their backs, the first creaks of their joints; the women in the marketplace with their wrinkled faces and streaks of white in their hair; the children, learning that no year resembled the one past, and that time had caught them all, more surely than a fisherman's net; all those on the road to the throne of Lord Death – and to oblivion.
'
The world contracted. A cold feeling ran over my entire body, as if I'd just put on chilled clothes after some time standing before a brazier. And the feel of the underworld, instead of abating, continued unchanged. I saw the skulls under the faces of the priests – smelled the coming rot, and the blotches that would spread over their skins as the blood stopped flowing within their bodies.
I wouldn't be able to maintain it for long, for it took its toll on my own energy. I'd expected to be frightened, or disgusted, but I wasn't. Cocooned in a power as familiar to me as the taste of maize, I felt… at ease, relaxed even for the first time in days. I had lived with the awareness of death for years – not as a distant event in the future, but as real as the blank eyes of corpses, as the blotches on pallid hands.
It would have to do.
I crossed the Sacred Precinct as if in a dream. A cold wind blew around me, reducing the bustle of the crowd to the silence of the grave and the crackle of flames on a funeral pyre. Indistinct faces brushed past me, and the only things that seemed real were the shadows of the temples, from the round tower of Quetzalcaoatl the Feathered Serpent to the familiar pyramid shape of the Great Temple dwarfing the Sacred Precinct.
I didn't feel quite ready to face Teomitl yet – what would I have flung at him, save worries I couldn't quite substantiate?
Instead, I made my own way to the quarters of the Master of the House of Darkness and found him awake, tended to by his personal slave. One of the She-Snake's guards was at the entrance; he let me pass, though I knew he would soon be reporting my coming to his master.
The Master of the House of Darkness looked, if anything, worse than on the previous day – his raw skin shining in the morning sun, glistening with the particular glint of pus and scabs. His torn eyelids had puffed up, all but hiding his eyes. With my new, sensitive eyesight, I could trace the incipient rot in every streak on his forehead and cheeks and smell the swelling pus, a rancid odour that threatened to overwhelm the smoke of copal incense.
'My Lord,' I said. 'I am Acatl, High Priest for the Dead.'
'I know who you are.' The voice sounded slightly peeved. 'I might be on my mat, but I'm no invalid, and certainly not at Mictlan's gates yet.'
I wasn't entirely sure I agreed, but I didn't say anything. I sat cross-legged in front of him – an honoured visitor – and spoke as if nothing were wrong. I prayed his diminished eyesight wouldn't let him see the way my gaze wandered downwards – of that, if he did see, he would misinterpret it as a sign of respect.
'So,' Pochtic said after a while. 'Here to investigate the attack on me, then?'
'Among other things,' I said, carefully. He was obviously used to be being in charge – which wasn't surprising, given his high position in the army. 'Can you tell me more about what happened? I found the mask on the ground.'
Pochtic's ruined face did not move. 'He was waiting for me in my chambers. I never did get to see his face – before I knew it, he had me pinned, an arm locked around my neck. And then he slid the mask on.' He gave a shudder – the act of memory itself was too painful. 'I don't remember anything except waking here, afterwards.'
He spoke like a warrior: frank, honest, not mincing words and making no efforts to hide anything.
Or did he? His account was not only fragmentary, but singularly unhelpful – as if he'd worked on it to give as little information as possible.
'Hmm,' I said. 'He grasped you by the neck. That would indicate a man taller than you.'
His mouth set in a grimace – his hands clenched as the split lips contracted, opening up the hundred tiny wounds he'd sustained. 'I suppose so.'
With him lying down, it was hard to tell – but I remembered the ceremony of welcoming for the army, and the four members of the war-council following one another. Pochtic, in his crimson feathers and black-trimmed mantle, had towered over Teomitl – who wasn't very small himself, either. So either our assailant was uncannily tall, whether he was human or not – I could think of several creatures that would fit that description. Or…
I needed a way to look at his neck – one that would be discreet enough to draw no suspicion. If he was lying, and in some ways involved with the epidemic, the last thing I needed was to be spooking him.
If I rose now – with the words he'd spoken fresh in his mind – he would suspect something. I had to gain time, instead. 'Asphyxiation,' I said. 'It's a common ritual used by the priests of Tlaloc.'
'I have little to do with the Storm Lord,' Pochtic said, not without disdain. 'My service is dedicated to Tezcatlipoca the Smoking Mirror, Lord of the Near, Lord of the Nigh – and to the other gods of war.'
'You don't think someone could have attacked you for precisely this reason?' I asked.
Pochtic snorted. 'I maintain good relations with the gods and their priests. Nothing particular happened in the last few days that would justify this.'
His eyes flicked, just a fraction, as he said that – and for a moment I saw raw fear in the pupils. He knew, or suspected what he'd been attacked for.
