up to me.
She rolled her eyes upwards. 'Of course I do need you. I can dispel the influence once it's out of his body, but I can't draw it out.'
'You need a physician.'
'No, I don't. I can't say I've been impressed by the performance of the priests of Patecatl so far,' Mihmatini said. 'I need someone more competent than that.'
You, her gaze seemed to say. 'I can't,' I said, the words burning in my throat. 'I'm no healer. I serve Lord Death – I can sever the soul from the body or call it back, but nothing finer than that. If I cast a spell, it will expel his own life-force from his chest.'
She fell silent – Southern Hummingbird blind me, I should have been able to give her another answer. I took the folded paper from her, and stared at it. Teomitl had been born on the day Ten Rabbit in the week One Rain. This put him under the tutelage of Tlaloc the Storm Lord – and given what was happening all over Tenochtitlan, we couldn't possibly hope to call on Him.
Unless…
'Quetzalcoatl,' I said aloud, my hand trailing on His image – the Feathered Serpent, Lord of Wisdom and Knowledge.
'I don't see…'
'It was His blood that brought humanity back to life, in the beginning of the Fifth Age. His breath that runs through us.' Quetzalcoatl-Ehecatl, the breath of all creation, the wind that no walls, no mountains would ever stop for long.
'It might work,' Mihmatini said. 'But I'm not sure the priests of Quetzalcoatl have escaped the widespread arrests.'
I folded the paper, carefully – back into the shape Yaotl had given it at the start. The arrests – yes, we would need to talk about those, to see if anything could be done…
Focus. One thing at a time. Save Teomitl first – if we could. Tlaloc's Lightning strike me, we had to succeed – I wouldn't lose him as I'd lost Ceyaxochitl. I couldn't.
'It needn't be a priest of Quetzalcoatl,' I said, slowly. 'I've got just the right person in mind.'
I wrote a message with shaking hands – the glyphs drawn askew, the red and black ink running, staining my fingers. A disgrace, my teachers would have said; but we were long past that. Yaotl carried it to the palace, while Mihmatini dispatched other messengers – slaves and priests both – to Chipahua's house, in order to collect the bodies.
The Duality House, as usual, seemed to have become our bulwark against the storm, and my sister was at the heart of it, managing everything with the proficiency of someone born to it.
Ceyaxochitl had once told me she was gifted; and I could still remember my answer.
I'd forgotten how often Tezcatlipoca the Smoking Mirror delighted in twisting fate – sending us down unswept paths, into unexplored wildernesses.
Mihmatini remained in the room, but at length a priest came to her with an urgent question, and with a last, agonised glance at Teomitl, she had to step out.
While I waited for her to come back, I held Teomitl's hand; it was the least I could do. The priest of Patecatl would have frowned, and raised up the spectre of contagion, but what did it matter?
From where I crouched, the sounds of the House – the conchshells, the hymns and the chants, the wet sound of bloodied grass balls slapped onto altar-stones – all receded away, and I was left alone with Teomitl. He had been moaning and muttering beforehand; I'd assumed it was nonsense, but as time went by, I caught words, a few at first, and then, as moments trickled by like drops of water, I picked up more – bright beads amongst threads – and the pattern itself, coalescing out of darkness, an endless litany of delirious failures.
'Fool, fool, fool, what did you think? Going in as if you were invulnerable – of course you never were, of course you never will be. She'll watch you from the World Below, she always does, what do you think you can prove?'
He could only be referring to his mother, who had died after a long struggle to bear him into the world – leaving him forever unable to prove himself as brave as she had been. 'Teomitl,' I said. 'She'd be proud of you.'
But he couldn't hear me – he just went on repeating the same things over and over, the same delirium.
A tinkle of bells announced the entrance of Mihmatini, accompanied by Nezahual-tzin – in regalia at least as fine as the one Teomitl had worn, from the red feather-suit to the finely wrought helmet in the shape of a coyote's head.
'I received your message,' Nezahual-tzin said. 'Most interesting. It was, ah, lacking a certain amount of flourish, shall we say?'
Mihmatini, I couldn't help but notice, was already glowering at him. What had he said to her, in the few moments in which they had walked through the House?
'You'll have to excuse me. My health isn't what it was at the moment.'
Nezahual-tzin nodded, gravely. 'Nevertheless… there was a most interesting pattern in your glyphs.'
'We're not talking about interesting,' she snapped. 'We want your help. Are you going to give it, or stand here making cryptic pronouncements?'
Nezahual-tzin removed his feather headdress with slow, deliberate gestures before laying it to the ground. Then he unclasped his blue-green cloak and let it fall onto the floor. He had us all staring at him – and he no doubt knew it.
'Your brother will no doubt tell you that making cryptic pronouncements is a pastime of mine.' Nezahual- tzin's voice was slow and stately, as if making a formal speech – every word delivered with the proper stresses, in the accent of Texcoco, the purest dialect of Nahuatl in the whole Anahuac Valley. He moved in a fluid, easy gesture, and before I knew it he was crouching by my side, watching Teomitl.
