Obsidian & Blood

  He smelled of herbs, the same bitter smell as the physician – had he just come from the sweatbaths? He liked going there to restore his strength and increase his power tenfold.

  'The tonalli life-force is weak, but the teyolia soul is still in the body.'

  'We already knew that,' Mihmatini pointed out.

  I intervened before the conversation degenerated further. 'He has something within his body, and we need you to draw it out.'

  'And then?' Nezahual-tzin raised an eyebrow.

  Mihmatini crouched on the other side of Teomitl's body – straight ahead of Nezahual-tzin. She brought her hands together and twisted them together, as if wringing a rabbit's neck. 'Then I'll destroy it. But I can't do anything so long as he protects it with his flesh and with his blood.'

  Nezahual-tzin nodded. He was still watching Teomitl – listening to the delirium as if he could find some sense within. I wondered how he felt – those two had never liked each other, Nezahual-tzin's detached, almost sarcastic attitude and focus on philosophy and knowledge at utter odds with Teomitl's desire to live in the present and prove his valour on the battlefield.

  'So?' I asked. 'Can you do something?'

  'I can always do something,' Nezahual-tzin said. 'What's the thing inside him?'

  'We're not sure,' Mihmatini said – her voice making it all too clear she was losing patience.

  Nezahual flashed her his most dazzling smile – a pity it would never work on her. 'We'll have to improvise, then. Can you bring me butterflies?'

• • • •

Mihmatini sent to the Wind Tower, the temple of Quetzalcoatl, for what Nezahual-tzin needed. While the priests of the Duality were gathering cages and drawing blood-patterns on the floor, I retreated towards the entrance-curtain. My presence here, as representative of Mictlantecuhtli Lord Death, was likely to do more harm than good.

  Outside, the Fifth Sun beat down on the cracked earth – as if nothing were wrong, as if Teomitl's life didn't hang in the balance by a thread. I struggled to find peace or acceptance; it had been easier the year before, when my own life had been in danger, but this… this was different. He was my student, my brother by alliance, and my responsibility through and through – and yet I had failed him on every level.

  Whoever was propagating this illness, they would pay – they would face the curved obsidian blade of justice, and be pierced by darts, and choked by mud until they had paid full price for their office.

  From within came chanting – Nezahual's grave voice, measured and pure, intoning a hymn, as if each word were a flower slowly blooming.

'Down into the darkness You go

In the place where the bones are broken

When the flutes and the drums are silent…'

  There was a sound like a flag unfurling: thousands of beating wings, sending the entrance-curtain billowing in the damp breeze – and the butterflies flew out of the room, a widening stream of iridescent colours missing me by a hair's breadth, like a continuation of the cotton cloth, their touch on my skin soft and delicate, a reminder of the god who was always there, watching over us, as He had ever done since the moment He'd brought humanity's bones back from the underworld.

'I pierce myself, I make myself bleed, aya!

Burn down the paper stained with my blood

Return the gift that was given

I pierce him, I make him bleed, aya!

Burn down the paper stained with his blood

Wash away the touch of the evil one

The breath of the sorcerer…'

  I heard another sound – a moan that started low, and grew – only to break into a dry, shuddering cough. Mihmatini cried out; I clenched my fingers, my nails digging into the palms of my hands. If I went inside, I would be of no use. I had to remember that – had to–

  A duller sound – something large and wet hitting the ground, and Mihmatini's voice, raised in anger.

  Then silence. The last of the butterflies lingered in the courtyard, its wings catching the light of the Fifth Sun and breaking it down into four hundred breathtaking colours. I did not move – not even when the entrance-curtain was lifted, and Mihmatini walked into the courtyard, carrying a crushed black thing which looked for all the world like the remnants of a caterpillar.

  'This is it? Should you be touching it?' I asked.

  'It's nothing,' Mihmatini said. Her face was glowing – her cheekbones lit from within with a light like that of the moon, save stronger. Instead of washing away her features, it seemed to make everything sharper, better defined, underlying her gesture with a solemnity that made her seem far, far older than her twenty years. 'It's the sorcerer's influence, given body and pulled out of him. By itself, it has no power.'

  Nezahual-tzin's face was pale. 'But it's not the whole of the influence. There is something else inside him, but I can't get it out. You should have asked someone else.'

  'We asked you.' Mihmatini's voice was low and intense. 'Acatl trusted you.'

  'I haven't said I was giving up.' Nezahual-tzin's face was set in a determined, most uncharacteristic grimace. 'In the meantime… this is for you, Acatl. No doubt you'll find it entertaining.' His voice was mocking again.

  'Come,' he said to Mihmatini – for a moment, he looked as though he was going to offer her his arm, like a