May it be in Your heart to grant, to give, to bring comfort…'
At length, Acamapichtli looked up. 'It's what I thought,' he said. He made a single, dismissive gesture with his hands – as if sending away an underling who had displeased – and the mist fell away, sinking back into the ground as if it had never been. It became easier to breathe once again.
'What you thought?' I asked.
He smiled – a thoroughly unpleasant expression. 'The magic does look similar to that of Tlaloc, but it doesn't belong to Him. It's Chalchiuhtlicue's.'
'That's not possible,' I said, sharply. Chalchiuhtlicue, Jade Skirt;
Tlaloc's wife, Teomitl's protector. Goddess of Lakes and Streams – patron of women in labour, She who washed away the sins of newborn children.
'Because you're the expert on the water gods?'
'No,' I said. 'But I'd thought…' My voice trailed off. 'You said it was Tlaloc's magic earlier.'
'I was wrong.' Acamapichtli didn't look ashamed at all. 'A mistake easily made. The spell was an unusual mess, and already decaying.'
I couldn't resist. 'You're the expert on the water gods.'
'Don't push me.'
Much as I would have liked to, this served no purpose. 'I won't. But I still don't understand why She would…'
'I don't know,' Acamapichtli said. His voice was grim. 'That was the other thing I wanted to ask you.'
'About Jade Skirt? Why do you need to ask?'
'She's your student's protector,' Acamapichtli said.
'I don't have any loyalty to Her.'
'Teomitl-tzin might, though.'
'I–' I started, and then found myself, to my surprise, telling the bare truth. 'I don't want to think about this, not now.'
I'd expected him to mock me straight away, but instead he cocked his head, and watched me for a while, not saying anything. 'Fine. It doesn't have much bearing on this anyway – not yet. Keep your unpleasant revelations cooped up, until they rise up to gobble you up like coyotes.'
Still as pleasant a man as ever. 'What did you want?'
'It's time we got a better grip on where this is coming from, and why.'
'And your idea–'
'You had me summon a dead man, and it didn't work. There is someone much better informed, though.'
'Someone?' I asked, already suspecting the answer.
'Tlaloc,' Acamapichtli said.
'You – you can't mean to do this.' One did not, could not summon gods into the Fifth World. For one thing, They would not be inclined to answer the call of a single mortal; for another, the Fifth World, which was not Their essence, made them weak and helpless, and gods seldom enjoyed being either. Instead, in the (unlikely) event one wanted to speak to gods directly, one went into their country. In my entire life, I had talked to Mictlantecuhtli perhaps a handful of times, and my last journey into another god's land had left me wounded and sick.
That was, of course, discounting the fact that when Tlaloc had tried to seize power in the Fifth World, Teomitl and I had been the ones to stop Him. I would hardly be welcomed into Tlalocan, the Land of the Blessed Drowned. 'You can't mean–?' I said, again.
'You want to know what's going on.'
'Yes, but calling on the gods–'
'At least we'd be certain.'
And I'd certainly be dead. I wasn't keen for that kind of assurance. 'It's a great risk.'
'Not so great.' His voice was sarcastic. 'Haven't you noticed rituals have become easier?'
'I don't understand–'
'When I summoned the dead warrior, Eptli, the sacrifice of a single jaguar shouldn't have brought him back for so long.'
'Then you knew.' He'd intended to cheat me all along; to pretend nothing had worked, that he'd done his best. How typical.
'That's not the point,' Acamapichtli said, sharply. 'The point is that something is interfering with the boundaries.'
'The plague?' I asked.
'I don't know. But it makes going into Tlalocan easier.'
I grimaced. 'Less dangerous doesn't mean it will be a walk in the Sacred Precinct. You haven't convinced me it's absolutely necessary for the good of the Empire.'
'And if it were?' His voice was sharp, probing in all the fragile, vulnerable places of my being as if by instinct, but this time I didn't need to hesitate.
'If you proved to me it were necessary, I would go.' To say I wouldn't like it would be an understatement, but I knew where my duty lay.
Acamapichtli watched me for a while. At length he shook his head. 'I can't see any other solution. And before you ask – no, I can't go alone. You're the one who has the most information about who died and when. I'm going to need you.' He didn't look as if he liked the idea much – more as if he'd swallowed something unpleasantly bitter, like unsweetened cacao.
'And that's meant to be enough? Am I just meant to trust your word?'
