eaten anything since before leaving for Tlalocan. Then I made my halting way out of the palace, to check on Mihmatini and on my own priests.
The air was sweltering, wet and heavy, and the sky was an overbearing shade of blue, which promised no respite from the heat.
The ghosts didn't leave, though they did grow fainter, at the same time as the numbness in my shoulder faded. Mictlantecuhtli's gift, whatever it had been, was slowly returning to its maker. But it had accomplished its purpose.
There was something wrong with the boundaries. Acamapichtli had said they were weaker; he had thought the plague had weakened them. I wasn't so sure. The hollow, nauseous feeling in my stomach – the one that was now slowly receding to bearable levels – was the same I'd had much earlier, when the army had returned, long before the plague was set loose.
There was something else, something we needed to work out with Ichtaca and the rest of the order.
I was munching on my tamales, enjoying the solidity of the maize sliding into my empty stomach – something firmly of the Fifth World, and not of Tlalocan or Mictlan – and slowly heading out of the palace, when someone grasped my shoulder. 'Acatl.'
If I hadn't been so bone-weary, I would have given a start. Nezahual-tzin moved within my field of vision. As usual, he was escorted by two Texcocan Knights, though he'd eschewed his regalia in favour of a more discreet cotton cloak and a simple headdress of mottled brown quail-feathers.
'Going round in disguise?' I asked.
His lips quirked up. 'I could say the same thing about you.'
I shrugged. If he wanted to make me angry, attacking my dress was hardly the best way.
'Your sister is waiting for you at the Duality House,' Nezahualtzin said.
And I could guess she wouldn't be particularly happy. But I didn't want to say this to Nezahual-tzin – who was Revered Speaker of Texcoco, not my friend or equal. 'Anything else I ought to know?'
Nezahual-tzin shrugged. We'd started walking towards the palace entrance, the two warriors following us. 'I might have a lead on why Teomitl survived the sickness.'
'A lead?' I said.
'I asked the stars,' Nezahual-tzin said. It was probably literal, too – his patron god Quetzalcoatl was Lord of the Morning Star among His other aspects. 'Magic flowed towards the Duality House that night.'
'Hardly surprising,' I said. With my healing, and our repeated attempts to heal Teomitl, the place must have been a riot of lights.
'Actually,' Nezahual-tzin said, 'it was Toci's magic.'
That stopped me. 'Grandmother Earth? Why would She–?' She was the Earth that fed the maize, that would take us back into Her bosom when the time came: an old, broken woman renewed with every offering of blood; a goddess born from the fragments of the Earth-Monster, eternally thirsting for human hearts and human sacrifices. And, in many ways, She was the opposite of the Southern Hummingbird, our protector deity: the incarnation of female fertility, the nurturing mother, whereas He was the virile, eternally young warrior. 'Why would She want to heal Teomitl?' I asked.
'I don't know,' Nezahual-tzin said. 'But I intend to find out. It seemed to come from a house in the district of Zoquipan.' His youthful face was that of an artisan, nibbling away at a massive block of limestone until the sculpture at its core was revealed. 'Care to join me?'
I shook my head. 'I have to get back to the Duality House.' That, or Mihmatini was finally going to lose patience with me.
Nezahual-tzin didn't look particularly disappointed. He did, though, walk with me up to the Duality House, claiming it was for my own safety. I wasn't sure of his motivations, but I welcomed the company, for I was none too steady on my feet.
We parted ways amidst a crowd of pilgrims carrying worshipthorns and balls of grass stained with blood – ranging from gangly adolescents barely old enough to have seen the battlefield to old men walking with canes, wearing long cloaks to hide the scars they'd received in the wars.
'Oh, one other thing,' Nezahual-tzin said.
I stopped, and painstakingly turned around. 'What?'
'You might be interested to know you're not the only one to have disappeared recently.'
Acamapichtli? 'I'm not sure–'
Nezahual-tzin's face was utterly impassive. 'No one has seen your student since yesterday. Officially speaking, of course.'
Of course.
'And you?'
Nezahual-tzin shrugged, casually. 'I haven't seen him, either. But I have it on good authority some of the warriors under his command have gone missing.'
He'd almost died. He'd said it to me, attempted to warn me: that he couldn't wait any longer for the things he thought were due to him. For the Mexica Empire to flourish under good leadership, and of course Tizoc-tzin's leadership was anything but brilliant. But surely he couldn't mean to… he couldn't want to sink us back into a civil and magical war…?
'I did warn you,' Nezahual-tzin said.
And he had; I didn't want to hear it any more now than I'd wanted to hear it back then. 'Yes,' I said. 'Thank you.' And I pushed my way into the crowd of the Sacred Precinct without looking back.
FIFTEEN
Contrary to what Nezahual-tzin had told me, Mihmatini wasn't waiting for me at the Duality House.
