And all, I suspected, because of us. It had to be – what else would cause such a massive disruption?
At the time, we'd thought it the lesser of two evils. The death of Tizoc-tzin, our newly designated Revered Speaker, had opened the gates wide to star-demons and their depredations. To name another Revered Speaker would have taken weeks – time we didn't have. Far better to seek the Southern Hummingbird's favour, and bring back Tizoc-tzin's body and soul from the heartland.
Except, it seemed, that it had solved nothing – merely sowed the seeds for further blood and fire in the Fifth World.
At this early hour, it made more sense to take one of the largest western canals, swinging under the Tlacopan causeway and continuing due south around Tenochtitlan. The houses of adobe became mud and wattle – with coloured roofs at first. Then even those went away, and the crowds heading to the marketplace thinned out, until we reached the Floating Gardens: a network of artificial islands used as fields for the planting of anything from maize to squashes. The farmers were up already, consolidating the ditches for irrigation and making sure the earth was well-watered in preparation for the planting of maize.
The island that hosted the bodies was visible from afar, if only for the whiffs of Mictlan's magic emanating from it, as dry and as stretched as desiccated corpses.
The boat touched the ground between two willow trees: we all disembarked, and waited for Ichtaca to lead the way.
He looked at me enquiringly – unwilling to break the rules. I suppressed a sigh and went towards the centre of the island, towards the greater concentration of Mictlan's magic. The bodies lay side by side in the hollow of a maize field, naked and bloated. The smell that wafted up to me nestled in the hollow of my stomach, strong enough to make me feel nauseous again. I might be used to handling corpses, but I'd never examined so many at the same time – and not in such a state. Thank the Duality it was the dry season now, and nowhere near as hot or as humid as it could get.
'If you'd do the honours…' Ichtaca said.
I didn't much feel like it, quite aside from my current weakness, but it would mean something to all of them, and especially to Ichtaca. With a sigh, I walked towards the bodies – cane in one hand, knife in the other.
The bodies lay on their backs in the mud of the Floating Garden, the willows at the edge of the island casting long, twisted shadows across their skins – and death, too, casting its own twisted shadows, in the form of blotches and bloated skins, all the signs of rot that we knew all too well.
Eptli's body was the worst: bloated and blue, barely recognisable as human. The others – the prisoner Zoquitl, Chipahua and his household – were not as bad. Chipahua and his companions in particular had the characteristic rigidity of the newly-dead, but their skins were dark rather than livid blue.
Before starting, I cast a quick spell of protection, calling on the power of the underworld to shield me. The noises of oars in the water receded, the peasants' tilling and digging became far away, and the sky itself became as grey as dust.
I crouched by Eptli's body – the most important for us – and considered. I had already examined it; I could cut into the flesh, releasing the noxious air contained within, but it was likely I wouldn't get anything more out of it, not without magic. It had decayed too much.
So, instead, I moved to Chipahua's body – setting the cane aside in the mud of the Floating Garden. He lay against the radiant blue of the sky, his eyes wide open, seeing nothing of the Fifth World, his scar crowded by the raised blisters on his entire face. They formed a faint pattern that would have been vaguely reminiscent of a mosaic, save that most of them had burst through the skin, bleeding into the body. His entire skin had turned dark and the whites of his eyes were now the red of blood. Blood had also pooled below the other orifices – nose and mouth and ears, eager to leave the body by whatever holes there might be.
The same pattern of burst blisters had also spread to his limbs, though they were more dense on the hands and feet than closer to the torso. Using the knife, I slashed at his tunic to reveal the body underneath: more burst blisters, and faint red spots covering the entire skin. I moved to the groin area, lifting the penis to have a better look – and its skin came away in clumps, as neatly as that of a flayed man, disintegrating like worn paper.
Breathe. He was dead; it wasn't as if anything worse could happen to him.
Breathe. I needed to–
With some difficulty, I focused on the corpse again, and looked at the penis and anus; both were flecked with dried blood.
I fought a surge of fresh nausea. I had seen many things, but not a corpse that looked as though every blood vessel had burst or decayed.
'Ichtaca?'
'Acatl-tzin?' He'd been waiting on the edge of the Floating Garden for me to finish my examination.
'There are a dozen bodies here,' I said. 'If you and the other priests don't start examining them, we'll still be here tonight.'
Ichtaca nodded, and started pointing to priests, assigning them bodies. He crouched by Eptli's body – trust him to take the hardest one – and drew his own blade, thoughtfully.
I didn't stare for longer – whatever mystery there was, he would solve it, and I needed to focus my energies on the body I was currently examining.
The mundane examination didn't seem overly conclusive; time for other methods.
I rubbed at my earlobes, dislodging the scabs from the previous offerings. With the blood, I drew glyphs on the backs of my hands – 'one' and 'knife', the week that was ruled by Lord Death. As the blood dripped down towards the hungry earth under my feet, I started chanting.
