Obsidian & Blood

  'How?'

  He grimaced again. 'Human sacrifice. We tried animals, but it was obvious there wasn't enough power.'

  'You sacrificed a life to save a life?'

  'An important life.' I hadn't seen Ichtaca creep up behind me – but suddenly he loomed behind me, as forbidding as a god. 'I needn't remind you of who Coatl is.'

  Deputy for the Master of Raining Blood, member of the warcouncil – moving among the turquoise and jade, the brightest lights and most shining mirrors of the Mexica Empire. 'I know. I don't care. A life for a life is wrong.'

  'Then what? Do you want us to kill him again? It won't regain the sacrifice's life. Besides…' Ichtaca said, 'he knew what he was doing.'

  How could he be so high in the hierarchy of Lord Death, and fail to see the problem? 'That's not the point. All lives are equal and weighed the same – separated only by the manner of their deaths.' I felt like a teacher in the calmecac, repeating obvious truths to boys not old enough to have lost their childhood locks. To give one's life to the gods was the greatest sacrifice, but to do so in favour of another human being, to rank human lives by importance, like things…

  Ichtaca's lips pursed. His rigid sense of hierarchy – what had caused him to put Coatl ahead in the first place – wouldn't let him contradict me, his superior. 'As you wish,' he said.

  The Duality curse me if I let him have the last word. 'It was good work,' I said to Palli. 'But I don't think it would make a viable cure.'

  He looked disconsolate, and I couldn't think of anything that would change matters. 'Look into it again,' I suggested. 'There might be a way around the human sacrifice.'

  'I suppose.'

  I wished I could offer more – but black was black and red was red, and he shouldn't have done that. I guessed my point had come across clearly enough. 'Ichtaca?'

  'Yes, Acatl-tzin?' His face was smooth, expressionless.

  'There is a man you need to track down – someone who came here earlier. A calendar priest.'

  'He will be under the seal of secrecy.' He didn't say 'you should know that', but it was abundantly clear.

  I shook my head. Yes, the priest wouldn't be inclined to reveal the contents of the interview. But still… a drowning man couldn't afford to be choosy about which bit of driftwood to cling to. 'He might still give us something to understand Pochtic. It looks as though Pochtic did the prescribed penance, and then still committed suicide.' Which, to be honest, made me wonder if the offence hadn't been too grave to be forgiven – which suggested either something large, or something that went against the will of a powerful god.

  'Hmm,' Ichtaca was still looking at the walls – which reminded me that he'd been muttering earlier.

  'Something the matter? Here, I mean.'

  His gaze suggested he thought more was the matter than a deserted room containing the body. 'I don't think – something is odd in this room, Acatl-tzin. I can't quite pinpoint what, but…'

  I sighed – assessing my meagre resources. 'Palli, can you see about tracking down the calendar priest?'

  Palli pulled himself straight, almost to attention. 'Yes, Acatl-tzin!'

  I could feel Ichtaca's discontent as I moved into the room, leaning on my cane – Storm Lord's lightning strike me, I was looking the same as Coatl, though perhaps not quite so battered.

  Coatl still stood where we'd left him, looking down at Pochtic's body. His eyes, dark and shadowed, were all but unmoving, his gaze expressionless. But tears had run down his cheeks, staining the black face-paint. 'That's not how it happens.' His voice, too, was expressionless – too carefully controlled.

  'How it happens?' I asked.

  'We die in wars,' he snapped. 'Caught by spears and cut by obsidian, our souls taking wing on the courage of eagles, the ferocity of jaguars. We don't–' His hand rose towards Pochtic, faltered. 'We don't just end it like this.'

  'No,' I said, at last. 'I know it's not much, but I'm sorry you had to see this.'

  He shrugged. 'Doesn't matter now. You can't erase the memory of it, anyway. Was there anything else, Acatl-tzin?'

  I bowed my head, as gravely as I could. 'Yes. I apologise for bringing this up' we both knew I wasn't sorry, not by a large margin 'but I need to know what you can remember about the sickness.'

  The tremor in his hands was barely visible. 'Not much. I – I couldn't breathe – as if I were in water or mud. And there were… bodies.' He inhaled, sharply. 'Dozens and dozens of bodies, all burning with fever. I've walked battlefields, but this was–'

  'Different.'

  'Yes.' Gently, he knelt by Pochtic's body, his fingers probing the wound that had slashed the arteries. 'That's all there is.'

  'I see.' It was consistent with my own symptoms – with Teomitl's. And all consistent with Jade Skirt's involvement – water or mud, and the sensation of choking. But it was nothing new, though.

  'And Pochtic?' I asked.

  'I thought I knew Pochtic.' His gaze was distant. 'Obviously, I didn't.'

  'So you don't know why he might have committed suicide.' I was only stating the obvious there, in the hopes that it might help.

  'No,' Coatl said. He rose, picked up his caneagain – his breath fast, laboured. 'He was a man who enjoyed life. Too much, perhaps. I don't think he understood what lay beneath as well as some.'

  'You mean?'