'It sounds like serious business,' the calendar priest said. He sounded wistful. 'Most of us just get called for adultery, or some other petty offence. You'd think a once-in-a-lifetime confession would be more exciting.'
'But it's not,' Palli said. 'Like most dead bodies turn out to have died from natural causes.' He sighed. 'And sometimes, of course, it all goes wrong like a dash of cold water, and you wish it could all be normal again.'
'I guess.' The priest sounded sceptical. 'Still… as you say, not every day you have a suicide.'
'The Master of the House of Darkness, no less,' I said, sombrely. 'In the wake of threats against the Mexica Empire.'
His face lit up. 'Really. And you need to speak to a calendar priest for that?'
I felt dishonest. Likely, it would come to nothing, and we'd have stoked his wrong ideas about the priesthood. But still… given the stakes…
I was going to regret this. 'The calendar priest who saw Pochtictzin would be useful, yes. He'd probably have a good idea of what's going on.' Better than mine, possibly.
'Look…' The calendar priest wavered. I gave him an encouraging smile that felt false from beginning to end. 'I didn't tell you this, all right?'
Palli shook his head. 'Nothing gets out. Our word on it.'
'Quauhtli was called for a reading at the house of some nobleman.' The calendar priest frowned.
'That's odd, isn't it? A reading at noon?' Not everyone had lunch, but most people preferred to wait until the heat of the day had dissipated before getting on with serious business like divination.
'Happens,' the priest said. He sounded less and less certain. 'I think. Most people don't ask for a particular calendar priest, though – and they don't send warriors to escort him to the house.'
Warriors. Why? 'Where did he go?'
Something of the worry in my voice must have reached him; he was wavering, wondering if he hadn't made a mistake in talking to us. 'He might be in more danger than you think,' I said. I kept my voice slow and quiet, despite what it cost me. 'But if we act now, we might be able to get him out.'
'Er… south edge of the Sacred Precinct, I think.' He gave us a quick description of canals, which I did my best to commit to memory – as well as a brief description of Quauhtli, though it was generic enough to be pretty much useless. 'Thank you,' I said.
We walked through the crowds to the southern edge of the Sacred Precinct, passing by the bone-rack, on which priests were adding a fresh row of bleached skulls from human sacrifices – someone had obviously failed to clean the skulls properly, judging by the rank smell of rotting flesh which rose from between the wooden posts. Palli grimaced; I looked on, preoccupied by other things.
The calendar priest had spoken of a house on the south-eastern edge of the Sacred Precinct – in the district of Zoquipan, the same location Nezahual-tzin had been investigating before someone had cast a spell on him.
It could have been coincidence, but there had been precious few of those lately.
Outside the Serpent Wall, the rows of noblemen's houses started up again, each encased within high, stuccoed walls – with steambaths, from which wafted the white vapour, and the smell of spices. Everything seemed silent. We trod our way past deserted canals, where boats bobbed at their anchors under the withering gaze of the Fifth Sun, following the priest's instructions until we stood in a street that seemed much the same as the others. The walls were blank, or decorated with frescoes, and nothing called to mind our missing calendar priest.
Palli looked at me questioningly. He was about to be disappointed – what good could a crippled High Priest do? Unless…
I put the cane on the ground, hand-spans away from the canal, and withdrew a knife from my belt. Then, quickly, I spoke a hymn to Lord Death.
The familiar veil descended over the world, throwing everything into insignificance – the adobe becoming the colour of yellowed bone, the water in the canal darkening to the colour of a corpse's blotched skin, the smells of maize and steam receding to become the familiar ones of rotting meat and flesh.
This deep within the streets inhabited by noblemen, magic was everywhere, the various trails crisscrossing in the air, shimmering in the water like spilled cooking oil. Huitzilpochtli the Southern Hummingbird, Tezcatlipoca the Smoking Mirror, Xochiquetzal the Quetzal Flower, Tlaloc the Storm Lord, everything merging like a hundred drumbeats on the night of a festival. I stood still, and didn't move – waiting for the discordant beat, the colour slightly out of place.
There was a faint trail alongside the canal – a smell of algae, of churned mud; a sensation of quiet, muffled sound in a universe where everything was at peace forever. I teased it out, followed it. It wove between houses, in and out of the steambaths, dipping into canals like a girl testing the waters, twisting in the mud at our feet like a snake.
The scent died at the gates of a mansion much like any other – blank-faced, drawn back on itself with no hint of what lay inside. But the smell in the air was familiar, quivering on the edge of recognition.
'Acatl-tzin…' Palli said, behind me.
I realised that I stood defenceless – a cane and a bloodied obsidian knife my only weapons.
Never mind.
The warrior by the gate was a veteran with the whitish scars of sword-strikes on his legs: he displayed them proudly, not bothering to hide them beneath a cloak. 'Yes?' he asked, making it clear we were wasting his time.
I smiled as brightly as I could. 'We're looking for a calendar priest.'
That, if nothing else, threw him. He hadn't expected brutal honesty. 'Not here. Now go away.'
'That's hardly polite,' I said. Behind him, from within the house, another three warriors were emerging – not the friendly-looking kind either, but beefy thugs that wouldn't have been out of place at a pillaging.
