The priests? The clergy within the Sacred Precinct? But surely that was impossible? 'I don't understand.'
Quenami took a step backward – and, with an effort akin to wrenching a sacrifice's heart from his chest, pulled himself together to look once more stern and arrogant. 'Of course you wouldn't. We mean the clergy of Tlaloc.'
Acamapichtli. Tapalcayotl. All of them, cooped up in their cages, stripped of their finery and of their powers. Perfect targets. 'How many?' I asked, but Ichtaca shook his head. 'You have to come, Acatl-tzin.'
How many priests had been in that courtyard? A hundred, perhaps more? I'd talked to Tapalcayotl, and had barely paid enough attention to the others caught in this sordid power-play. But surely there had been dozens of cages: the clergy of Tlaloc was the second most numerous, after that of Huitzilpochtli the Southern Hummingbird.
Say two dozen. That was already too much. Every death would have increased the powers of our sorcerer, and brought their plans this much closer to fruition.
I thought of Mihmatini's calendar, and of the sense in the air of the calm before the storm. Well, lightning had struck, and we were, if not lost, dancing on the edge of the chasm already.
NINETEEN
It was carnage. Granted, I wasn't a warrior and hadn't walked the battlefields, but I imagined it couldn't get much worse than this. It wasn't the blood scattered on the ground: I had seen enough of it in devotions or large spells. It wasn't the body parts, either: again, I was no stranger to violence.
What made my stomach heave was the sheer scale. The courtyard had been lined with cages, and all of them had been hit at the same time, by what seemed to be a much faster variant of the plague. The bodies lay contorted on the ground, blackened with internal bleeding – and I remembered from the autopsy how much it had hurt, every organ breaking down and leaking into the body. The faces were turned upwards, the nostrils and mouths ringed with blood; the eyes, wiped clean by the blankness of death, had red corneas, and scarlet tears ran down the cheeks.
Near the back, under the pillars, I found the cage where Tapalcayotl had been. He lay still, almost unrecognisable with the flow of blood that had puffed up his cheeks, all his haughtiness and aggressiveness gone forever – one arm still extended outwards, with a carved amulet that had rolled away on the stone floor.
So much blood; so much magic, shimmering in the air, so much raw power devoted to Chalchiuhtlicue. The sorcerer would be gorged with it, ready to move against the Empire if necessary.
I knelt, and said the words, the ones I always said – the litany for the Dead – even though they'd died for Jade Skirt, and would be in Her land now, rowing boats among the eternal canals, harvesting always-ripe maize. But I couldn't leave them without a guide, and there were no priests of Tlaloc left, not in the whole of Tenochtitlan.
Footsteps echoed behind me. I'd expected Tizoc-tzin, but it was the She-Snake, his face grave. 'I trust you've seen enough.'
No, I hadn't. 'How did this happen?'
'I don't know,' the She-Snake said. 'But I'm not surprised. They were jailed pending trial, not kept under a magical watch.' His gaze was dryly amused. 'No one is going to care if malfeasants fail to survive until they appear before the judges, after all.'
Of course he was lying, and of course he knew what I'd think of this. I bit back on an angry remark – he hadn't been the one to arrest the clergy, after all – and said, instead, 'I trust that's made Tizoc-tzin realise that the clergy wasn't involved with any of this.'
The She-Snake raised a mocking eyebrow. 'It might have. I wouldn't know. We've all advised him to remain in his quarters for the moment. If whoever has done this is moving against the Mexica Empire, then they'll target its head, sooner or later.'
'That's not enough,' I said. I tasted bile on my tongue. 'You've seen what they can do. Tizoc-tzin has to leave Tenochtitlan.' I didn't like this; among other things, it would leave Teomitl a freer rein than I liked, but it had to be done. We couldn't afford to lose the Revered Speaker – never mind that most of this was his fault, that Tapalcayotl and Acamapichtli were dead, the clergy of Tlaloc all but reduced to small, unimportant priests in far- flung cities, and that it would take years for it to rebuild itself, if it was rebuilt at all…
No. I was High Priest. I'd let my feelings and my urge for justice distract me once, and the results had been disastrous. The truth was, there was as much justice as we could make, but preserving the balance of the Fifth World was more important than even that.
It was a thought that hurt like a knife between my ribs, but I had to hold it. I had to believe it.
'He can't–' The She-Snake considered for a while. 'I can't be the one to suggest this. In his absence, I would represent him in the city, and he knows it. He'll see this as an attempt to seize power.' His face was unreadable; I'd never really understood what motivated him; if he didn't, deep down, yearn to be more than viceroy, more than a substitute for the Revered Speaker.
'Then ask Quenami.' Given his state, I didn't think he would protest, for once.
I didn't look to see if he was following. He could deal with the politics, as if he had been born to. I, in turn, would deal with the magic.
I stood in the centre of the courtyard, breathing in the rank smell of blood – it had started to change already in the sunlight, like butchered meat going bad. So much of it, such a sickening waste…
Cuixtli wasn't here: there was no other power to show me the way. But I knew what to look for, now. I slashed the back of my hand, letting the blood drip onto the ground, and said a hymn to Lord Death, feeling the cold of the underworld rise up, the keening lament of the Dead become the only sound in the courtyard. Everything seemed to recede into insignificance, save the corpses in the cages, limned with green light, the eyes bleeding and weeping, as if they could still see anything in the Fifth World. Faint traces of light hovered over the bodies: the
