'The old woman?' I asked. She had been the one to see him; the one that had set him on his bid for the Turquoise and Gold Crown. 'Who is she?' She'd exuded Toci's magic, as naturally as we breathed – as if nothing stood between her and the goddess. Another agent we knew nothing of? Unlikely: few gods ceded Their powers to mortals, and Toci – the hungry earth, the broken furrows – tended to keep Herself to Herself.
Mihmatini grimaced. 'His sister. Always had a bit of a weakness for her brother – though really, he's almost young enough to be her nephew, or worse. And she doesn't look like she likes Tizoctzin – or Axayacatl-tzin – very much, for that matter.'
More palace politics? I hid a grimace. The last woman who had interfered in imperial succession had been by far the more successful and canny claimant – even though she had failed, in the end. An old imperial princess would be as sharp as broken obsidian – and as dangerous as a jaguar mother deprived of her children. 'Between both of them, they might just get what they want.' That was, in the case of the princess , the support of the palace; for Teomitl, that of the army. And Tizoc-tzin out of the city… Had I done the right thing?
But no, I had to. We couldn't afford to have our Revered Speaker fall to Chalchiuhtlicue's magic, not so soon after the last one's death – and with him unconfirmed, too, devoid of anything but the simplest magics of the Southern Hummingbird.
Mihmatini shook her head. 'There has to be something I can do, Acatl.'
Was there? I couldn't be sure. 'You know him better than anyone else,' I said, slowly. 'You'll think of something.'
She took in a deep breath. 'I guess.' But she didn't sound convinced.
'I need your help,' I said to Neutemoc.
Neutemoc raised an eyebrow. 'That's… unexpected.'
'I'm not finding this funny.'
'Me neither.' There was a flash of something in his eyes, as if he remembered for a moment that I was part of the reason his wife was dead, and his house deserted. 'What do you want?'
'Nothing much,' I said. 'I need you to look into Eptli.'
'Why? The man has been dead long enough, surely?'
'I don't know,' I said. 'I've got a gut feeling he wasn't picked at random.' The first victim of the disease would have had a high symbolic weight, if nothing else – but something in the way he had been set up suggested personal rancour, and if it wasn't Chipahua, or the merchant Yayauhqui, or Xiloxoch, then I couldn't understand why anyone would hate him.
'I can ask,' Neutemoc said. 'But unless you can think of something more specific…'
'Anything that would have made him an enemy.'
'Still rather broad.' Neutemoc grinned with far too much amusement.
'Look, if I knew, I wouldn't be here. I don't think it's anything obvious, like people who couldn't stand him as a warrior. If it were, we'd have found out by now. It has to be something more insidious; some secret of his past we haven't found.'
Neutemoc sighed. 'I'll see what I can do.'
Afterwards, I walked with Mihmatini in the courtyard, under the gaze of the white moon – Coyaulxauhqui, She of the Silver Bells, who was the Southern Hummingbird's sister and His bitterest enemy.
'He loves you,' I said in the silence. 'But–'
'But not enough to listen to me? I don't know if that's love.' She sounded miserable. 'He's doing a foolish thing.'
'The gods come first.' They always did – except my own god, who always came last. 'The Mexica Empire comes first.'
Mihmatini shivered. 'He belongs to the Southern Hummingbird after all, doesn't he?'
I was silent, for a while. 'You have to realise it's not only the Southern Hummingbird who drives the Mexica forward. The other gods feast on our offerings as well, and would crush anyone foolish enough to try and get in their way.'
'But other people would make them just as well, wouldn't they? We're not the only ones worshipping Tlaloc the Storm Lord, or Xochiquetzal.'
'No,' I said. I stopped by the pine tree, ran a hand on its rough bark, breathing in the smell of crushed needles and dry wood.
'It's not fair.'
'It's not about fairness. It's about balance first.'
'And you believe that?'
'Yes.' I had to – or what else could I cling to? 'What are you going to do?'
'I don't know. That's the problem, Acatl – I just don't know.' Her face in the moonlight was gentle, and she seemed not so much the Guardian or a priestess, but just my sister, as bewildered as the day the dog had bitten her. 'There has to be something…'
I didn't know what to say. I could have lied, and told her it would get better, but that would have been wrong.
She sighed, at length. 'Never mind. Let's see what tomorrow will bring. Good night, brother.'
'Good night.'
I emerged from dark, deep dreams of the plague sweeping through Tenochtitlan – among which swum Acamapichtli's blind face, his hands questing for my own, never quite meeting them – and found myself in a sunlit room, with one of Neutemoc's slaves waiting by my sleeping mat. 'Acatl-tzin, there is someone to see you.'
'Someone?' I rolled over painfully – I no longer needed the cane to stand up, but I did still feel as though I'd been pummelled repeatedly. 'I'll be outside in a moment.'
Alone, I pulled myself upwards – reached out for my obsidian knife and offered up my blood to the Fifth Sun and Lord Death.
I didn't know who I had expected – Ichtaca with further news, perhaps, or the She-Snake, come to apprise me of yet another disaster. But the person waiting for me in the courtyard was Xiloxoch – her face painted the
