Obsidian & Blood

breathe.

  'Oh, Acatl.' Her voice was pitying. 'Have more faith.'

  I said nothing – I couldn't think of any smart answer to this. Instead, I turned to Nezahual-tzin. 'Have you–?'

  He nodded, brusquely. 'Let's get to it, shall we? I don't know how long I can stay upright.'

  The courtyard shimmered into existence again – except that I stopped it halfway through, before it became fully material. I could see Nezahual-tzin, slowly breathing – calling down the Feathered Serpent's power until his skin glowed with pulsing magic – and Acamapichtli, his blind eyes thrown back, looking up at the sky, which slowly filled up with storm clouds. There was a noise like wings unfurling, and the distant rumble of thunder.

  And I – I, who belonged in neither of those worlds – I felt the touch of Mictlantecuhtli spread from the marks on my shoulder,a cold that seized my bones and muscles, and then my heart until I could no longer feel it beat. My hands curled up into claws, my skin reddening against the cold.

'I stand on the boundaries

On the edge of the region of mystery, on the edge of the house of the fleshless

I stand on the boundaries

On the edge of the gardens of flowers, of the expanses of grass…'

  And, as I spoke the words of the hymn – as Acamapichtli and Nezahual-tzin joined me – light slowly appeared, washing us all in a radiance that was neither the harsh one of the Fifth Sun, nor the green mouldy one of Mictlan, but something that had been there for the birth of the Fifth World, something that would always be there, underpinning the order we kept.

'We stand for sickness, in the house of the living

For the breath of the wind, in the region of the fleshless

For life and death, caught on the threshold…'

  And there was… something, like a tightening, as if a loose garment had just readjusted itself: the world knitting itself back together. My gate wavered and shrank, and the nausea that I'd carried with me all this time finally sank down to almost nothing.

'With this we will stand straight

With this we will live

Oh, for a while, for a little while…'

  And then the feeling was gone, and I sagged to my knees like a wounded man whose feverish rush of energy had just worn off.

  'Acatl!'

  'I'm fine, I'm fine,' I said, but I could barely pull myself to my feet. I shouldn't have left the cane behind us. I turned back, to stare at Moquihuix's body – and, to my surprise he stared back at me, his face clouded with the approach of death.

  The weapon Mihmatini had used to stab him – a sharp reed which shone as if it had been dipped in gold – was still embedded in his chest. He didn't look like Coatl at all, but like his true self, a Revered Speaker lying in the dust of Mictlan.

  'Priest.' His voice still carried far, as if he were addressing the crowd from atop his pyramid temple. His lips curled up, in a smile that was painful. 'It is Tenochtitlan's destiny, indeed, to rule over the valley of Anahuac, to expand into the Fifth World and make everything theirs. I wish you joy.'

  'Wait!' I said, but his eyes had closed, and his body was already shimmering out of existence, his limbs growing fainter and fainter, followed by his torso, and, last of all, the turquoise cloak which had marked him as a Revered Speaker and his quetzal feather headdress, crumbling into a fine powder which mingled with the dust.

  A wind rose, carrying a faint, familiar smell – rotting maize, or leaves – and his soul rose upon it; not the faint memory of a human, but a bright radiance made of hundreds of people: the people of the plague, the dead that he carried with him. He rose towards the dais, and was lost to sight.

  When I turned around, Nezahual-tzin and Mihmatini had both joined me on the dais. Nezahual-tzin was binding Mihmatini's wound, with a mocking smile. She was glaring at him, daring him to make a comment.

  'You'll be fine?' I asked.

  She shook her head. 'Of course I'll be fine, Acatl. Don't fuss like an old woman. It doesn't become you.'

  'Sorry,' I said. 'It's just that–' I saw, then, that her free hand was shaking, her back slightly arched, and I could only guess at the effort she used to hold herself upright. 'Never mind. Let's go back.'

  We came back to the Fifth World in the same courtyard we'd left from. It was bathed in sunlight, the corpse of Matlaelel and the bloody remnants of a few ahuizotls the only signs of the battle. And another corpse, too, shrivelled like a dried fruit, who might have been Coatl, who might have been Moquihuix-tzin: it was hard to tell anymore, with the decay.

  I'd expected a crowd of noblewomen, irate at our intrusion upon their lives – who were, I was beginning to understand, neither as weak nor as defenceless as I'd allowed myself to think.

  I hadn't expected the warriors: an army large enough to fill the place, their macuahitl swords glinting in the sunlight – and, at their head, the old woman and Teomitl – and my brother Neutemoc and my offering priest Palli, standing in their path with the desperate assurance of doomed men.