steam-baths and cooked maize.
“He's dead,” Macihuin said.
Nayatlan, the last member of the sect, had found the same ending as his brethren; he lay on his back on his reed mat, in the bedroom. He had the same mark as Huitxic on his torso.
I opened up the chest in three swift cuts, and retrieved the obsidian shard in the heart: a shard similar to the one that had killed Huitxic.
Macihuin stood to the side of the mat, his face dark. I held out the bloody shard to him, and he nodded. From the next room came weeping sounds: Nayatlan's wife.
“Four Rain,” I said, lifting the jade pendant. The Third Age, which had ended when the gods sent down fire that consumed the earth.
“As if we didn't know.” Macihuin sighed, and knelt to look at the body. “It was foreseeable, but still…”
“You had a watch on him.”
“From the outside of his house. Did you think I could place guards within the house of a respected warrior without raising an outcry?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “But this is serious.”
Macihuin did not speak.
“Did you get a chance to interview him?”
“I did,” Macihuin said. “Not a very productive talk: he denied everything.”
I laughed, without joy. “Of course. So did Ceyaxochitl.”
“The Guardian? I had your message, but…”
“She's involved,” I said.
“That's a serious accusation, Acatl. Do you have anything to support it?”
“No. But I hope to find something here.”
We searched every corner of the house; the dead man's widow helped us by showing us the chests where her husband had kept his most precious possessions. We found nothing.
The last wickerwork chest we examined, though, was not as deep as it ought to have been. I raised my eyes to Macihuin, who was kneeling by my side, his hands full of clothes; together we tipped the chest's contents onto the ground.
It turned out to possess a false bottom, full of sketches and papers. Nayatlan's widow swore in a voice still shaking with grief that she had never seen them. The glyphs on them were so faded they were almost illegible.
“I need some time to study these,” I said.
Macihuin was silent for a while. “I may have to refer this to the palace courts,” he said at last. “This is going beyond me.”
“Don't. I need you.”
“Why?”
“They're all dead,” I said. “She's done her work. The longer we wait, the more proof disappears.”
“And what do you think I should do?”
My eyes rested on the first of the papers: it showed Tezcatlipoca, God of the Smoking Mirror, presiding over the first race of men in the age Four Jaguar. “Have Ceyaxochitl's house watched, as best as you can.”
We did have a brief talk with Nayatlan's widow, but she did not even know her husband had been part of the sect. It was going nowhere.
I studied the manuscripts as best as I could, between the wake and the sacrifices for a dead man – for I still had my own work. The spells written in the manuscripts were old ones, so powerful they would have been beyond the grasp of an untrained sect.
One of the spells was annotated as if in preparation, but half the glyphs were missing, which made it hard to decipher. A summoning, probably of some monster. Thank the gods they had not succeeded. I almost was grateful to Ceyaxochitl, until I remembered her arrogance. She had killed innocents.
The rest of it was dull: all of it was praise to Tezcatlipoca, to His magic that could bring both life and death.
Fool. But still not enough to justify his death.
I got messages from Macihuin, all attesting to the same lack of progress: Ceyaxochitl did not go out of her house on the following day; nor on the next one. He had had the houses of the other three dead men searched, to no avail.
Macihuin himself finally came to tell me the investigation was being withdrawn from him. The last victim had been not only a warrior, but a member of the Eagle Regiment, and his exalted status demanded more than a minor magistrate. Macihuin had to withdraw his guards while a more competent magistrate was found.
I took the watch myself on the second night. Nothing happened. I sat all night on a neighbour's roof, watching the inner patios of Ceyaxochitl's house, and my clothes were wet by the time I finally came back to my temple.
