I had laid on the altar the three shards of obsidian: the two that came from the murders, and the last for Payaxin. Each time I came back to my temple I was reminded innocents had died.
On the second night of my watch, I saw Ceyaxochitl going into her courtyard with an owl cage. I saw her lay down the jade, the spider carving and the obsidian blade. I saw her kill the bird and trace the square in blood.
I saw her summon the Wind of Knives. He came to her call, and moved to stand near her, the hundred of obsidian knives glinting under the light of the moon. She whispered something to Him.
No. I rose from my precarious hiding place, and almost fell from the roof. But still I could not hear the words any of them spoke. Ceyaxochitl dismissed the Wind of Knives, and He faded away from the courtyard, taking with Him the coldness and the sense of despair.
Not possible. The Wind had not sounded so much of a liar.
Had He? What did I know of underworld creatures, after all? I only knew how to read men. Supernatural creatures remained beyond me to encompass.
I came back to my temple at dawn, shaking from the cold, and sent a messenger to Macihuin, begging him to come. I waited and waited, but there was no answer. At last, a bedraggled boy brought me a crumpled piece of paper from Macihuin.
Something was afoot. Why had Ceyaxochitl summoned the Wind of Knives once more? Did she think to kill more men, more foolish sects who spoke of things they would never dare accomplish? Did she…
My heart missed a beat. Did she think to kill both Macihuin and I?
I sent my answer, telling to Macihuin to take care, and I waited.
On the altar, the shards of obsidian glinted with sunlight: two of them green, the last without any colour at all.
The sun seemed to take an eternity to move; I watched the shadows of the obsidian shards expand and then shrink again. The light turned from golden to white to golden again.
The shards…
I picked the two which shone with green reflections, one in each hand, and looked at them carefully. They did not look like the one in Payaxin's body; in fact… I put both of them in my right hand. They fitted together along part of their length, to form a narrow piece almost twice as long. Pieces of the same shattered blade?
It did not look like a blade, no matter which way I turned the assembled pieces. Still, there was something odd about them…
The sun was still high in the sky. I wrapped the three shards in a cotton cloth, and went into the district of artisans.
I had trouble finding a knife-maker who would receive me; they had work to do, more important work than accommodating a priest for the Dead.
At length a very old man shuffled out of a workshop. “You need a knife-maker? I have time.”
He must have seen my grimace in spite of his rheumy eyes. “I am not so old, boy.”
I sighed, and handed him the cloth. “Can you tell me where those knife shards came from?”
He laughed as he moved back into the shadows of his house. I followed him.
“From which quarry, you mean? That's hard. Perhaps, if the pieces are big enough…” He unwrapped the cloth, bent over them.
His finished knives lay on a low table, each of them a testimony to his skill, the blades sharp, the handles carefully crafted. Obsidian flakes lay everywhere.
At length the old man raised his eyes. “Those are not knife shards.”
My heart went cold. “What do you mean?”
He moved, picked one of his own knives, and showed me the edge of the blade. “A knife blade is… peculiar. We make it by shaving off flakes from the rock, and it shows: you can still see the places where we removed the slivers.” His hand hovered over Payaxin's shard. “This is a knife shard. This was made to cut. You can see the indentations on the edge.”
“And those?” I asked.
“Those were polished,” he said.
“But they're sharp.”
He shook his head. “They're sharp because they were broken. Broken obsidian always cuts.”
I asked my next question carefully, unsure of where his answer would take me. “Then where do those come from?”
“I only make knives. But…” He laid his knife back on the table, and looked me in the eye. “It's a mirror, an obsidian one such as a woman would have in her house.”
A mirror.
I thanked him, picked up the shards, and went home. All the while my mind was running on unfamiliar paths, desperately trying to fit the pieces together. Tezcatlipoca, God of the Smoking Mirror. The mirror of obsidian that gave life and death.
Shards of a mirror that throbbed with power under my hand, speaking of death. Not the underworld. Never the underworld. Deaths, because Tezcatlipoca was also the God of War and Fate.
Despite everything that Ceyaxochitl had told me, despite everything Macihuin and I had found out, the sect had indeed summoned something. But not something from the underworld. The Wind would have killed them then.
