She shook her head again. “No. I've been in empty houses. This one isn't empty. There's something in it. Something that will suck the soul out of you. Be careful, my Lord.”
Xoco had unsettled me more than I had thought possible. To calm myself, I walked through the courtyard.
Huchimitl hadn't loved her husband. They'd quarrelled, often and bitterly: a loveless, angry marriage. Xoco had been right in that respect at least.
After that fateful morning, I'd never spoken to Huchimitl again. Something had broken between us. Her betrothed was a tequiua, a warrior who had taken four prisoners and was entitled to tribute and honours – I remembered Huchimitl's angry gaze when she'd flung his feats of glory at me. Only later did I understand that it had not been anger, but unrequited love, that had made her so forceful. By then, it was too late. My meagre gifts of apology were returned intact; when I came to her father's house, her family would not speak to me, and Huchimitl herself was never there.
Would things have been different, I wondered, if I had understood her that morning? For years I had told myself that it would have made no difference – that it was the gods that I wanted to serve, that Huchimitl did not matter. But I knew she did.
I looked at the house again. Why had Xoco been so frightened of it?
It was a normal house for an affluent warrior: a courtyard enclosed by adobe buildings, with a few pine trees and a pool in the centre. The entrance-curtains to each building were elaborately decorated, but the walls themselves were not painted: odd but not sinister. It was, to be sure, a bit unsettling to see adobe stark white, shining under the sun as if it held some secret light, but –
My eyes had started to water, and there was a throbbing in my head that had not been there before, a throbbing like some secret heartbeat uniting the earth beneath my feet and the buildings scattered on its surface. And then I realised that the throbbing was the beat of my own heart, rising faster and faster within my chest, singing like pain in my whole body, sending waves of heat until my skin was utterly consumed, and everything beneath it was revealed, blistered and smarting…
No. I tore my eyes from the house as fast as I could, but it took a while for my heartbeat to calm down. I had seen enough strange things in my life to know this was not a hallucination. Xoco was right. There was something about this house. Something unpleasant, and it was spreading – from the house to Citli, and the gods only knew where it was going to stop.
I didn't like it. It meant that everyone could be struck down.
Everyone.
After that experience, I was not keen on entering a room in the house again, but Huchimitl was waiting for me inside – and I would not leave her alone in there, if I could help it. I asked the slave at the gates where the reception area was, and he showed me through another door into a large, well-lit room.
The brightly-coloured frescoes adorning the room were a relief after the blank adobe of the outer walls. All of them represented sacrifices to the gods: young children weeping as their throats were slit to honour Tlaloc, God of Rain; a maiden dancing to honour Xilonen, Goddess of Young Corn, later replaced by a priest wearing her flayed, yellow skin; a warrior, his face thrust into burning embers as a sacrifice to Huehueteotl, God of the Hearth.
Again, those were not unusual. I well knew that only human blood and human lives kept the end of the world at bay. I had abased myself before gods, offered them what they needed, from human hearts to flayed skins; I had wielded many obsidian knives myself in many sacrifices. But the concentration of images in that room seemed almost unhealthy.
I found Huchimitl sitting on the dais in the centre. She turned her masked face towards me. “So?”
“Something is wrong.” I looked at her, sitting secure between her walls, never suspecting about the curse affecting more than just Citli. “The house is wrong.”
Her gaze rested on me, and would not move away. “An odd thing to say.”
“Don't tell me you haven't felt it.”
For a moment I thought I had convinced her. And then she spoke, sinking her barb as deep as she could. “Not all of us are fortunate enough to have gone to calmecac, and become a priest.”
Now that I had seen where she lived, the oppressive atmosphere of the house, more than ever I regretted not coming to visit her. I should have insisted when her family rejected me. I should have done something, not turned away like a coward. So I kept my peace, and said only, “They say your husband died in odd circumstances.”
“How would you know?”
“Does it matter?”
“The servants told you,” Huchimitl said, with an angry stabbing gesture. “They talk too much, and most of that is lies.”
I kept hoping she'd give me something, anything I could use to understand what was going on. “Do you deny that his death wasn't normal, Huchimitl? All I have to do is ask the slaves, or check the registers – “
“There was nothing odd about my husband's death,” she snapped, far too quickly.
Nothing odd? The hollow in my stomach was back. Had Xoco been right about Huchimitl's guilt? “Why do you say that?”
“Because my husband's death has nothing to do with Citli's illness. Tlalli had a weak heart. He exerted himself too much on the battlefields abroad; and he died of it. That is all.”
“They say you quarrelled.”
Huchimitl nodded; the reflections on the mask moved as she did so. I felt queasy just seeing that. “We did, often,” she said. “Do you want me to lie and say it was a happy marriage?”
“No,” I said. “Though I truly wish you'd found happiness.”
“We don't always get what we wish for,” Huchimitl said. “Acatl. Trust me. I saw Tlalli die. It was a heart
