The jade heart went completely black. I reached out to enfold it in my hands, ignoring the searing pain that spread from the stone into my skin, and felt it beat under my fingers: a slow, regular rhythm that started in the rightmost ventricle and moved upwards, into my arm.
Slowly, carefully, I rose, keeping the heart in the same position. The beat didn't falter.
The shadows were gradually dispelled by torchlight; I could see Teomitl's shocked face, trying to reassemble itself into its usual haughty mask – and the body of the owl, blood pooling under it, the red flower blossoming on the jade plate.
Still standing within my quincunx, I turned to face each direction in turn. When I turned north, east or west, the beat of the jade heart went completely still. But when I faced south, towards the Itzapalapan causeway, the heart sprang to life under my fingers.
It had worked, then; and the beast we sought was somewhere in that direction.
• • • •
Teomitl insisted on bringing a purse filled with medicinal herbs, as well as his new sword. He kept rubbing the weapon, as if its touch were subtly wrong. I couldn't blame him: the obsidian shards embedded in the wood were charged with enough magic to send anyone into oblivion. The veil hanging around him seemed to be weaker around the sword, as if the magics were fighting one another, but it did not appear to be serious – for which I was eternally grateful.
As we exited the temple and headed southwest towards the district of Moyotlan, I asked, 'You do know about the magic?'
He looked puzzled. 'Which magic?'
'Around you?'
The way Teomitl attempted to look at his arms and legs convinced me he hadn't known. But he didn't look happy about it: his face darkened, a change of mood that was visible even in the wavering light of his torch.
'A protective spell some fool laid on me without my consent,' he muttered, darkly. 'Nothing worth worrying about.'
I did wonder, though: it was powerful magic, and I wasn't entirely sure how it would withstand the assaults of a beast of shadows – some spells just shattered, crippling the people on whom they'd been laid. 'You'd better stay back,' I said.
Teomitl shook his head and didn't answer.
Under my fingers, the heart beat at its steady rhythm as we ran through the deserted streets. The grand houses became smaller, turning from adobe to mud, the flat roofs replaced by high, tapered ones painted with abstract patterns; finally turning into the humble mud dwellings of peasants, ringed by fields of maize. We were almost at the lake shore.
Teomitl's hands held the torch steady as we ran out of the city altogether, and found ourselves in the midst of dried maize husks, crunching under our feet.
I turned the heart right and left; and it beat again, in the direction of a group of small, squat islands on the edge of the lake.
Teomitl saw the way I faced, and groaned. 'Oh no. Not the Floating Gardens.'
The
'We need a boat,' Teomitl was saying, his torch wavering left and right. 'There.' He all but ran to a small reed boat, moored to the bank ahead of us. 'Let's take this one.'
'It's not ours,' I said, shocked. 'At least ask for permission.'
His eyes were wide in the torchlight. 'Why?' he asked. 'We'll bring it back.'
'Before dawn?' I asked. 'I can't guarantee that, and neither can you.' A boat like that would be a family's sole means of transport, the only way to gather fish from the lake, to carry merchandise to the marketplace. To wake up in the morning, and discover it lost, to think it stolen… that would truly be disastrous. I scanned the banks: close by was the dark shape of a hut, its coloured thatch roof reflecting the torchlight. 'Let's warn them.'
'Acatl-tzin.' Teomitl's voice shook on the verge of exasperation. 'A life is at stake, and you worry about peasants?'
My own parents had been peasants. I had grown up in fields much like those we were walking in; and the weak were so easily overlooked in the scheme of things. Teomitl's attitude, while not unexpected, disappointed me. I'd hoped for more – intelligence? Compassion? 'That boat is a family's living,' I said, more sharply than I'd intended to. 'I won't trample lives to save just one.'
'But,' Teomitl said, shaking his head, 'you said you were looking for Priestess Eleuia…'
I was already walking towards the hut. With all the noise we were making, they would no doubt be awake.
A man dressed in a simple loincloth stood on the threshold of the dwelling, holding a trembling torch in his hand.
'We need to borrow your boat,' I said.
His eyes focused on me, on my grey cloak, its colour uncertain in starlight, on the streaks of makeup that marked my face. I could have been anyone to him. But he saw that I was armed.
'Take what you need,' he said. 'But don't…' A sweeping gesture with his hands, encompassing the hut and those sleeping within.
'Oh, for the Duality's sake,' Teomitl said. He threw something in the air. It glittered as it fell, and landed with the harsh sound of metal striking metal. 'Buy a new boat with that, if we damage it. Come on, Acatl-tzin. Let's go.'
The man bent down to pick up Teomitl's offering: quills of gold, tied together at the end, enough to ensure two months' living, if not more. Tossed casually into the mud, as if they were worth nothing at all: the quintessential warrior gesture. Some student. Obedience, like humility, was a foreign notion to him.
'Teomitl,' I said as he untied the boat: an interesting feat, since he had one hand taken by his torch. 'I thought I'd made things clear. You follow my lead.'
