my chest, slowly emptying my lungs.
The power of Mictlan slowly receded, leaving me exhausted: drained of joy, of hope. I had never had cause to draw on it that way. I had not even been sure it could be done.
I hoped never to do it again.
I lay, hardly daring to breathe. Every movement of my chest sent fresh waves of pain through my ribcage. My left arm would never be the same, either.
The moon's light struck the Floating Garden, throwing into stark contrast the bed of maize shoots, and the blood that was pouring onto it. My blood.
Someone – Teomitl – hauled the beast's corpse off me. 'Acatl-tzin?'
I didn't move, just stared at him, watching him blur in and out of focus. His left leg sported an ugly gash, and he leant on his sword – but the spell around him was still tight, and his upright bearing was undiminished.
'I've been better,' I whispered.
He pulled me upright, into a seated position. 'Good thing we came well-prepared,' he said, searching in the herb pouch he'd taken from the temple.
He pulled out a pad of dayflower and applied it to my chest wound. It turned dark; with a curse, he threw it away, and applied another one.
'Don't move,' he said, when the bleeding had slowed down. 'I think there were things in that hut that might help us…'
He was soon back, with a covered jar of clay that stank of alcohol. 'Pulque,' he said. 'Unfermented maguey sap would have been better, but it will have to do.'
When he poured it over the wounds, I thought I would scream again. But I'd had my fill of screaming. I clenched my teeth, and attempted to bring the world back into focus.
Teomitl tore my cloak into strips to make bandages; his gestures as he dressed my wound were cool, professional. 'You're not – a – healer,' I said.
He shook his head. 'But I've seen my share of wounds, and my share of warriors whose wounds filled with pus and turned black. Stupid. Those things are easily cured, if you take them at the beginning.'
'Your own wounds,' I said, struggling to come up with something significant. My thoughts seemed to have scattered.
He shrugged. 'Damaging, but not serious. I'll splint my leg after I'm done with you.'
'Thank you,' I said, when he was finished. My left arm was wrapped in maize leaves; my chest was covered in an array of cotton bandages soaked in pulque. The smell of alcohol was starting to go to my head, making me feel dizzy. I shook myself, and winced at the pain.
'Don't overexert yourself!' Teomitl snapped. He looked at his own wound, critically. 'Mm.'
I laughed, more sharply than I'd intended to. 'The night isn't over. We still have to find who summoned the beast, not to mention Priestess Eleuia.'
'Do you think I don't know?' Teomitl's voice was low, angry. 'I'm telling you those wounds won't heal if you keep running around the city.'
I rose, carefully. Even breathing hurt. Teomitl was pouring the rest of the pulque on his own wound, with an efficiency that made me suspect he didn't need my help.
'I'll go and search the hut,' I said. I still needed to access the beast's memories, but that would be best done a little later, when I'd had time to catch my breath.
'By the way,' Teomitl said, without raising his eyes. 'You've got some nerve, throwing knives at me.'
I shrugged. I hadn't liked doing it, but there had been no other choice. 'I wasn't throwing it at you. I used my priest's senses to target the beast. Anyway, it missed you.'
'It might not have.'
'You'd rather have lost?' I asked, pointedly. 'If you want to exchange wounds…'
He shook his head, sharply. 'No. But I'd rather you didn't do it again.'
'If it had been me fighting, and you outside, I'd rather take my chances with a thrown knife than with the beast's claws. But I'll remember.'
Inside the hut, I carefully rekindled the dying fire, offering a brief prayer to Huehueteotl, God of the Hearth. The flames that rose between the three stones illuminated the walls, magnifying my shadow like that of a monster. The shards of the jade heart crunched under my feet.
With some difficulty, I turned the three corpses on their backs. In the sweltering heat of the marshes, they had already decomposed, flesh sloughing off, revealing the bones beneath. I'd seen too many dead people to be unsettled by the half-visible skulls, or by the strong smell of putrescence that hung in the air.
Their chests gaped open: an uncomfortable feeling, given how close I'd come to sharing the same fate. My wounds itched under Teomitl's bandages.
I whispered a quick litany for the Dead, brushing blood from my wounds over their rotting foreheads – the best I could do outside my temple and without much living blood of my own. Later, I'd make sure someone picked up the corpses and brought them back to give them a proper funeral.
Dark splotches of blood marked the floor of the hut. I knelt, rubbed my fingers on one of them. It flaked. Completely dry, then. By the look of the corpses, they had been dead for some time anyway: at least a day, if not
