Obsidian & Blood

  I was too tired to exchange pleasantries with her. 'How could you have been such a fool, Huei?'

  Her hand went to her throat. 'I don't understand you.'

  'You understand me very well,' I snapped. 'You summoned that beast. You asked it to abduct Eleuia, and you thought you'd never be discovered.'

  'You're insane,' she said, her eyes widening slightly.

  But I wasn't deceived. She'd already proved that she was a good liar.

  'I'm not insane,' I said. 'One thing nobody told you about beasts of shadows: they remember the first moments after their summoning. And their memories can be accessed.'

  Huei shook her head. 'You're lying, Acatl.'

  Couldn't she see? The Duality curse her, couldn't she see? 'I'm not here to arrest you,' I all but screamed, heedless of the slaves, who were now clustering at the entrance. 'This is your life we're talking about. Don't you know the penalty for breaching the boundary?'

  'Acatl…'

  How could people be so ignorant of the boundaries that I maintained, of the price for dealing with the underworld – as if all that mattered was capturing prisoners and offering their hearts to the Sun God?

  'Death, Huei. That's the price: an obsidian shard embedded in your heart, and the Wind of Knives carrying away your soul. What were you thinking of? You just can't play around with the boundaries!' A cold feeling was starting to work its way down my spine, but I couldn't tell how much of it I was imagining. He couldn't already be at the underground cavern, could He?

  She said nothing. She was watching me, her face expressionless; and she still hadn't moved from her dais.

  'How could you have been such a fool?' I asked, the question I'd been holding in my mind finally released. 'You had everything. Why endanger it all?'

  She inclined her head, a gesture as slow and stately as an imperial wife's. 'You're the one who doesn't understand, Acatl.' Her eyes were harsh. 'Neutemoc was the one who gave us all of this: the house, the jade and feathers–' Her hands moved, encompassed the rich frescoes on the walls, the silver and jade ornaments on the wicker chests. 'And he would have thrown it away for a whore's open legs. He was unhappy for a few months, and he'd take some ephemeral comfort, never seeing the consequences? I couldn't let that happen. I couldn't let him go.'

  'You loved him,' I said, shocked. The coldness was halfway down my spine now. 'You'd have killed him?'

  Her hands clenched in a spasmodic gesture. 'He wasn't supposed to be there, the Storm Lord smite him! He was supposed to be coming home.' And for the first time I heard the emotion she'd been hiding beneath her haughty mask: not fear or anger, but despair. And it hurt me to the core.

  'And finding you reeking of magic?' Some part of me knew that I was wasting time; that the coldness was all the way down my spine, and already a faint lament echoed in my ears. But I couldn't help it. I thought I had understood her, that we had trusted each other, and everything had been a lie.

  'He would never have known,' Huei said. 'And he would have come back to me in time. The children would have been safe.'

  'No,' I said. You couldn't rebuild on a canker. You couldn't go forward with a lie, any more than you could force maize burnt by Mictlan's touch to grow again. But she wouldn't see that. I couldn't make her see.

  'Acatl?' Mihmatini's puzzled voice. 'Can I have an explanation?'

  I turned, briefly. She'd pushed aside the slaves with an authority I hadn't known she possessed. Suddenly, I remembered the stakes; and that I was standing there, wasting time arguing with Huei. 'It's not the time,' I snapped, more violently than I'd intended to. And, to Huei: 'You still don't understand. The Wind of Knives is coming for you. To kill you.'

  For the first time, Huei looked uncertain. 'I don't–' she started.

  'You must have known the penalty,' I said. 'Please tell me you knew it.'

  And when she turned to look at me, her eyes widening in panic, I knew that she hadn't been the mind behind all of this. Someone had used her, and discarded her like a broken clay toy, knowing that she would die, putting an end to embarrassing questions. 'You did not,' I said. 'Who told you how to summon the beast, Huei?'

  I could feel the Wind now: a pressure in the back of my mind. He was moving north along the Itzapalapan causeway, gathering shadows around Him like shrouds. He was coming rapidly, covering in a few minutes what had taken Teomitl and me half an hour of running.

  'That's my own concern.' Huei was moving away from the dais, trying to get away from me.

  I shook my head. 'Not any more. Not from the moment you breached the boundaries. Who was it, Huei?'

  Her smile was bitter. 'And if I tell you… what then, Acatl? Will you protect me from the Wind of Knives?'

  'I can't,' I whispered, feeling the growing hollow in my stomach. I had been a fool to return here, hoping for answers, hoping I could safeguard my brother's perfect family, the pinnacle of achievement I couldn't reach. 'I–'

  'No,' Huei said. Her voice was sad, but she held herself with the bearing of an Imperial Wife. 'You've never understood, Acatl. I gave everything to this marriage, and Neutemoc repaid nothing to me. One grows tired of a hundred slights, of the casual gestures of indifference. One grows tired of wondering when one's husband will finally abandon his own household.'

  Every one of her words was a knife wound in my gut. Neutemoc couldn't have been so stupid. He…

  But I had seen how much he desired Eleuia.

  'Huei,' I whispered, but she looked at me, straight and tall, and she didn't answer.

  Mihmatini had been watching us, growing more and more horrified with each word. 'Acatl,' she said. 'You don't mean…'

  When she was younger, on my rare holidays from the calmecac, I'd shared with her the tales of the priests, trying to impress her with all the beasts we'd have to fight, deluding myself I could play the warrior. She knew about the Wind of Knives, and she knew why He was coming.