Obsidian & Blood

  'Where did Huei go?' I asked. I realised I didn't need to ask the question. I closed my eyes, and felt, beyond the pain that filled my body, the familiar pressure of the Wind's mind. He was once again moving through the streets of the Moyotlan district, though He appeared bewildered for some reason. Huei's spell, surely. What had she cast? How had she known all that magic? 'She's still in Moyotlan. He hasn't caught her.'

  Mihmatini squeezed my hand, briefly, and withdrew. 'There's a boat outside in the canal. Oyohuaca will row for you. She's a competent girl,' she said. 'Go.'

  'I don't need–' I started, stubbornly.

  Mihmatini shook her head, more amused than angry. 'Help? Can't you accept, for once in your life, that you can't do it on your own?'

  A groundless accusation: I had taken Teomitl's help. And then I thought, uneasily, of the way I'd summarily sent him home, getting rid of him before the climax.

  Mihmatini watched me, silent – not judging, she'd never judged me. For her, I'd always be the brother who helped her climb trees, and brought her treats from the festivals. No, not quite; for the priestesses at the calmecac had changed her, moulded her into this coolly competent girl whom I hardly recognised.

  'I'll take the boat,' I said, finally.

  Her face relaxed, a minute sag of her skin that made her less alien. 'Go,' she said.

  'With not even a warning?' I asked.

  'You know them all, Acatl. And you'll still ignore them. Go.'

  But, as I left the garden, she still called after me, 'Try to come back standing on your feet, will you?'

  Feeling even more broken than before, I limped out, bent on finding the Wind before he found Huei.

  Given my present state, it was a hopeless undertaking, but I had to try. For Huei's sake, and also for my own.

ELEVEN

Servant of the Gods

In the canal before Neutemoc's house, Oyohuaca, a slave-girl clad in a rough maguey-fibre shift, was waiting for me in a long, pointed reed boat. I climbed in, wincing as my bandages shifted.

  'Where to?' Oyohuaca asked, straightening up the lantern at the boat's bow.

  I closed my eyes, feeling for the Wind's presence. He was a few streets away from us. He had slowed down, oddly enough, and was going in a slow, wide circle towards the south-western edge of the Moyotlan district.

  'Left,' I said.

  She rowed in silence, with the easy mastery of one who had lived all her life at the water's edge. With each gesture, she whispered the same words, over and over like a litany for the dead. It took me a while to realise that the words were those of a prayer asking for the blessing of Tlaloc, the Storm Lord, God of Rain, and of His wife Chalchiutlicue, the Jade Skirt, Goddess of Lakes and Streams.

'O Lord, Our Lord,

The people, the subjects – the led, the guided, the governed,

Their flesh and bones are stricken with want and privation

They are worn, spent and in torment–'

  There was something eerie about the sound of Oyohuaca's voice, floating over the canals in counterpoint to the splash of her oars. As we moved into deserted canal after deserted canal, it seemed to call up the mist, to trail after us. And something else trailed too, something dark and quiet that swam after the boat, biding its time.

  Under the splash of the oars – in, out of the water, in, out – was its song: a quiet, hypnotic air that wove itself within my mind, melding with Oyohuaca's prayers until I no longer knew what belonged to whom.

'In Tlalocan, the verdant house,

The Blessed Land of the Drowned

The dead men play at balls, they cast the reeds

Go forth, go forth to the place of many clouds

To where the thick mists mark the Blessed Land

The verdant house, the house of Tlaloc and Chalchiutlicue'

  For too long, it had bided its time at night, quieting its hunger with fish, with newts, with algae: the sustenance of the poor, the abandoned. But now it smelled blood: a living heart, so tantalisingly close. Soon, it would feast until satiation…

'Let the people be blessed with fullness and abundance

Let them behold, let them enjoy the jade and the turquoise – the precious vegetation

The flesh of Your servants, the Providers, the Gods of Rain

Let the plants and animals be blessed with fullness and abundance–'

  The song stopped; the oars fell against the boat's frame with a dull sound that resonated in my bones. 'Acatl-tzin,' Oyohuaca said, urgently.

  With some difficulty, I tore myself from my reverie. 'What?'

  'Don't,' Oyohuaca said. The slave-girl sounded frightened.

  'I don't understand.' The Wind was moving again, picking up speed, straight towards the edge of Tenochtitlan.