'An
Oyohuaca's face in the moonlight was drained of all colours. 'Don't listen to its song.'
'I didn't know they sang.'
Oyohuaca shook her head. 'They don't. Not unless they truly want you. Don't listen,' she said, picking up her oars again.
I thought of Huei's spell, which had so bewildered the Wind. It certainly was possible she'd summoned the beast to cover her tracks, in case some more mundane agency attempted to follow her.
How in the Fifth World had she become proficient enough to know all of this?
Oyohuaca and I followed the Wind's trail across the canals of Moyotlan. As the night became older, the houses had become silent and dark, their thatch-roofs wavering in the light of the torch; and the only sounds that came to us were the distant shell-blasts from the Sacred Precinct.
Oyohuaca kept singing her hymn, but now I could discern its urgency: it was her only protection against the ahuizotl. It didn't cover its song, though. That kept insinuating itself in my mind, whispering promises of happiness below the water – easy, it would be so easy to lean over the edge of the boat, lose myself in the Blessed Land of the Drowned…
I came to with a snap, sharply aware of how close I'd come to yielding. The smell of churned mud – and a faint, faint one of rotten flesh – filled my nostrils.
Don't listen, Oyohuaca had said. They don't sing. Not unless they truly want you.
The ahuizotls, like any magical creatures, would be drawn to power: to my own magic, embedded within the obsidian knives in my belt.
Focus. I needed to focus. I closed my eyes and thought of the Wind of Knives, of the dry emptiness of Mictlan, and how it would fill my skin and bones.
The song receded, fading to an insinuating whisper.
I opened my eyes. We were in one of the last canals in the district of Moyotlan. Beyond the houses on the right lay the open expanse of Lake Texcoco. There was no place to hide. Water wouldn't stop the Wind of Knives. Where in the Fifth World had Huei gone?
'Turn right,' I told Oyohuaca.
We squeezed through a small canal between darkened houses, and emerged from the maze of Tenochtitlan's waterways onto open water. On the left was the Tlacopan causeway, its broad stone path snaking into the distance; on the right were more Floating Gardens: rows of fields bearing the crops that fed the city.
'And now?' Oyohuaca asked.
The Wind of Knives wasn't far away. No, not far at all. On the nearby bank was the familiar glimmer of obsidian. He wasn't moving. Was He waiting for something? I couldn't see Huei anywhere.
I pointed to the bank. 'Leave me here,' I said.
The slave Oyohuaca didn't look reassured. In fact, as soon as I'd managed to disembark, she rowed away from the bank, and waited in the midst of the water, away from us.
The Wind of Knives didn't move. Mud squelched over my sandalled feet as I climbed the muddy rise – as cold, I imagined, as the touch of the ahuizotl would have been on my skin.
'Acatl,' the Wind of Knives said when I came near him.
I tensed, one hand closing on the hilt of an obsidian knife.
He did not move. He watched something below, in the Floating Gardens: a flickering light on one of the islands. 'No need,' He said.
'You–' I started.
'She is out of my reach.'
'I don't understand–'
'It is a simple thing,' He said, without irony.
'You are justice,' I said, slowly, not yet daring to believe that Huei was safe. 'You cannot be swayed, or set aside.'
'Not by you,' the Wind of Knives said. 'But there are higher powers than I. Goodbye, Acatl. We shall meet again.' He was fading even as He spoke, the obsidian shards receding into the darkness until shadows extinguished their polished reflections.
'Wait!' I said. 'You haven't told me–' He hadn't told me anything. But He was gone, or perhaps would not answer to me.
I could summon him again, but I didn't have any of the proper offerings at hand. It would take time: more time than walking down the rise, towards the light that He had been watching.
I signalled to the boat again. After a while, the slave Oyohuaca rowed back. No doubt she had ascertained that the Wind of Knives was truly gone before she would approach again. She was a cautious girl.
'Can you row me to that Floating Garden?' I asked.
Oyohuaca spoke as I painstakingly climbed into the boat. 'It's not a Floating Garden,' she said.
But… 'Then what is it?'
'A temple,' Oyohuaca said, picking up her oars again. 'To Chalchiutlicue, Our Lady of Lakes and Streams. It's where they host the sacrifices for Her festivals.'
The flickering light turned out to be a torch, held by a priestess who kept watch over the temple complex.
It was a simple affair: a long building of adobe, firmly set onto a terrace of stone. Part of it appeared to be a calmecac for hosting the priestesses and the students; and another part of it – the part that hummed with a coiled power I could feel – had to be the shrine to the goddess.
