Yaotl and Neutemoc carried Eleuia's body back to my temple. As we walked on the Tlacopan causeway, the macabre load elicited more than a few startled glances. But the presence of a Guardian deterred people from approaching us.
Ichtaca was descending the shrine steps when we entered. He took a look at the body in Yaotl's arms, and a long, darker one at me. 'You'll be needing one of the examination rooms, I take it?'
I nodded. I really needed to speak with Ichtaca about the running of the temple, before whatever grievance he had festered into something incurable; unfortunately, time was hard to find.
I sent the others to follow Ichtaca, while I stopped by the storehouse to recover a wooden cage with an owl. I might not need magic to examine the corpse, but one never knew.
The examination room was a simple affair: a stone altar with grooves to evacuate the blood; a wooden chest holding a collection of obsidian knives; and at the back, a smaller altar of polished ivory dedicated to Mictlantecuhtli. I set the owl's cage on the floor, near the altar.
I recovered a small, sharp obsidian blade from the chest, and made my offerings of blood to my god: three quick slashes across the back of my left hand, blood flowing onto the altar. 'We come for the truth,' I said, softly. 'Blind not our eyes; deceive us not. We come for the truth.'
I touched the tip of my obsidian knife to the altar. A small jolt passed from the handle of the knife to my palm: a sign that some of Mictlan's magic had suffused the blade.
Yaotl and Neutemoc had already laid Eleuia's body on the stone altar. Bluish blotches marked her stomach: the same place as the stretch-marks of her childbirth.
Ceyaxochitl's cane tapped on the stone floor, until she found her place. She watched me like a vulture awaiting carrion.
I put the tips of my fingers on Eleuia's purple lips, and gently forced them open. The touch was cold, numbing. Froth had adhered to the inside of her mouth. Not sufficient – many things other than drowning could cause the foam – but a good start.
I retrieved a clean cloth from the chest and wiped off the foam. Then I pressed down on her chest, forcing her to exhale.
Foam bubbled up, replacing what I had removed. So Eleuia had drowned: she had been alive before entering the water. Interesting. I would have expected her captors to throw her dead body into the lake, not for her to be dragged down by the ahuizotl.
'Well?' Ceyaxochitl asked.
I shrugged. Not much to say at that point. 'She died of drowning. The ahuizotl is most likely what killed her.'
I turned my attention to the bruises. They were by no means abnormal: as the body bumped against branches and other obstacles, it was bound to gather quite a few of them. But something about their pattern…
I felt them, carefully. The skin was bluish-black and swollen, resilient to my touch. But bruises inflicted after death didn't swell, and they seldom turned blue-black.
Not all of the bruises were the same age. I stepped back, lifted one of Eleuia's arms. There was… a gradation: some of them were blue-black, bordering on a greenish colour, some of them were barely turning blue; and a few were still red marks on the skin.
My stomach churned. She'd been beaten up, consistently and regularly: in three days, the oldest bruises had had time to start discolouring, but the most recent ones were only burst vessels, the blood barely coagulating.
'Someone tortured her,' I said, slowly.
Neutemoc's face turned white and harsh, like a shell.
'They took her, and then they beat her, again and again.'
'What for?' Ceyaxochitl asked.
I shook my head. 'I don't know. I thought – she had a child, in the Chalca Wars.' Even though I didn't see what the child would have had to do with all of this. Unless Eleuia had tried to blackmail Mahuizoh?
'Yes,' Neutemoc said. 'I remember.' His gaze was distant. 'But it was stillborn, Acatl.'
'That's what Eleuia told you.'
Neutemoc said, 'I was there, Acatl. I saw her bury the body. Trust me. He could never have lived.'
'You're sure?' I asked.
Neutemoc's lips were two dark lines in the oval of his face. 'Yes,' he said. 'I'll bear witness to that, if you wish.'
'No need,' I said. Huitzilpochtli strike me down. The child had sounded like too great a thing to be ignored – and Eleuia herself not above doing whatever she had to do to ensure her future. But if he was dead…
What could her abductors have wanted from Eleuia?
I ran my fingers on the bruises. Perhaps I was mistaken. But no, there were too many of them, and they were too large to have been caused by random objects dragged by the currents. The way they were spread, too: few parts of Eleuia's body weren't covered in them. It spoke, not of rage, but of a cold-blooded method, from the summoning of the beast to Eleuia's deliberate, methodical torture. My stomach churned again. Who were those people?
Mahuizoh? He had loved her, if I believed my witnesses, or at any rate, had had affection for her. Surely he wouldn't…
My fingers, probing, found a raised area on Eleuia's cheek: a smaller bruise, barely old enough to have discoloured.
It was the pattern of an object that had hit her, engraved into her flesh: a wound that dated from not too long before her death. I knelt, and stared at it. Unfortunately, the blood had spread and partially erased the contours. It had a shape: hints of curves, of stylised lines meeting to form the point of something else…
'Neutemoc?' I asked. 'Does this mean anything to you?'
Neutemoc turned Eleuia's face to the light; carefully, as if afraid she'd crumble under his touch. He stared,
