for a while, at the eyeless hollows, at the small pattern on her cheek. His face was expressionless but his fingers had clenched into fists. 'There was no reason,' he muttered. 'What kind of man…?'
I knew what he was thinking, because I felt the same nausea welling up in me, tightening until I could barely breathe. 'Neutemoc.'
At length, he shook his head. 'No,' he said. 'That mark is too badly damaged, Acatl.'
Ceyaxochitl's cane tapped on the stone floor. 'Let me see,' she said.
Neutemoc stepped aside, without a word.
Ceyaxochitl, unlike Neutemoc, probed Eleuia's flesh like a buyer investigating the fitness of a dog. A faint trace of magic hung in the air: she was calling on the power of the Duality to aid her sight. 'Hum,' she said. 'It is very deformed.'
'Spreading blood,' I said. 'She was alive for some time after that bruise.'
'How long?' Ceyaxochitl asked.
'Not very long,' I said. 'So?' I felt sick. In my years as a priest for the Dead, I had seen death; I had seen cruelty. But never had I seen it so methodically applied.
And yet they had released Eleuia, or she had escaped. Unless… unless they had summoned the ahuizotl to kill her, thinking to hide their crimes. Possible. It was a risk – no one summoned the Jade Skirt's creatures without paying a price – but possible.
Ceyaxochitl stared at the mark for a while. 'I have seen something like it. But I can't remember where.'
'Can you find out?' Neutemoc asked.
'Yaotl will take a copy of it,' Ceyaxochitl said. 'I can't guarantee I'll remember, but maybe someone at the Duality House…'
Neutemoc said nothing while Yaotl sketched a copy of the mark on a maguey paper. He was watching Eleuia like a man dying of thirst, as he must have watched her while she was still alive. I couldn't help thinking of Huei's anger; and how, ultimately, it had been justified.
FOURTEEN
Ceyaxochitl and Yaotl left soon after that, claiming pressing business at the palace. Neutemoc remained where he was, staring at the corpse, in what seemed to be a particularly bleak mood.
I stopped Ceyaxochitl at the door. 'I don't suppose you could summon someone from Tlalocan?'
Her eyes held me, expressionless. 'From the Blessed Land of the Drowned? You want to summon Eleuia?' Finally, she sighed. 'No. The Duality is the source and arbiter of all the gods, but They have no power over where the dead go. And you…'
I could summon the dead, but only those who belonged to my god, Mictlantecuhtli. Eleuia, who had drowned, belonged to Tlaloc, and I couldn't summon her without the Storm Lord's blessing. But there was another way. 'If she won't come to my call, I could go to her.'
Ceyaxochitl raised her eyebrows. 'Risky.'
In a god's world, I would be an exile, my magic diluted, my body weak. And there was a risk, no matter how insignificant, that I would meet Father's soul: a small thing compared to the stakes, but not something I was looking forward to, by any means.
'I know,' I said. But Eleuia would know why she had died, and who had abducted her. It was the most direct way to find out the truth.
'I really have to be at the palace,' Ceyaxochitl said. 'But if you're not back in three hours, I'll know what happened.'
I nodded. By trying to enter Tlalocan, I would subject myself to Tlaloc's whims. If I hadn't come back in three hours, there wouldn't be much Ceyaxochitl could do, except perhaps succeed where I had failed.
After Ceyaxochitl and Yaotl had left, I went back into the room. Neutemoc was still staring at Eleuia's body, with a naked hunger that made me sick. He obviously hadn't been listening to a word we'd said, and what he was thinking of was quite obvious. It rankled. Here I was, endangering my life, and all he could think of was Eleuia? Not even Huei, or his children, or his family?
I asked, angrily, 'This is what you'd have destroyed your marriage for? This flesh?' I made a sweeping gesture towards the altar, encompassing Eleuia's small, reduced body: the whitened flesh, the wrinkled fingertips… the missing eyes.
'It wasn't about carnal lust,' Neutemoc snapped.
I walked to face him, words I couldn't hold any more welling up in me. 'Wasn't it? You had everything, Neutemoc. It's not my fault if you tried to throw it all away.'
'You can't understand.'
'No,' I said. 'You're right. I can't even start to fathom it.' I knelt on the ground, and gently traced the outline of the glyph for 'water' on the stone: the mouth of a jug, out of which issued the serpentine shape of waves.
'What are you doing?' Neutemoc asked.
I shrugged. 'You'll see.' I retrieved the owl's cage from the altar, set it in the centre of the room, and withdrew the cloth that was covering it. A deafening, angry screech came from the bird in the cage.
'You're going to do magic here?' Neutemoc said.
I didn't answer.
'Acatl!' he said.
I raised my eyes briefly. 'Yes,' I said. 'And I'm going to need you here, watching out.'
'What for?'
I went back to the altar, and picked the jade plate and the spider carving. 'I'm going to enter the World
