hour?'
Neutemoc's voice was slow, deadly. 'Ask him,' he said.
The second guard looked at Neutemoc, clearly trying to decide whether he was jesting.
'Ask him,' Neutemoc said, 'about Priestess Eleuia.'
I had been carefully folding the crumpled maguey paper into a small square. By the guards' blank faces, they'd obviously not been involved in Eleuia's abduction. Time to pass a discreet message to Commander Quiyahuayo, then. There was no reason to drag the guards into the shame of Eleuia's murder.
'Tell him we found this on her body,' I said, handing my folded paper to the first guard.
He wasn't long gone. When he came back, his face was set in a frown. 'He'll see you,' he said.
The Jaguar House was almost deserted at this early hour: a few Knights were playing patolli in one of the courtyards, and all the unmarried Knights were in their dormitories – some, by the noises wafting through the entrance-curtains, still engaged with various courtesans.
Neutemoc didn't speak until we were a long way in. 'I'd hate to be trapped here,' he said.
I shrugged. 'You shouldn't have come, then.' The dice were all Quiyahuayo's in this House, anyway. At least, if I didn't come back, Ceyaxochitl and Yaotl would know who held me.
It was a meagre consolation, but it sustained me until we reached Quiyahuayo's room.
A delicate entrance curtain, adorned with images of the great Tezcatlipoca slaughtering the enemies of the Mexica, opened to reveal a wide room lit by two braziers. Lord Death and His wife faced each other in the frescoes on the walls. The god and His consort sat on Their thrones of linked bones, with the Wind of Knives a small, sharp shadow in the background. It was… wrong. They shouldn't have been there. It wasn't their place.
The only furniture was a reed mat, and four large wicker chests. One of the chests, I saw, held piles of folded codices, laid on top of each other. Even from this distance, I could tell what they were: books of prayers to Mictlantecuhtli, detailed indexes to the minor gods of the underworld, spells to summon them and bind them to one's will.
Altogether, it painted a picture of a man's obsession with Mictlan: a trait ill-suited to a commander of the Jaguar Knights, a man who should have been sworn to the Hummingbird. It was clear, though, why he had chosen to use a beast of shadows to abduct Eleuia.
Commander Quiyahuayo, in full Jaguar regalia, was sitting on the reed mat, surrounded by discarded codices and by broken writing reeds. He held a clay tablet, which he used as a support to write on maguey paper. His gestures were slow, but precise.
He raised his eyes when we came closer. 'My late-night visitors,' he said, seemingly amused. 'Leave us, will you?' he asked the guard – who nodded, and exited the room.
Commander Quiyahuayo put down his writing reed, and tilted the tablet towards us. He'd been writing on the paper I'd sent him: he had drawn a circle around the symbol, like the shape of a signet ring.
He knew.
I glanced at the entrance-curtain. The guard was standing just behind it. I couldn't tell with certainty, but there was probably a second guard as well. No choice, then; no way back; but I had known that before entering the room.
'So,' Commander Quiyahuayo said. 'Do sit down.'
Neutemoc had been watching him with a mixture of horror and fascination. 'Going through your pretence of politeness?'
Commander Quiyahuayo bowed his head. The quetzal tail-feathers on his headdress followed his motion, bending like stalks in the wind. 'The proper gestures, at the proper time,' he said. 'Incidentally, don't even think of trying to attack me, physically or otherwise.' He said the last with a quick nod in my direction, having seen my hand tighten around one of my obsidian knives. 'It would only make things more painful. And believe me, I have no wish to do so.'
He sounded sincere, and in many ways that was the worst. 'More painful than you made them for Eleuia?' I asked.
'Ah,' he said. 'Eleuia. Do sit down,' he repeated.
'I'd rather remain standing,' Neutemoc snapped. 'Since you judge that what happened to me was just an inconvenience?'
'A minor thing,' Commander Quiyahuayo said. He set his clay tablet aside carefully. 'Compared to the stakes.'
'What stakes?' I asked, wondering what kind of man would speak of human lives as if they were part of some vast game. Not a man I would like.
Commander Quiyahuayo's smile was ironic. 'Why, the Fifth World. What else do we play for?'
'I don't understand,' I said, just as Neutemoc snapped, 'Are you going to toy with us all night? Or just do to us as you did to Eleuia?'
Commander Quiyahuayo's smile slowly faded. 'You still care for the bitch,' he said, surprised. 'Why? She tried to kill you.'
If Neutemoc was shocked at this, he didn't show it. 'So did you,' he said.
Commander Quiyahuayo shrugged. 'Hazards of combats.'
This was obviously leading nowhere. Neutemoc was right: Commander Quiyahuayo was toying with us until he became bored. 'What's your interest in Eleuia?' I asked. 'Does it have anything to do with her child – the one she had in the Chalca Wars, in a temple dedicated to the Storm Lord?'
Commander Quiyahuayo recoiled visibly, though he soon recovered.
'Tell me what is going on,' I asked. 'We know about the child. We unearthed his bones. We know something is wrong with them.' I couldn't help shivering as I said this.
'You've been busy, I see,' the commander said.
'Yes,' I said. 'But I still don't–'
He cut me with a frown. 'You're a priest, Acatl. Don't you know what those bones are?'
Eerie, was my first thought. I remembered the feeling I'd had when holding them, the same feeling as in Tlaloc's shrine. 'Powerful,' I said.
