patterns, Neutemoc pulled at my cloak.
'Come on,' he said, dragging me towards the door. 'Let's get out of here.'
I threw a glance at Commander Quiyahuayo. His eyes were glazed. The terrible numbness of the creatures' wounds would already be coursing through his whole body. He'd stay there, helpless, until they'd fed to satiety. And then the Duality knew what they'd do. Turn on us?
'I–'
'There's nothing you can do for him,' Neutemoc snapped. 'Remember? We can't kill those things. Besides, he's a murderer.'
I wasn't so sure about that. Commander Quiyahuayo had admitted to torturing Eleuia easily – indeed, as if it didn't matter at all – and I didn't think he'd lied when he said he hadn't killed her. It did leave open the question of who had killed Eleuia, and why.
With a terrible knot of guilt in my stomach, I sprang to my feet. Neutemoc was standing near the entrance curtain. 'Come on!' he said.
The air seemed to have turned to tar. I ran towards Neutemoc, but it seemed to take an eternity for me to reach him.
'Let's leave.' Neutemoc opened the curtain: outside, a thin drizzle veiled the courtyard. A blast of wind splattered rain into my face.
There had been guards, I thought, struggling to think. There had been…
The guards lay in the muddy earth, their faces drained of colour, their jaguar uniform rent open to reveal chests criss-crossed with claw-marks. I remembered the noises of men running, and of fighting, moving away from us. Not, it seemed, moving away from us: merely ending with the death of all the fighting men.
The Jaguar House was all but silent. Only the soft patter of the rain on the terraces broke the terrible stillness. Rain. The Storm Lord's rain.
'He's come into his powers,' I said.
'Because you believed that bastard's lies?' Neutemoc screamed. He was running towards the courtyard's exit. His face through the drizzle was that of a man who realises the ground has shifted under him, bringing the yawning chasm that much closer.
Commander Quiyahuayo's story had sounded too complicated to be invented on the spur of the moment; and it fitted, chillingly, with the evidence we already had. 'Why else would someone kill Commander Quiyahuayo?' I asked.
Not someone. Something. The creatures, the same which had tried to kill Neutemoc. The servants of Tlaloc.
Neutemoc didn't answer. He was ahead of me now, making his way through the maze of courtyards and rooms as if they were his own home. Of course, this was the House of his Brotherhood. Everywhere, the same stillness: the patolli boards abandoned on the ground, pelted by rain; and the bodies beside them, pale and unmoving.
Through the open door of a dormitory, I caught a glimpse of a warrior lying in a courtesan's arms: both bloodless bodies curled together in a grotesque parody of life. The same sense of wrongness as in the cave was rising in me, slowly, steadily, like a vessel filling up. I looked up at the rain, and felt the magic coiled at the heart of the clouds, coming down with each drop. The rain wasn't normal, either. As if we needed this.
'They're catching up,' I said. I couldn't keep up with Neutemoc. I'd lost track of how many courtyards we'd run through.
'I know!' Neutemoc shouted, without turning around.
Would Mihmatini's spell protect him – or would it would yield under the creatures' repeated assaults?
A child. Nausea was rising in me, sharp, demanding. A living child, somewhere in the teeming mass of Tenochtitlan, sending the creatures like puppets to destroy Commander Quiyahuayo and his men, who might still have thwarted the Storm Lord's plans.
At the entrance, the two warriors no longer stood guard. But the gates were wide open; and beyond them, sharply outlined through the curtain of rain, lay the pyramids of the Sacred Precinct, and the safety of the Duality House.
Neutemoc was already running through. Not being as agile or as lithe as my brother, I did my best to follow him. As I passed under the gates, something clawed at my cloak: the cloth tore with a ripping sound, and flapped loose in the wind.
I didn't turn. I wouldn't see anything. I just ran on. But the next claw-swipe went for my back. A fiery trail opened on the left side of my spine. Numbness spread from the wound, slowing down my rush of panic until I felt nothing at all. Just the wounds, opening one by one, and the strange, pleasant feeling of drifting away…
At the edge of my vision, Neutemoc had stopped, wondering why I wasn't following.
I had to… Grimacing, I forced myself forward. It was like moving through thick honey. I lifted my leg, laid my foot on the ground – once, twice – but neither the gates nor Neutemoc grew closer.
More wounds, in my back. Blood, trickling down, a warm, steady flow washed away by the rain. But everything was as it should be: I would be at peace for ever in Tlalocan, and I would have no need to prove myself any more…
Light blazed across the gates: a radiance so strong it hurt my eyes. For a moment, I hung suspended in time, the numbness burning away like paper crinkling in the fire, before slamming back into my own body.
Every wound in my back hurt. But it was pain; it was keeping me alive…
I tottered forward. My feet slid into the mud, and somehow I found myself on one knee, fighting dizziness.
'Acatl-tzin!'
Hands steadied me, dragged me upwards. Blinking, I managed to bring Teomitl's face into sharp focus.
'You…'
'Later,' Teomitl said. He was blazing: Huitzilpochtli's power streamed into the night, a warmth in my bones and on my soaked skin. I'd been wrong: he wasn't Payaxin. He was much tougher than my dead apprentice, much more adapted to survival. 'We have to find some shelter.'
