row of featherwork at the neck of my cape. Hummingbird feathers, the mark of a warrior, of the war god, Left- Handed Hummingbird Himself, and hence an inalienable symbol of nobility.
Of course, the greater nobles supplemented hummingbird feathers with the plumes of the quetzal, symbol of Lord Quetzalcoatl; but it had been a while since I had any dealings with the nobility, minor or otherwise.
It had been a good deal longer since I had dealt with any of my clansmen. My relatives and I would much rather it stayed that way. But Uncle Tlaloc commanded, and his word was the closest thing there was to law down in English Town. I stepped over a sleeping beggar on the sidewalk, threw back my head, squared my shoulders, and marched off toward the Death Master’s temple-every inch a Child of the Hummingbird on his way to his destiny on the Field of Flowers.
The guards at the Temple Precinct passed me on the strength of my cloak, the clan tattoo on my cheeks-and my bearing. None of Uncle’s other employees could have entered the sacred quarter of the Atlnahuac so easily, which was why the old bastard had chosen me for this job.
The Death Master’s temple was at the far end of the sacred quarter, close to the bay and downwind of the major temples. I strolled easily and unremarked among the other nobles, priests, and servants who were out at this hour. Floodlights cast the painted and carved friezes in garish light. Here and there neon tubes outlined the temples on top of the pyramids in reds, the color of fresh blood, and purples, the shade of clotted blood. It was different- harsher-than I remembered, and yet I knew the sacred quarter hadn’t changed.
Ninedeer hadn’t changed either. He was as thin and gangly as I remembered him. Adulthood hadn’t cured his weak chin, and the elaborate jade lip plug he affected only heightened the deficiency. We had never particularly liked each other.
“I didn’t expect to ever see you again,” he said when a temple servant ushered me into his presence.
I cast an arm at the stone tables behind him and the draped burdens a few of them bore. “Working here?
Surely I would have thought you’d expect me to turn up sooner or later.”
The years had done as much to improve his sense of humor as they had to improve his jawline. “I didn’t expect to see you alive,” he amended. “You’re not even supposed to be here.”
I smiled in the way I had learned since I had been with Uncle Tlaloc. “You could call the guards and have me sent away,” I said mildly. “Of course, then I would have to seek you elsewhere to conduct our business.”
His expression told me that rumors about what had happened to the last relative who crossed me had leaked into clan gossip. “What do you want?” he asked sullenly.
“I want a look at one of your charges,” I said. “And I want to know what you can tell me about it.”
“It? You mean an animal?” That was possible, of course. The Death Master’s duties included collecting the bodies of animals who had died in the city, as well as dead humans, sacrificial victims, and executed criminals. But he knew damn well it wasn’t any animal, and his voice showed it.
“I mean the huetlacoatl.”
Ninedeer flinched as if I had slapped him. “No! Absolutely not.”
I leaned against the wall in an attitude of exaggerated ease. “One way or another, cousin. One way or another.”
He hesitated, weighed his alternatives, and decided it would be better to give me what I wanted now. He shrugged, gestured, and led me down a short corridor. The room at the end was narrow and low, but cleaner than the main receiving chamber. There were sweet herbs strewn on the floor and the gas torches gave a steady, bright light. Normally a room like this would be used to receive the bodies of high nobles and other important functionaries. What lay on the table now was not a noble, and perhaps not a functionary, but it was clearly important.
“Make it quick,” he said as we entered the chamber. “They are coming for the body soon.”
I gestured and Ninedeer flung back the red cotton sheet that draped the corpse.
The thing on the slab was man-sized and had walked on two legs. Beyond that there was little enough resemblance to a human. The skin was greenish-gray, shading to fishbelly white between the legs. The head had a prominent muzzle filled with sharp teeth made for tearing. The huge middle claw on each foot was drawn back in the rigor of death. The hands were more delicate and supple, but were frozen in a raking gesture. The corpse lay half on its side because its tail would not let it lie on its back.
Huetlacoatl, the old Serpent Lords, mysterious inhabitants of Viru, the continent to the south. In spite of hundreds of years of trading, raiding, and occasional open warfare, and in spite of the fact that they had a trading post on an island in the bay, I had never seen one in the flesh before.
“Satisfied?” Ninedeer demanded and made to recover the body.
I frowned and gestured him away. The corpse was split from the crotch almost to the neck. There were other wounds on the body, stab wounds to the upper chest showing how the creature had died, and a dark line around the neck that I took to be the bruise left by a garrotte.
I pointed to the gaping wound and cocked my eye at Ninedeer. “It was done after he was dead,” he admitted. “At least if the thing works like a human being or an animal. The heart-or whatever kept its soul-had stopped pumping.”
“Is the heart still there?”
“Quetzalcoatl, yes!” Ninedeer exclaimed, wide-eyed. “As least as best the Death Master can tell. This one wasn’t sacrificed, if that’s your meaning.”
I bent down to examine one of the three-fingered hands with its raking talons. “Any blood?”
“No. Nor on the big claw on the foot, either. Now will you please get out of here?”
“Shortly. Now what else can you tell me?”
“Nothing. Go away.” I didn’t need to be a spirit reader to follow his thoughts. As a lesser noble and scion of a Reed clan, I had every right to be here. But my clan membership, and my life, were the only things they had not taken from me when they cast me out. And in spite of a clansman’s theoretical rights, I doubted the authorities would appreciate even a clansman in good standing poking around something as sensitive as a dead huetlacoatl. If I were found here they might not spare my life this time. But whatever they did to me, Ninedeer would be in trouble, and that was all he cared about.
Since Ninedeer put more value on his record than I did on my life, the rest was easy. “I’ve got all night, you know.”
Ninedeer ground his teeth. “It was done where it was found, in the alley. At least if these things bleed the way animals do.”
That made sense. A deserted alley was as good as any other place for such butchery. I reached down and examined the hem of the thing’s drab cotton cloak. “What’s this?”
He shifted from one foot to the other. “I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t.”
I held the hem to my nose and sniffed, trying to drown out the snake stink. “Candle grease.” I dropped it and looked the body over. Whoever had done this had stood over the thing for a while.
Ninedeer was almost dancing with impatience. “The Speakers to the Huetlacoatl will be here any minute to retrieve the body. If they find you here it will be hard on both of us.”
“No sweet herbs and winding sheet?”
“We do not know what the huetlacoatls’ customs are on these things. Nowgo! ”
There wasn’t much else to learn there, so I went. I stood in the shadows across from the Death Master’s temple for a while, under a carved Earth Monster that protected me from most of the rain, while I thought about what my cousin had told me. I wasn’t ready to return to the Hummingbird’s Palace. Uncle Tlaloc likes complete reports, not mysteries.
The first mystery was how the thing had died. A fight among the huetlacoatl? Possibly. They were supposed to kill by disemboweling with the ripping claws on their feet, but the wound had been made from the bottom up, not the top down. What’s more, the flesh was sliced neatly, not torn as by a claw.
And the marks of the garrotte and the stab wounds to the chest suggested human assistance, at least.
Not for the first time I wondered what Uncle Tlaloc was doing sticking his nose in this business. That in itself suggested human involvement.
So, assume the huetlacoatl had been killed by men. It had taken several of them, one to hold it by the garrotte around its neck and more to stab it-probably two more, at least, judging from the stab wounds.
Then why had humans gone to all that trouble to kill a huetlacoatl? True, they were unpopular-so unpopular they seldom left their treaty island in the bay and almost always traveled with an escort of human guards. Yet,
