empire together even more firmly than it had been before the coming of the English.
Aside from that, the end of cycles had passed with only the usual quota of wars, plagues, and rebellions to mark them. Or so they taught in the schools of the nobles. Each time, the new cycle began with the lighting of the sacred fire atop the Grand Pyramid at the Great Plaza on the shores of the Lakes of Mexico. The Emperor was reconfirmed and life continued, largely unchanged from one cycle to the next.
Only the unofficial cults changed as the old ones were discredited when the predicted miracles and wonders didn’t appear.
Since leaving my old life I found the common folk saw matters differently. To them the end of a cycle marked a profound change, a chance to strike the world’s balance anew-and by implication to ease the lot of the commoners.
But only by implication. Even here in the tolerant South, the priests would not countenance a cult that spread unrest or criticized the divinely inspired order of things. Still, was it such an odd notion that the world as we knew was it coming to an end? Was the Empire as strong or the Emperor as vigilant as He had been? Was there more unrest, more muttering in the cities and banditry in the countryside? Was there more injustice and less punishment for it? Was it really such a strange notion that Reeds and Frogs, nobles and commoners, and yes, even huetlacoatls, might somehow be combined into something new and better for the next cycle?
That thought was still with me when I hailed a water taxi to take me back through the increasingly noisome canals to the English Quarter.
Uncle Tlaloc kept me waiting for nearly four hours at the Hummingbird’s Palace before he heard my report. Not that there was anything to report, but I didn’t want Uncle getting ideas about my meeting with Toltectecuhtli.
When he finally got around to me he heard me out with a bored expression and waved me away without a word, a sign he wasn’t pleased. I didn’t bother to finish my last drink and headed for home. It was raining again, and I felt as if all three worlds were pissing on me.
The hall was dark when I reached my apartment building. Not terribly unusual. The gas torch at the end was old and cranky and so was the porter who was supposed to see to it. But tonight it struck me wrong. I pressed myself against the wall and drew my sword. Then I sidled down the corridor with my back to the wall, silently testing every door behind me as I went.
They were all securely locked, but mine wasn’t. I pressed flatter against the wall beside the door and reached out with my sword to work the latch. The door swung open noiselessly. Which meant something was really wrong. I deliberately left the hinges unoiled.
The apartment was dimly lit by the gas lamp at its lowest setting. I wasn’t about to go stumbling about in the semi-dark, so I reached over and turned the light full on.
Shit.The apartment was a mess. The cushions had been slit, items pulled off shelves and scattered on the floor, the shelves themselves had been moved. A low table was upended, as if someone had searched the base.
I made straight for the bedroom. Everything there was in disarray, except the box at the foot of the bed.
It was sitting just as I had left it-almost.
I’m very particular about that box. It is arranged just so with a hair clasped in the front corner between the lid and the box. Whoever had searched it had gotten it almost right. The box was within a finger-breadth of where I had left it, the angle was almost right. The hair was missing, having fallen out unnoticed when the box was opened.
I turned away, damning myself for keeping such a thing in the first place. Then I realized I hadn’t seen my servant Uo, or his body, anywhere. With my sword still drawn, I went looking.
I found him on his pallet by the kitchen fire, alive, amazingly enough. He barely stirred when I kicked him and a brief examination showed he was drugged. From the looks of it there’d be no information to be gotten out of him before morning.
I went back to the front room, turned the table right side up, pulled up one of the least-damaged cushions, and got out the tequila jug. I needed to settle my nerves, but most of all I needed to think.
Whoever did this wasn’t a personal enemy. That the skin was still in its box told me that. No, this was business, and obviously that business involved something I was supposed to have. It wasn’t the skin and it wasn’t money-although my strong-box had been cleaned out. So what was it?
I thought back to the priest’s words. That my part in the changing of the cycles was ignorance. That I was to cling to ignorance, profess ignorance and cherish it.Screw that! I was sure as hell ignorant, but this kind of ignorance was likely to get me killed. The obvious conclusion for whoever searched my apartment was that I’d been clever about hiding whatever it was. Their next obvious action was to grab me and question me. I doubted very seriously they’d take “I don’t know” for an answer-not unless I said it with my dying breath.
By this time the tequila was half gone and so was I. I braced a chair against the door to prevent unwelcome night visitors, kicked Uo again to see if he was any closer to waking, and when he obviously wasn’t, I staggered off to bed.
Sleep ended abruptly. I felt the presence of someone’s eyes and breath on me. It was not my servant.
“Smoke?” I mumbled. There was no answer. A stranger had been in my room, over my bed, like a disease- ridden spirit coming in an open window. I was not in the mood for another nightmare. My spine from neck to tailbone became unnaturally cold. I did not move.
Dawn was breaking. The light of fallen warriors accompanying the Sun on today’s arc through the sky filtered in weakly through the mosquito netting. After some intense staring into empty space, my eyes adjusted to the half- light.
Then some of the neighborhood roosters crowed inharmoniously. My nerves were scrambled, but I was wide awake.
Carefully, I let my eye dart about the room. No one was there. Nothing lurking in the corners or shadows.
I felt thatsomething was near. It had to be almost touching me.
There is a time-honored method of revenge in which poisonous insects or reptiles are placed inside a person’s body through the sorcerer’s art. If skill at sorcery is lacking, the cruder method of simply putting a small deadly creature in a person’s bed will do. In these times, among those who deal in not-so-flowery wars between clans, the later, cruder method is preferred.
My sleep was deep, but restless. I was tangled in my sheet. With a slow, deep breath I tried to relax all my muscles without moving them too much, raised my head, looked with my eyes, felt with the entire surface of my skin.
I saw and felt nothing, and almost breathed a hearty sigh of relief. Then something glinted in light that grew slowly brighter. Something shiny sparkled. It was close to me. Near my face. Close to my heart.
There, precariously balanced on the knot of sheets under my chin was a delicate work of the carver’s art that horrified me. It was a butterfly, masterfully carved of black volcanic glass. A real obsidian butterfly, a manifestation of the goddess of nocturnal visions. The Emperor’s Shadow, in the tradition of the poet-emperors of old, used this fragile, razor-sharp metaphor as a warning.
Popular knowledge says that if you are careful and take the obsidian butterfly off your body, pick it up and set it aside without breaking it or cutting yourself, you are destined to live. To cut yourself or to break the delicate symbol meant you are doomed.
I remembered how my mother was always telling me to be careful, and how my carelessness finally disappointed her for good. With an agonizing effort, I pulled a hand free of the sheets. The butterfly, teetered, and slipped between a fold of cloth. I carefully reached for it, aiming my fingers at the flat surface of the wings.
“Holy Shit!” I screamed as the edge of one of those black, transparent wings bit into a fingertip.
Instinctively, I jerked back my hand. As if alive, the butterfly soared across the room, to shatter into spray of black crystal against the wall.
I sprang from bed, sucked the blood from my finger like a thirsty god, and thought, They may call me Lucky, but there’s no question that I was born on the second day of the Rabbit.
Uncle Tlaloc wasn’t drinking when he summoned me into his presence. That was a very bad sign.
As I knelt before him I felt his eyes boring into the back of my head. He didn’t bid me to rise and sit as usual. He just kept looking at me like an ocelot looks at a baby bird it can’t decide whether to play with or just eat right away.
“I understand there was some excitement at your quarters last night,” he said at last.
His face didn’t change while I told him the story.
