5
Imperial Blood
Tizoc-tzin's quarters were in a courtyard on the same layout as the Imperial Chambers: a wide terrace over two state rooms where his followers sat, gorging themselves on amaranth seeds, and cooked fowls. It was... not exactly indecent, I guessed, not exactly forbidden, but still unseemly, with the palace in mourning.
Upstairs massed mostly warriors – Eagle Knights in their cloaks of feathers, and Jaguar Knights in full regalia, with their helmets in the shape of a jaguar's head. They watched Quenami and I pass by with predators' smiles. The division between priests and warriors ran deep. They saw us as uptight fools, we saw them as arrogant men obsessed with appearances. Even Teomitl, who paid less attention to this than other warriors, proudly bore the orange scorpion cloak and the shaved head that denoted him as a Leading Youth.
The entrance-curtain was wide open, even though the evening was colder than usual. Inside, bare-chested warriors lounged on mats, picking frogs, fish and other delicacies from bowls set in front of them.
Quenami wove his way through the crowd with supreme ease, stopping here and there to greet a particular table, ignoring their gazes of frank contempt. Teomitl's face was frozen in ill-concealed anger, and he walked with the haughty pride of a sacrifice victim.
At the back of the room, five windows opened on another courtyard, a garden from which came the chatter of birds. The wind, blowing through the apertures, brought in the smell of the distant jungle, strong enough to overwhelm the aroma of copal incense.
Tizoc-tzin was seated on a mat behind a wooden screen so polished it shone with yellow reflections. Beside me I felt Teomitl stiffen. "Does he wear turquoise too?" he whispered angrily.
As it turned out, Tizoc-tzin – a middle-aged man with sallow skin – did not wear turquoise, but a deep blue that was uncomfortably close to the imperial colour. I couldn't help but notice that several of the warriors we'd passed had also removed their sandals out of reverence.
"Ah, our high priest for the Dead. What a pleasure," he said. He dismissed Quenami with a wave of his long fingers, and then turned his attention back to me.
He had never made me comfortable, in a very different way than the She-Snake. I could trust the She-Snake to act in his own interests; but with Tizoc-tzin I never knew if he was going to do something just out of caprice.
His eyes were two small, black beads that pierced me like a spear. He considered me for a moment with growing anger. "I've always known that priests couldn't be trusted. You have just exceeded my expectations."
"The star-demons – "
"Save your breath." His voice had an aura of command, cutting, merciless. "I know all about the star-demons, Acatl."
"Then you'll know this isn't the time for quarrels."
"On the contrary." Tizoc-tzin smiled, an expression that didn't reach his eyes. "This is a time of flux. What better opportunity for change?"
Oh gods, what a fool. But a scrap of self-preservation prevented me from saying that aloud. "My Lord – "
"I know everything there is to know about you, and you have gone too far."
"Too far?" I asked. I might have, with Acamapichtli, but there was no way he could know about that, not unless Quenami could communicate by thought alone.
Tizoc-tin's gaze moved to Teomitl. "Don't act so innocently, Acatl. Did you think I would never realise? A prince will marry a noblewoman or a princess, never the daughter of peasants."
So that was what it was all about. How dare he? "If you refer to my sister," I said, coolly, "she is no longer the daughter of peasants. She is the sister of a Jaguar Knight, and of the High Priest for the Dead."
Teomitl's face had gone pale. I had to admit we did not have much to stand on. Mihmatini would have made a wonderful concubine, but to reach any higher would have been the worst kind of arrogance.
"The daughter of peasants," Tizoc-tzin repeated. "And you… you have the audacity to think her fit to join the imperial family? It is not enough to have my brother in your thrall, always following you. You must have more, Acatl. You place your pawns everywhere advantageous and hope that I won't notice. Well, I'm no fool, and I have seen."
I'd listened in growing perplexity, and then anger. "You accuse me wrongly. I have never had any intention of holding power in this court."
"That was the game you played at first." Tizoc-tzin's face had turned the colour of muddy earth. "Last year, when you came before me, having never set a foot at court. But that's no longer true."
"I have the best interests of my order and of the Fifth World at heart."
"No doubt, no doubt." His face was creased in a smirk I longed to wipe off.
Star-demons take the man, how could he not see that I was sincere? Out of all those he had to face within the imperial court, I was possibly the one with the least reason to set myself against him...
Except, of course, for the treacherous little voice that kept whispering that the She-Snake and Manatzpa were right, that he was no man fit to be Revered Speaker, no man fit to rule Huitzilpochtli's empire.
"My Lord..."
His eyes were on me. I saw then that he'd dismiss me. That out of his rivals, I was the one enjoying the least support, an isolated priest whom no one would miss. That was the reason why Quenami, the Storm Lord's lightning blind him, had looked so happy, one fewer man in his path.
"Enough."
It was Teomitl who had spoken. For the first time since entering the room, his voice had the same cutting edge as Tizoc-tzin's. "Brother, look at you. You disgrace yourself."
"So says the man who follows him," Tizoc-tzin snapped.
"So says the man who sees clearly," Teomitl said. "Do you truly wish to dismiss the High Priest for the Dead, at a time like this? What an auspicious way to start your reign."
Tizoc-tzin did not move, but his whole stance hardened. "You're young," he said to Teomitl. "You understand nothing of politics."
"No," Teomitl said. "And I'm not sure I ever will."
Tizoc grimaced. "You'll have to. Can't you see?" His voice softened, no longer the ruler chastising his subjects. "In less than a week, you'll be Master of the House of Darts. In a few dozen years..."
"The Revered Speaker is anointed by Huitzilpochtli," Teomitl said, at last, and Tizoc-tzin, who believed more in men than in gods, grimaced. "He leads us forth into battle, to extend the boundaries of the Mexica Empire from sea to sea. This isn't about politics."
"You'd marry her, then?" Tizoc-tzin's lips had thinned to a slash across his face. "The little peasants' daughter?"
If that was intended as a reconciliation – a shared moment of prejudice – it failed utterly. Teomitl's face froze, took on the cast of jade. I reached out and squeezed his arm hard enough to bruise. "No, you fool," I whispered.
"What I choose to do or not to do does not belong to you," Teomitl said. "Nothing has been decreed yet, brother."
"It will not be long." I wondered where Tizoc-tzin's confidence came from, when the council was so split, and one of his own followers had just been slaughtered?
"I thought you'd know," Teomitl's voice could have frozen water, "you who will dedicate yourself to the Southern Hummingbird, to the Smoking Mirror, the gods of all that is fluid and impermanent. Nothing in the Fifth World is ever certain."
"Oh, you're mistaken." Tizoc-tzin's smile, for once, was sincere, and quietly confident. "Very much mistaken, brother."
"Then we'll see, won't we?" Teomitl put his hands palms up; and then turned them towards the floor in a clink of jade and metal. "How the dice fall. Meanwhile– "
Tizoc-tzin's gaze rested on me, dark and angry. "Meanwhile, I will let things rest. But be assured, Acatl, I won't forget."
Neither would I.
* * * *
I came out of our interview with Tizoc-tzin shaking like reeds in the wind. Teomitl, who viewed all such displays as cowardice, appeared unmoved. It was only when he stopped in a small courtyard and just stood there, staring at the sky, that I knew he had not been unaffected.
"He's not a bad man," he said.
Around us, the night was cold and heavy, the stars above pulsing softly, the owls hooting in the night, the faint smell of copal and scented sweat baths. "I'm not sure," I said.
"You don't know him. He was always like this." His hands clenched. "He can't see the world through other people's eyes, but he knows his own faults, all too well."
No, I didn't know Tizoc-tzin. But, somehow, I doubted that Teomitl, who was ten years his junior and had grown up in the seclusion of a priests' school, would know him any better. "He's your brother," I said. I'd do the same for any of mine. Heavens, I'd even defended my brother Neutemoc last year, even though I'd believed him to be as guilty as the evidence indicated. "Your loyalty–"
"It's not about loyalty." Teomitl paced in the courtyard, around a small basin decorated with coloured stones. His eyes were still on the sky. "I know how he is."
"You didn't grow up together–"
"No, of course not. But he's grooming me to be Master of the House of Darts in his stead."
"That doesn't mean–"
"I'm not a fool!" He stabbed the empty air with his right hand.
"I never said you were." I'd never seen him in such a state, and it worried me. Throughout the previous day, he'd gone into the palace, more or less picking quarrels with everyone he met. He seemed to have reverted to the prickly boy Ceyaxochitl had entrusted to me a year ago, one who had "Grown up like a wild flower", as she had said. It was as if all my teachings, all my exercises, had been for nothing. Was it Axayacatl-tzin's death? His brother had been Revered Speaker for most of Teomitl’s life. It would be hard to admit the world was about to change irretrievably.
"You don't understand. I take his lessons, and I learn." His voice was softer now, almost spent.
I asked the question he wanted me to ask. "And what do you learn, Teomitl?"
"Not the lessons he wants to teach me." He stopped pacing, and would not look at me. "I learn that he stopped trusting others a long time ago. I learn that he has enemies and sycophants, but no friends. I learn," and his voice was a whisper by now, "that power took him and gnawed him from the inside out, and that he is but a frightened shell, that the only goal he can still dream of is to sit on Axayacatl's mat. Everything else tastes like ashes."
I was silent for a while. "That's what you learnt. But not what I see." Not to mention that this gave him a motivation to influence the vote, perhaps to the point of using supernatural help to do it.
"Acatl-tzin– "
I had always been honest with him, and even when it came to this moment, I could not give him some comforting lie. "No," I said. "I can only believe what I see."
He looked at me for a while. His hands were still, preternaturally so. "I see. I see."
"Teomitl–"
"No, you're right. It's not that at all, and I am a fool. Good night, Acatl-tzin."
"Teomitl!"
But he was already gone.
* * * *
I remained for a while, sitting in the courtyard, wondering what I could have said that would have made things go differently. I didn't like those bleak moods, or the quick way he took offence. He'd always been susceptible, but right now he looked as though his nerves were rubbed raw.
Something was wrong, but I couldn't work out what.
Footsteps on the stones tore me from my reflection. Looking up, I saw Ceyaxochitl looming over me, her slight silhouette highlighted by moonlight. "I thought I'd find you here."
"Here?" I said, gesturing to the small courtyard. The only remarkable thing about it was that it contained us both.
"In the palace." She grimaced, and slid to sit cross-legged next to me on the warm stones. "I've told you before: you don't get enough sleep."
"I should think I've outgrown the need for a mother."
Ceyaxochitl's gaze grew pensive. "Yes, I should think you have. Most impressively."
A small, almost muted jab. Even though they'd both been dead for years, my parents had loomed large over my life, until the previous year, when I'd finally realised I was no longer beholden to them. "What do you want, Ceyaxochitl? I assume you didn't come here to talk."
She shrugged. "Perhaps I did. Perhaps I do care about your welfare."
Now she scared me. The last time Ceyaxochitl had interfered in my life, she'd got me nominated as High Priest, a position I didn't want and didn't particularly appreciate. That I'd grown into it over the years didn't change the original intent. "You can't get me higher than this," I said. I tried not to think of Teomitl, my student, the boy-prince who would one day become Revered Speaker.
Ceyaxochitl smiled, the lines of her face softening in the moonlight. "We'll see."
I hesitated, loath to break the moment by focusing on murder and intrigue once again. "I promised the councilmen protection from the Duality, for those who desired it."
"We can provide," Ceyaxochitl said. "Though I imagine many of them will already have their own protections."
"Echichilli?" I said, thinking of the old councillor.
"He was always a strong magician." There was an expression on her face I found hard to read in the moonlight, and then I realised it was nostalgia. "A good man, one of the few on the council."
"The others..."
"The others like the sound of their own voice, and the power they hold – at ordinary times, and in circumstances like these. But you knew this already."
"Perhaps," I said, non-committal. "What did you find?"
"Not much. Quenami moves to Tizoc-tzin's tunes, but I shouldn't think this is much of a surprise. The boy always did like power and pomp."
I wondered who in the palace she didn't know – whom she couldn't dissect as effectively as she dissected me. It was a terrifying thought.
"How goes the courtship?" she asked.
There was only one courtship I was aware of. "Well, I suppose," I said, cautiously. I had not seen Mihmatini in a while. "Enthusiastically, knowing Teomitl."
"But Tizoc-tzin doesn't approve, does he?" Ceyaxochitl's flat gaze bored into mine.
"I shouldn't think you need to be a calendar priest to divine that," I said.
"He's a fool, Acatl." She appeared unconcerned by the fact she'd just uttered treasonous words. "The Master of the House of Darts is a military leader, first and foremost. He plans our campaigns, he oversees the movements of troops within and without the capital. Tizoc-tzin uses it for prestige, and as a stepping stone to the Turquoise-and-Gold Crown."
"He'll be Revered Speaker, soon," I said slowly.
"Yes." She closed her eyes. "Yes. There is that. Well, there isn't anything you or I can do about that, sadly." She rose and walked slowly, leaning on her cane, which rapped on the ground. She'd always looked old and frail, but I'd never seen her move so cautiously. "Ceyaxochitl?"
"Yes?"
"Can you do it?" Could she hold us together, keep the star-demons from the Fifth World?
The woman I'd known all my adult life would have shaken her head and berated me for being a silly, sentimental fool. This one – the old, weary one by my side – simply shook her head. "I don't know. Things have changed. The previous Guardian was still young when Moctezuma-tzin died, and her husband was still alive."
"Husband?" I asked, startled. Most priests were celibate. I'd assumed the Guardian would be, too.
"Of course." Her voice was light, ironic again. "The Duality is male and female, the creator principle that drives the Fifth World. Guardians can marry."
"And you– "
She shrugged. "When I was very young. But it didn't last."
I tried to imagine her with a man in tow, an equal, not a slave, a man she'd have loved. My mind refused to wrap itself around the idea. I had always known her old and single, as a quasi-mentor figure. It was hard to discard all this. "Did he die?"
"Weak heart."
"I'm sorry– "
"Don't be, Acatl." She didn't sound grieved; but of course it would have happened decades ago.
"But there is only one Guardian. I've never heard– "
"He was a symbol," Ceyaxochitl said, patiently. "Of the male principle. Not a Guardian, not even a priest. But when you don't have the luxury of living blood, symbols turn out to be important. Vital."
"And…"
"And the signs are here," Ceyaxochitl said. "As I told you. I'm an old, lone woman past childbearing age. Hardly the ideal vessel for the Duality's powers."
"We've always held." I didn't need to say "because of you", because she already knew it.
"We have. And everything comes to an end, as you are uniquely placed to know."
"Don't mock me," I said. "The stakes– "
"The stakes will always be high," Ceyaxochitl said. "But I might not rise to it. Be prepared, Acatl."
She left the courtyard without looking back. I stood there, shaking, a hollow opening in my belly. If the Guardian couldn't hold us...
* * * *
In my temple, I found my second-in-command Ichtaca anxiously waiting for me outside. "Palli has been looking for you all over the palace and the Sacred Precinct. He says he has some information you sent him for."
The sorcerers on the registers, and the room search.
"I'll see him now," I said. I was tired, but this was more important. I had to see Palli or I'd lose his respect.
Ichtaca led me through the courtyard, past the numerous examination rooms that opened into the frescoed walls. Students were crowding around one of the entrances. I could hear snatches of sound from inside, a lesson on how bodies changed after death, and how to look for the signs of poison.
"How did it go?" Ichtaca asked.
"Not well." I couldn't quite keep the frustration out of my voice. "They're all bickering about who gets to be Revered Speaker."
Ichtaca's gaze drifted upwards, towards the star-studded sky.
"I know about the star-demons. But they don't seem to." There was one star there which shone more brightly than the others: He who was the Evening Star and the Morning Star, Quetzalcoatl the Feathered Serpent, the God of Knowledge and Creation – the god of all priests, whoever they served. He was the only one on our side, but His powers, like those of all the gods, were constrained in the Fifth World.
"Not a time for games," Ichtaca said. "But, if that's their will..."
I had no constructive answer, merely a prayer to the Duality that we weather the transition without too much bloodshed.
Palli, the offering priest in charge of Axayacatl-tzin's funeral, was waiting cross-legged in one of the smaller examination rooms, under a fresco that showed the progress of the soul through the levels of Mictlan, from the river that marked the boundary, to the ninth level, to Lord Death's throne. The god sat, bathed in blood, on a chair made of bones, skeletal and hunched, with his ribs poking out of His chest, His clawed hands empty.
Palli rose when we came in. "Acatl-tzin. Ichtaca-tzin."
I bowed, a fraction, as befitted our respective functions. I hated the formalities, but I knew he and Ichtaca lived by them. "I apologise. I ran into some trouble in the palace, but that's not an excuse."
His gaze suggested, very clearly, that I was high priest, and that it wasn't his place to question me, an attitude I'd always found unhealthy. At least Ichtaca always made it clear when I erred. I sighed. "What have you found?"
He handed me a list written on maguey paper in a neat hand, every glyph aligned and detailed, as if it had been written by a high-level scribe. Names and dates.
"I thought you might need to know birth-signs," Palli said.
A man's birth-sign determined his access to different kinds of magics and his innate talent. I had been born on a day One Reed, which put me under the gaze of the Curved Point of Obsidian, Lord of Justice; of the Feathered Serpent; and of course of Lord Death.
I scanned the list. Many names I knew. The She-Snake was near the top, as was Echichilli the old councilman; and even Manatzpa. In fact, most of the council was.
There were some notable absents, though. "Xahuia?" I asked.
Palli shook his head. "The Texcocan wife? She wouldn't be in here, Acatl-tzin, and neither would her retinue. They seldom get out of the women's quarters, and never out of the palace, so there is no need."
No need to register them, because they'd never need to enter the palace again. I smoothed the paper carefully. "I see." One name caught my attention. "Who is Pezotic?"
Palli bent over me, trying to read the glyphs upside-down. I turned the paper towards him, and pointed to one name near the bottom.
"Master on the Edge of the Water?" Palli asked. "That's a councilman's title, isn't it?"
"It sounds like one," I said, slowly. "But I would have remembered if I'd interviewed him." And I had interviewed the whole council. Manatzpa and Echichilli had told me as much.
"There are many other names on the list," Ichtaca said, in a conciliatory tone. "Surely you need not waste your time with this one."
"If he's a councilman and he's not there anymore, then I want to know. And I want to know why." Quenami had made it clear one did not demote councilmen, but it seemed like this had in fact happened. I'd have to ask Manatzpa next time I saw him.
I looked over the list some more, but I couldn't see anything else that was surprising. "Thank you," I said to Palli, and folded the paper back into a fan-shape. "What about the rooms?"
Even before he grimaced, I'd guessed what his answer would be. "I can only spare six or seven priests, and it's a large palace. If you want, I can get more. "
"No," I said. "I appreciate it, but we can't afford to let the Revered Speaker go without funeral rites, or leave the city unattended. Do what you can."
Palli nodded. "I might be able to send more priests if we rearrange the rituals a bit," he said thoughtfully. "Make sure that there's someone on guard all the time."
We left him to think things through. Ichtaca and I walked back to the circle we'd drawn on the ground on the previous night, a lifetime ago, to check on the wards. As Ichtaca said, best make sure the city stood; we could see about the court later on.
After we were done I checked on the temple's doings – on a few ongoing investigations into suspicious deaths, the death-vigils and the few offerings we got from the living. But my mind was elsewhere, and I retired to my house soon after the Hour of the Lord of Princes, with the night still young. Teomitl had been right about at least one thing – better get some sleep while I could.
* * * *
I woke up briefly to the blare of conch-shells that announced the rise of the Fifth Sun then sank back into darkness.
When I woke again it was mid-morning, and the bustle of the Sacred Precinct filtered into the courtyard – the prayers and the chants, the drum-beats that accompanied the sacrifices, the familiar smell of incense mingling with that of animal blood.
I knelt and sliced my earlobes to make my own offerings – to Lord Death, and to the Fifth Sun, He who would see us through those difficult times, for it looked as though His human servants were sadly lacking.
I sat for a while in the courtyard, under the lone pine tree, chewing a day-old maize flatbread, the only edible thing I had left in the house. I should have thought of asking Ichtaca for supplies on the previous evening, but I had been too preoccupied with Teomitl.
The Storm Lord blind him, what was wrong with the boy?
Perhaps he had outgrown me. After all, I had known that he couldn't remain my student – or, indeed, Mihmatini's suitor – forever, that he was destined for politics and war, wholly outside my purview. Tizoc-tzin had taken him under his protection, and was teaching him what was necessary.
Still, it wasn't as if I could shed my responsibility when it suited me. A man who would pick quarrels with the most powerful individuals in the Mexica Empire was not yet an adult and would not rise far, even through feats of arms. If even Tizoc-tzin, a canny politician, could not teach Teomitl that then it was also my responsibility to try. Perhaps he would listen to me more than to his brother.
Admittedly it did not look very likely at this point.
The sky was clear and blue, its colour as crisp and as vivid as a new fresco. I walked to my temple, intending to pick up Palli before going back to the palace. Instead, the first person I saw when entering the courtyard was Yaotl, Ceyaxochitl's personal slave, in the midst of a conversation with Ichtaca.
My sandals on the paved stones of the entrance made enough noise that they stopped talking. "There he is," Ichtaca said.
Yaotl turned, his embroidered cloak rippling in the breeze. "Acatl-tzin."
I braced myself for more sarcasm, but his face under the blue-and-black paint was grim, an expression I had never seen on him before.
Fear reached inside my chest and closed a fist around my heart. "What is it?"
"It's Mistress Ceyaxochitl. She's been poisoned."