Obsidian & Blood

THIRTEEN

Funereal Thoughts

Between Mihmatini and me, we carried Quechomitl's body back to Neutemoc's house. Neutemoc himself trailed after us, still stunned and shaking. He hadn't spoken a word since thanking Mihmatini for saving his life.

In the courtyard, an old woman slave and Oyohuaca, the girl who had rowed me through the canals, were seated on the ground, waiting for us. When they saw Quechomitl's body, they gave a mournful howl.

"Master," they said, looking back and forth at Quechomitl's bloody husk, and at Neutemoc, whose Jaguar regalia were also covered in blood.

"Later," Neutemoc said. "Take him to the temple for the Dead. Give him a proper vigil and make the proper offerings." His voice shook at first, but gained in strength with every word.

Still oozing Huitzilpochtli's light, he walked, not into the reception room, but towards his living quarters.

I glanced at Mihmatini. "How long is your spell going to last?"

She shrugged. "Two, maybe three days? It's not going to be enough. Whoever got those to attack him will try again. And if they can't kill him, they'll try to harm those around him."

Like Quechomitl. "I know. Can you do something?" I asked.

Mihmatini puffed her cheeks. "I know a spell for warding a house against evil influences. It takes time to cast, but it's meant to last for a month."

"If you could…" I asked.

She nodded. "I'll go and get my materials. You talk to Neutemoc."

"I…" I didn't think I wanted to do that. When the shock wore off, Neutemoc was going to remember why his house was deserted, and who was to blame.

"Acatl." Her voice was stern. "You two have run away from each other for long enough. Go."

"When did you turn into Mother?"

She snorted. "All women turn into their mothers, Acatl."

And all men into their fathers. But I couldn't imagine myself as Father. I couldn't be that old, embittered man who'd never forgiven me for not supporting him in his dotage – and whom I'd repaid by refusing to undertake his vigil; a petty, useless gesture that would not change the grievance between us.

I found Neutemoc, not in his room, but in Huei's. He'd spread her jewellery on the reed mat, and was staring at it listlessly. The bloodstained jaguar head of his regalia rested against the wall frescoes, by a warrior twisting a noose around the neck of a fallen enemy.

When I entered, Neutemoc raised his gaze, but didn't speak.

I crouched on the other side of the reed mat, looking at Huei's jewels. Beautiful pieces, all: exquisitely sculpted jade in the shape of flowers and birds; polished necklaces with gold pendants; and a small obsidian mirror, reflecting my brother's wan face. I reached out to pick up one of the necklaces. Neutemoc hissed.

"Don't," he said.

I withdrew my hand, slowly. I said nothing; just waited for him to speak.

After a while, he said, "You saved my life. It's the only reason I'm not throwing you out of this house. But I strongly suggest you get out, before I lose my calm and give you the thrashing you deserve." He clenched his hand. Blood oozed from one of his wounds.

"Mihmatini strongly suggested that I talk to you, after what happened."

I'd expected him to snort, but he didn't move. He was very angry, then. "You dragged our sister into this." He snorted. "Things still haven't changed, brother, have they? She's always liked you. I just can't see why."

"Neutemoc–"

His face contorted for a brief moment. "Our parents were right. You bring nothing but trouble."

"Our parents were wrong," I snapped. "I made my own choices."

"Leaving me to pick up the pieces," Neutemoc said.

"You had the means to," I said, more nastily than I'd intended. The "pieces" were Father and Mother, after they grew too old to support themselves.

"Yes," Neutemoc said. "But I don't see why I should have to pay for the choices you made. For any of your choices," he added, in case I hadn't understood the first reference.

"Look – this time, there was no other way."

"No other way? My wife gives herself up as a sacrifice victim, and you think this is a satisfactory outcome?"

I shook my head, wondering how I could calm him down. "She tried to kill you."

Wrong tactic. His face closed. "No," he said. "You imagine things that aren't. She's always loved me. More than I could bear."

You fool. "So you destroyed your marriage just because you 'couldn't bear it'? How convenient."

"We won't talk of my marriage here," Neutemoc said.

"Because it's not relevant?" I asked. "Don't you think your marriage got you here?"

Neutemoc's hand clenched again. "No. What happened to me…" His voice trailed off. He'd always been an honest man and a terrible liar, which explained how easily I'd flushed him out in my first interrogation. "Perhaps it had to do with my marriage," he said, finally. "But that still doesn't give you the right–"

"There was no choice!" I snapped. "For what she'd done, the sentence was death. Death at the hands of the Wind of Knives, or at the hands of the Guardian's warriors – whoever found her first."

Neutemoc spat. "And your solution was…?"

"My solution?" I asked. "She made her own choices, Huitzilpochtli curse you! She was the one who went to Chalchiutlicue's temple and offered herself to Her," I said. "I couldn't stop her." How could he not see what Huei had got herself into: something far greater than her, which had ultimately swallowed her whole? How could he not see?

Neutemoc's hands clenched. "So you had no part in this? How convenient. That was also your excuse for not becoming a warrior on exiting the calmecac, wasn't it: events beyond your control. Not good enough, Acatl."

He had always known how to find the least of my weaknesses. His argument was, almost word for word, the reproaches Mother had kept addressing to me. "Leave the calmecac out of this, will you?"

He smiled. "Because you think this had nothing to do with the calmecac, and what you've made of yourself? The brother I used to play with would have given his life rather than harm me, or any of mine."

It was so patently unfair it didn't shame me. All it did was infuriate me. I raised my good hand, pointed at the wounds on my chest and on my arm. "You see these?" I asked. "I asked the Wind of Knives to spare her, Neutemoc. I pleaded for her life – I, who'd never allowed anyone to sway me – I made a fool of myself trying to sway a divinity that cannot be swayed."

Neutemoc's lips tightened in grim amusement. "Yes. I know how unbending you can get." He rubbed his face, but didn't speak further.

"I did all I could," I said. "But she ran away from the Wind of Knives, to the only refuge she could find."

Neutemoc stared at me. At last he said, "A poor refuge." And, with a shock, I realised that the glimmer in his eyes were tears.

"I…" I started, not sure what to say. Neutemoc had always been a strong man: going on, regardless of the circumstances. Even when he'd been arrested, he'd never broken down. "You can go to the temple, talk to her."

"It won't bring her back to me, will it?" Neutemoc said.

I could have lied to him; but I, too, had never been a good liar. "No," I said. "The temple is the only place where she's safe, both from the Wind of Knives and from the Imperial Guards."

Neutemoc didn't speak. His eyes were closed and he breathed slowly, heavily, swallowing his tears. His hands toyed with a small, broken obsidian pendant, heedless of the thin line of blood the edge of the stone was drawing on his palm.

"Neutemoc," I said, "she made her own choices, and you can't go back on any of them. And one of her choices was to summon that beast."

Neutemoc opened his eyes. "Tell me something," he said.

"Anything you want," I said, and it was a lie. There were some things I would be incapable of telling him.

"Did you know she was a sorceress when we married?"

I hadn't expected this question, and it took me a while to understand what he was asking me. "No," I said, shocked. "You're mistaken. Huei was never a sorceress."

"Then how did she summon that beast?"

I sighed. "People came to the house. They gave her the means."

Neutemoc's face hardened. "The same people who abducted Eleuia?"

"Yes," I said. Possibly the same ones who were trying to kill him, although I didn't understand why anyone would take my brother as a target.

Save for Acamapichtli. But the High Priest of Tlaloc wasn't a fool. He'd wait until Tizoc-tzin's attention was no longer on Neutemoc before striking.

Neutemoc took a deep breath. He was obviously wrestling with a difficult decision. At last he said, "I want to join your investigation, Acatl."

If anyone deserved to, it was Neutemoc. He'd suffered much in this, but I wasn't sure I could bear his ongoing hostility towards me. On the other hand… I'd allowed Teomitl to take part; I couldn't in all honesty deny Neutemoc for my own comfort.

I laid my hands on the reed mat, a hand-span from Huei's jewels. "You're sure?"

"Yes," Neutemoc said tersely.

"Then you'll have to be honest with me."

His eyes flickered. "I will. After all, I have nothing to hide any more. Or to lose, indeed." His voice was bitter, and cut me to the core.

"Very well," I said. "You can help."

He nodded. "Thank you." But he didn't move to touch my hands, and the set of his jaw said, clearly, that he hadn't forgiven me: that we were temporary allies, to avenge Huei and Eleuia and Quechomitl, but that we were not, could never be reconciled. And I wasn't sure I could ever be on friendly terms with him: not when his own foolishness had been the canker at the heart of his marriage, turning Huei into a stranger to both of us.

"Do you know," I asked, "why someone would try to kill you?"

"Apart from our friend the High Priest?" Neutemoc asked.

"I think he's more crafty than this." The least you could say about the attack was that it lacked subtlety.

"Then no," Neutemoc said.

"Any enemies?" I asked, and thought of Mahuizoh. I'd forgotten about him in the rush to defeat the beast of shadows; but he had a prime motive for wanting Neutemoc dead.

"Not that I know of."

Neutemoc appeared sincere, but I still asked, "Among the Jaguar Knights?"

"The usual resentment that I was elevated, not born into the nobility. But not, I think, enough to justify such determination."

"Hum," I said. I would definitely have to meet Mahuizoh, if he ever came out from wherever he was hiding. But, if Mahuizoh was a sorcerer of such powers, how come no one at the Jaguar House, or within his own household, had ever mentioned it? "I'll enquire. Mihmatini is putting wards around the house, in addition to the protection she already put on you. It should keep you safe."

"Safe," he repeated wryly. "Whenever did my own sister turn into a powerful priestess?" He didn't sound unhappy, but rather deeply puzzled, as if this were a wholly unexpected outcome.

I shrugged, feeling as dislocated as he was. "When she started eating maize gruel, I suppose." It had been an ongoing joke in the family that Mihmatini had screamed whenever Mother attempted to switch her diet from milk to gruel.

Neutemoc smiled, a tight expression that didn't reach his eyes. "I suppose," he said, and the moment of shared reminiscences was past.

"I'll go to my temple," I said. "I've got some unfinished tasks." Such as speaking to Ichtaca before matters between us festered beyond recovery.

Neutemoc nodded. "I'll join you later."

I toyed with the idea of telling him to get some sleep, but decided in the end that only Mihmatini could afford that kind of remark. I didn't want to tear our fragile understanding.

As it turned out, I didn't go to my temple immediately, because Mihmatini caught me in the courtyard, and insisted on my getting a proper meal. Despite my protests, I somehow found myself sitting next to her and the children, and facing a pale, angry Neutemoc who no doubt wished Mihmatini would stop trying to reconcile us.

The dinner was brief and perfunctory. Despite the sumptuous dishes aligned on the table – fried newts, white fish with red peppers and tomato, agave worms and sweet potatoes – I ate little, my stomach roiling at the mere thought of receiving food. I tried to avoid Neutemoc's gaze as much as possible, and focused instead on what I needed to do. Many, many things, including having a heartto-heart talk with Ichtaca.

But Mihmatini forestalled me again, insisting I spend the night at the house.

"I have other things–" I started.

She drew me aside, exasperated. "They're going to come back. You know that. Do you really want to leave us undefended?"

"You're good," I said. Better than me, I suspected. The spell of protection she had cast on Neutemoc – and now on the whole house, removing us from the sight of any foes – was intricate, and mastered by few. I was incapable of casting it.

She shook her head. "I'm not good enough to keep him safe."

My first, shameful thought was: Then let him die. Let my parents see that he's no better than me. But I couldn't hold that thought for long, not without remembering how I'd already let Father down by not undertaking his vigil. I couldn't do it a second time.

"He's not going to be happy," I said.

"Then let him brood," she said. "It will keep him alive."

I didn't know what Mihmatini said to Neutemoc. She talked to him in a low, urgent voice, making a couple of stabbing gestures with her hands. He said nothing when I unrolled a sleeping mat in one of the spare rooms.

Sleep was a long time coming. I kept seeing Huei's bitter, resigned face, moments before the Wind of Knives arrived; and in my dreams it turned into the wrinkled face of the ahuizotl, its eyes yellow and malevolent.

Finally, darkness came and swallowed me whole.

The following morning, Mihmatini badgered us all into having breakfast together again: Neutemoc, the children and I. We were sipping some cacao laced with vanilla and spices when the young slave, Oyohuaca, came into the room. "Acatl-tzin," she said. "There is a man outside to see you."

The man outside turned out to be Yaotl, who smiled widely when I entered the courtyard, followed closely by Neutemoc. "Acatl," Yaotl said. "I hear you've been having considerable success at the Imperial Court."

"Ha ha," I said, unwilling to start yet another war of words. "Are you here to congratulate me, or to drop further obstacles into my path?"

"Neither," Yaotl said. "I bring you good news." He checked himself. "Well, 'good' in a certain meaning of the word, of course." I was fighting a rising sense of frustration.

"Can you get to the point, instead of taunting me?"

"My my, we're in a bad mood today," Yaotl said. "Mistress Ceyaxochitl sent me. We've found Priestess Eleuia's body floating near Chapultepec."

As expected, Neutemoc accompanied us. Yaotl made no comment; he spoke with me as if Neutemoc were not there.

Chapultepec was a small town at the end of the Tlacopan causeway, west of Tenochtitlan. Sitting on the banks of the lake, the town comprised mostly peasants working the fields of the Floating Gardens, and a sizeable community of fishermen. It was with one of those – a grizzled man in just a loincloth, his face deeply tanned by the sun – that Ceyaxochitl was speaking. She and the fishermen stood by the edge of the lake. I couldn't see Eleuia's body at first; but then I made out the white shape floating in the fisherman's net.

"You see," the fisherman was saying, "I get up this morning and go pull up the nets like I do all my life, except that they won't come up so easily. A big fish, is what I tell myself. A fish big enough to feed the whole family, sons and cousins and uncles and aunts." He barely stopped between two sentences, obviously proud of his find.

Ceyaxochitl nodded from time to time, but didn't interrupt him.

"So I pull harder and harder, and when the net finally surfaces, there's this white thing in it. A fish, I still tell myself, but then I see her hair trailing behind her, and then I continue pulling, I see her face and I know I have to tell someone…" His voice trailed off.

"You did well," Ceyaxochitl said. "Ah, Acatl. You see what we have." The fisherman, curtly dismissed, stepped away from us.

"Not yet," I said. I walked closer to the net. Neutemoc was standing behind me, frozen in shock. "Can we get it out of the water?" I asked.

"I was waiting to know if you could see anything," Ceyaxochitl said.

I extended my priest-senses, but felt only the everyday setting: the wide expanse of the lake, the peasants tilling the fields, the anchor of the earth beneath us. I shook my head. "Easier to see if you're on dry land." As Neutemoc and Yaotl started hauling the body of the net, I asked her, "I thought you'd be at the Imperial Palace?"

Ceyaxochitl's eyes were on the muddy banks of the lake. Further away, boats ferried peasants with hoes and baskets from the town to the Floating Gardens. At last Ceyaxochitl said, so softly that no one but I could have heard, "There isn't much that can be done any more."

No wonder the noblemen had been so numerous at the Imperial Audience. The succession of Revered Speaker Axayacatl-tzin grew closer and closer, and Tizoc-tzin would be in a prime position to claim it. "How long?" I asked.

"A few months, if the Southern Hummingbird's protection holds. In reality… considerably less, I'd say."

"I see." Neutemoc and Yaotl were laying the body on the bank; I went closer to take a better look at it.

In life, Eleuia might have been strong and alluring, drawing men to her as peccaries will draw jaguars. In death, she was small and pathetic, her beauty extinguished. The lake's currents had torn her clothes off: her skin was as white as the new moon, and clammy, as unsettling as the touch of a Haunting Mother. Multiple bruises had formed on her arms and legs. Algae had twined with her hair, and her face… Her face was the worst: empty eye-sockets gazed at me, still encrusted with dried blood. Small scratches, like those made by tiny claws, spread around the place where the eyes should have been.

I didn't need to take a look at her hands to know what kind of claws had pawed at her eyes, probing until they detached. "An ahuizotl?" I asked Ceyaxochitl.

She nodded. "Yes. Her fingernails are also missing."

I closed my eyes, remembering the monster that had tracked me across the canals. Too many coincidences. What was Chalchiutlicue's part in this?

I looked at the body again. The last thing we knew about Eleuia was that Huei's mysterious allies had taken her. They might have released her, although it sounded unlikely, and I didn't think Eleuia would have gone to the town of Chapultepec. She'd have tried to go back to her temple.

Which left the second option: she had been dead by the time she entered the water, and the ahuizotl had only feasted on a corpse.

I could have cast the same spell as before, back in the calmecac, to see if Mictlan's gates had opened on the lake-banks – but that spell worked best in confined spaces. Here, sunlight and the passage of numerous fishermen and peasants would lessen the traces of Mictlan's magic. The results would be misleading at best. No, better to take the easier choice and examine the body. There would be time for spells later, if the examination wasn't conclusive.

"I need to make sure what she died of. We'll take the body back to my temple," I said. "It will be quieter for a full examination."

Neutemoc bent, stiffly, to lift Eleuia's left hand. He stared at the wrinkled skin of her hands, at the incongruously pale skin revealed by the absent fingernails. His face was rigid, washed of all emotion.

"We leave this earth," he whispered, softly, slowly: the beginning of a hymn to the dead. "We leave the flowers and the songs, and the maize bending in the wind. Down into the darkness we must go, leaving behind the marigolds and the cedar trees…"

I hoped Eleuia had indeed drowned. Drowned men and women went, not into the oblivion of Mictlan, but into Tlalocan, the Blessed Land of the Drowned: a place where flowers blossomed all year round, and where maize never lacked; where Father would be, tilling the eternal fields, blissfully unaware of me. I prayed that Eleuia, who had suffered so much during the Great Famine, would at least have this consolation.

To us, the living, would be left the task of finding out what had happened to her.

Yaotl and Neutemoc carried Eleuia's body back to my temple. As we walked on the Tlacopan causeway, the macabre load elicited more than a few startled glances. But the presence of a Guardian deterred people from approaching us.

Ichtaca was descending the shrine steps when we entered. He took a look at the body in Yaotl's arms, and a long, darker one at me. "You'll be needing one of the examination rooms, I take it?"

I nodded. I really needed to speak with Ichtaca about the running of the temple, before whatever grievance he had festered into something incurable; unfortunately, time was hard to find.

I sent the others to follow Ichtaca, while I stopped by the storehouse to recover a wooden cage with an owl. I might not need magic to examine the corpse, but one never knew.

The examination room was a simple affair: a stone altar with grooves to evacuate the blood; a wooden chest holding a collection of obsidian knives; and at the back, a smaller altar of polished ivory dedicated to Mictlantecuhtli. I set the owl's cage on the floor, near the altar.

I recovered a small, sharp obsidian blade from the chest, and made my offerings of blood to my god: three quick slashes across the back of my left hand, blood flowing onto the altar. "We come for the truth," I said, softly. "Blind not our eyes; deceive us not. We come for the truth."

I touched the tip of my obsidian knife to the altar. A small jolt passed from the handle of the knife to my palm: a sign that some of Mictlan's magic had suffused the blade.

Yaotl and Neutemoc had already laid Eleuia's body on the stone altar. Bluish blotches marked her stomach: the same place as the stretch-marks of her childbirth.

Ceyaxochitl's cane tapped on the stone floor, until she found her place. She watched me like a vulture awaiting carrion.

I put the tips of my fingers on Eleuia's purple lips, and gently forced them open. The touch was cold, numbing. Froth had adhered to the inside of her mouth. Not sufficient – many things other than drowning could cause the foam – but a good start.

I retrieved a clean cloth from the chest and wiped off the foam. Then I pressed down on her chest, forcing her to exhale.

Foam bubbled up, replacing what I had removed. So Eleuia had drowned: she had been alive before entering the water. Interesting. I would have expected her captors to throw her dead body into the lake, not for her to be dragged down by the ahuizotl.

"Well?" Ceyaxochitl asked.

I shrugged. Not much to say at that point. "She died of drowning. The ahuizotl is most likely what killed her."

I turned my attention to the bruises. They were by no means abnormal: as the body bumped against branches and other obstacles, it was bound to gather quite a few of them. But something about their pattern…

I felt them, carefully. The skin was bluish-black and swollen, resilient to my touch. But bruises inflicted after death didn't swell, and they seldom turned blue-black.

Not all of the bruises were the same age. I stepped back, lifted one of Eleuia's arms. There was… a gradation: some of them were blue-black, bordering on a greenish colour, some of them were barely turning blue; and a few were still red marks on the skin.

My stomach churned. She'd been beaten up, consistently and regularly: in three days, the oldest bruises had had time to start discolouring, but the most recent ones were only burst vessels, the blood barely coagulating.

"Someone tortured her," I said, slowly.

Neutemoc's face turned white and harsh, like a shell.

"They took her, and then they beat her, again and again."

"What for?" Ceyaxochitl asked.

I shook my head. "I don't know. I thought – she had a child, in the Chalca Wars." Even though I didn't see what the child would have had to do with all of this. Unless Eleuia had tried to blackmail Mahuizoh?

"Yes," Neutemoc said. "I remember." His gaze was distant. "But it was stillborn, Acatl."

"That's what Eleuia told you."

Neutemoc said, "I was there, Acatl. I saw her bury the body. Trust me. He could never have lived."

"You're sure?" I asked.

Neutemoc's lips were two dark lines in the oval of his face. "Yes," he said. "I'll bear witness to that, if you wish."

"No need," I said. Huitzilpochtli strike me down. The child had sounded like too great a thing to be ignored – and Eleuia herself not above doing whatever she had to do to ensure her future. But if he was dead…

What could her abductors have wanted from Eleuia?

I ran my fingers on the bruises. Perhaps I was mistaken. But no, there were too many of them, and they were too large to have been caused by random objects dragged by the currents. The way they were spread, too: few parts of Eleuia's body weren't covered in them. It spoke, not of rage, but of a cold-blooded method, from the summoning of the beast to Eleuia's deliberate, methodical torture. My stomach churned again. Who were those people?

Mahuizoh? He had loved her, if I believed my witnesses, or at any rate, had had affection for her. Surely he wouldn't…

My fingers, probing, found a raised area on Eleuia's cheek: a smaller bruise, barely old enough to have discoloured.

It was the pattern of an object that had hit her, engraved into her flesh: a wound that dated from not too long before her death. I knelt, and stared at it. Unfortunately, the blood had spread and partially erased the contours. It had a shape: hints of curves, of stylised lines meeting to form the point of something else…

"Neutemoc?" I asked. "Does this mean anything to you?"

Neutemoc turned Eleuia's face to the light; carefully, as if afraid she'd crumble under his touch. He stared, for a while, at the eyeless hollows, at the small pattern on her cheek. His face was expressionless but his fingers had clenched into fists. "There was no reason," he muttered. "What kind of man…?"

I knew what he was thinking, because I felt the same nausea welling up in me, tightening until I could barely breathe. "Neutemoc."

At length, he shook his head. "No," he said. "That mark is too badly damaged, Acatl."

Ceyaxochitl's cane tapped on the stone floor. "Let me see," she said.

Neutemoc stepped aside, without a word.

Ceyaxochitl, unlike Neutemoc, probed Eleuia's flesh like a buyer investigating the fitness of a dog. A faint trace of magic hung in the air: she was calling on the power of the Duality to aid her sight. "Hum," she said. "It is very deformed."

"Spreading blood," I said. "She was alive for some time after that bruise."

"How long?" Ceyaxochitl asked.

"Not very long," I said. "So?" I felt sick. In my years as a priest for the Dead, I had seen death; I had seen cruelty. But never had I seen it so methodically applied.

And yet they had released Eleuia, or she had escaped. Unless… unless they had summoned the ahuizotl to kill her, thinking to hide their crimes. Possible. It was a risk – no one summoned the Jade Skirt's creatures without paying a price – but possible.

Ceyaxochitl stared at the mark for a while. "I have seen something like it. But I can't remember where."

"Can you find out?" Neutemoc asked.

"Yaotl will take a copy of it," Ceyaxochitl said. "I can't guarantee I'll remember, but maybe someone at the Duality House…"

Neutemoc said nothing while Yaotl sketched a copy of the mark on a maguey paper. He was watching Eleuia like a man dying of thirst, as he must have watched her while she was still alive. I couldn't help thinking of Huei's anger; and how, ultimately, it had been justified.