Obsidian & Blood

INTRODUCTION

Recently, when we moved out of our old apartment into a new, better one, I found a pile of old index cards at the bottom of one of the drawers. When I spread them out on the living room table, I saw, with a surprise, that they were the same cards where I'd jotted down the beginnings of what would become Servant of the Underworld. It was all there on the cards: my frustration at figuring out an unfamiliar world, my anger at a plot that wouldn't slot into place, and my bewilderment at my main character, Acatl, whose preoccupations I couldn't understand – seemingly endless nights of spreading out the cards on the table and rearranging them, shuffling them in the hope that everything would coalesce into something I could trust myself to write.

If I look back at those beginnings, five years ago, it seems hard to believe that this little pile of index cards would grow into a book, let alone into a trilogy that spanned three years, dozens of characters, and an entire world beyond the capital city that I'd envisioned as the primary setting of the book.

But it did grow; and so did I, maturing into a better writer as I wrote the novels. Acatl grew as a person, acquired friends and students and allies, and the Tenochtitlan that was a bare word on a piece of paper became a city vibrant with life: with the smells of cooked maize, and the deep sounds of drums welcoming the dawn on the Sacred Precinct; with the vivid colours of feathers and embroidered cotton skirts, and the sound of banquet poems filling the night with beautiful, melancholy words; with the dance of reed boats in the canals, and the cold, chilling passage of the Wind of Knives as He enforced the underworld's justice...

It is a wonderful and thrilling place, and one that I enjoy returning to, again and again. This volume gathers all the stories of this fantastical Tenochtitlan: the three novels that complete the Obsidian and Blood trilogy, and (thanks to the wonders of digital formats) the Acatl short stories that were published in various venues.

I hope you enjoy this journey into Acatl's world.

Aliette de Bodard

Paris, 2012