Obsidian & Blood

NINETEEN

The Water's Influence

It was carnage. Granted, I wasn't a warrior and hadn't walked the battlefields, but I imagined it couldn't get much worse than this. It wasn't the blood scattered on the ground: I had seen enough of it in devotions or large spells. It wasn't the body parts, either: again, I was no stranger to violence.

What made my stomach heave was the sheer scale. The courtyard had been lined with cages, and all of them had been hit at the same time, by what seemed to be a much faster variant of the plague. The bodies lay contorted on the ground, blackened with internal bleeding – and I remembered from the autopsy how much it had hurt, every organ breaking down and leaking into the body. The faces were turned upwards, the nostrils and mouths ringed with blood; the eyes, wiped clean by the blankness of death, had red corneas, and scarlet tears ran down the cheeks.

Near the back, under the pillars, I found the cage where Tapalcayotl had been. He lay still, almost unrecognisable with the flow of blood that had puffed up his cheeks, all his haughtiness and aggressiveness gone forever – one arm still extended outwards, with a carved amulet that had rolled away on the stone floor.

So much blood; so much magic, shimmering in the air, so much raw power devoted to Chalchiuhtlicue. The sorcerer would be gorged with it, ready to move against the Empire if necessary.

I knelt, and said the words, the ones I always said – the litany for the Dead – even though they'd died for Jade Skirt, and would be in Her land now, rowing boats among the eternal canals, harvesting always-ripe maize. But I couldn't leave them without a guide, and there were no priests of Tlaloc left, not in the whole of Tenochtitlan.

"We leave this earth, we leave this world

Into the darkness we must descend

Leaving behind the precious jade, the precious feathers,

The marigolds and the cedar trees…"

Footsteps echoed behind me. I'd expected Tizoc-tzin, but it was the She-Snake, his face grave. "I trust you've seen enough."

No, I hadn't. "How did this happen?"

"I don't know," the She-Snake said. "But I'm not surprised. They were jailed pending trial, not kept under a magical watch." His gaze was dryly amused. "No one is going to care if malfeasants fail to survive until they appear before the judges, after all."

Of course he was lying, and of course he knew what I'd think of this. I bit back on an angry remark – he hadn't been the one to arrest the clergy, after all – and said, instead, "I trust that's made Tizoc-tzin realise that the clergy wasn't involved with any of this."

The She-Snake raised a mocking eyebrow. "It might have. I wouldn't know. We've all advised him to remain in his quarters for the moment. If whoever has done this is moving against the Mexica Empire, then they'll target its head, sooner or later."

"That's not enough," I said. I tasted bile on my tongue. "You've seen what they can do. Tizoc-tzin has to leave Tenochtitlan." I didn't like this; among other things, it would leave Teomitl a freer rein than I liked, but it had to be done. We couldn't afford to lose the Revered Speaker – never mind that most of this was his fault, that Tapalcayotl and Acamapichtli were dead, the clergy of Tlaloc all but reduced to small, unimportant priests in far-flung cities, and that it would take years for it to rebuild itself, if it was rebuilt at all…

No. I was High Priest. I'd let my feelings and my urge for justice distract me once, and the results had been disastrous. The truth was, there was as much justice as we could make, but preserving the balance of the Fifth World was more important than even that.

It was a thought that hurt like a knife between my ribs, but I had to hold it. I had to believe it.

"He can't–" The She-Snake considered for a while. "I can't be the one to suggest this. In his absence, I would represent him in the city, and he knows it. He'll see this as an attempt to seize power." His face was unreadable; I'd never really understood what motivated him; if he didn't, deep down, yearn to be more than viceroy, more than a substitute for the Revered Speaker.

"Then ask Quenami." Given his state, I didn't think he would protest, for once.

I didn't look to see if he was following. He could deal with the politics, as if he had been born to. I, in turn, would deal with the magic.

I stood in the centre of the courtyard, breathing in the rank smell of blood – it had started to change already in the sunlight, like butchered meat going bad. So much of it, such a sickening waste…

Cuixtli wasn't here: there was no other power to show me the way. But I knew what to look for, now. I slashed the back of my hand, letting the blood drip onto the ground, and said a hymn to Lord Death, feeling the cold of the underworld rise up, the keening lament of the Dead become the only sound in the courtyard. Everything seemed to recede into insignificance, save the corpses in the cages, limned with green light, the eyes bleeding and weeping, as if they could still see anything in the Fifth World. Faint traces of light hovered over the bodies: the remnants of the teyolia and tonalli souls, gathering their scattered pieces before entering the world of the gods – close enough to touch, if I were so minded. But their words would be garbled and confused – their selves incomplete – and I would learn nothing.

Instead, I focused my attention on the pillars. Magic pulsed from them, an angry, steady beat – as I walked closer, the frescoes mingled and merged with each other, receding away until all that remained were the red glyphs, their contours bent like maize stalks in strong sunlight: a pyramid surrounded by smoke, a temple pierced by arrows, a body lying on the ground, torn into four hundred pieces…

May everything you start turn against you, wither into dust, into filth. May your priests lose the black and red of the ancients – their codices, their memories of knowledge and ritual. May you be left without faces or hearts, thrown in the mud with the god's shackles weighing you down…

Jade Skirt's magic, washing over me like waves in a stormy lake – flashes of writhing bodies, contorting in the agony of drowning, of ahuizotls feasting on the eyes and fingernails of bloated corpses…

Enough.

I drew a shuddering breath and stepped away from the wall.

Ichtaca was waiting for me at the courtyard's entrance. "I need to know who came here."

He raised an eyebrow. "Half the palace. They were on trial, and I'm sure neither Tizoc-tzin nor the court would have deprived themselves of the opportunity to mock them."

"You don't understand. Someone engraved a spell within this courtyard, and they had to have done it after the cages were set up."

His face set in a grimace. "Acatl-tzin–"

"I'm sure of it."

Xiloxoch. Yayauhqui. Which of them had it been? I had been weak, and ineffective. For once, Teomitl had the right of it: we had to act. "You need to arrest people," I said to the She-Snake.

"You know who is responsible for this?"

"No," I said. "But it's too late for those considerations."

The She-Snake grimaced; I could tell he didn't entirely agree. But, like me, he had to bow to necessity. "Who?"

"A courtesan named Xiloxoch, and a Tlatelolcan merchant. Yayauhqui."

Which, of course, might stop nothing, even if it was one of them. If they had accomplices, the plague would go on.

No, not only the plague. They'd made a deliberate sacrifice to Jade Skirt, gathering up power with those deaths packed so close by. The plague wasn't the finality: our sorcerer was preparing for something much, much worse.

"I'll try to locate them. But you must know–"

That the palace was large, and in utter chaos; that they might not want to be found. "I know." But it had to be tried, all the same.

"I'll inquire," Ichtaca said. He looked at the She-Snake, who still stood near the empty cages, looking at the corpses as if it could all make sense. But of course it would all make sense, once we caught the culprit. Once the Mexica Empire was safe. "One more thing, Acatl-tzin. About the Master of the House of Darkness."

"Pochtic?" Our mysterious suicide, who was probably mixed up with all of this.

"Yes," Ichtaca said. "I examined the room in which he died, as you requested me to."

I hadn't – not exactly – but the gods knew I wasn't about to begrudge him for taking initiatives. "And?"

"There is something I have to show you."

"Ichtaca, there is no time–" I started, but his face was set.

"I could tell you, but I need your opinion."

I sighed. "Fine," I said. "Let's go." At least it would get me away from that courtyard and that pervasive smell of meat and blood – else I was going to retch up the little I had in my stomach.

Pochtic's rooms were deserted, the focus of attention having moved elsewhere. We climbed the stairs of the pyramid, passing by a couple of bored-looking guards – and found ourselves in the room again.

The body had been removed to our temple, and everything smelled – stale, neglected, as if reflecting the misery and despair that had led Pochtic to commit the sin of suicide. The braziers had been extinguished, and the smell of copal incense had turned into the unpleasant one of cold ashes. The frescoes, though, were as vibrant as ever – the painted faces of the gods such as Tezcatlipoca the Smoking Mirror looking back at us, at the stains of blood that had changed the colour of the floor – mocking and empty-eyed, as if They knew secrets we weren't worthy of.

Tlaloc the Storm Lord had known something – something that had scared him. And if a god, one of the Old Ones, could be scared of something…

The Duality curse me, I didn't want to think about that, not now.

Ichtaca stopped at the back of the room, near one of the windows, looking down at the blood-stained sleeping mat. "Here," he said. "Can you look at this?"

I still had Lord Death's true sight upon me, and for a moment, all I could see was death – the memory of blood spurting out from cut arteries, of a soul sleeping away into the underworld. "Not the blood," I said.

"No," Ichtaca said. "Beneath."

Beneath… There was something – not an image, but the faint memory of a smell, something I'd seen before, sweet and sickening…

Jimsonweed. Peyotl. Teonanacatl, the gods' food, the sacred mushrooms – a compound of powerful hallucinogens that pierced the veil between the Fifth World and the world beyond. So close to a sleeping mat. "Dreams," I said. "Portents. He was in contact with the spirit world."

Ichtaca grimaced. "Yes."

He had been seeking it, deliberately. "Taking advice from someone dead?" I shuddered to think of all the sorcerers whom he could have contacted, with the boundaries weakened. At least the dead who descended into Mictlan didn't survive for more than four years – after their journey through the underworld, they dissolved at the foot of Lord Death's throne. But the other dead – the ones who went to the Fifth Sun's Heaven, or into Tlalocan – they were still there, waiting to be summoned, or freed.

"There's something else, too."

Something else… I extended my senses, probing at the edge of the cloud. Something sharper, like pieces of a broken knife – corrupted almost beyond recovery. "Wards?" I asked. "Some kind of spell…"

"Yes," Ichtaca said. "I was hoping it would remind you of something."

Not that I could think of. "Wards aren't my specialty," I said, almost sheepishly. "Have you asked a priest of the Duality?"

"I tried, but they're too busy warding off the epidemic from the rest of the population."

"I've seen them somewhere, that's the trouble. Something much like it, but I can't pinpoint…"

"It'll come back to you," I said, finally. I looked at the pieces again, but they had faded too much, and unlike Ichtaca, they didn't remind me of anything at all.

What could Pochtic have done, which would require guidance from the dead? I thought back to when I'd seen him in the courtyard of the prisoners' quarters. Cuixtli, the Mextitlan prisoner, had said Pochtic had been looking for a spell.

Looking for a spell, or… or making sure everything was as it should have been?

"He cast the spell," I said, slowly. It made sense – an altogether chilling kind of sense.

But why? Why would the Master of the House of Darkness, one of the four on the war-council, seek to act against the clergy of Tlaloc? Some old rivalry I hadn't known of? Some grievance? It all sounded too extreme.

"What spell?" Ichtaca asked.

"The one in the prisoners' quarters. The one that took the lives of Tlaloc's priests."

There was silence. "He did what?"

The voice wasn't Ichtaca's; it came from behind us, from the entrance to the room. And I knew it.

I turned around, slowly, and watched Acamapichtli limp into the room. Like his priests, he was all but unrecognisable – his face scarred, his movements slow and stiff – and the eyes…

The corneas had burst, drowning the irises. "You–"

He fumbled his way into the room, tapping the floor with a wooden cane – his other hand wrapped into something I couldn't see. Behind him was a black-clad guard, not his jailer, but his only help to move, to climb stairs – to see anything at all. The steady tap of the cane against the stone floor was all I could hear as he made his way towards us. "I caught the sickness, yes. But, as you can see, it passed me by. Almost."

Almost – and it had left its mark everywhere. And it had damaged his eyes, too. I had been blind for a while, after entering Tlaloc's world – but I had recovered. For Acamapichtli, there would be no such grace.

"You–" He was alive – alive, ready to help us, to rebuild his own clergy. But the cost, oh gods – the cost…

"Always be prepared," Acamapichtli said. His voice was raw, as if he hadn't spoken for a long time – I thought of blood, dripping down his throat, of vocal chords distended as those few blood vessels within burst, and bled, and left whitish scars everywhere within. "I–" He stopped in the middle of the room, the cane finally falling still – blessed silence flowing all around us. He unclenched his hand, revealing the bone-white shape of an amulet. "Always be prepared." There was a shadow of the old, mordant sneer on his face, if not in his voice. "It's served me well, as you can see."

"You're alive," I said – stupidly, because it seemed to be the only fact filling my head. "I thought–"

"That I was dead?" He grinned, a truly frightening expression – his thin lips parting to reveal teeth, covered in the blood that had leaked from his gums. "Not such luck, I'm afraid. I'm a hard man to kill." He tapped his cane against the ground, once, twice. "Now, what were you saying about the–" he paused there, his hands shaking "the deaths of the clergy?"

"I think," I said, slowly, "that the Master of the House of Darkness was involved. I don't know if he cast the spells or made sure they were in place – but he certainly played his part in them." And that – not the deaths, those were part of the ritual – but the betrayal of the Empire and the Fifth World – that would be a sin the gods might forgive, but that Tizoc-tzin wouldn't, and he had already seen how much score Tizoc-tzin set by priests and by the gods' rules. He had to have known, even after his penance, that it wouldn't keep him safe, that nothing would ever keep him safe from Tizoc-tzin.

But why had he thought…?

Oh, of course. I had come into the prisoners' quarters and challenged him, and he had assumed I knew something. He had been wrong, of course. I ought to have felt sorry, but the memory of the priests in the courtyard made it all but impossible.

"I see," Acamapichtli said. "Can you summon his soul?"

"I don't know–" I glanced at Ichtaca, who still hadn't moved. We'd already summoned the soul of one victim, and it hadn't been of great help. "I need preparations for that; it certainly won't be until tomorrow."

"I don't care. This – rabbit-faced coward has just played his part in all but exterminating my clergy." Acamapichtli gripped his cane – he was still a blind, scarred man with a limp, but power shim mered in the air around him, a reminder the enemy underestimated him at his peril. "Anything we can do to avenge this…"

I could understand – I'd had some of the same burning hunger within me, and knew how much worse it would all be for him – but we couldn't afford anger; we couldn't afford revenge. "It's not over yet, that's the problem. The deaths were just the beginning. They're the fuel for another spell."

Acamapichtli said nothing for a while – his ruined eyes staring straight ahead. "I want revenge."

"I know. But the Fifth World–"

"–can take care of itself?" He laughed, sharp and bitter. "Probably. But they were my priests, Acatl. They will not be used for some ritual against us. Tell me how I can help."

I shook my head. "You need to find your Consort," I said. "If she's still alive. We need to understand what kind of ritual we're dealing with. Ichtaca, can you set up the summoning?" I asked.

He grimaced. It was far from a straightforward thing – the body was unwashed and unadorned, and the vigils hadn't even started. And we both knew how important procedures were, at a time like this. "I'll see what I can do," Ichtaca said. "In the meantime–"

I glanced at the darkening sky – the air as heavy as before a storm. "I have an errand to do. I'll see you afterwards."