The Sacrifice Game

(22)

At our Grandfather Heat’s next birth we met three of the Harpy emissaries. They’d been among the bloods who’d adopted me in the cave, way back in the day, before we left for Teotihuacan. We exchanged cakes and did a whole “welcome, my brothers” trip. They kept making jokes about how 2Hand had lost weight during the trek, how his eyes had sunk so deep into his baby-fat face that they looked like two black pebbles in a bowl of dough. Actually, it really was like coming home, I felt a little cozy in spite of myself. Still, gloom hung over the situation like, I don’t know. I guess like gloom. Like, basically, a whole lot of hanging gloom. If the Harpies didn’t win the great-hipball game we’d lose everything, including the fillings in our teeth. Or at least the jade fillings. Maybe they’d let us keep any wooden ones.

And we wouldn’t win. The hipgall game would be worked. And the fix would be tight. If we won, it would be like getting a real upset in a World Wrestling Entertainment event. It couldn’t happen. If the Harpies persisted in trying to win anyway, the ball game would be called against them, the Harpies would object, and a fight would start, which the Ocelots were confident they would win. Then they could justifiably take all the Harpies’ possessions and probably a good chunk of them as captives. After that, the other raptor clans in the area would retrench and make deals with the Ocelots.

It was dark inside the audencia tent and the sand over the hide-covered smoke holes sounded like a cymbal brush on a floor tom. I kept thinking about the all the converts outside, huddled in their little camps, their exposed skin shredding away. We sat in an abbreviated version of our circle, with the three leaders of the Harpy delegation in their hereditary spot at the eastern point, and then Hun Xoc, 2 Hand, 1 Gila, 1 Gila’s eldest son, two of the old greatmothers from the Rattler House, Koh, Coati, and me. We could each have one attendant behind us and I’d picked Armadillo Shit. As I said, normally a woman wouldn’t be let anywhere near here, but just like Alligator Root was kind of a third sex and could go in the women’s courts, Koh and her greatmothers could come into ours. A couple of the town cargo-bearers scurried around setting out basins of fish oil and big wide-rimmed pots of rock-heated water. We were the biggest thing that had ever happened in town and they’d already all sworn sempiternal devotion.

2 Dead Coral-one of the ordinands under 20 Blue Snail, who was 2JS’s sort-of in-house heirophant-was the head of the delegation, and even though he was being friendly he gave me a touch of the creeps. He greeted us speaking as 2 Jeweled Skull, which took a while, since it was a ritual form, like telling you how to insert the metal fitting into the buckle and how items have tendency to shift during flight or something. When he got to the actual news from Ix it didn’t sound good. Like I may have said, 2 Jeweled Skull had been called out by 9 Fanged Hummingbird, the ahau of the ruling Ocelot House of Ix, to a hipball game, kind of like a trial by combat. In this case the stakes were the Ixian Harpy Clan’s stores and trading rights against the heads of the Ocelot Clan’s Emerald Brethren, that is, their hipball champions. Basically it was a way to scale down a civil war. But from what the emissaries said, this one wasn’t likely to scale it down too effectively. Most likely the ball game wouldn’t even get to the second half.

Of course, the subtext of all this was that 2JS was really asking us to relieve him, and hoping to win the battle with our help. 20 Blue Snail-a duckbill-mask-wearing underling who was 2JS’s best Sacrifice Game player, but who wasn’t even in Koh’s league, or even mine, lately-took some time comparing long lists of bloods and auxiliaries on both sides, but the gist was that 2JS and his pledged allies would have about forty percent the strength of 9 Fanged Hummingbird and the Ocelots. If our convoy got back to Ix in time, Koh’s forces would easily tip the balance. Then the other Raptor clans would step in and help 2JS, and the Ocelots would be recent history. 2JS would become at least the de facto k’alomte of Ix, maybe keeping 9 Fanged Hummingbird on as a puppet ruler. Maybe he’d even take over completely, although since the k’alomte always had to be a cat, to do that 2JS would have to get himself adopted into a feline clan.

At any rate, the Ixian branch of the Star Rattler cult would become Ix’s most powerful non-clan-based organization. Koh would set up shop near the Star-Rattler’s mul-which was in a good location in Ix, “downtown,” I guess you could say, but which currently wasn’t large and wasn’t very well funded-and 2JS would have to keep her and her followers happy. And one of her conditions would be that the ruling coalition would have to build my tomb, to my specifications. And if that got done in time, I could get the gel mixed up, get buried per the ROC specifications, and the next thing I knew I’d be back in the merrie olde twenty-first century with a headful of Sacrifice Game expertise and a revitalized Will to Power.

20 Blue Snail said even though the Ocelots had gotten the gossip from Teotihuacan about our role in wrecking the place, they still couldn’t disinvite us. We’d be welcome as clansmen of the Harpies. Delegates from both cat and raptor clans were coming from all the important cities of the highlands and lowlands. Even Severed Right Hand was officially invited, although since he was still only at Ka’an, near the coast, he’d be too far away. And for every official guest there’d be at least ten peripheral people arriving in Ix over the next few days, vendors, traders, smart oddsmakers and destitute addict gamblers, prostitutes, clowns, wandering families, whatever.

Finally, 20 Blue Snail said the buzz was that Koh’s Star-Rattler’s cult was growing “in four directions,” that is, all over the world, and that 2JS was interested in helping serve Star Rattler. Koh was impassive, of course. I couldn’t tell whether he was just flattering her. Then, as though it was an afterthought, he mentioned that the date of the ball game had been moved up two suns. He said it was for some astronomical reasons, but also that the Ocelots were behind it. Anyway, it gave us only eleven days to get to Ix.

There’s no way, I thought. The fastest marching rate for the whole army-even discounting the elders, the women, children, the sick, the dead, and the inessential baggage-couldn’t possibly be over a jornada, that is, about thirty miles per day, and we had over three hundred miles to go in eleven days. We could do it if we forced four or maybe even just three extra marches, but the line would get strung out and even the bloods would be exhausted when they entered Ix. I looked at Hun Xoc and Koh and could tell they were doing the same calculations. As far as I knew no group this size had ever moved that fast. We’d have to set a record.

Hun Xoc asked permission of the rest of the circle to speak in house code.

Everyone signaled that it was all right.

“The Lady Koh’s four hundred clans won’t make it,” Hun Xoc said.

“They’ll have to seek asylum somewhere else.”

Not true, 20 Blue Snail answered in the same language, Koh’s children can’t stay outcasts for much longer.

What he meant was that the main thing Koh needed was to stabilize her base. She might be able to afford to keep the cat clans as enemies for a while, but to do that she’d need to reach some sort of stable rapprochement with as many of the other international (to use the word loosely) ruling families as possible. As of now, she could count only the Fog lineage and the rest of 3 Talon’s aerial clans, and maybe the Ixian Harpies, as friends. Settling respectably in Ix as an invited clan leader-at least temporarily-would be her best chance.

I looked at him. You couldn’t read anything under the duckbill mask. I couldn’t stop thinking about how much he looked like one of the plates in this nineteenth-century book on the Maya by Stepanwald. I pretended to ease myself back and used the motion to sneak a look at Koh. I had the feeling she understood what 20 Blue Snail was saying, and that he was right.

They passed the speaking cup to Lady Koh.

She asked when we’d have our meeting with 2JS. I guess she didn’t want to deal with anyone but him and you couldn’t blame her.

He can’t come outside Ix to meet you, Hun Xoc said. From the way he said it I got the feeling 2JS was under polite house arrest. 20 Blue Snail said we wouldn’t all be able to talk when we got near the city, either, we’d be in a ceremonial procession and under constant observation. It was going to be like an inauguration or royal ball. For now, all we could do was accept the invitation and get there.

Then we need to get a few beats alone with him just before the hipball game, Koh said.

20 Blue Snail said he’d try. And if a fight breaks out, what then? he asked.

The Rattler’s children will support their host, Koh said.

The Ocelots won’t let all of your followers into the court district, Hun Xoc said. At most they’ll let in two or four hundred of the highest bloods. The rest will have to stay as close as possible outside and wait for our signal.

Koh signed that was good enough. We voted “agreed.”