Aztlan: The Last Sun (15 page)

Still, it still wasn’t the sort of thing a nine-cycle-old really wanted to hear about, especially after the gods had taken his father.

Sitting there now in the marble chamber, I turned the urn around in my hands, taking note of its weight, its workmanship, its renderings of the death-god Mictlantecuhtli and his wife Mictlancihuatl in bright parrot colors. I had never studied it so closely before. But then, I hadn’t felt so close to my father since the day he died.

Usually, when I visited him there in the Hall of the Fallen, I told him about the latest Eagle game, picking out the highlights as if I were a commentator on the Mirror. Or I described the case I was working on at the moment, especially if there was something unusual about it. Those were the kinds of things he had liked to talk about when he was alive.

But this time I had something more to say.

“I know what happened to you all those cycles ago,” I told him. My voice, soft as it was, echoed from wall to wall. “And I know who was responsible for it. Your spirit can rest easy now in the Lands of the Dead.”

I could almost hear him answer in that easygoing tone he had, a smile in his voice: “Don’t worry about me, Maxtla. Just take care of yourself.”

That was the way he had been with me. It was the way I wanted to be if I ever had a family.

My father hadn’t been perfect. I saw that now. He had made mistakes, caring so much about justice that he was willing to break the Emperor’s Law to carry it out.

But his mistakes didn’t make me love him any less. If anything, they made me love him more.

I arrived at the River of Stars half an hour earlier than the High Priest had suggested, sweaty from making my way through the thousands of masked celebrants to get there. But Itzcoatl and his entourage were all present already, dressed in their white robes and their gold sandals, smiling and waving to the crowd.

Itzcoatl wore a headdress made of yellow gold and turquoise and a weave of thick, red parrot plumage, topped with a wild cascade of blue-green feathers taken from the tail of the crested quetzal. His attendants wore the same sort of thing but with a more modest cascade of deep blue cotinga feathers.

The rest of the High Priest’s Honor Guard was in evidence as well, all three of them wearing sleeveless white tunics made of finely woven lamb’s wool and long earrings made of iridescent hummingbird feathers. One of them was the First Chief of Investigators, Eztli Zayanya. He was smaller than I thought he would be, with dark eyes that seemed to bore into me like bone worms as I approached.

Several police officers moved to intercept me, but Zayanya waved them away. Obviously, he knew who I was.

As he was my boss, protocol demanded that I greet him before anyone else. “First Chief,” I said, holding out my hand.

He grasped it. “Colhua. Congratulations.”

I nodded. “Thank you. You too.”

The other members of the Honor Guard were Tupac Cualli, the First Administrator of Aztlan, and Xipil Nenetl, the willowy, attractive woman in charge of the city’s Mirror coverage.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and traced it to the High Priest, who smiled at me from beneath his headdress. He said, “Good to see you, Colhua.”

Then, like everyone else, he noticed the scabs and the black-and-blue marks on my face.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Just part of the job.”

Itzcoatl shook his head disapprovingly. “It is unfortunate that it should be so. I will ask the gods for your quick recovery.”

I smiled. “I’m grateful.”

“My attendants,” he said, “have a pair of earrings for you.”

Normally, I would have declined. I wasn’t the earring-wearing type. But in this case, I made an exception and accepted a pair from one of the white-robed priests.

As I put them on, hooking them through the slits in my earlobes made just after I was born, I wondered what celebrities Itzcoatl had left out of his Honor Guard in order to include me. I made a mental note to ask him later.

I expected that I’d have to wait a while before the ceremony began. But the time went quickly. Before I knew it, Tonatiuh was touching the horizon, spreading his blood-fire over the water.

The High Priest and then the rest of us got down on our knees and immersed our arms in the river, a demonstration of awe and piety. The water was warmer than I would have thought, as warm as my bath. The only chill I felt was when I took my arms out, exposing them to the breeze.

To my right, beyond Zazanya, the High Priest closed his eyes and said a prayer to the gods. Then he got to his feet, turned, and began walking away from the river, the gold in his headdress glinting sharply in the light of the Last Sun. The rest of us in his Honor Guard followed, and Itzcoatl’s white-robed attendants fell in behind us.

The crowd, an immense sea of god-masks and animal-masks as wild and colorful as any I had seen before, cheered and blew conch-horns and parted for us. Hands everywhere lifted toward the sky in fear and supplication. In every direction except the one behind us, towering torches were lit.

But not everyone was there in order to mark Tonatiuh’s passing. Among the multitudes were the same sort of police teams on which my father had served during the last Renewal.

I should have felt safe. After all, my fellow officers were watching over me. The First Chief of Investigators himself was walking beside me. But I couldn’t help thinking about the Knife Eyes, and what I had told Necalli, and what he might have told someone else.

It wouldn’t take much for the Knife Eyes to kill me. A little misdirection, a hidden blade, a citizen who could be blamed for the deed. They could have their revenge on me the way First Sun had had its revenge on my father.

So I kept my eyes open, searching the crowd for anything that suggested malicious intent. Block by block, as we passed the huge torches set up at each intersection, I maintained a lookout, and not just for myself. After all, I was an Investigator, and the High Priest of Aztlan was arrowing through the masses just ahead of me.

At one point, with the river a few blocks behind me, I began to wonder how pervasive the Knife Eyes’ influence might be. What if someone like Zazanya had been one of them earlier in his career? What if he had maintained his ties to them as he ascended to the rank of First Chief?

Yaotl might not have known about him, or he might have known and not said anything.

My eyes slid in Zazanya’s direction—and met his, which were looking back at me. He smiled, as anyone caught up in such a huge, dizzying celebration might smile. But I wondered if there were something behind the smile, and maybe something sharp in his pocket as well.

So it went, as Tonatiuh died for the last time in glorious streaks across the sky. The people on either side of us threw fistfuls of flower petals, white and yellow and purple. They fluttered and fell on our heads and shoulders, some of them sticking to the High Priest’s headdress.

But to my relief, that was all the people threw. No knives. No darts. Nothing threatening at all.

The sky darkened to indigo. The torches grew more fearsome, imposing their orange fury on the night. But there was no trouble. The High Priest’s procession moved through Aztlan like the gleam of hope it was supposed to be, all the way to the building that housed Itzcoatl’s sanctum.

As we reached it, I saw one of the god-masks on my right suddenly loom closer—close enough for its wearer to reach out and touch the High Priest. Instinctively, I moved to intercept him. But before I could do anything, a couple of Investigators did it for me.

The mask was pulled back into the crowd. A moment later, I couldn’t find even a sign of it. I breathed easier.

As if oblivious to the incident, the High Priest turned in his tracks to face me and the rest of his Honor Guard. He was beaming beneath his headdress, aglow as if with an inner light.

At that point, I knew, he would choose one of us to accompany him up to his sanctum and help him prepare for his appearance before the people. Because even within the Honor Guard, there was one honored above the rest.

Itzcoatl looked at all four of us—Cualli, Zazanya, Nenetl, and me. But in the end, his gaze settled on me alone.

I wasn’t surprised.

After all, he had said he wanted to honor not only me but also my father. And he had said as well that he wanted to touch the common people. In making me his choice, he would accomplish both his goals.

Feeling the eyes of Zazanya and the others on me, I joined the High Priest and entered the building with him. The lobby was lit but, in accordance with tradition, there was no one inside.

“You know,” said Itzcoatl, turning to me, “it has been a long time since I’ve done this. But as I recall, it was a most amazing experience.”

I nodded. “I have no doubt of it.”

At the end of every cycle, the High Priest addressed a crowd from his balcony. But not
this
kind of crowd. Though he was merely the proxy of the gods, he had to be feeling godlike himself.

Together, the High Priest and I took the lift up to his sanctum. All the way, he smiled to himself. It was hard for me to take my eyes off that smile, hard to remember that it was just a man standing beside me, a creature of flesh and blood and not something more ethereal.

Eventually, we reached the top floor of the building. As we emerged from the lift into the hallway, I heard cheering. It was faint but unmistakable.

“The people,” said Itzcoatl.

“Yes,” I said, “the people.”

Pausing at the door to his sanctum, he pressed a pad on the wall. Instantly, the holy space revealed itself to us, its immensity illuminated by lighting strips placed at intervals. At the same time, the cheering from outside became a roar, so loud that I felt as if we were standing in the crowd below us.

Last time I was there, the open slits in the vaulted ceiling had let in the sun’s rays. Now they gave us glimpses of the emerging stars instead.

Moving inside, the High Priest beckoned for me to follow. The doors to the place closed behind us, probably triggered by an electric eye. Caught in the embrace of Itzcoatl’s sanctum, I felt as if I were part of a great, joyous, and terrible secret.

The doors to the balcony were closed for the time being. In front of them stood a red-veined marble pedestal. On the pedestal lay the glassy, black obsidian knife that the High Priest would raise as he addressed the crowd.

He picked up the knife and turned it over in his hand, studying it as if he were looking at it for the first time. “Once again, Colhua, I must thank you.”


I waved away the notion. “I am honored to serve you.”

Itzcoatl looked up at me and smiled. “You have no idea how honored—or how well you will serve.”

With his free hand, he took off his headdress and placed it on the marble pedestal. Then he opened his robe and let it slip to the floor, revealing a black robe underneath.

The kind priests had worn in ancient days.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Of course not,” said the High Priest. “Allow me to explain. You see, despite what I said to you earlier, Lolco Molpilia had nothing to do with the murders at Centeotl and at Atlaua.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“Because they were carried out by
me
.”

“You . . . ?”
I echoed.

“Yes. Surprised? And they were not the first murders I committed. I did the same thing at the
last
Fire Renewal.”

I shook my head. “Why?”

“I was young when I first became High Priest, Colhua. I was optimistic. But my optimism soon became discontent. I saw the way the gods were treated in our time. No longer the all-powerful arbiters of death and deliverance, their likenesses were abased on storefronts and mocked in the form of toy figures.”

He sounded like Eren. But there was a difference: Eren hadn’t just admitted to committing murder.

“The priesthood was a sham,” said Itzcoatl, “a shadow of what it had once been. Disgusted, I delved into ancient texts, seeking something more, something greater. And do you know what I found?”

I didn’t answer him. But then, I didn’t have to. He was having a conversation with himself.

“I found that the gods we pretended to worship were not the
only
gods. Once,” he said, caressing the knife in his hand, “the people had paid tribute to an older pantheon. Gods whose names sounded like snakes slithering among stones.”

I took a step back toward the doors, in case he decided to use the knife on me. Unfortunately, the High Priest seemed to notice my retreat.

“Don’t bother,” he said. “The doors are locked and they will stay that way. Now, where was I? Oh yes—the older gods. They demanded blood, Colhua. And I gave it to them. My first victim was a man named Acacitli Mazatl. Sound familiar?”

“Mazatl’s . . . father?”

His light-colored eyes danced. “Very good. And my second victim should sound familiar as well. His name was Patli—the father of Yaretzi Patli. It was gratifying to take their lives, a pleasure to serve deities still worthy of my respect. But there was an Investigator . . . a clever fellow, like you. He had his suspicions about me. In time, he might have exposed me.

“So I leaked word to First Sun that he was going to shut them down. I knew that their backs were against the wall, that they would move quickly and decisively. And they did, during the Fire Renewal ceremony, as I led the procession from the river to my sanctum. They stabbed the clever fellow in the neck. The wound proved fatal.”

I felt a pit open in my stomach.

“That was your father,” said Itzcoatl. “The hero credited with saving my life.” He laughed. “Ironic, isn’t it?”

I felt my hands ball up into fists. But I didn’t go after Itzcoatl. Not yet.

“It gets better,” he said. “Because after I received his body in the Hall of the Fallen, I did to it what I had done to Mazatl’s father and Patli’s father—I opened him up and placed a candle inside him, and dedicated his death to the dark gods—all before I burned him to ashes.”

My throat constricted. Wherever my father was in the Lands of Death, he was writhing. He had been a devout man all his life. To know that his death had honored Itzcoatl’s pantheon rather than his own. . .