Obsidian & Blood (34 page)

  Ceyaxochitl handed me the piece of paper without another word. 

  There wasn't much to see: it was just a drawing in red ink, and another in black ink, superimposed upon it. Together, both sets of lines formed a stylised figure: an animal, suggested by its claws and the shape of its maw. 

  "I don't understand," I said.

  Ceyaxochitl sighed. "The red pattern is the one Yaotl took from Eleuia's cheek."

  "And the black?" I asked, a hollow deepening in my stomach. Missing lines. If you added the black lines to the red, you had a complete pattern.

  Ceyaxochitl raised a hand. "Promise me you're not going to do something foolish about it," she said.

  She was really, really worrying me. Was the overall symbol some Imperial seal? "I can't promise that until you tell me," I said. 

  She was silent, for a while. "It was badly smudged," she said. "Barely recognisable. But Yaotl has a good memory."

  "And?" I hated that she was toying with me, holding her answer at arm's length.

  She turned, to lay one hand on the altar, as if drawing strength from the stone. "It's a ring," she said. "A ring of engraved turquoise." 

  My stomach twisted. Turquoise was an Imperial colour. "Who wears that ring?" Tizoc-tzin? Or – and my heart missed a beat – Teomitl? 

  "Only one man," Ceyaxochitl said. "Quiyahuayo, Commander of the Jaguar Brotherhood."

  Commander Quiyahuayo. I'd met him, was my first, incredulous thought. He hadn't sounded like… Like a sorcerer. Like a ruthless man, ready to sacrifice Neutemoc for the Duality knew what aim. Was I such a fool as not to recognise a sorcerer?

  "That's not possible," I said. "Someone made a copy…"

  Ceyaxochitl shook her head. "That would be going to a lot of trouble for not much. We had so much trouble tracing that ring, I don't think it was meant to mislead us."

  "I don't understand," I said, stupidly. But I did. The Jaguar Knights were privileged warriors, heavily connected to the Imperial Family – especially their Commander. Ceyaxochitl was telling me that Quiyahuayo might be behind the abduction of Eleuia; but that I would have to tread carefully.

  I thought of the bruises on Eleuia's skin; of how no part of her had been left undamaged; of how Quiyahuayo had left Neutemoc to rot in his cage for days; of how he'd induced Huei to betray her husband and put her own life in danger; of how, because of him, she was now condemned to death. A cold anger crystallised in my chest.

  I crumpled the paper between my fingers. "Thank you," I said, and walked out before she could stop me.

 

Yaotl joined me as I reached the outer courtyard of the Duality House. "You're about to do something foolish," he said, flatly. For once, he didn't sound amused or ironic.
  "Do you have any other solutions?"

  "Mistress Ceyaxochitl can appeal to the Imperial Courts–"

  "That's not a solution," I said. "That's just delaying things."

  "Sometimes, it's the best thing," Yaotl said. "Quiyahuayo has more influence than you believe."

  "No," I said. I wasn't there to dally in politics. I wasn't there to be thrown left and right by events out of my control. I wanted justice. 

  Yaotl started to say something, but then met my gaze. He sighed: an unusual, uncharacteristic gesture. "It's your choice," he said. "Don't say we failed to warn you this time."

  I shook my head. If my destiny was to rush in, like a fool, then so be it.

 

I was almost all the way to the doors of the Jaguar House when I realised someone had followed me. Neutemoc. 

  "You're not safe here," I snapped.

  He stood, some paces away from me, stubbornly unmoving. "I heard you. It's my Brotherhood, Acatl. My commander. I think I deserve an explanation."

  He still shone, faintly, with Mihmatini's spell: a soft light, barely visible to my priest-senses, which spilled on the beaten earth under us. The rising wind whipped at his cloak, giving him the air of an uncanny monster.

  I looked at the bulk of the Jaguar House, throwing its shadow over us – at the guards at the entrance. For company, I could do worse than Neutemoc: he might hate me, but he'd guard my back, if only because I was family and because his brotherhood had betrayed him.

  "Very well," I said, finally. "Come on."

  He walked some paces away, which suited me. I had no desire to start a long conversation. When we reached the Jaguar House, though, I saw the faces of the guards darken.

  "You shouldn't be here," the first guard said to Neutemoc.

  A faint, dangerous smile stretched Neutemoc's lips. He spread his hands, palms up, as if to show he had no weapon. "I'm still a Jaguar Knight," he said. "And I'm entitled to be here."

  The second guard growled. "You haven't set a foot in here since your arrest, and now you come back."

  "It's the coming back that matters," Neutemoc said. He was hiding his anger, his sense of betrayal, very well, but I saw it in the slight tremor of his hands. "I want to see the commander." 

  The first guard laughed, his fingers tightening around the shellgrip of his spear. "As if he'd see you at this hour?"

  Neutemoc's voice was slow, deadly. "Ask him," he said.

  The second guard looked at Neutemoc, clearly trying to decide whether he was jesting.

  "Ask him," Neutemoc said, "about Priestess Eleuia."

  I had been carefully folding the crumpled maguey paper into a small square. By the guards' blank faces, they'd obviously not been involved in Eleuia's abduction. Time to pass a discreet message to Commander Quiyahuayo, then. There was no reason to drag the guards into the shame of Eleuia's murder.

  "Tell him we found this on her body," I said, handing my folded paper to the first guard.

  He wasn't long gone. When he came back, his face was set in a frown. "He'll see you," he said.

 

The Jaguar House was almost deserted at this early hour: a few Knights were playing patolli in one of the courtyards, and all the unmarried Knights were in their dormitories – some, by the noises wafting through the entrance-curtains, still engaged with various courtesans.

  Neutemoc didn't speak until we were a long way in. "I'd hate to be trapped here," he said.

  I shrugged. "You shouldn't have come, then." The dice were all Quiyahuayo's in this House, anyway. At least, if I didn't come back, Ceyaxochitl and Yaotl would know who held me.

  It was a meagre consolation, but it sustained me until we reached Quiyahuayo's room.

  A delicate entrance curtain, adorned with images of the great Tezcatlipoca slaughtering the enemies of the Mexica, opened to reveal a wide room lit by two braziers. Lord Death and His wife faced each other in the frescoes on the walls. The god and His consort sat on Their thrones of linked bones, with the Wind of Knives a small, sharp shadow in the background. It was… wrong. They shouldn't have been there. It wasn't their place.

  The only furniture was a reed mat, and four large wicker chests. One of the chests, I saw, held piles of folded codices, laid on top of each other. Even from this distance, I could tell what they were: books of prayers to Mictlantecuhtli, detailed indexes to the minor gods of the underworld, spells to summon them and bind them to one's will.

  Altogether, it painted a picture of a man's obsession with Mictlan: a trait ill-suited to a commander of the Jaguar Knights, a man who should have been sworn to the Hummingbird. It was clear, though, why he had chosen to use a beast of shadows to abduct Eleuia. 

  Commander Quiyahuayo, in full Jaguar regalia, was sitting on the reed mat, surrounded by discarded codices and by broken writing reeds. He held a clay tablet, which he used as a support to write on maguey paper. His gestures were slow, but precise. 

  He raised his eyes when we came closer. "My late-night visitors," he said, seemingly amused. "Leave us, will you?" he asked the guard – who nodded, and exited the room.

  Commander Quiyahuayo put down his writing reed, and tilted the tablet towards us. He'd been writing on the paper I'd sent him: he had drawn a circle around the symbol, like the shape of a signet ring. 

  He knew.

  I glanced at the entrance-curtain. The guard was standing just behind it. I couldn't tell with certainty, but there was probably a second guard as well. No choice, then; no way back; but I had known that before entering the room.

  "So," Commander Quiyahuayo said. "Do sit down."

  Neutemoc had been watching him with a mixture of horror and fascination. "Going through your pretence of politeness?" 

  Commander Quiyahuayo bowed his head. The quetzal tail-feathers on his headdress followed his motion, bending like stalks in the wind. "The proper gestures, at the proper time," he said. "Incidentally, don't even think of trying to attack me, physically or otherwise." He said the last with a quick nod in my direction, having seen my hand tighten around one of my obsidian knives. "It would only make things more painful. And believe me, I have no wish to do so."

  He sounded sincere, and in many ways that was the worst. "More painful than you made them for Eleuia?" I asked. 

  "Ah," he said. "Eleuia. Do sit down," he repeated.

  "I'd rather remain standing," Neutemoc snapped. "Since you judge that what happened to me was just an inconvenience?" 

  "A minor thing," Commander Quiyahuayo said. He set his clay tablet aside carefully. "Compared to the stakes."

  "What stakes?" I asked, wondering what kind of man would speak of human lives as if they were part of some vast game. Not a man I would like.

  Commander Quiyahuayo's smile was ironic. "Why, the Fifth World. What else do we play for?"

  "I don't understand," I said, just as Neutemoc snapped, "Are you going to toy with us all night? Or just do to us as you did to Eleuia?" 

  Commander Quiyahuayo's smile slowly faded. "You still care for the bitch," he said, surprised. "Why? She tried to kill you." 

  If Neutemoc was shocked at this, he didn't show it. "So did you," he said.

  Commander Quiyahuayo shrugged. "Hazards of combats."

  This was obviously leading nowhere. Neutemoc was right: Commander Quiyahuayo was toying with us until he became bored. "What's your interest in Eleuia?" I asked. "Does it have anything to do with her child – the one she had in the Chalca Wars, in a temple dedicated to the Storm Lord?"

  Commander Quiyahuayo recoiled visibly, though he soon recovered.

  "Tell me what is going on," I asked. "We know about the child. We unearthed his bones. We know something is wrong with them." I couldn't help shivering as I said this. 

  "You've been busy, I see," the commander said. 

  "Yes," I said. "But I still don't–"

  He cut me with a frown. "You're a priest, Acatl. Don't you know what those bones are?"

  Eerie, was my first thought. I remembered the feeling I'd had when holding them, the same feeling as in Tlaloc's shrine. "Powerful," I said.

  Commander Quiyahuayo shook his head. "Power." 

  "I–"

  Gently, Commander Quiyahuayo rested his hands on the reed mat. "Power incarnate."
  "The Storm Lord's power?" I asked.

  He shrugged. "The gods' powers are constrained in the Fifth World. That's why They find human agents." He probed at the clay tablet on the ground as it were an aching tooth. "But agents are tricky. Unreliable. They have a will of their own. Some gods desire a vessel that is more… pliant, shall we say?"

  I stared at him, my contempt forgotten. Surely… "Tlaloc made a child?" I asked. "He fathered a child with Eleuia?"

  Commander Quiyahuayo smiled with the pleased expression of a teacher who had just managed to pass on knowledge. In the flickering light of the braziers, the fangs of the jaguar maw framing his head shone: a second, far more dangerous smile. "The Storm Lord wanted a child who would hold the full extent of His powers. To create life with those constraints is hard, more so when one is a god with no idea of where to start." His voice was grim. "Hence the stillbirth." 

  It was a fascinating story he was telling me, but I couldn't trust him. Every one of his words was a lie. This was the man who had arranged Eleuia's abduction. "Why should I believe you?" I asked. "You tortured her. You killed her."

  "I didn't kill her. The bitch escaped." Commander Quiyahuayo sounded angry. "As to why you should believe me… That, I'm afraid, is your own problem. If you don't, it won't change many things for me."

  He was right: either way, he had us at his mercy. I ought to have felt frightened. But I'd entered the Jaguar House knowing what I was doing. I wanted explanations.

  Commander Quiyahuayo spread his hands. "Think of Eleuia. Of the kind of woman she was."

  The problem was that for a lie, it rang true, too much in keeping with Eleuia's character. Bearing a child would earn her the Storm Lord's favour: an easy way to rise through the hierarchy, borne on the god's powers. And what better way to be safe from hunger than to have the favour of the God of Rain – He who made the maize flowers bloom?

  "I still don't understand," I said slowly, to give me time to compose my thoughts. "The child is dead. Whatever Tlaloc wanted to do, it wouldn't have worked."

  From outside came shouted orders and the sound of footsteps, running in the distance. Commander Quiyahuayo shook his head in distaste. "My, they're noisy tonight. Pay no attention. Where were we? Ah yes. The child." He smiled. "You see, there was a second child. And this one survived his birth."

  I stared at him, incredulous. "That's why you tortured her?"

  The shouting had moved away from us, and the sounds of running men were gradually dying down. A breeze stirred the curtain. Neutemoc cursed, and moved away from the draught.