And then, with a feeling like a blade of ice slid through her ribs, Onalli saw that it wasn’t the case. She saw what Tecipiani was carrying: a body, just like her: the limp shape of the boy she’d downed in the courtyard.
“You—” she whispered.
Tecipiani shifted. Her face, slowly coming into focus, could have been that of an Asian statue—the eyes dry and unreadable, the mouth thinned to a darker line against her skin. “Ezpetlatl, of the Atempan calpulli clan. Given into our keeping fifteen years ago.”
Shame warred with rage, and lost. “I don’t care. You think it’s going to atone for everything else you did?”
“Perhaps,” Tecipiani said. “Perhaps not.” Her voice shook, slightly—a bare hint of emotion, not enough, never enough. “And you think rescuing Xochitl was worth his life?”
Onalli scanned the darkness, trying to see how many guards were there—how many of Tecipiani’s bloodless sycophants. She couldn’t take them all—fire and blood, she wasn’t even sure she could take Tecipiani. But the lights were set all around the courtyard—on the roofs of the buildings, no doubt—and she couldn’t make out anything but the commander herself.
As, no doubt, Tecipiani had meant all along. Bitch.
“You’re stalling, aren’t you?” Onalli asked. “This isn’t about me. It has never been about me.” About you, Tecipiani; about the House and the priests and Xochitl. . . .
“No,” Tecipiani agreed, gravely. “Finally, something we can agree on.”
“Then why Xochitl?” A cold certainty was coalescing in her belly, like a snake of ice. “You wanted us both, didn’t you?”
“Oh, Onalli.” Tecipiani’s voice was sad. “I though you’d understood. This isn’t about you, or Xochitl. It’s about the House.”
How could she say this? “You’ve killed the House,” Onalli spat.
“You never could see into the future,” Tecipiani said. “Even two years ago, when you came back.”
“When you warned us about betrayal? You’re the one who couldn’t see the Revered Speaker was insane, you’re the one who—”
“Onalli.” Tecipiani’s voice held the edge of a knife. “The House is still standing.”
“Because you sold it.”
“Because I compromised,” Tecipiani said.
“You—” Onalli choked on all the words she was trying to say. “You poisoned it to the guts and the brain, and you’re telling me about compromise?”
“Yes. Something neither you or Xochitl ever understood, unfortunately.”
That was too much—irreparable. Without thought, Onalli shifted Xochitl onto her shoulder, and moved, her knife swinging free of its sheath—going for Tecipiani’s throat. If she wouldn’t move, wouldn’t release her so-called precious life, too bad—it would be the last mistake she’d ever make—
She’d half-expected Tecipiani to parry by raising the body in her arms—to sacrifice him, as she’d sacrificed so many of them—but the commander, as quick as a snake, knelt on the ground, laying the unconscious boy at her feet—and Onalli’s first swing went wide, cutting only through air. By the time she’d recovered, Tecipiani was up on her feet again, a blade in her left hand.
Onalli shifted, and pressed her again. Tecipiani parried; and again, and again.
Neither of them should have the upper hand. They were both Jaguar Knights; Tecipiani might have been a little less fit, away from the field for so long—but Onalli was hampered by Xochitl’s body, whom she had to keep cradled against her.
Still—
Still, Tecipiani’s gestures were not as fast as they should have been. Another one of her games?
Onalli didn’t care, not anymore. In one of Tecipiani’s over-wide gestures, she saw her opening—and took it. Her blade snaked through; connected, sinking deep above the wrist.
Tecipiani jumped backward—her left hand dangled uselessly, but she’d shifted her knife to the right—and, like many left-handers, she was ambidextrous.
“You’re still good,” Tecipiani admitted, grudgingly.
Onalli looked around once more—the lights were still on—and said, “You haven’t brought anyone else, have you? It’s just you and me.”
Tecipiani made a curt nod; but, when she answered, it had nothing to do with the question. “The House still stands.” There was such desperate intensity in her voice that it stopped Onalli, for a few seconds. “The Eagle Knights were burnt alive; the Otters dispersed into the silver mines to breathe dust until it killed them. The Coyotes died to a man, defending their House against the imperial guards.”
“They died with honor,” Onalli said.
“Honor is a word without meaning,” Tecipiani said. Her voice was steady once more. “There are five hundred Knights in this House, out of which one hundred are unblooded children and novices. I had to think of the future.”
Onalli’s hands clenched. “And Xochitl wasn’t part of the future?”
Tecipiani didn’t move. “Sacrifices were necessary. Who would turn on their own, except men loyal to the Revered Speaker?”
The cold was back in her guts, and in her heart. “You’re sick,” Onalli said. “This wasn’t worth the price of our survival—this wasn’t—”
“Perhaps,” Tecipiani said. “Perhaps it was the wrong thing to do. But we won’t know until long after this, will we?”
That gave her pause—so unlike Tecipiani, to admit she’d been wrong, to put her acts into question. But still—still, it changed nothing.
“And now what?” Onalli asked. “You’ve had your game, Tecipiani. Because that’s all we two were ever to you, weren’t we?”
Tecipiani didn’t move. At last, she made a dismissive gesture. “It could have gone both ways. Two Knights, killed in an escape attempt tragically gone wrong . . .” She spoke as if nothing mattered anymore; her voice cool, emotionless—and that, in many ways, was the most terrifying. “Or a success, perhaps, from your point of view.”
“I could kill you,” Onalli said, and knew it was the truth. No one was perfectly ambidextrous, and, were Onalli to drop Xochitl as Tecipiani had dropped the boy, she’d have the full range of her abilities to call upon.
“Yes,” Tecipiani said. A statement of fact, nothing more. “Or you could escape.”
“Fuck you,” Onalli said. She wanted to say something else—that, when the Revered Speaker was finally dead, she and Xochitl would come back and level the House, but she realized, then, that it was only thanks to Tecipiani that there would still be a House to tear down.
But it still wasn’t worth it. It couldn’t have been.
Gently, she shifted Xochitl, catching her in her arms once more, like a hurt child. “I didn’t come here to kill you,” she said, finally. “But I still hope you burn, Tecipiani, for all you’ve done. Whether it was worth it or not.”
She walked to the end of the courtyard, into the blinding light—to the wall and the ball-court and the exit. Tecipiani made no attempt to stop her; she still stood next to the unconscious body of the boy, looking at some point in the distance.
And, all the way out—into the suburbs of Tenochtitlan, in the aircar Atcoatl was driving—she couldn’t get Tecipiani’s answer out of her mind, nor the burning despair she’d heard in her friend’s voice.
What makes you think I don’t already burn?
She’d always been too good an actress. “Black One take you,” Onalli said, aloud. And she wasn’t really sure anymore if she was asking for suffering, or for mercy.
Alone in her office once more, her hands—her thin, skeletal hands—reach for the shriveled mushrooms of the teonanácatl—and everything slowly dissolves into colored patterns, into meaningless dreams.