Quenami wove his way through the crowd with supreme ease, stopping here and there to greet a particular table, ignoring their gazes of frank contempt. Teomitl's face was frozen in ill-concealed anger, and he walked with the haughty pride of a sacrifice victim.
At the back of the room, five windows opened on another courtyard, a garden from which came the chatter of birds. The wind, blowing through the apertures, brought in the smell of the distant jungle, strong enough to overwhelm the aroma of copal incense.
Tizoc-tzin was seated on a mat behind a wooden screen so polished it shone with yellow reflections. Beside me I felt Teomitl stiffen. "Does he wear turquoise too?" he whispered angrily.
As it turned out, Tizoc-tzin – a middle-aged man with sallow skin – did not wear turquoise, but a deep blue that was uncomfortably close to the imperial colour. I couldn't help but notice that several of the warriors we'd passed had also removed their sandals out of reverence.
"Ah, our High Priest for the Dead. What a pleasure," he said. He dismissed Quenami with a wave of his long fingers, and then turned his attention back to me.
He had never made me comfortable, but in a very different way than the She-Snake. I could trust the She-Snake to act in his own interests; but with Tizoc-tzin I never knew if he was going to do something just out of caprice.
His eyes were two small, black beads that pierced me like a spear. He considered me for a moment with growing anger. "I've always known that priests couldn't be trusted. You have just exceeded my expectations."
"The star-demons –"
"Save your breath." His voice had an aura of command: cutting, merciless. "I know all about the star-demons, Acatl."
"Then you'll know this isn't the time for quarrels."
"On the contrary." Tizoc-tzin smiled, an expression that didn't reach his eyes. "This is a time of flux. What better opportunity for change?"
Oh gods, what a fool. But a scrap of self-preservation prevented me from saying that aloud. "My Lord–"
"I know everything there is to know about you, and you have gone too far."
"Too far?" I asked. I might have, with Acamapichtli, but there was no way he could know about that, not unless Quenami could communicate by thought alone.
Tizoc-tin's gaze moved to Teomitl. "Don't act so innocently, Acatl. Did you think I would never realise? A prince will marry a noblewoman or a princess, never the daughter of peasants."
So that was what it was all about. How dare he? "If you refer to my sister," I said, coolly, "she is no longer the daughter of peasants. She is the sister of a Jaguar Knight, and of the High Priest for the Dead."
Teomitl's face had gone pale. I had to admit we did not have much to stand on. Mihmatini would have made a wonderful concubine, but to reach any higher would have been the worst kind of arrogance.
"The daughter of peasants," Tizoc-tzin repeated. "And you… you have the audacity to think her fit to join the imperial family? It is not enough to have my brother in your thrall, always following you. You must have more, Acatl. You place your pawns everywhere advantageous and hope that I won't notice. Well, I'm no fool, and I have seen."
I'd listened in growing perplexity, and then anger. "You accuse me wrongly. I have never had any intention of holding power in this court."
"That was the game you played at first." Tizoc-tzin's face had turned the colour of muddy earth. "Last year, when you came before me, having never set a foot at Court. But that's no longer true."
"I have the best interests of my order and of the Fifth World at heart."
"No doubt, no doubt." His face was creased in a smirk I longed to wipe off.
Star-demons take the man, how could he not see that I was sincere? Out of all those he had to face within the Imperial Court, I was possibly the one with the least reason to set myself against him…
Except, of course, for the treacherous little voice that kept whispering that the She-Snake and Manatzpa were right, that he was no man fit to be Revered Speaker, no man fit to rule Huitzilpochtli's empire.
"My Lord…"
His eyes were on me. I saw then that he'd dismiss me. That out of his rivals, I was the one enjoying the least support, an isolated priest whom no one would miss. That was the reason why Quenami, the Storm Lord's lightning blind him, had looked so happy, one fewer man in his path.
"Enough."
It was Teomitl who had spoken. For the first time since entering the room, his voice had the same cutting edge as Tizoc-tzin's. "Brother, look at you. You disgrace yourself."
"So says the man who follows him," Tizoc-tzin snapped.
"So says the man who sees clearly," Teomitl said. "Do you truly wish to dismiss the High Priest for the Dead, at a time like this? What an auspicious way to start your reign."
Tizoc-tzin did not move, but his whole stance hardened. "You're young," he said to Teomitl. "You understand nothing of politics."
"No," Teomitl said. "And I'm not sure I ever will."
Tizoc grimaced. "You'll have to. Can't you see?" His voice softened, no longer the ruler chastising his subjects. "In less than a week, you'll be Master of the House of Darts. In a few dozen years…"
"The Revered Speaker is anointed by Huitzilpochtli," Teomitl said, at last, and Tizoc-tzin, who believed more in men than in gods, grimaced. "He leads us forth into battle, to extend the boundaries of the Mexica Empire from sea to sea. This isn't about politics."
"You'd marry her, then?" Tizoc-tzin's lips had thinned to a slash across his face. "The little peasants' daughter?"
If that was intended as a reconciliation – a shared moment of prejudice – it failed utterly. Teomitl's face froze, took on the cast of jade. I reached out and squeezed his arm hard enough to bruise. "No, you fool," I whispered.
"What I choose to do or not to do does not belong to you," Teomitl said. "Nothing has been decreed yet, brother."
"It will not be long." I wondered where Tizoc-tzin's confidence came from, when the council was so split, and one of his own followers had just been slaughtered?
"I thought you'd know," Teomitl's voice could have frozen water, "you who will dedicate yourself to the Southern Hummingbird, to the Smoking Mirror, the gods of all that is fluid and impermanent. Nothing in the Fifth World is ever certain."
"Oh, you're mistaken." Tizoc-tzin's smile, for once, was sincere, and quietly confident. "Very much mistaken, brother."
"Then we'll see, won't we?" Teomitl put his hands palms up; and then turned them towards the floor in a clink of jade and metal. "How the dice fall. Meanwhile–"
Tizoc-tzin's gaze rested on me, dark and angry. "Meanwhile, I will let things rest. But be assured, Acatl, I won't forget."
Neither would I.
I came out of our interview with Tizoc-tzin shaking like reeds in the wind. Teomitl, who viewed all such displays as cowardice, appeared unmoved. It was only when he stopped in a small courtyard and just stood there, staring at the sky, that I knew he had not been unaffected.