I woke up briefly to the blare of conch-shells that announced the rise of the Fifth Sun then sank back into darkness.
When I woke again it was mid-morning, and the bustle of the Sacred Precinct filtered into the courtyard – the prayers and the chants, the drum-beats that accompanied the sacrifices, the familiar smell of incense mingling with that of animal blood.
I knelt and sliced my earlobes to make my own offerings – to Lord Death, and to the Fifth Sun, He who would see us through those difficult times, for it looked as though His human servants were sadly lacking.
I sat for a while in the courtyard, under the lone pine tree, chewing a day-old maize flatbread, the only edible thing I had left in the house. I should have thought of asking Ichtaca for supplies on the previous evening, but I had been too preoccupied with Teomitl.
The Storm Lord blind him, what was wrong with the boy?
Perhaps he had outgrown me. After all, I had known that he couldn't remain my student – or, indeed, Mihmatini's suitor – forever, that he was destined for politics and war, wholly outside my purview. Tizoc-tzin had taken him under his protection, and was teaching him what was necessary.
Still, it wasn't as if I could shed my responsibility when it suited me. A man who would pick quarrels with the most powerful individuals in the Mexica Empire was not yet an adult and would not rise far, even through feats of arms. If even Tizoc-tzin, a canny politician, could not teach Teomitl that then it was also my responsibility to try. Perhaps he would listen to me more than to his brother.
Admittedly it did not look very likely at this point.
The sky was clear and blue, its colour as crisp and as vivid as a new fresco. I walked to my temple, intending to pick up Palli before going back to the palace. Instead, the first person I saw when entering the courtyard was Yaotl, Ceyaxochitl's personal slave, in the midst of a conversation with Ichtaca.
My sandals on the paved stones of the entrance made enough noise that they stopped talking. "There he is," Ichtaca said.
Yaotl turned, his embroidered cloak rippling in the breeze. "Acatl-tzin."
I braced myself for more sarcasm, but his face under the blue-and-black paint was grim, an expression I had never seen on him before.
Fear reached inside my chest and closed a fist around my heart. "What is it?"
"It's Mistress Ceyaxochitl. She's been poisoned."
SIX
Princess of Texcoco
The Duality House, unlike the palace, was silent and dark, and those few priests we crossed were in courtyards, down on their knees to beseech the favour of the Duality for their ailing superior.
"She came back from the palace late at night," Yaotl said. "Everything was fine at first but then she started complaining of tingling in her hands and feet. And then it spread."
"Something she came into contact with?" I asked. I had seen her yesterday, and she had seemed tired and weary, but I had attributed it to a long day, not to poison.
Would it have changed anything, if I had noticed?
I hoped it wouldn't have. I needed to believe it would make no difference. Regrets wouldn't serve us now; what we needed was to move forward.
We reached the main courtyard of the shrine, a vast space from which rose a central pyramid of polished limestone. Ceyaxochitl's rooms were just by the stairs. Their entrance-curtain, usually opened to any supplicant, was closed, unmoving in the still air.
Inside, Ceyaxochitl was propped up against the wall, her skin sallow, her whole frame sagging. A frowning physician was holding a bowl of water under her chin.
"No shadow. Her spirit is still unaffected," he said. "It's a physical poison."
"You know about poisons," Yaotl said.
I couldn't help snorting. "Yes, but after death. Generally, I don't have patients. I have corpses."
The physician withdrew the bowl of water. "That's as close to a corpse as you can get to, young man. Nothing is responding. She can't speak, or move any muscle." He turned to Yaotl. "I'd need to know the day and hour of her birth, to know which god is in charge of her soul."
Yaotl's hands clenched, slightly. The physician's asking for her nameday could only mean that he intended a full healing ritual, which in turn meant the situation was desperate. "Quetzalcoatl. The Feathered Serpent." God of creation and knowledge, and the only other god to accept bloodless offerings. I couldn't say I was surprised.
"I'll send for supplies, then," the physician said.
I knelt and touched Ceyaxochitl's warm skin. Nothing responded. Her heartbeat was fast and erratic, as if the organ itself were bewildered.
"She's in here," the physician said. "Conscious. It's just that her body is completely paralysed."
About as cowardly and as nasty a poison as you could think of. They could have had the decency to make it clean, at least.
"Acatl-tzin," Yaotl insisted.
"Do you have any idea what she could have been poisoned with?" I asked the physician. He was the expert, not I.
"What other symptoms have you seen?"
Yaotl thought for a while. "She was rubbing at her face before the numbness came. And having some difficulty walking, as if she'd been drunk, but Mistress Ceyaxochitl never drinks."
Indeed not. She might have been old enough to be allowed drunkenness, but she'd always seen that as a sign of weakness. She'd always been strong.
Gods, what would we do without her?
"Something she ate, then, in all likelihood," the physician said.
"Something?" I asked. Surely things hadn't degenerated so fast at the palace that food and drink couldn't be trusted anymore? "Can't you be more precise?"
"Not without a more complete examination," the physician said. His voice was harsh. "But I think you'd want me to see if I can heal her first."
"Yes," Yaotl said. "But I also want to make sure that the son of a dog who did this does not get away with it."
The physician looked at Ceyaxochitl again and scratched the stubble on his chin. "I seem to remember a similar case some time ago. I'll send back for my records, to see if anything can be inferred from it. In the meantime the best we can do is keep her warm."
And breathing. It didn't take a physician to know that if the paralysis was progressing, the lungs would stop functioning at some point, not to mention the heart.
I moved my hand from Ceyaxochitl's hands to her chest, feeling the heart within fluttering like a trapped thing. "I know you can hear us. We'll find out who did this. Stay here. Please."
Please. I knew we'd had our dissensions in the past, our disagreements on how to proceed, but they had been spats between friends, or at least between peers. To think that she was dying, that she might not see the next day…
The Flower Prince strike the one who had done this, with an illness every bit as bad and as drawn-out as the poison that now coursed through Ceyaxochitl's veins. "Did she say anything?" I asked Yaotl. "Any clues?" Anything we could use…