He shook his head. "Not that I can remember. She complained about the whole afternoon having been a waste of her time."
But she must have seen something, or suspected something after the fact. Otherwise why take the risk of poisoning her? The penalties for such a crime would have been severe, death by crushing the head, at the very least.
"Nothing at all?"
The physician, who was lifting the entrance-curtain in a tinkle of bells, stopped, and then turned back towards me. "When I was first called, the paralysis hadn't quite reached everywhere. She managed to say something, for what it's worth."
"Yes?"
"Well, her lips were already half-paralysed, but I think it was something about worshipping bells."
Yaotl and I looked at each other. "Acatl-tzin?"
Bells. Silver Bells. Huitzilpochtli's sister Coyolxauhqui, She of the Silver Bells, who waited under the Great Temple for Her revenge.
"I don't know if it makes any sense," the physician said.
I withdrew my hand from Ceyaxochitl and carefully stood up. "It does make sense. Thank you."
"Not to me," Yaotl said.
"Silver Bells. She's been poisoned by a devotee of Coyolxauhqui," I said, and watched the pallor spread across his face.
Our enemies were indeed in our midst. One person, or several, were worshippers of She of the Silver Bells; summoners of star-demons, harbingers of chaos, determined to sow destruction among us.
The only question was who.
I ate a sparse lunch in my temple with my priests: a single bowl of levened maize porridge, flavoured with spices. Then, instead of going straight back to the palace, I detoured through the Wind Tower, the shrine to Quetzalcoatl. Like the other shrines it stood on a platform atop a pyramid; unlike the other shrines, which were squat and square, the Wind Tower was made of smooth black stones and completely circular, offering no sharp angles or purchase. For Quetzalcoatl was the Feathered Serpent but also Ehecatl, the Breath of Creation, and to hinder Him in His passage through His own shrine would have been an unforgivable offence.
And He was the Morning Star and the Evening Star, our only ally in the night skies in those dangerous times.
I could have prayed to Lord Death in Ceyaxochitl's name, for He was the only god I claimed, as familiar as a wife to a husband or a digging stick to a peasant. But, somehow, it felt wrong to appeal to Him to keep a soul out of His dominion.
I stood for a while on the inside of the shrine with pilgrims crowded around me, unsure of what to say. I did what I had always done. Kneeling, I pierced my earlobes with my worship thorns, and let the blood drip onto the grass balls by the altar. The Feathered Serpent took no human sacrifices, but only our penances and our gifts of flower and fruit. He had given us the arts and the songs. He had once descended into the underworld for the bones of the dead, had braved death and darkness so that humanity might be recreated.
"Keep her safe," I whispered. "Please.
You who know the metals in the earth
The jade and the flowers and the songs
You who descended into Mictlan
Into the darkness, into the dryness
Please keep her safe."
I wished I could say that He'd been listening, but the shrine remained much the same as ever. I was not His priest, I did not have His favours. My prayer was no doubt lost among the multitude.
I walked back into the palace in an even bleaker mood than I'd left it. As fate and the Smoking Mirror would have it, the first person I met in the corridors was Quenami, the High Priest of Huitzilpochtli, who looked unusually preoccupied.
"Acatl." He frowned. "I haven't seen you this morning."
"I had other business to attend to." I was not in the mood for niceties. "Did Ceyaxochitl come to you yesterday, Quenami?"
There was a brief moment before my words sunk in, which I could almost follow by looking at his blue-streaked face. "The Guardian? She might have. I don't remember."
"Only a day ago, and you can't remember? What a fickle mind you have."
"I thought yesterday's little interview would have removed your inclination to insult your peers or your superiors." Quenami's voice was cutting.
So many things had changed since yesterday. "Perhaps. That was before someone poisoned Ceyaxochitl."
"Poisoned? That means–"
"She's dying," I said, curtly. I tried not to think of her warm, unresponsive skin under me, of the feeling of her heartbeat lurching out of control. She'd been at my back for as long as I could remember. We'd fought, but I'd always known she'd be there when the Empire truly needed her. "And whatever happened, it was in the palace."
"Do you have any proof of that?" Quenami appeared to have recovered from his shock, feigned or genuine I did not know.
"Who else would dare poison the Guardian?"
"More people than you'd think." His voice was condescending again. "Foreign sorcerers–"
"The only sorcerers of any note are in this palace," I snapped. "And I'm going to make sure they can't do any harm anymore."
Quenami's face was frozen into what might have been anger or fear. "So you'll just badger us into confessions? You're making a mistake."
"Why? Because I'm impinging on your privileges? Look, I'm not intending to probe into secrets or shatter your face and heart in public, but you must realise that someone tried to kill the Guardian of the Sacred Precinct – agent of the Duality in this world, the keeper of the invisible boundaries. If they dare to do that, then no one here is safe."
Quenami's face shifted to disdain. He was going to tell me that he was High Priest of Huitzilpochtli, that out of all people, he should be safe.
I forestalled him. "It was poison poured into a meal, or a drink." I kept my voice as innocuous and as innocent as possible. "That could happen to anyone. Even if you could have your meals tasted by a slave, it was slow-acting. She didn't show any symptoms until a few hours after the poisoning."
"What poison?"
"I don't know," I said. "But a nasty one. The muscles refuse to obey. You're trapped as a prisoner in your own body, until your lungs or your heart give up. It's not a pleasant way to go." Not to mention pointless. Sacrifices and wounds dealt on the battlefield were painful, but this pain was an offering to the gods, the whole body becoming a sacrifice. But, for Ceyaxochitl, there would be no reward, no justification for enduring this slow slide into oblivion.
"Fine," Quenami said. "What do you want me to do, Acatl?"
"Just answer a few questions. Did you or did you not see Ceyaxochitl yesterday?"
"Yes," Quenami said. "Very early in the morning."
"And?"
He hesitated for a while, trying to see what he could and could not tell me. "She kept insisting to know where I stood."