The gods were decidedly not on our side.
We made a cursory examination of the rooms which didn't yield anything useful, and moved onto Manatzpa's private quarters.
In daylight they seemed much smaller than in my fevered imagination. They did wrap around two courtyards, but even the largest of them barely covered the surface of the Imperial Chambers. They had loomed much larger in my frantic flight of the night before.
As I had already noticed, the rooms were bare, with few ornaments. Manatzpa might have been a nobleman, but he had not believed in pomp any more than Teomitl. A few wicker chests and a few circular fans, carelessly tossed in corners where the feathers had creased, their colours all but faded; thin and simple reed mats, serving as little more than places to sit; and two unlit braziers.
I opened the wicker chests to find piles of vibrantly-coloured codices, ranging from lists of rituals to the tribute of the provinces. In the chest after that was poetry, carefully re-transcribed. Pride of place was given to a volume collecting the poetry of Nezahualcoyotl, the previous Revered Speaker of our neighbouring city Texcoco. The codex had been well-thumbed, but the glyphs were intact with no markings on the paper, the treasured possession of a man who seemed to have had few of them.
Altogether they painted the picture of a man whose interests had
been broad, a scholar, an intellectual whose curiosity extended to everything and anything. A man I might have appreciated, more than I ever had Quenami or Acamapichtli, had the circumstances been otherwise.
Teomitl was rummaging through another chest, shaking his head as he discarded clay vessels and worship thorns. At length he crossed his arms over his chest. "This is pointless, Acatl-tzin."
I couldn't help shaking my head in amusement. Teomitl might have had the raw power and the fighting spirit, but the minutiae of investigations would always be beyond him. "Have a little patience," I said, pulling aside a third chest to reveal treatises on medicine. "Whatever he left behind, he wouldn't have wanted us to find it. It's likely well hidden."
Teomitl frowned and moved to stand against one of the frescoes, his head at the level of Huitzilpochtli's angry face. "We're wasting our time while they move against us."
I lifted an almanac on plants and their uses, and moved to the rest of the pile. "The problem is that we don't know who 'they' are."
"Too many suspects?" Teomitl shook his head.
"Too many agendas," I said. It was a given that everybody was dabbling in magic or planning political moves against their opponents. The question was whose moves included star-demons. Manatzpa had sworn it wasn't him; and his death tended to prove it. But Xahuia was still on the loose; not to mention those who still remained within the palace compound.
And, the Duality curse me, I still had no idea of how it all intersected or made sense. A plot to bring the star-demons down shouldn't have had this many complications, this many people dying to prevent them from talking. Whatever else I might have said about She of the Silver Bells, She'd always been straightforward, much like Her brother. No tricks, just fire and blood and war.
"I see." Teomitl was silent for a while. "Acatl-tzin, I wish to apologise."
I turned, genuinely surprised. "What for?"
"For the other night."
It took me a while to see what he was referring to. Ages seemed to have passed since that night when he had walked away from me in the wake of our interview with Tizoc-tzin. "Don't mention it. We have bigger problems on our hands."
"It's the little cracks that break obsidian. The flaws that undo jade," Teomitl said. He looked me in the eye – proud, unashamed, his was as unlikely an apology as I had ever seen, and yet oddly touching. "You have your opinion about my brother, and I have mine."
"Yes," I said, cautiously. I wasn't quite sure of what opinion to have about Tizoc-tzin anymore, except that we were still at each other's throats.
"Let it remain that way." Teomitl made a small, dismissive gesture, a command that could not be denied. "Let's not talk further about this, or we'll disagree."
Probably, but I didn't say this. "As you wish."
I lifted another medicinal codex. I was almost at the bottom of the pile now, and still had nothing to show for my labour. The Southern Hummingbird blind us, it looked like Manatzpa had been prudent to excess.
Wait.
The second-to-last paper in the pile was much smaller, a single sheet of maguey fibre. The writing on it was the neat, elegant hand of someone used to glyphs, every colour applied with a sense of context and decorum that could only belong to a temple.
"Ueman, Fire Priest of Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent, the Precious Twin:
"On this day Ten Flower in the year Two House, Councilman Manatzpa gave the temple ten rolls of the finest cotton cloths, fifty gold quills and one bag of quetzal tail-feathers, in exchange for the Breath of the Precious Twin."
The Breath of the Precious Twin was a costly protective spell that put the holder under the personal gaze of the god. Along with the Southern Hummingbird's protection, it was one of the most effective wards a man could barter for. I was wary of using it. Mictlan's magic was not compatible with Southern Hummingbird's spells, and while the Feathered Serpent might be one of the most benevolent deities, there was something inherently disturbing about having His eye permanently on me.
I hadn't seen it, but then he'd have taken precautions so it wasn't obvious. He had been a canny man – save, I guessed, when he'd started to resort to murder to have his way.
Mind you, the protective spell had not helped him much. The Obsidian Butterfly Itzpapalotl had sheared through it as though it barely existed and taken his soul with Her as easily as a man might take a basket of herbs.
The priest's name at the top of the paper was the same one Xahuia had given me. His title was given as Fire Priest, the secondin-command of the Wind Tower.
I turned the paper over thoughtfully. Ten Flower. Seven days ago. And the spell had not come cheap, either. Even for a man as rich as Manatzpa, the price was a fortune. Even before Echichilli's death Manatzpa had already been looking for protection, as if he had already known that something was going to happen. How had he known?
What in the Fifth World was this secret that star-demons killed for?
Behind us, the bells tinkled: one of the slaves, wearing the elegant collar of the palace servants around his neck. "Master, there is someone who wishes to see you."
"Us?" Teomitl stepped in.
The slave shook his head. "He asked for the High Priest for the Dead."
Someone I didn't know, then, not any of the players still remaining, who would have summoned me instead of coming here. But why me?
The youth who strode into the courtyard was a sight. It was not that he was richly dressed, with an elaborately embroidered cotton tunic, a plume of heron feathers at his belt and another set of feathers bending from the back of his head towards his neck. Rather, it was the state of the regalia – the feathers were torn, their white tarnished with blood, and dark splotches stained the tunic all around the collar line. He held his macuahitl sword a little too casually, as if daring an invisible watcher to attack him, and the shards shone a sickly grey-green in the sunlight.