The smoke thinned, flowing out, but it remained on the edges of my vision. I tried shaking my head, but it was as if it had become stuck to my cornea. Its tendrils shifted on the edges of my vision, and never left no matter what I looked at. Magic crept along the nape of my neck, cold and unforgiving, almost like underworld magic, but without its comforting familiarity. It wasn't the resigned acceptance of a god who took whatever dead souls were left to Him, but the endless hunger of something that lived between the stars, something that had been there since the start, and would be there in the end, that would see the night swallow us all, our hymns and our poems, our flowers and our songs, our fires and our blood-offerings, and make us all as nothing.
What goddess had the She-Snake called upon?
"Come," the She-Snake said, bending his head with a smile. His grey eyes had become bottomless pits in the darkness, a window into the deepest cold, the one that had settled across the world before the Fifth Sun had risen.
I followed because I no longer had any choice; but my fingers clenched around the obsidian knife at my belt, feeling the arc of Lord Death's power, a reassurance that I wasn't alone, come what may.
We walked through the palace, and it was as if we had become ghosts. No one, not a single slave, not a single servant or nobleman turned to look at us. It seemed to me, too, that we were moving faster than we should have been. We passed the House of Animals in what seemed barely a heartbeat, and were in the other half of the palace, the one belonging to the Revered Speaker, before I could even accustom myself to this strange magic.
The She-Snake was already walking ahead, into a courtyard I would have recognised anywhere – Tizoc-tzin's.
Like the previous time, it was deserted and silent; but this time the palpable smell of neglect became something else, a thin veneer over decay and rot and fear. As I climbed the stairs in the SheSnake's wake, I saw traces of blood clinging like black splotches to the limestone, and the smoke spread to wreathe the whole building, making it seem pallid and distant.
Inside, the same silence, the same smell. The She-Snake crossed between the pillars, hardly looking up to avoid them. He stopped at the back of the room, by a window overlooking the tropical garden. To the left was an entrance-curtain, the bells tinkling out a muted lament.
"Here."
"I don't see–" I started.
"Go inside," the She-Snake said, bowing his head. "And ask me any questions you might have, afterwards."
I threw him a suspicious glance. But if he wanted to kill me this was a singularly complicated way to go about it. Suppressing a sigh, I lifted the entrance-curtain. It slid between my fingers like raindrops; I hissed in surprise, but then took the smarter approach, and merely pushed through it. It was like walking through a waterfall, a little resistance, like the crossing of a veil, and then nothing more.
Inside, the room should have been a riot of colours. Vivid frescoes, and luxuries such as feather-fans and bronze braziers lay piled on reed mats; but they were muted by the smoke, highlighting the impermanence of such a gluttonous display of wealth.
Tizoc-tzin sat on a reed mat in the further corner; and the silhouette by his side, with the blue feather head-dress, could only be Quenami. He wasn't a particularly tall man, but even seated he seemed to tower over the hunched figure of Tizoc-tzin.
I dared not creep too close to their whispered conversation – Quenami, for all his bluster, was High Priest, and might have a way of seeing me – but the smoke was making it difficult for me to hear: it cut their words into four hundred meaningless pieces, carried away by the cold wind between the stars.
"…crown… mine…"
"…Lord of Men… sacrifice… regrettable deaths, but necessary…"
"…that they would dare disobey…"
Carefully, I walked closer. Quenami stiffened. I stopped, my heart hammering against my throat, but he relaxed again, and bent closer to Tizoc-tzin.
Southern Hummingbird blind me, why did he always find a way to thwart me?
Closer… The smoke whirled around me; the world shifted and blurred, a prelude to being torn apart.
"You worry too much, my lord," Quenami was saying, smooth and smiling. I was close enough to see the paint on his face, the jade, obsidian and carmine rings on his fingers, made almost colourless by the smoke.
Tizoc-tzin shivered, and did not answer. He was staring at a cup of hot chocolate; the bitter, spicy smell wafted up to me, not pungent but oddly muted, as if the smoke plugged my nose.
Quenami went on, "Everything is going according to plan."
I didn't like the idea that those two had a plan. "You call this –" Tizoc-tzin's voice was a hiss – according to plan? No wonder priests are such appalling strategists."
Quenami's face went as smooth as carved jade. "You're tired, my lord."
Tizoc-tzin looked up sharply. For a heartbeat I thought he was looking straight at me, but he was merely staring at Quenami, his face tense. "Yes," he said, thoughtfully. "You're right. I grow weary of this nightmare, Quenami." He lifted his cup of chocolate: the bitter smell wafted up stronger, as unpleasant as a corpse left alone for too long. I shook my head to clear the smell; the tendrils moved across Quenami's arms and hands in an unsettling effect. And as the smoke shifted, so did their voices, receding into the background.
"…over soon…" Quenami was saying. "Tomorrow… opposition removed quite effectively…"
What was happening tomorrow? What opposition? I needed to know. I bent further, and all but lost my balance as Quenami shifted positions. My hand passed a finger's breadth away from his head. He stopped, then, looked around him suspiciously. One of his hands drifted downwards, to pick an obsidian knife from his belt.
Time to go. I didn't know whether his spell would be effective, but I had no intention of finding out.
When I came out, the She-Snake was waiting for me, sitting on his haunches on the platform, watching darkness flow across the courtyard, as if it were the most natural thing in the Fifth World.
I said, slowly, "It can't be true. He wouldn't dare–" Do what, exactly? I hadn't heard much, but the little Quenami had said had made it clear those two were no longer playing by any rules I might have known. "It's some trick of your spell."
"No tricks," the She-Snake said. "Do you think me capable of inventing something that complicated? I'm a much more straightforward man than you take me for, Acatl."
"It's not what Axayacatl-tzin thought," I blurted out.
"He had his own opinions; and he had lived for too long in my father's shadow."
"Fine," I said. But I couldn't trust him. I couldn't possibly face the enormity of what he had shown me. "Then tell me Whose protection we are under, tonight."
"Do you not know?" the She-Snake said. "Ilamantecuhtli."
"The Old Woman, She who Rules?" I asked. The title meant nothing to me.
"Another aspect of Cihuacoatl, the She-Snake." He smiled when he saw my face. "Did you think my title was purely honorific? I serve a goddess, as much as the Revered Speaker serves Huitzilpochtli."
"The goddess of–"