"Well, well," Xochiquetzal said, finally. "It's not often that I have visitors."
"My Lady."
"A priest, too. Although" – she sounded disappointed, like a jaguar that had missed its prey – "not one of my own."
I swallowed, wondering how much I could tell Her. "Your priests still think you in the Heaven Tamoanchan, my Lady Xochiquetzal."
The light over my head grew brighter, and in Her voice was the anger of the storm. I kept my gaze on the beaten earth. "They don't know because the Guardians have not seen fit to inform them."
And with reason. The last thing we needed was a religious war within Tenochtitlan. But I guessed it would have hurt, all the same, to be expelled from Tamoanchan by the Duality, for a mere sin of lust.
"I'm not a Guardian," I said, finally.
"No," She said. Her voice was toneless. "I can see that. You may rise, priest. What do you want?"
Carefully, I approached the dais, all my muscles poised to flee. Gods were capricious, caring little about the balance of the world – and one who had been expelled from the gods' company even more so. "I have come for a favour."
The Quetzal Flower smiled. She wasn't young, not any more. A network of fine wrinkles marred Her cheeks, and She kept rubbing at Her eyes, so often that the cornea had turned red with blood vessels. "You rarely come for anything else." She reached out, and took the parrot in Her hands. Something seemed to pass from the animal into Her: some light, fleeing the corpse and nesting under Her skin, coursing through her veins like blood. "Very well. Ask your question."
"My name is Acatl. There is a priestess," I said, slowly. "Eleuia–"
"I know who Eleuia is," Xochiquetzal said. "I may be fallen from grace, but I'm not completely powerless. What do you want?"
"She has disappeared, and we are looking for her."
The Quetzal Flower didn't move. "Eleuia," She said. "I don't know where she is."
"That wasn't–"
"What you needed? You would have asked for it, at some point." "Why don't you know?" I asked, unable to resist my curiosity. "Isn't she your servant?"
The light dimmed, for a bare moment. Xochiquetzal said, finally, "I'm on earth. In a world where My body doesn't belong, where everything fights My existence. It takes its toll. No god can remain on earth and keep more than token powers."
"Except if they entrust them to a human agent," I said, thinking of Revered Speaker Axayacatl-tzin, and of the last time I'd seen him at the Major Festivaclass="underline" rising from the limestone altar of the sacrifices atop the Great Temple, his hands and obsidian knife reddened with human blood; his whole body brimming with the magic of Huitzilpochtli, the magic that kept the Mexica Empire strong.
Xochiquetzal smiled, and this time Her voice was bitter. "Not all of us are upstarts, ready to give our powers to anyone. Humans are unreliable. They have wishes and desires of their own. One day, what the Southern Hummingbird does will come back to haunt Him."
I said nothing. The affairs of gods were not my own; even less so those of the Quetzal Flower, whom I did not worship.
Xochiquetzal went on. "But it's the way of things. Huitzilpochtli rises to power, becomes the protective deity of your Empire. And We – the old ones, the gods of the Earth and of the Corn, We who were here first, who watched over your first steps – We fade."
The melancholy in Her voice was unexpected; and, because She was a goddess, it saturated the room, until my throat ached with regret for the days of my childhood. "You still have priestesses," I managed to whisper.
"Yes," She said, "but the greatest temple within the Sacred Precinct isn't Mine, and the sacrifices they offer Me are paltry little things, to keep Me amused. People believe in war and in the sun, more than they believe in rain or in love." She shook Her head, as if realising what She'd just said. "Enough. We haven't come here to wallow in My own misery."
"I just want to know…" I swallowed, trying to blot out the image of Neutemoc, grunting over the supine body of a shadowy priestess. "I was told Eleuia had a child. I want to know–"
"Whether it's true?" The Quetzal Flower didn't move. "You know," I whispered.
"Of course. I'm a goddess of childbirth, among other things."
Goddess of love, of carnal desire; of lust and all the base instincts that made fools out of us. The Duality curse me, why couldn't I stop thinking of Neutemoc?
Xochiquetzal rubbed at Her eyes, absent-mindedly. "Eleuia. Yes, she had a child. Sixteen years ago. But it was stillborn."
"Stillborn?" I asked.
Her eyes slid away from me, focused on the jade flowers by Her dais. "Dead. She buried the umbilical cord on a battlefield, to ensure the child's safe passage into the afterlife."
That's not the custom, was my first thought. The second, which I spoke aloud, was, "Would you tell me who the father was?" Not Neutemoc. Please, not Neutemoc.
Xochiquetzal shrugged. "I have no idea. Why does it matter so much to you?"
She was toying with me again, batting me to and fro, like a guinea pig between the paws of a jaguar…
"My brother is involved," I said at last. "I need to know–"
"Whether he had a child? How amusing, priest."
"Please," I whispered. Her radiance had become blinding.
Something landed at my feet, wet and soft. It took me a moment to realise, squinting through the strong light, that it was the body of the parrot, small and pathetic in its death, cast aside like a rag.
"One sacrifice," Xochiquetzal said. "One paltry, bloodless little bird. An insult. You're fortunate that I was inclined to accept it. I don't owe you anything more." She rose from Her dais – and, for a mere moment, She was every woman I had ever desired, passion and need searing through my bones at the sight of Her. Burning, my skin was burning, and I was on my knees before Her, scarcely aware of having thrown myself to the ground…
She laughed then: the sound of water crashing into underground caves. "Better," She said. "Much better." She walked by my side, even as I struggled to rise. I could have sworn Her radiance had grown stronger, sharper: deprived of the potency of blood sacrifices, did She now feed on simpler things, on fear, on abject obedience?
I rose on shaking hands, met Her gaze: ageless amusement, uncomfortably close to malice.
"You might yet be of some use," the Quetzal Flower said. She was back on Her dais, reclining on Her low chair like a playful jaguar. "You know the proper sacrifices for Me. Bring them here, and I may feel in the mood to give you more."
I knew what She wanted: offerings, proper worship offered before Her; not the distant sacrifices of Her priestesses, their smoke rising into the Heavens She'd been cast out of, but the blood of living animals, and perhaps of humans. I didn't have any hold over Her: certainly not here, on Her own ground, and perhaps not even in my own temple, with Lord Death's protection over me.
"I'll…" I struggled to find words. We both knew I had no choice.
She smiled again. "I'm sure you'll be back. Until next time, Acatl."
• • • •
I left Xochiquetzal's house in a bad state. My hands would not stop shaking, and every time I thought back to Her, to the light enfolding Her as She rose from Her throne, my manhood would stiffen uncontrollably: something that hadn't happened to me since my calmecac schooling.