I could have sworn he was smiling.
The serpent flew to a deserted spot outside of the city, in the midst of the Floating Gardens, the series of island-fields that grew our crops. It landed in the middle of a patch of newly-planted tomatoes – the green leaves just opening – and, with a great sigh, it sank back down into the earth.
The ahuizotls remained. They watched me with unblinking yellow eyes, as if daring me to put a step wrong. I pulled myself into an upright position, the most I could do. It wasn't only the weakness induced by the heartland – less than an hour ago, I had been convinced this day was my last – to find a sudden reprieve was heartening, but it was the sort of unwelcome episode I'd have been glad to avoid altogether.
Four silhouettes walked towards me from the single hut on the edge of the floating garden, wading through the maize stalks. I wasn't surprised when they turned out to be Teomitl, Nezahual-tzin, and the two Texcocan warriors I had seen earlier.
Wordlessly, Teomitl handed me a couple of obsidian knives which I put back into their sheathes.
"Impressive," I said, slowly.
"Just a trick." Nezahual-tzin smiled.
Teomitl looked more preoccupied. "Acatl-tzin? You don't look–"
"I'll be all right," I said, raising a shaking hand. "I just need a moment to recover."
"See?" Teomitl said, with a scornful glance at Nezahual-tzin. "I told you it would work."
Nezahual-tzin grimaced. "I've heard better plans. But yes, it worked. Only because they got sloppy."
"I thought you were confined to your rooms," I said to Teomitl, the only thought that occurred to me.
"I broke out." He smiled again – pure Teomitl, carelessly proud.
"Right. Right. So did I, it seems." I stared at the ground under my feet, took a deep breath. The air was clean and crisp, nothing like that of my cell. "What now?"
They both looked at me as if it were obvious that I held the answer. The gods help me, I didn't need another adolescent struggling with nascent responsibility, Teomitl on his own was enough trouble for a lifetime, and I had a suspicion Nezahual-tzin would be even worse.
"We need to move," I said. "We can sort out the rest later. Tizoctzin isn't going to let you get away with it for long, and neither is Quenami." I looked at Nezahual-tzin, who was currently focusing on the water lapping at the floating garden's edge. Ah well. Lost for lost, I might as well get a chance to commit the crime they'd accused me of. "How soon can we be in Texcoco?"
Nezahual-tzin's gaze drifted back towards me. He didn't look surprised in the slightest. "One, two days? We have boats and supplies, but we'll have to get past the dyke as soon as we can."
Texcoco lay east of Tenochtitlan, across the lake of the same name, and a great dyke had been built to prevent the waters of the lake from flooding us. It was manned by a few forts, though its main purpose wasn't military. Any invading army would come by land, which meant one of the three causeways rather than the lake.
"Two days?" I asked.
"A little less if the gods are with us."
"Or the ahuizotls," Teomitl said. "But not in Tenochtitlan, we'd stand out too much. Let's wait until we're out of the city."
"And Mihmatini?" I asked.
Teomitl grimaced. "She's gone to the Popocatepetl volcano. On a pilgrimage of, ah, indefinite length."
And I could imagine how much she'd have protested at being taken away for her own safety. "Good," I said. "Let's go. We can sort out the details later."
• • • •
Nezahual-tzin's boats were two flat-bottomed barges, a slightly larger version of the canoes fishermen steered all over the lake. They looked as if they had been specifically purchased for the rescue rather than brought with him. A Revered Speaker such as him would normally travel with more pomp, and the boats looked more utilitarian than grand and imposing.
The first boat was packed with the supplies he had mentioned – wrapped maize flatbreads and fruit, as well as cages holding owls and rabbits. The second one was packed with men – a dozen Texcocan warriors who all looked old enough to be veterans of Nezahual-tzin's coronation war.
Nezahual-tzin caught my glance, and smiled. "It never hurts to be prepared, Acatl."
I climbed gingerly into the boat, found myself a comfortable spot wedged against a particularly large bale, and determined not to move again in a lifetime.
Two of the warriors took the oars. Teomitl's ahuizotls slid into the water with a splash, and swam by our side as we moved away from the floating garden.
We cruised through row upon row of floating gardens, a whole district on a grid pattern, like the rest of the city. Soon the floating gardens thinned away, to become streets where peasants carried cloth and maize kernels to the marketplace and where the steady clack of looms from the women's weaving floated to us through the open entrances of their thatch houses. We were swinging around Tenochtitlan, keeping to the more populated areas in order not to stand out.
In between the houses I caught a glimpse of the Sacred Precinct's tallest buildings – the Great Temple under which the Moon Goddess Coyolxauhqui was imprisoned, and the circular Wind Tower, where I had prayed to Quetzalcoatl for Ceyaxochitl's life. The Feathered Serpent had not answered that prayer, but it occurred to me that perhaps He had given me something else to see me through my hour of need.
Nezahual-tzin stood near the prow, watching the houses go past. He looked much like any other nobleman's son, his cloak of thin cotton, his jade lip-plug glinting in the sunlight, his hair pulled back and caught in the base of his feather headdress.
We swung east into ever-smaller streets. The boats wove their way through the traffic – peasants coming back from the marketplace, warriors standing tall and proud in the regalia they had earned on the battlefield, priests with blood-matted hair on their way to the Sacred Precinct – with preternatural ease. If I didn't have Nezahualtzin in my sights, I could have sworn that there was more to this than the agility of two warriors.
Teomitl was a little further down our boat, his hand trailing just above the water. His face was furrowed in concentration, his eyes focused on the dark shapes trailing the boat.
We came out into an expanse of open water. Ahead of us was the bulk of Nezahualcoyotl's Dyke, keeping back the saltwater and regulating the level of the lake during the flood season.
I had expected trouble at this juncture, but the few warriors manning the fort on the dyke looked bored, and the boats were carried over to the other side without any major incident. While Nezahualtzin and I engaged the guards in idle conversation, the ahuizotls leapt over the wall and slid noiselessly back into the water, dark shapes gone past in an eye blink.
Behind the dyke were only a few boats, going either to Teotihuacan or Texcoco, merchants with goods to sell and wider barges belonging to noblemen on pilgrimages.