Teomitl moved to stand near Nezahual-tzin. "Time to go a little faster."
The ahuizotls dived, two under each boat. I felt a slight jerk as they moved to bear the weight of the keel, and then we were gliding across the water at a greater speed than oars alone could have managed. Teomitl's face shone the colour of jade, the light flickering across his features.
"How long can he hold?" Nezahual-tzin asked, sliding next to me.
"I don't know." Teomitl's eyes were two pits of darkness, and sweat ran down his face. I had seen him control more ahuizotls, but it had been for a much shorter amount of time. He had to have summoned these early in the morning for my rescue, and he hadn't released them since.
"I see." Nezahual-tzin stroked one of the owls in the cages, his fingers nimbly avoiding its beak stabs. "You're tutoring him well in magic, but his grasp of politics is appalling."
"So is mine," I said, and it wasn't an admission of shame. "Quenami's, however, is excellent."
"Point taken. But still…"
"You think Tizoc-tzin will be Revered Speaker?" I asked.
Nezahual-tzin's head moved a fraction. "I don't like the idea any more than you do, but we have to face this fact: Tizoc-tzin is likely to have been elected Revered Speaker by the time we come back."
"I know," I said. I hated myself for lending reality to his words, but he was right. There was nothing we could do. "But he won't want Teomitl to succeed him."
"You forget." Nezahual-tzin's lips curled up in a smile. "He's the only one who doesn't get a vote in his succession."
"His opinion matters."
"It does." Nezahual-tzin was silent for a while. "But Teomitl is destined to be a great warrior. He'll honour the Southern Hummingbird much better than I ever did, and the council will see that, in time."
"You're a politician," I said, slowly. To think I was having idle chitchat with the Revered Speaker of Texcoco…
"To each his own. I leave war to those with more heart for strife." Nezahual-tzin smiled. His eyes rolled up in their orbits, as white as pearls. "My face and heart are turned towards knowledge."
A fitting devotee of the Feathered Serpent indeed. "You didn't have to come with us," I said.
"No," Nezahual-tzin said. He watched the water for a while.
"But it was getting a little uncomfortable in Tenochtitlan?" I guessed.
"I'm a fair man, Acatl," Nezahual said. "I know exactly what my faults are, but the Smoking Mirror curse me if I'm going to let Tizoctzin run amok. A Revered Speaker may be Lord of Men, but he has a responsibility to them. He is the servant of the people. He is humble and an example of the law he upholds."
Hardly Tizoc-tzin's qualities. "Still," I said. "You can't ask that of everyone."
Nezahual-tzin's eyes drifted briefly towards Teomitl, whose grip on the boat had become so strong it seemed to be eating into the wood. "No. But some people will do it, regardless." He looked down again. "Axayacatl was one of them, but not any more."
He seemed angry or embarrassed. I couldn't be sure. "There was nothing more you could have done," I said.
"No," Nezahual-tzin said. "It's not that." He looked into the water. "I'm Revered Speaker of Texcoco, Acatl. My role is to vote on his designated successor, and to make the first speech at his funeral. That's the only reason I came into Tenochtitlan."
And now it looked as though he would fail at both.
I lifted my gaze against the glare of the sun, watching the shore grow closer and closer. "You'll probably not be in time for the vote. Tizoc-tzin has made sure of it. But, at the rate we're going, you might make the funeral."
And I was startled to see him smile for the first time, surprised and careless, like the boy he was.
We reached Texcoco sometime in the evening. Teomitl was white. As the boats wove their way through the canals of the city, he came down, and sat next to me, his shoulders sagging against my chest. I could hear the thunder of his heartbeat and feel his skin, as cold and as clammy as underwater algae. The Duality curse me, I shouldn't have let him go so far. It was my responsibility to tutor him in magic and to teach him his limits, even if I had a suspicion I would lose that particular battle. Teomitl thought limits were for the weak.
The boat bumped against a dock. Nezahual-tzin stretched himself, looking at the tall adobe houses critically. The warriors in the other boats spread themselves around him in a tight knot. "We're not staying here," he said. "Let's go to the summer palace."
Teomitl did not answer. "He's in no state to walk," I said. I had a dim memory of the summer palace, somewhere in the mountains above Texcoco. It did not exactly sound like an easy trip, and I was in only marginally better shape than Teomitl.
"He won't have to," Nezahual-tzin said. His eyes shone white in the darkness, without pupils or cornea, white as the full moon hanging over us. He had never looked so alien. He shifted aside slightly and two litters loomed out of the darkness, a massive chair of carved mahogany, with a canopy of feathers and gold, and another, simpler one of wood and cloth, with enough sitting space for two. "Get on."
He couldn't have sent word ahead so fast, could he? I didn't know any spells of the living blood to communicate across distances, but he might not have been operating on quite the same rules as most priests. As Quetzalcoatl's servant, his power would come from fasts and vigils, and the occasional sacrificed animal.
Nevertheless, the timing was eerie. I wasn't sure if the point was to disorient us, or whether there was some other, more sinister purpose to his moves, and I had no way of knowing.
Enough. I wasn't Tizoc-tzin, and now wasn't the time for paranoia.
Teomitl did not stir as I set him into the second chair. I climbed on as best as I could, helped by one of the silent bearers. As soon as I was in, the litter started moving with a rocking tilt, away from those few lights I could see.
Nezahual-tzin had climbed in with the ease of someone who had ridden in litters all his life, he sat negligently in his chair, with the casual arrogance of the ruler, and looked at the land around him with the eyes of its owner. The warriors spread behind us, closing the march.
As in Tenochtitlan, the adobe houses gave way to wattle-anddaub, first with triangular, brightly-coloured roofs, and then simple structures of twigs and branches. The road snaked through the mountain, and soon the only lights were those of the torch-bearers by our side as we climbed higher and higher. Scraggly trees went past us in the darkness, the only noise was that of the bearers' feet scattering rocks and gravel on the path.
I dozed off. When I woke up again a huge structure loomed over us, a mass of stone and light clinging to the face of the mountain, with the smell of flowers and copal incense drifting towards us. Slaves rushed to help us dismount and I stood on shaking legs, looking at the sculptures of the Feathered Serpent framing the massive entrance, their jaws open as if to swallow us whole. Above the lintel was carved an image of the Storm Lord, fangs protruding from His lower lip and a snake shaped like lightning in His left hand. His blackened eyes seemed to be following me a little too closely for comfort.
And there was magic on the ground, arcing through my legs and spine, a slow ponderous heartbeat that seemed to link the Heavens and the earth, a compound of spells I couldn't identify. Wards shimmered all over the stone, shivering like a sea of crawling insects. From the ground to the sky above, endlessly renewed, endlessly forged anew. My hand itched where Acamapichtli's talisman had burnt me.