Tizoc-tzin's face darkened, but he stuck to ritual, starting a lengthy hymn to the glory of the Southern Hummingbird.
I'd have been listening, even though I wasn't particularly fond of the Southern Hummingbird – a warrior god who had little time for the non-combatant clergy – but something caught my attention on the edge of the crowd. A movement, in those massed colours? No, that wasn't it. Something else…
The nausea in my gut flared again. Gently, carefully, I reached out to my earlobes, and rubbed the scabs of my blood-offerings until they came loose. Blood spurted on my hands, warm with the promise of magic.
My movements hadn't been lost on everyone: my student Teomitl was staring at me intently under his quetzal-feather head dress. He made a small, stabbing gesture with his hand, as if bringing down a macuahitl sword, and mouthed a question.
I shook my head. The spell I had in mind required a quincunx traced on the ground – hardly appropriate, given the circumstances. I rubbed the blood on my hands and said the prayers nevertheless:
"We all must die
We all must go down into darkness
Leaving behind the marigolds and the cedar trees
Nothing is hidden from Your gaze."
The air seemed to grow thinner, and my nausea got worse – but nothing else happened. The spell wasn't working. I should have guessed. I'd made a fool of myself for nothing.
Tizoc-tzin had finished speaking; now he took a step backwards, and said, "Welcome back your children made men, O Mexica."
The war-council stepped aside as well, to reveal three rows of warriors in quilted cotton armour and colourful cloaks, the feather insignia over their heads bobbing in the wind.
There were so few of them – so few warriors who had taken prisoners. It looked like Acamapichtli's sources were right: there couldn't be more than forty of them before us, and many of them were injured, their cloaks and quilted armour torn and bloody. Many of them were veterans, with the characteristic black cloaks with a border of yellow eyes; many held themselves upright with a visible effort, the knuckles of their hands white, the muscles of their legs quivering. Here and there, a younger face with a childhood-lock broke the monotony of the line.
"Beloved fathers, you have come at last, you have returned
To the place of high waters, the place where the serpent is crushed
Possessors of a heart, possessors of a face,
Sons of jaguars and eagles…"
There was something… My gaze went left and right, and finally settled on a warrior in the front row, near the end of the line – not among the youngest, but not grizzled either. He wore the or ange and black cloak of a four-captive warrior and the obsidian shards on his sword were chipped, some of them cleanly broken off at the base. His face was paler than his neighbours, and his hands shook.
But it wasn't that which had caught my attention: rather, it was the faint, pulsing aura around him, the dark shadows gathered over his face.
Magic. A curse – or something else?
The warrior was swaying, his face twisted in pain. It wouldn't be long until–
"My Lord," I said, urgently, my voice cutting through Tizoc-tzin's speech.
Tizoc-tzin threw me a murderous glance. He looked as though he were going to go back to what he was saying before. "My Lord," I said. "We need to–"
The shadows grew deeper, and something seemed to leap from the air into the warrior's face – his skin darkened for a bare moment, and his eyes opened wide, as if he had seen something utterly terrifying. And then they went expressionless and blank – a blankness I knew all too well.
He collapsed like a felled cactus: legs first, and then the torso, and finally the head, coming to rest on the ground with a dull thud.
Teomitl moved fastest, heading towards the line and flipping the body over onto its back – but even before I saw the slack muscles and empty eyes, I knew that the man was dead.
I made to move, but a hand on my shoulder restrained me: Quenami, looking grimly serious. "Let go," I whispered, but he shook his head.
Ahead of us, two warriors were pulling the body of their comrade out of the crowd. Teomitl stood, uncertainly, eyeing Tizoc-tzin – who pulled himself up with a quick shake of his head, and went on as if nothing were wrong.
Something crossed Teomitl's face – anger, contempt? – but it was gone too fast – and, in any case, Tizoc-tzin was moving, his elaborate cape and feather headdress hiding my student from sight.
"To the place where the eagle slays the serpent
O Mexica, O Texcocans, O Tepanecs…"
Surely he couldn't mean to…
Behind me, Quenami was taking up the chant again, his lean face suffused with his customary arrogance and a hint of contempt, as if I'd been utterly unable to understand the stakes.
The other officials and the warriors had looked dubious at first, but who could not be swayed by the will of the Revered Speaker, and of the highest of all priests? They took up the hymn, hesitantly at first, then more fiercely.
"To the place of the waters, the island of the seven caves
You come back, o beloved sons, o beloved fathers…"
"A man is dead," I whispered as the hymn wound to a close, and Tizoc-tzin approached the warriors, bestowing on them, one by one, the ornate mantles appropriate to their new status. "Do you think this is a joke?"
Quenami smiled. "Yes. But the war has been won, Acatl. Shall we not celebrate, and laugh in the face of Lord Death?"
Having met Him numerous times, I very much doubted Lord Death was going to care much either way – He well knew that everyone came to Him in the end, no matter what they did.
"It's a lie," I said, fiercely, but other hymns had started, and Quenami wasn't listening anymore.
The morning dragged on, interminable. There were chants, and intricate dances where sacred courtesans and warriors formally courted each other, reminding us of the eternal cycle of life and the order of the Fifth World. There were drum beats and the distribution of maize flatbreads to the crowd, and songs and dances, and elaborate speeches by officials. And through it all presided Tizoctzin, insufferably smug, as puffed up as if he'd been one of the captive-takers.
I stood on the edge, mouthing the hymns with little conviction – my mind on the warrior and on his fall. People did collapse naturally: from weak hearts, or pressure within the brain that couldn't be relieved; reacting to something they'd eaten, or the sting of some insect. But there had been magic around him, strong enough for me to feel it.
I doubted, very much, that it had been a natural death.