After the ceremony, the officials of the city went into the palace, where a formal banquet was served: elaborate maize cakes, roast deer, white fish with red pepper and tomatoes, newts with sweet potatoes… Tizoc-tzin, as usual, ate behind a golden screen; Teomitl was sitting with the other members of the war-council, around the reed mat of the highest-ranked, the closest one to the window and the humid air of the gardens. Beside him was Mihmatini, my younger sister – as his wife, she should have been sitting at a separate mat, but she was also Guardian of the Sacred Precinct, agent of the Duality in the Fifth World and keeper of the invisible boundaries, enough to give a headache to any protocol master. Beneath her elaborate makeup, her eyes were distant: she didn't like banquets anymore than I did, though she could hardly afford to ignore them. Between them was a thin line I could barely see – a remnant of a spell they'd done together, a magic which kept them tied even though the spell had ended.
Though Teomitl was obviously glad to see Mihmatini, I could see him fidget even from where I sat between Quenami and Acamapichtli, doing my best to avoid speaking to either of them. I could feel his impatience – which mirrored my own.
Further down, several Jaguar Knights were sitting around their own reed mats – among them was my elder brother Neutemoc, smiling gravely at some joke of his neighbour. It looked as though the campaign had enabled him to re-establish ties with his comrades, and other things besides. He looked plumper, and the jaguar body-suit no longer hung loosely on his slender frame: perhaps he was finally getting over his wife's death.
I let my gaze roam through the room, waiting for the banquet to finish. Amidst the colourful costumes, the faces flushed with warmth and the easy laughter there was something else, the same undercurrent of unease tightening in my belly. The atmosphere was tense: the laughing and smiling Jaguar Knights carefully avoided looking at the golden screen, while the warriors clustering around Tizoc-tzin – richly dressed noblemen, with barely a scar on their smooth legs – huddled together, talking as if they were in the midst of enemy territory.
All was not right with the world.
As soon as the last course of the banquet was served, I got up.
"Leaving so soon?" Quenami asked.
"I want to see the body," I said.
Quenami raised a perfectly-plucked eyebrow. "Always the High Priest, I see. Forget it, Acatl. The man had a sunstroke."
I shook my head. "Magical sunstrokes don't exist, Quenami. Someone cast a spell on him."
I expected Acamapichtli to say something, but he had remained worryingly silent – as if lost in thought. Probably thinking of how he could turn the situation to his advantage.
Quenami smiled. "Look at you. Such wonderful dedication." His voice took on a hard edge. "Nevertheless… today we celebrate our victory, Acatl – the return of the army, and the confirmation of our Revered Speaker. Tizoc-tzin needs his High Priests here."
An unmistakable, utterly unsubtle threat. But I'd had enough. "This isn't the confirmation," I said. "As you said – today we celebrate our victory. I don't think the absence of one person is going to make a difference." Especially not one High Priest with dubious loyalties, as far as Tizoc-tzin was concerned. "I don't stop being High Priest for the Dead when we celebrate."
Quenami made a slow, expansive gesture – one I knew all too well, the one which suggested there were going to be unpleasant consequence and that he'd done all he could to warn me.
And, of course, the moment I had my back turned, he was going to go to his master and denounce us.
At least I knew where I stood with him.
The dead warrior had been taken deep within the Imperial palace – on the outskirts of Tizoc-tzin's private apartments. The sky above us had the uncanny blue of noon, with Tonatiuth the Fifth Sun at his highest.
A slave took me to a small, dusty courtyard with a dry well – I'd expected it to be deserted, but to my surprise two people were waiting for me there. The first was Teomitl, still in full finery, looking far older than his eighteen years. Next to him was a middle-aged man, whom I recognised as another member of the war-council. Though he wore rich finery, the lower part of his legs was uncovered, revealing skin pockmarked with whitish skins. He nodded curtly to me – as an equal to an equal.
"I didn't see you leave," I said to Teomitl.
He grinned – fast and careless – before his face arranged itself once more in a sober expression, more appropriate to the Master of the House of Darts. "We were right behind you."
"Tizoc-tzin–" I said, slowly.
"Tizoc-tzin can say what he wants," the other man interrupted. "I have no intention of abandoning one of my own warriors."
"This is Coatl," Teomitl said, shaking his head in a dazzling movement of feathers. "Deputy for the Master of Raining Blood."
And, as such, in command of one fourth of the army. "I see," I said. I pulled open the entrance-curtain in a tinkle of bells, and slipped inside.
It was dark and cold, in spite of the noon hour: the braziers hadn't been lit, and the dead man lay huddled on the packed earth, abandoned like offal – an ironic end for one who had worshipped Huitzilpochtli, our protector god: the eternally youthful and virile Southern Hummingbird.
Automatically, I whispered the words of a prayer, wishing his soul safe passage into the underworld, for his hadn't been the glorious death of a warrior, the ascent into the Heaven of the Fifth Sun, but rather small and ignominious, a sickness that doomed him to the dark, to the dryness of Mictlan.
"You knew him," I said to Coatl.
He made a curious gesture – half-exasperation, half-contempt. "Eptli. Yes. I knew him."
"Did he have any enemies?"
"Eptli was one of the forty honoured warriors, out of an army of eight thousand men. I'd say there would be strong resentment against him."
"Yes," I said. "But why single him out? Why not any of the others?"
Coatl spread his hands. "I knew Eptli because he was under my orders, but no more than that. His clan-leader was responsible for his unit."
There was something – not quite right in the tone of his voice, as if he was going to say more, but had stopped himself just in time. What could it possibly be?
Eptli had been a four-captive warrior: with this, his fifth capture, he could aspire to membership of the Jaguar or Eagle Knights, the prestigious elite of the army.
I was about to press Coatl further, when the entrance-curtain tinkled again. I started – surely Tizoc-tzin wouldn't search for us that soon – but instead a covered cage landed on the floor with a dull thud, startling whatever was inside so it gave a piercing, instantly recognisable cry.
I knelt and lifted the cover – to stare into the bleary, murderous eyes of a huge white owl, who looked as though only the wooden bars prevented it from terminally messing up my face. It screeched once more, disdainfully.
Acamapichtli strode into the room, rubbing his hands together as if to wash away dust. "There you go. Living blood. You can use it." It wasn't a question.
"We're–"
"– certainly not going to wait for Tizoc-tzin to find us," Acamapichtli said. "He died of magic, didn't he? That's something serious."