Where had I heard that? "Did you know him?"
"No. He wasn't a young man, more like the kind you'd expect to have married already – his thighs were covered in battle scars."
Which about described every warrior who had survived a few battles: their quilted cotton armour didn't protect their legs, and the obsidian edges of the macuahitl swords inflicted horrific wounds in the melee. "Anything else?" I asked, struggling to contain my impatience.
"He had another scar. Across his face. A sword must have sliced his right cheek open, and gone upwards to the temple." Tapalcayotl grimaced again. "My guess is that he was happy to be alive after that."
"Acatl-tzin," Teomitl said behind me.
I nodded; got up, as leisurely as I could. The scar was indeed distinctive, and I knew where I had seen it last.
The warrior Chipahua – Eptli's comrade, who had been so frustrated at being deprived of the captive.
We came out of the palace all but running. Teomitl had picked up two Jaguar warriors on the way – we'd run into them outside the aviary, and he'd used his authority as Master of the House of Darts to sweep them up. They didn't look aggrieved; rather, they held themselves with a particular sense of pride – an almost religious devotion, as if they were favoured of some god.
Teomitl's face had taken on the aspect of carved jade again; perhaps it was that, or perhaps his regalia, which was distinctive enough, but the crowd of the Sacred Precinct seemed to part from us, the priests and worshippers shrinking away as if burned by the light.
At the edge of the Sacred Precinct, Teomitl caught two boats with a mere wave of his fingers – two small crafts, poled by women taking their wares back from the marketplace.
"We could have taken a boat from my temple," I said as I climbed into one of the swaying crafts. The woman's gaze was stubbornly cast down – one did not look the Master of the House of Darkness in the eye.
Teomitl waved a dismissive hand. "Your temple is too far, Acatltzin. We would waste time."
The boat slipped into the crowded canals like a knife through the lungs, weaving its way between the coloured crafts carrying baskets of vegetables and cages filled with animals. The woman poled in silence, not looking at either of us – it occurred to me that I was just as impressive as Teomitl in my position of High Priest, holder of wisdom and knowledge; so far high above her I might as well have been sitting on the canopy of a ceiba tree.
"What are you going to do?"
"Warn them." Teomitl's voice was curt, deadly.
"It might already be too late." The sickness came fast – faster than it should have, but if it was supernatural, it was only to be expected.
Teomitl's lips tightened. "You're in a contrary mood."
I guessed I was; someone needed to temper Teomitl's blind enthusiasm. My place as a teacher demanded no less.
The boat passed under a wooden bridge, a hand's breath from a porter drawing water for a peasant. The houses thinned, growing larger and larger like trees unfolding from the ground – the adobe walls brightly painted, and the gardens on the rooftops spreading a smell of pine cones and dry wood, a sweetness that reminded me of home.
It docked in front of Chipahua's house: we crossed the small stretch of beaten earth of the street, determined to finish this sordid business.
Teomitl stopped short when he reached the courtyard. "Acatltzin."
"I know." There had been a slave, last time, and the sound of pestle against mortar as the women pounded maize into flour. Now there was no one.
No, not quite. There was something… trembling on the edge of existence – a smell, a tightness in the air – something all too familiar that sent a thrill to my bones, and set my heart hammering against the cage of its ribs.
"Death," I said, aloud.
One of the warriors drew his macuahitl sword – a thing of glittering edges, of cutting shards, reflecting the sunlight into a thousand fractured pieces. Magic quivered along its body: the warm, unwavering glow of the Southern Hummingbird's power in the Fifth World. "Stay back, Teomitl-tzin."
But Teomitl was already moving – faster than a snake uncoiling, rushing inwards. I followed him at a more leisurely pace – taking in everything as if in a daze.
The courtyard, bathed in golden sunlight; three still bodies under the pine tree – no, not quite still, for even as I watched one of them gave a last, heaving gasp, and I saw the ihiyotl soul gather itself from its seat in the liver, and unfold wings of blinding radiance, taking flight in an instant like a held breath, vanishing into the world of the gods.
The second courtyard, and the woman I'd seen earlier – Chipahua's wife – lying on her back, looking at me with unseeing eyes.
There was no blood. I might have understood it, if there had been blood – might have thought of sacrifices, of gods gathering back the power that belonged to Them. But everything smelled dry, as stretched as Mictlan the underworld.
The reception room: Teomitl was standing in front of the dais, looking down at a mat filled with food – the smell of cooked amaranth wafted up, terrifyingly incongruous – and the frescoes themselves seemed to have dimmed, their bright colours passing away.
Too late, I saw that it wasn't the colours that had vanished, but the shadows that had appeared, so many of them they covered the whole room, clinging to the pillars and the walls, packed tight against the faces of the gods. I caught a glimpse of screaming faces; of tangled limbs; of flaky skin, distorted by sores, and then they were unfolding like the wrath of a storm, and upon us before we could move.
For a moment – a bare, agonising moment – it seemed my protection would hold; bathed in the familiar stretched emptiness of Mictlan, I saw this as no more than part of the rhythm of the Fifth World – all sicknesses leading, ultimately, to the throne of Lord Death, the place that belonged to us alclass="underline" stretched and dry and dark, sending us back into the embrace of Grandmother Earth.
And then, with a sound like bones caving in, the protection yielded. It left a faint, cold tingle on my skin – soon replaced by a blazing heat, and a sensation like a thousand bats beating wings around me; darkness rose and enfolded me in a crushing embrace, and I saw nothing but one screaming face after another; glistening limbs, wet with blood and with the white of bones poking out from wrinkled skins; over me, the bodies were all over me, feebly twitching; fingers scrabbling over my eyelids; limbs strewn across my chest, crushing the breath out of me; clammy lips pressed against my thighs and arms and hands, every touch seeming to rob me of more strength.
Everywhere – they were everywhere, in the Fifth World, in the world above, in the world below – there was no escape…
I was on my back, staring into the slack face of a woman, who pressed against me like a lover – her mouth open in a soundless scream, revealing teeth the colour of decayed corn. Her hands – or another's hands, I couldn't be sure – were clawing at my belly; there was a brief, fiery flesh of pain, and the slimy sensation of something wet against my skin, before the pain flared up again, destroying everything else. Distantly, I noted what it had to be, and what its loss meant, but the thought itself vanished in the welter of other ones – in the rancid smell of so many bodies pressed against mine.