"I pierce myself, I make myself bleed, aya!
Burn down the paper stained with my blood
Return the gift that was given
I pierce him, I make him bleed, aya!
Burn down the paper stained with his blood
Wash away the touch of the evil one
The breath of the sorcerer…"
I heard another sound – a moan that started low, and grew – only to break into a dry, shuddering cough. Mihmatini cried out; I clenched my fingers, my nails digging into the palms of my hands. If I went inside, I would be of no use. I had to remember that – had to–
A duller sound – something large and wet hitting the ground, and Mihmatini's voice, raised in anger.
Then silence. The last of the butterflies lingered in the courtyard, its wings catching the light of the Fifth Sun and breaking it down into four hundred breathtaking colours. I did not move – not even when the entrance-curtain was lifted, and Mihmatini walked into the courtyard, carrying a crushed black thing which looked for all the world like the remnants of a caterpillar.
"This is it? Should you be touching it?" I asked.
"It's nothing," Mihmatini said. Her face was glowing – her cheekbones lit from within with a light like that of the moon, save stronger. Instead of washing away her features, it seemed to make everything sharper, better defined, underlying her gesture with a solemnity that made her seem far, far older than her twenty years. "It's the sorcerer's influence, given body and pulled out of him. By itself, it has no power."
Nezahual-tzin's face was pale. "But it's not the whole of the influence. There is something else inside him, but I can't get it out. You should have asked someone else."
"We asked you." Mihmatini's voice was low and intense. "Acatl trusted you."
"I haven't said I was giving up." Nezahual-tzin's face was set in a determined, most uncharacteristic grimace. "In the meantime… this is for you, Acatl. No doubt you'll find it entertaining." His voice was mocking again.
"Come," he said to Mihmatini – for a moment, he looked as though he was going to offer her his arm, like a man to his wife, but in the face of Mihmatini's glower, he opted instead for a simple, nonchalant wave of his hand.
I knelt, and peered at the black thing. It stank – not the rank, deep smell of the altar of sacrifices, but something closer to a bloated corpse left in the sun for too long. It looked like a lizard – save that it seemed to have little to no tail.
I'd expected magic, but when I extended my priest-senses towards it, I felt – almost nothing. A faint, residual beat perhaps, but one that would take true sight to be prised apart. It looked like–
Southern Hummingbird strike me, I'd seen this before – not the blackness or the stench, but this vague curled-up shape, almost small and pathetic.
A symbol, that was what it was. It wouldn't give sickness: it was just the shadows which had been given a physical body, a physical reality Mihmatini and Nezahual could expel from Teomitl's body.
Carefully, using the tip of one of my obsidian blades, I prised the thing apart – it had vestigial limbs, which I carefully disengaged from the body, and what I'd taken to be a tail were in fact two legs, all but fused together by the violence of Mihmatini's spell. I had seen this before – where had I–?
A human child.
True, the head was wrong – flat rather than round, and slightly too small – but the rest – the rest was unmistakable: the small limbs just starting to branch into fingers and toes, the sharp edge of the spine with its vertebra. I hadn't attended many vigils for premature children, but several times, I had had cause to examine a woman who had died in childbirth with the child still in her womb – praying all the while that her spirit was at rest, that she wouldn't see the indignity of knives tearing her open from the Heavens where she now dwelled.
That made no sense – carefully, I lifted the thing again, but saw only the same resemblance.
And then I remembered, with a chill – that Xochiquetzal, the goddess who watched over the courtesan Xiloxoch, was not only Goddess of Lust and Desire, but also watched over childbirth.
TWELVE
Recovery
I must have remained there for an eternity, staring at the thing – and not knowing what to do.
Xochiquetzal's magic. And Tlaloc's influence. I had been right: it looked like the plague came from those two – seeking to damage the Fifth World once again. And Xiloxoch had been the self-confessed worshipper of the goddess – doing Her will in Tenochtitlan in Her absence. But still…
Still, all this for revenge?
Xochiquetzal would not remember the Mexica, or Tizoc-tzin, kindly. Neither would She blink at slaughtering dozens to make Her point.
Before rushing out to the temple of Xochiquetzal, I needed – confirmation. Some evidence that the thing had indeed been the result of a spell which called on Xochiquetzal. I needed to cast a spell of true sight, and look for magical traces.
A shadow fell over me – the priests of the Duality? Perhaps even the people we'd sent to Chipahua's house, with more information on what had happened?
The shadow did belong to one of the priests; what I had not expected was that they wouldn't be alone: leaning on their shoulders were two Jaguar warriors – the same ones that Teomitl had so peremptorily recruited on the way out of the palace.
"What happened?" I asked the priests.
They had little to report. The bodies of Chipahua and his household had been taken to a remote spot on the edge of Tenochtitlan, past the Floating Gardens, where Ichtaca and the other priests of my order could conduct more thorough examinations – hopefully with a reduced risk of contagion.
The Jaguar warriors looked pale, and probably felt as bad I did; but appeared unharmed otherwise. I wondered about the sickness – it didn't seem to take time to show symptoms, but its progress seemed… erratic, to say the least? It didn't look natural at all.
"I need you to do one thing," I said.
They looked at each other – with an eagerness I found troubling. "When you go back to the palace, can you arrange for the other bodies – Eptli and his prisoner – to be taken with the others? My order will need to examine this."
"Of course, my Lord."
The entrance-curtain tinkled again: Nezahual-tzin, his face set in a careful mask. He looked angry, or contemptuous, I wasn't sure. "Acatl," he said. "You have to see this."
The first thing I saw when I entered was Teomitl. He was awake, sitting propped against the wall, pale and wan, his eyes dark wells in the beige oval of his face, his hands clenched within his lap in a way that was anything but natural – it was obvious that if he released them, they would start shaking. Mihmatini was by his side, crushing his hand in hers – her face a mixture of elation and relief. The luminous thread between them was all but gone now, faded enough to become part of the beaten earth.