Palli had gone rigid – I focused on my breath, coming in and out of my lungs; on the faint touch of Lord Death on my skin, a wind that raised goosebumps on my arms. I was High Priest for the Dead, and they couldn't touch me – they wouldn't dare.
At last, we reached the centre of the house. A small flight of steps led to a grander room, wide and airy with rich frescoes. At the back of the room, seated on a low-backed chair, was the owner of the house.
She was a woman – and old enough to be my own grandmother, with bent limbs and hundreds of wrinkles on her round face. But the gaze she directed towards us was sharp, and, when she moved, she exuded enough magic to choke the life out of us.
I knelt on the mat before her – couldn't help noticing the stains of blood, scrubbed but never removed. Was this where Nezahualtzin's missing warriors had died? The air seemed to shimmer with the heaviness of the grave – the magic of Grandmother Earth, who had birthed us and would receive us all.
"So you're the priest." Her voice was mildly curious – kind, almost, save that her tone was firm, and obsidian lay beneath every word, sharp and cutting.
"We're looking for a priest," I said, slowly.
"And with no more idea of the stakes than a child breaking maize stalks before the harvest."
That stung. "You're the one who sent Nezahual-tzin back, weren't you? 'He's coming.' He said what you told him to say."
"A warning you'd do well enough to heed." She rose – I could feel her more than see her, but she moved with a grace and fluidity uncanny for her age. Her shadow fell over me, and she seemed so much larger than she ought to have been – the room smelled of dry earth, of rotten leaves, and the hand she laid on my shoulder was curved claws, pricking my skin to the blood. "You have little idea of what you're playing with, priest." I heard a sound, a breath coming in rapid gasps – and it was mine, it had always been mine…
Far, far away, someone pulled an entrance-curtain, the tinkle of bells a muffled sound that could not impinge on her presence, on the five fingers laid on my shoulder, each a sharp, painful touch on my exposed skin.
"He's mine."
"Yours?" The hand withdrew; the presence, too. My heart thudded against my chest, begging to be let out of its cage of ribs.
"Of course. Aren't you, Acatl-tzin?"
Slowly, carefully, I rose – for I knew the voice, as well as my own, all too well…
Teomitl stood framed in the doorway, his feather headdress of quetzal plumes, his cloak a deep, almost turquoise blue, and with jewellery shining at his throat and wrists. Clothes fit for a Revered Speaker; the old, thoughtless arrogance transfigured, too, into deliberate authority.
"You–"
He waved a dismissive hand, and the air seemed to tighten with each sweep of his fingers. "Not here, Acatl-tzin. Come. We need to talk."
Did we indeed. I brushed dirt and dried blood from my cloak, stood as straight as I could – not shaking, not shouting, standing with a calmness I didn't feel, not one bit…
"Teomitl-tzin…" There was someone else behind him – a calendar priest, judging by his garb. Our missing priest, Quauhtli. And something about him…
Teomitl shook his head. "I've got all I need. Thank you."
Quauhtli's face lit up, far too fast and too strongly to be a natural feeling. "It was my duty, Teomitl-tzin." His eyes were open slightly too wide; his gestures, as he moved into the room, were those of a drunken man, and I didn't need true sight to see Jade Skirt's magic etched in every limb and every muscle.
"You–" I started, but Teomitl shook his head.
"I told you. Not here. Let's go out."
I thought we'd be alone, but two warriors followed us at some distance – close enough to hear everything. Teomitl made no remark, merely accepted their presence with the same ease Nezahual-tzin accepted his own bodyguards. He looked – leaner, somehow, more dangerous than he had, as if something had broken irremediably within him.
"We've been looking for you," I said. It seemed like such an inadequate way to express the turmoil within me.
He shrugged. "I had things to do. To safeguard the Empire."
"Such as suborning calendar priests?" I shouldn't have antagonised him this early in the discussion, but I couldn't help it.
Teomitl's face set in a grimace. "We've already had this talk, Acatl-tzin. I'll do whatever is necessary to protect the Mexica."
Go on, I thought. Say it. Teomitl was, if nothing else, scrupulously honest; these… evasions ill-suited him. "And you think you know better than your brother?"
He grimaced again. "Tizoc? We can dance around like warriors at the gladiator-stone, and it won't change the truth. My brother is a sick man."
"Unfit to rule," I said, slowly, softly. "Is that what you think, Teomitl?" I knew it was; I just hadn't thought he would voice it, much less act on it.
"Isn't that what you think?" His voice was fierce, as cutting as obsidian shards. "Don't look so surprised. I've seen you, Acatl-tzin. You brood like a jaguar mother over a lame cub. You wonder if you were right to bring him back."
"No," I said. "I brought him back with the Southern Hummingbird's sanction, with the blessing of Izpapalotl, the Obsidian Butterfly. You can't change the truth, Teomitl. I'm a priest, and when the gods speak, I obey."
"They're not your gods."
"They're the gods of the Mexica Empire." Didn't he understand anything? "The ones who protect us, who bring us victory after victory, who gather in all the tributes from the hot lands and the deserts. What I think of them doesn't intrude. It shouldn't intrude."
"Then you're a fool."
Was I? "If I am, it's no place of yours to tell me."
"Because I'm your student? No longer."
I thought of the calendar priest's vacant gaze; of Teomitl's voice, a lifetime ago. Do you think me wise, Acatl-tzin? Wise enough to handle Chalchiuhtlicue's magic?
"No," I said. "I should think you've made it abundantly clear." I raised a hand to forestall his objection, and miraculously, he stopped. "Listen to me – as a parting gift, if nothing else. The Empire dances on a knife's edge, with a Revered Speaker half-back from the land of the dead. And you – you'd think to replace him, as easily as you spend breath. Except you can't. You just can't. We've barely recovered from one disaster already, and to depose the Revered Speaker will cause an upheaval we're not equipped to deal with."
"Still the same." Teomitl's lips were two narrow lines, as pale as those of a drowned man. "You're too cautious, Acatl-tzin. Moments should be seized; opportunities should be wrestled into fruition. I'll not wait in my brother's shadow for years on end, wondering when he'll have the decency to complete his journey into the world beyond. I will act now."
One Revered Speaker deposing another was bad enough – "And what – kill him?"
His gaze didn't waver. "As you said: he's already halfway there."
To kill his own brother… But then I remembered that they'd never been close; that Tizoc-tzin's persistent mocking of Mihmatini had driven the final wedge between those two.