"Brother." Neutemoc lifted his bowl towards me – a salute, almost. "Be welcome."
I sat next to him, helping myself to a handful of maize flatbreads. For a while, neither of us spoke; the children squealed and laughed as Mihmatini mimicked a bumbling warrior seeking to eat driedout corn, and a merchant obsessed with counting his feathers and gold quills. It was all – so hauntingly familiar, a reminder that outside the tensions of the Imperial Court and the threat of our extinction, there were still flowers and songs, still quetzal feathers and precious jade. And yes, they wouldn't last, they would be soiled and marred – but did that make them less valuable, while they still shone brighter than the Fifth Sun?
"How is she?" I asked.
Neutemoc made a stabbing gesture with one hand. "Brittle. Be careful what you say."
I grimaced. "I'm always careful."
"You know what I mean." Neutemoc turned, to look at me for a while. "You look melancholy as well. Still that warrior's death?"
"I don't know," I said. I'd walked back there, rather than my temple, and to be honest, I still didn't know why. I could have made four hundred excuses about needing to talk to Mihmatini, or to keep contact with my family, but there had been no such rationality in my choice. Like a hunted beast, I'd gone to ground in familiar surroundings, and those had turned out to be my brother's house. "There is too much going on."
Neutemoc was silent for a while. "There is always is, isn't there? The gods move and plot, and we are the pawns on the patolli board." He raised his bowl again, as if addressing an invisible assembly.
"You know–"
"–that you don't think that." The ghost of a smile quirked up his lips. "But still… they talk, in the Jaguar House."
"Of the deaths?"
"That, yes." Neutemoc laid his bown on the mat, between the jug and a plate of tamales. Then he looked at me sideways, from the corner of his eyes. "There are a lot of Knights missing, too. Officially, they've gone back to their families for the Feast of the Sun."
"I can't–" I started. I wasn't supposed to be telling anyone about Teomitl; the gods knew we had too many people, from Nezahualtzin to the She-Snake, who already suspected. But if I didn't speak out, the weight on my heart would blacken and tear it. "They went to join Teomitl."
Neutemoc's face went deathly still. "He has desires beyond the House of Darts, then?"
"I don't know," I said, a little more annoyed this time. "He's not involved in this." It might have been his goddess' magic, but he'd almost died. No, he had nothing to do with the sorcerer. But he was making use of the chaos for all it was worth. "But the situation suits him, and he is taking advantage of it."
"And you never foresaw any of this," Neutemoc said – displaying a disquieting shrewdness for a man who had once been oblivious to the goings-on in his own household.
"No," I said, at last. "I don't understand–" I didn't understand how both Mihmatini and I could have failed to see anything – to interpret the signs, the portents; to peer into the shape of the future and see how it inevitably led to this, brother against brother.
"He was your student," Neutemoc said. "Your beloved son, if you want to go that far – and knowing you, I suspect you would. But even beloved sons go astray, Acatl. It's the nature of raising children." His lips quirked up again, in what might have been a smile if it wasn't so weak and devoid of emotion. "Our parents might have had a few things to say about that, had they lived."
But it wasn't that – what Teomitl was doing went against everything I'd been trying to teach him. I poured myself cactus juice into another bowl, letting the sharp, pungent aroma waft up to me, washing away all other smells. "Yes," I said, sarcastically, raising the bowl towards him. "They might." Look at us now, the priest they'd always disapproved of, and the bright warrior all but disowned by his own order.
Mihmatini rose, leaving Ollin and Mazatl on the mat – both curled up and sleeping. Like Quenami, she quelled the shaking of her hands well, but she couldn't quite disguise it.
"You saw him," I said.
"Of all the stubborn-headed–" she stopped herself, and sat by our side. "I can't… I just can't make him listen."
"You're his wife," Neutemoc said, finally. "He'll heed your opinion, but not on this."
She took a deep breath. "I thought–" She blinked, furiously, her eyes wet – and for a moment I wished Teomitl were there, so I could shake some sense into him.
"He loves you," Neutemoc said, gently. "But he wasn't always smart, that one."
Mihmatini said nothing – her hands clenched, briefly.
"Did he…?" I hesitated. "I'm sorry, but I have to ask. Did he tell you anything?"
I had to repeat the question twice before Mihmatini could bring herself to answer it. "Say anything? No, nothing useful," Mihmatini said. "But the chaperone is the driving force behind this."
"The old woman?" I asked. She had been the one to see him; the one that had set him on his bid for the Turquoise and Gold Crown. "Who is she?" She'd exuded Toci's magic, as naturally as we breathed – as if nothing stood between her and the goddess. Another agent we knew nothing of? Unlikely: few gods ceded Their powers to mortals, and Toci – the hungry earth, the broken furrows – tended to keep Herself to Herself.
Mihmatini grimaced. "His sister. Always had a bit of a weakness for her brother – though really, he's almost young enough to be her nephew, or worse. And she doesn't look like she likes Tizoctzin – or Axayacatl-tzin – very much, for that matter."
More palace politics? I hid a grimace. The last woman who had interfered in imperial succession had been by far the more successful and canny claimant – even though she had failed, in the end. An old imperial princess would be as sharp as broken obsidian – and as dangerous as a jaguar mother deprived of her children. "Between both of them, they might just get what they want." That was, in the case of the princess , the support of the palace; for Teomitl, that of the army. And Tizoc-tzin out of the city… Had I done the right thing?
But no, I had to. We couldn't afford to have our Revered Speaker fall to Chalchiuhtlicue's magic, not so soon after the last one's death – and with him unconfirmed, too, devoid of anything but the simplest magics of the Southern Hummingbird.
Mihmatini shook her head. "There has to be something I can do, Acatl."
Was there? I couldn't be sure. "You know him better than anyone else," I said, slowly. "You'll think of something."
She took in a deep breath. "I guess." But she didn't sound convinced.
"I need your help," I said to Neutemoc.
Neutemoc raised an eyebrow. "That's… unexpected."
"I'm not finding this funny."
"Me neither." There was a flash of something in his eyes, as if he remembered for a moment that I was part of the reason his wife was dead, and his house deserted. "What do you want?"
"Nothing much," I said. "I need you to look into Eptli."
"Why? The man has been dead long enough, surely?"
"I don't know," I said. "I've got a gut feeling he wasn't picked at random." The first victim of the disease would have had a high symbolic weight, if nothing else – but something in the way he had been set up suggested personal rancour, and if it wasn't Chipahua, or the merchant Yayauhqui, or Xiloxoch, then I couldn't understand why anyone would hate him.