At last, they stood below me. Nezahual-tzin smiled up at me. "As timely as ever, I see."
I shook my head – now wasn't a time for jibes. "Are you–?" I asked Mihmatini. "I thought he was going to kill you." I thought I was going to lose her forever, that I'd bargained for nothing but one more death. "I–" It hurt, to breathe.
"Oh, Acatl." Her voice was pitying. "Have more faith."
I said nothing – I couldn't think of any smart answer to this. Instead, I turned to Nezahual-tzin. "Have you–?"
He nodded, brusquely. "Let's get to it, shall we? I don't know how long I can stay upright."
The courtyard shimmered into existence again – except that I stopped it halfway through, before it became fully material. I could see Nezahual-tzin, slowly breathing – calling down the Feathered Serpent's power until his skin glowed with pulsing magic – and Acamapichtli, his blind eyes thrown back, looking up at the sky, which slowly filled up with storm clouds. There was a noise like wings unfurling, and the distant rumble of thunder.
And I – I, who belonged in neither of those worlds – I felt the touch of Mictlantecuhtli spread from the marks on my shoulder,a cold that seized my bones and muscles, and then my heart until I could no longer feel it beat. My hands curled up into claws, my skin reddening against the cold.
"I stand on the boundaries
On the edge of the region of mystery, on the edge of the house of the fleshless
I stand on the boundaries
On the edge of the gardens of flowers, of the expanses of grass…"
And, as I spoke the words of the hymn – as Acamapichtli and Nezahual-tzin joined me – light slowly appeared, washing us all in a radiance that was neither the harsh one of the Fifth Sun, nor the green mouldy one of Mictlan, but something that had been there for the birth of the Fifth World, something that would always be there, underpinning the order we kept.
"We stand for sickness, in the house of the living
For the breath of the wind, in the region of the fleshless
For life and death, caught on the threshold…"
And there was… something, like a tightening, as if a loose garment had just readjusted itself: the world knitting itself back together. My gate wavered and shrank, and the nausea that I'd carried with me all this time finally sank down to almost nothing.
"With this we will stand straight
With this we will live
Oh, for a while, for a little while…"
And then the feeling was gone, and I sagged to my knees like a wounded man whose feverish rush of energy had just worn off.
"Acatl!"
"I'm fine, I'm fine," I said, but I could barely pull myself to my feet. I shouldn't have left the cane behind us. I turned back, to stare at Moquihuix's body – and, to my surprise he stared back at me, his face clouded with the approach of death.
The weapon Mihmatini had used to stab him – a sharp reed which shone as if it had been dipped in gold – was still embedded in his chest. He didn't look like Coatl at all, but like his true self, a Revered Speaker lying in the dust of Mictlan.
"Priest." His voice still carried far, as if he were addressing the crowd from atop his pyramid temple. His lips curled up, in a smile that was painful. "It is Tenochtitlan's destiny, indeed, to rule over the valley of Anahuac, to expand into the Fifth World and make everything theirs. I wish you joy."
"Wait!" I said, but his eyes had closed, and his body was already shimmering out of existence, his limbs growing fainter and fainter, followed by his torso, and, last of all, the turquoise cloak which had marked him as a Revered Speaker and his quetzal feather headdress, crumbling into a fine powder which mingled with the dust.
A wind rose, carrying a faint, familiar smell – rotting maize, or leaves – and his soul rose upon it; not the faint memory of a human, but a bright radiance made of hundreds of people: the people of the plague, the dead that he carried with him. He rose towards the dais, and was lost to sight.
When I turned around, Nezahual-tzin and Mihmatini had both joined me on the dais. Nezahual-tzin was binding Mihmatini's wound, with a mocking smile. She was glaring at him, daring him to make a comment.
"You'll be fine?" I asked.
She shook her head. "Of course I'll be fine, Acatl. Don't fuss like an old woman. It doesn't become you."
"Sorry," I said. "It's just that–" I saw, then, that her free hand was shaking, her back slightly arched, and I could only guess at the effort she used to hold herself upright. "Never mind. Let's go back."
We came back to the Fifth World in the same courtyard we'd left from. It was bathed in sunlight, the corpse of Matlaelel and the bloody remnants of a few ahuizotls the only signs of the battle. And another corpse, too, shrivelled like a dried fruit, who might have been Coatl, who might have been Moquihuix-tzin: it was hard to tell anymore, with the decay.
I'd expected a crowd of noblewomen, irate at our intrusion upon their lives – who were, I was beginning to understand, neither as weak nor as defenceless as I'd allowed myself to think.
I hadn't expected the warriors: an army large enough to fill the place, their macuahitl swords glinting in the sunlight – and, at their head, the old woman and Teomitl – and my brother Neutemoc and my offering priest Palli, standing in their path with the desperate assurance of doomed men.
TWENTY-FOUR
The Revered Speaker
We'd appeared behind Neutemoc and Palli – which meant that the warriors saw us first, and, as their faces widened in incredulity, Neutemoc turned round to face me. "Acatl!"
He looked exhausted – his jaguar's furs bloodied, his helmet split with a blow that must have narrowly avoided cleaving his skull. Palli himself was holding himself with easy, casual aloofness, as befitted both his position and the situation, but beneath it all, he had to be no less tired than my brother. "What in the Fifth World…?"
I looked for Acamapichtli – who had withdrawn between the pillars, and was on his knees, helping his Consort bandage her wound. His gaze was mild, sardonic: it said, quite clearly, that he would take no part in this, that, Master of the House of Darts or Revered Speaker, it made no difference to him at all, and that the Fifth World would endure as it always had.
Not unexpected, sadly.
Teomitl moved, as fluid as a knife through human flesh – kneeling by the charred body of Coatl-Moquihuix, which lay between the warriors and us. "He's dead," he said. He wore rich garb – not quite that of the Master of the House of Darts, not quite that of a Revered Speaker, as if he were still uneasily caught between both functions. But his attitude was regal.