“Then they were a danger,” I said, quietly.
“They? They had no idea what they were dealing with. Between them, they didn't have enough magical talent to fill a copper bowl. They couldn't have summoned a minor monster without making a mess of the ritual.”
“Tell me why they died, then.”
“I have no idea,” Ceyaxochitl said, more calmly. “But this is the truth, Acatl. They could not have summoned anything.”
That last sounded sincere, but it did not exonerate her.
“I see,” I lied. “They had jade emblems?”
Ceyaxochitl shrugged. “The past Ages of the World. Four pendants, one for each of them. Itlani was their leader: he bore the sign for Four Jaguar, for that is the age in which Tezcatlipoca first reigned.”
“He was also the first to die.”
She did not answer. She clearly did not want to give me more. I rose, slowly, shaking the stiffness from my legs and back. “Thank you.”
Ceyaxochitl did not rise at once, which allowed me to take a good look at the three knives spread out on the table by her side. They had a good edge, and all shone with a peculiar colour. Not green like the shard I had, but an aquamarine hue that was similar.
I laid one hand on the leftmost blade, before she could stop me, and felt the power pulse deep within. The same power as the shard that had killed Huitxic.
Liar.
“You have overstayed your welcome,” Ceyaxochitl said, coldly.
I withdrew my hand from the knife.
“What are these knives?” I asked.
“God-touched.” Ceyaxochitl would not meet my eyes. “That's all you need to know, Acatl. Now get out of my house.”
I left. There would have been no point in talking further with her.
By the time I came back to my temple, I was exhausted. I sent a message to Macihuin, and then spent the rest of the evening making my own offerings of blood to the gods. I could not keep my thoughts from returning to Ceyaxochitl. Three dead warriors: Itlani, Pochta, and then Huitxic, with that obsidian shard in his heart. Obsidian that did not belong to the Wind of Knives, but throbbed like Ceyaxochitl's knives. Three members of a sect worshipping Tezcatlipoca and hoping He would end the world. And the fourth still alive, watched over by Macihuin.
They had been incompetent. I did not think Ceyaxochitl was lying on that point. But it changed nothing. As Guardian, she still might have taken it upon herself to remove them.
My sleep was dark and dreamless, and I woke up to an angry cry.
“Acatl!”
Macihuin's face hovered over me. In the blink of an eye, I was awake and sitting upright on my reed mat.
“What is it?” I asked. Outside, it was still night; I could hear owls hooting to one another. The air smelled of steam-baths and cooked maize.
“He's dead,” Macihuin said.
Nayatlan, the last member of the sect, had found the same ending as his brethren; he lay on his back on his reed mat, in the bedroom. He had the same mark as Huitxic on his torso.
I opened up the chest in three swift cuts, and retrieved the obsidian shard in the heart: a shard similar to the one that had killed Huitxic.
Macihuin stood to the side of the mat, his face dark. I held out the bloody shard to him, and he nodded. From the next room came weeping sounds: Nayatlan's wife.
“Four Rain,” I said, lifting the jade pendant. The Third Age, which had ended when the gods sent down fire that consumed the earth.
“As if we didn't know.” Macihuin sighed, and knelt to look at the body. “It was foreseeable, but still…”
“You had a watch on him.”
“From the outside of his house. Did you think I could place guards within the house of a respected warrior without raising an outcry?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “But this is serious.”
Macihuin did not speak.
“Did you get a chance to interview him?”
“I did,” Macihuin said. “Not a very productive talk: he denied everything.”
I laughed, without joy. “Of course. So did Ceyaxochitl.”
“The Guardian? I had your message, but…”
“She's involved,” I said.
“That's a serious accusation, Acatl. Do you have anything to support it?”
“No. But I hope to find something here.”
We searched every corner of the house; the dead man's widow helped us by showing us the chests where her husband had kept his most precious possessions. We found nothing.
The last wickerwork chest we examined, though, was not as deep as it ought to have been. I raised my eyes to Macihuin, who was kneeling by my side, his hands full of clothes; together we tipped the chest's contents onto the ground.
It turned out to possess a false bottom, full of sketches and papers. Nayatlan's widow swore in a voice still shaking with grief that she had never seen them. The glyphs on them were so faded they were almost illegible.
“I need some time to study these,” I said.
Macihuin was silent for a while. “I may have to refer this to the palace courts,” he said at last. “This is going beyond me.”
“Don't. I need you.”
“Why?”
“They're all dead,” I said. “She's done her work. The longer we wait, the more proof disappears.”
“And what do you think I should do?”
My eyes rested on the first of the papers: it showed Tezcatlipoca, God of the Smoking Mirror, presiding over the first race of men in the age Four Jaguar. “Have Ceyaxochitl's house watched, as best as you can.”
We did have a brief talk with Nayatlan's widow, but she did not even know her husband had been part of the sect. It was going nowhere.
I studied the manuscripts as best as I could, between the wake and the sacrifices for a dead man – for I still had my own work. The spells written in the manuscripts were old ones, so powerful they would have been beyond the grasp of an untrained sect.
One of the spells was annotated as if in preparation, but half the glyphs were missing, which made it hard to decipher. A summoning, probably of some monster. Thank the gods they had not succeeded. I almost was grateful to Ceyaxochitl, until I remembered her arrogance. She had killed innocents.
The rest of it was dulclass="underline" all of it was praise to Tezcatlipoca, to His magic that could bring both life and death. God of the Smoking Mirror, the faded hymns said, you who hold the destiny of the world in your hands, you who will rule over the Empire. There, too, Nayatlan had written things, and I could piece together enough. He had had a son, I understood, who had drowned in the marshes while still very young. The fool had hoped Tezcatlipoca would bring him back in the Sixth Age.