I didn't think Cocochi was deliberately trying to impede my inquiry. Though I dearly would have liked to tone down some of that acidity, it wasn't my place.
"Any ideas where he might be?" I asked.
"In the girls' calmecac?" the young woman started, and then covered her mouth. "His sister is there," she said, a little too belatedly.
I sighed. When having an affair, be discreet, which was obviously an art neither Neutemoc nor Mahuizoh had mastered. I was starting to think subtlety wasn't the hallmark of Jaguar Knights.
"I know about the calmecac," I said finally. "Any other ideas?"
"What's he saying?" Cocochi asked.
The younger woman shook her head, in answer to my previous question.
"Can we look around the house?" I asked.
She shrugged. "Of course," she said, with a tired smile. "It will give Auntie Cocochi something to harp on for days." And get the attention of Mahuizoh's mother away from her, which would surely be restful.
Again, not much. We searched room after luxurious room: most of them were occupied by Mahuizoh's aunts, uncles, siblings and siblings' descendants, but Mahuizoh himself was nowhere to be found. Not a trace of him, or of someone who might know where he was. Wherever was he keeping Eleuia? Why abduct her, rather than kill her, if he hadn't wanted something out of her – sex, abject excuses for her infidelity – something else entirely?
Disappointed, Ixtli and I went back to the Duality House. We settled in a small, airy room that served as the headquarters for his regiment. A map was spread out on a reed mat, depicting the four districts of Tenochtitlan, with the streets and the canals coloured in a different pattern, and small counters obviously standing for men or units of men. Ixtli looked to be a careful, meticulous planner.
Slaves brought us refreshments, and a quick meal of atole, maize porridge leavened with spices. I washed it down with cactus juice, enjoying the tart, prickling taste on my tongue.
"We're wasting our time," Ixtli said. "Why don't we just arrest everyone? We might just start with that awful old woman."
I shook my head, although I had the same sense of standing on the brink of failure. "Do you really think it will solve anything?"
"No," Ixtli said. "But it would be something. Are we going to run around Tenochtitlan another cursed time?"
I said, "I have no idea where to look, but…"
His face was grimly amused. "Wherever he's hiding, we can't find it."
"No," I said. But we needed to find him. We needed Eleuia, alive, and evidence to present to Neutemoc's trial.
Tlaloc's lightning strike me, how could I be so utterly ineffective?
"Can you ask around the city?" I asked Ixtli.
He shrugged, in a manner that implied he didn't have much hope. "The Guardian put us at your disposal. I'll do my work. But I'll warn you beforehand–"
"That you promise nothing. I know," I snapped, and realised how tired I was. It was late evening by now. The sun had set. Every passing moment lessened the light that filtered through the entrance-curtain, and we still had no trail. Nothing. "I'm sorry," I said. "It's been a bone-breaking day."
Ixtli looked at me much as Yaotl had, on the previous evening. "Go get some sleep, priest. You can't help here. We'll send for you the moment we find him."
Ixtli was right. They'd be more efficient without my hampering them.
I walked back to my temple in a tense mood, thinking of Neutemoc at the Imperial Audience. Duality, what was I going to tell Huei?
There was no vigil in the darkened shrine: a handful of offering priests were laying out marigold flowers on the altar, but the hymns wouldn't start for another hour. Frustrated, I found a small, empty room reserved for the instruction of the calmecac students, and closing my eyes, sat in meditation.
It didn't work. All I could focus on wasn't the safety of the Fifth World, but the missing Mahuizoh; the fate of my brother, hanging in the balance; and over it all, the shadowy shape of Xochiquetzal, unattainable, unadulterated desire.
The Duality curse us. Did I really need to dwell on the goddess now?
I changed approaches, and made my offerings of blood: drawing thorns through my earlobes, once, twice, three times, until the sharp, stabbing pain had drowned every one of my thoughts.
But I still couldn't banish the image of the Quetzal Flower. In my mind, it merged with that of Priestess Eleuia: everything a man could desire or aspire to, a woman who would suck the marrow from your bones and still leave you smiling.
I threw the bloodied thorns on the floor, exasperated. I needed to focus on Neutemoc, not on a goddess I didn't worship.
Go bury yourself with the dead, Acatl, if you can't deal with what makes us alive.
I wasn't a coward. I'd made my choice, entered the priesthood of Mictlantecuhtli, but I hadn't been running away from the battlefield. I hadn't been running away from life.
The Southern Hummingbird strike Her. I wasn't a coward.
"Acatl-tzin?" The voice tore me from my nightmares.
Ichtaca. Good, reliable Ichtaca, his thoughtful face an anchor for my sanity. "Yes?" I said, attempting to keep my voice from shaking.
If he heard it, he gave no sign of it, save for a slight tightening of his lips. "You have a visitor. It's late at night, but given how urgent the matter sounded…"
I shook my head. Ixtli. It had to be Ixtli, with news of where the Jaguar Knight Mahuizoh was. "No," I said. "Show them in."
Ichtaca's lips pursed again. "In here?" he said. His torch illuminated the whitewashed walls, the minimal furniture. "As you wish."
But the man who came behind Ichtaca wasn't who I'd hoped for, not at all.
"Acatl-tzin," Teomitl said. He radiated untapped energy: the magical veil around him absorbing it, pulsing like a beating heart. "I've done what you asked of me."
I tried to remember what task I'd found for Teomitl. Something that would keep him busy, that would keep him away from me. Searching the girls' calmecac school, wasn't it?
"I see," I said, trying not to let my disappointment show. Whatever Teomitl had found, it could have no bearing on the investigation.
"I was given something for you," Teomitl said. "By a young girl in one of the furthest courtyards."
The young girl with the nahual, the one who saw far too much for someone so young. I hadn't imagined she would contact me again.
"She says she found it in the bushes near the centre of the courtyard. Probably shaken loose when the beast leapt over the wall."
He was speaking too fast for me to follow: every word tumbled on top of the previous one, forming the basis of some arcane structure I couldn't comprehend. I raised a hand. "Slow down, Teomitl. What did she find?"
Teomitl smiled, and held out his hand. "This," he said.
It was the missing pendant from Eleuia's room. As I'd suspected, it represented the warrior alone, an exquisite miniature of an Eagle Knight in full regalia. The stone was obsidian, though strangely enough, it didn't shine in the torchlight…
No! This wasn't obsidian.
I reached out for the pendant. "May I?" I asked Teomitl.