No. It could not be.
She knelt to grasp my head, raising my gaze towards her face. Her smell was intoxicating: anger and hatred and envy, all swirling around something else I couldn't name – and her heart… Such a young, delicate heart…
"This is what you will do," she said.
And there was no doubt left; none at all. For the voice, unmistakably, belonged to my brother's wife, Huei. I must have closed my eyes. When I opened them again, I was lying in the middle of the circle, sprawled over the beast's body. My chest ached fiercely under the bandages.
Teomitl's scowling face entered my field of vision. "I told you–"
"Not to move around. I know," I said, taking the hand he offered me, and rising. Around us, the moon cast its light on the desolate Floating Garden: the place where I'd accessed the beast's memories was now nothing more than a circle of charred ashes, blackened earth which would take years to heal. Mictlan's magic was anathema to life; and the beast had been bursting with it.
More damage to the harvest. Just what I needed. I tried to remain focused on this – to forget what I had seen – but I couldn't.
Huei.
My brother's wife had summoned the beast.
Why?
She hadn't seemed… I shook my head. She had seemed sincere; but, then, like Neutemoc, she had moved away from me in four years. She was no longer my only ally in my brother's house, but something else entirely.
It wouldn't matter. A chill was working its way into my bones. Summoning a beast of shadows carried its own penalty. The Wind of Knives would soon appear in Tenochtitlan, to kill Huei for her transgression.
What would I tell Neutemoc, when he came home to find his wife dead? Neutemoc was innocent of everything save adultery; but that thought didn't bring me any relief.
No. There had to be some explanation. Something. Anything that would explain the utter failure of Huei's marriage.
"We need to get back to the city," I said to Teomitl.
He rowed me back to the shore in silence. As the oars splashed into the lake, I kept wondering when I would feel the first touch of cold on my spine. Seven years ago, I had merged my mind with the Wind of Knives to bring down an agent of Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror, and that mind-link had never quite died. When the Wind entered the Fifth World, I would know.
Teomitl was too tired to row farther than he had to. And I was not in a state to row either, with my injured arm. We left the boat at the edge of the Floating Gardens and walked north, back into the city of Tenochtitlan proper.
Teomitl didn't speak until we were walking once more on the familiar streets of the Moyotlan district, with the grand adobe houses of the wealthy rising all around us. "Where to?" he asked. He was leaning on his crutch, his face transfigured by eagerness. I hated to dash his hopes, but there were things I couldn't let him see.
"Home, for you," I said. I did not want to face the Wind of Knives; to face the darkness and the coldness, to plead for Huei's life even though I knew the Wind could not be swayed. But this was something that I would do alone. I would not drag someone else into it. The Wind of Knives would merely cut them down like maize, dispassionately judging that they had no right to speak with Him.
"What?" Teomitl asked. "You promised–"
"No," I said, hating myself for my cowardice. "I allowed you to come with me. But what happens now is something you're not prepared for."
No, not prepared for. That while my married brother was busy courting a priestess, his own wife, Huei, plotted with shadowy figures to get her revenge.
"I'm prepared," Teomitl said, sullenly.
"You're in no state to fight."
I could have predicted his next remark. "Neither are you."
"No," I said. "But there are other ways to fight." Even magical weapons would shatter against the Wind of Knives, and nothing would stop or sway Him. How could Huei have been so foolish?
Teomitl was still watching me. "Go home," I said, as gently as I could. "I'll call on you the next time there is something, promise. But this isn't the right time."
"I don't see why," Teomitl said. But he looked down, at his splinted leg, and sighed. "You'll summon me?"
"Promise," I said, praying that the next time I was involved with the underworld, it would be safe enough for him to accompany me. "Go home, and take care of that leg."
"Very well," Teomitl said, grudgingly. "But I'll hold you to this, Acatl-tzin." He started limping towards the Sacred Precinct, then turned, a few paces from me. "And don't forget to be careful with those wounds!"
His attitude – thoughtless arrogance, the strange, buoyant mood that propelled him through life – was not only that of a warrior, but that of a nobleman's son. Where had Ceyaxochitl found him?
Left to my own devices, I walked back to Neutemoc's house. I made my way through the network of Tenochtitlan's canals – under deserted bridges, past houses lit up by late-night revelry, where snatches of music and loud laugher wafted into the street, a memory of what I couldn't have.
I prayed that there was still time left to avert the disaster.
TEN
Mictlan's Justice
Despite the late hour, Neutemoc's house was still lit, though the only sounds that pierced the night were the lilting tones of a poet reciting his latest composition. Cradling my bandaged arm in my good hand, I walked to the door.
"Yes?" the slave who was guarding the entrance to the courtyard asked. He was a burly man, with macuahitl scars on his legs: a veteran of some battlefield, though only the Duality knew how he had fallen low enough to sell himself into slavery. "What do you want?" His voice was contemptuous.
Only then did I realise what I must look like. My cloak had been torn to make the bandages that now covered my naked chest, and I stank of pulque alcohol like a base drunkard. In fact, it was a good thing I hadn't met a guard on my way through the city, or I'd have been arrested for drunkenness. And for a priest, that offence carried the death penalty.
"I'm Huei's brother-in-law," I said. "I need to see her."
"She has no time for–" The slave sniffed.
"Beggars?" I asked, infuriated. "I've looked better, but I'm certainly not about to ask for her charity. Will you let me in?"
He didn't look as though he was about to. Luckily for me, someone crossed the courtyard to see what was causing all the noise.
"Acatl?" my sister Mihmatini asked. She wore a pristine dress of white cotton, with a simple embroidery of sea-shells along the hem, and her hair was impeccably combed.
I felt ashamed of what I looked like, compared to her. "Can you convince the guard here to let me in? I need to speak to Huei, quickly."
"Huei?" Her eyes widened. "Is it about Neutemoc?"
I shook my head. I still hadn't felt the familiar cold in my bones. But I was trying not to think of the old, old cenote south of Tenochtitlan, the fissure opening in the rock to reveal the stillness of an underground lake; and how the air above that lake would be growing darker and darker, as the Wind of Knives coalesced into existence at the only gateway He could pass through without being summoned.