"Let the Revered Speaker be no exception," I repeated, and broke off the ritual with a bow. Now that the formalities were out of the way, I could finally approach the body.
Axayacatl-tzin lay on his reed mat, relaxed as only death could make a man. His face – the face upon which no mortal had been allowed to gaze back when he had been alive – was slack, every trace of divinity long since fled. He looked much like any other corpse in my temple, save for the turquoise tunic that denoted him as Revered Speaker. He was painfully thin, the bones of his arms visible through the translucent skin, and his body smelled faintly unpleasant, the rancid odour of a man old before his time. He'd died of war wounds gone bad; of the decay that had settled into his bones and muscles. No foul play here. Not in a palace barricaded by protective wards, not under the watchful gaze of so many priests.
"Satisfied?" Quenami asked. The High Priest of Huitzilpochtli looked even more smug. I hadn't imagined that was possible.
"I expected to be," I said, turning back to face him. "You know that the corpse isn't the problem when a Revered Speaker dies."
Acamapichtli snorted. "The star-demons? You worry far too much, Acatl. Last time, the wards held for more than a month. And I should think our fighting abilities haven't diminished since then."
I wasn't a fighter, and he knew it. "When we are talking about beings that want to tear us apart, yes, I'd rather worry."
"Worry, then, if you wish. The interregnum will be short, in any case. We'll soon crown a new Revered Speaker, whom the Southern Hummingbird will invest with His power."
I turned towards Quenami, who made a small grimace. "Yes," he said. "It might be worth considering them. The palace wards will be reinforced."
He was young, newly come into his role, elevated from the nobility through connections and privilege and not from the clergy. He had no idea of the stakes. "You take this far too lightly," I snapped. "If you'd seen the creatures that prowl the boundaries, you wouldn't laugh."
Ahuizotls, creatures that feasted on the eyes and fingernails of drowned men; Haunting Mothers, who tore babies and toddlers into pieces; and star-demons, crouched above us, waiting for us to make a mistake, waiting for their time to come…
Gods, it wasn't a time for levity or carelessness.
"And you have no idea of the stakes," Acamapichtli said, with obvious contempt.
This, coming from a man whose god had tried His best to topple the Fifth Sun. "Do dispel my ignorance," I said.
Acamapichtli crossed his arms over his chest, looking down at Axayacatl-tzin with no expression on his face. "He might not have been a great Emperor. He did not carve our territory out of the forsaken marches, or elevate us from tribe to civilisation. But he held us together."
What did he mean? "As will the next Revered Speaker."
The heron-feathers in Acamapichtli's headdress rippled in the breeze. "If he can be chosen."
"Tizoc-tzin was the Revered Speaker's choice," Quenami said, as seamlessly as if they'd planned it together. Considering the wide distance they kept from one another, I rather doubted it; but then again, Quenami had amply proved in the past that he knew how to sway a conversation. "His brother, the Master of the House of Darts, the commander of the regiments. He holds the loyalty of the army's core."
Politics. Power-grabbing. Always the same. "I still don't see what that has to do with us. Whoever becomes Emperor will want to maintain the boundaries. They will want the Heavens, the Fifth World and Mictlan to remain separate. They will want us to survive."
The She-Snake spoke up, in a calm, measured tone. "That's what they want to tell you, Acatl-tzin. That the council might dither. That it might not want to confirm Axayacatl-tzin's decision, that of a sick old man whose mind was halfway to Mictlan, after all." The She-Snake's voice carried the barest hint of sarcasm. He had to be one of the other candidates the council was split over; and his adversaries had just embarrassed themselves in front of him.
I thought of the stars overhead, growing larger with every passing moment. It would probably only be a few star-demons prowling the city, but even a few was too many. "If they wanted to dither, they should have done it before the Revered Speaker's death. It's too late now. Every passing day, the star-demons draw closer to us." There would be remnants of Huitzilpochtli's protection, tattered pieces, so easy to grind down to nothingness. There would be wards, such as the ones in my temples, drawn by devotees of other gods – the Flower Prince, the Feathered Serpent, the Smoking Mirror… But nothing like the impregnable wall that had been in place during Axayacatl-tzin's reign.
"Nonsense," Quenami said. "In the chronicles, they sometimes took entire weeks to decide on a new Revered Speaker. It never seemed to harm anyone."
"This is not a good time," I said. "The moon grows closer to the sun. The calendar priests have been warning about an eclipse for some time. We stand in its shadow, and this means that star-demons will be able to breach the boundaries." As the moon loomed closer to the sun, eating into its radiance, She of the Silver Bells, the moon goddess, grew stronger; and her brother, Huitzilpochtli, our protector, weaker. "In previous reigns, perhaps we were made of stronger stuff," I said, a slight jab at Acamapichtli and Quenami, who didn't react. "But today we are weak and defenceless. I have seen stars tonight, bearing down upon us. They are already coming to us. Have you ever seen a star-demon, my lords? You wouldn't laugh, believe me."
They were all looking at me with mild interest, as if I were trying to sell them a mine of celestial turquoise or a quarry of underworld jade. They didn't care. They thought it was an acceptable risk, so long as the end result allowed them to rise to greater power and influence.
They disgusted me more than I could express in words.
"My lords," I said, bowing. "I will attend to the body, and leave you to the mundane matters–"
I never finished the sentence. The entrance-curtain was cast aside in a discordant sound of bells slammed together, and someone strode into the room. "Acatl-tzin!"
"Teomitl?" My student, who also happened to be Axayacatl-tzin's and Tizoc-tzin's brother, wore more finery than I'd ever seen on him, a gold-embroidered tunic, a quetzal-feather headdress, and black and yellow stripes across his face. He clinked as he moved, from the sheer weight of jade and precious stones on his body.
Both the high priests and the She-Snake bowed to him, deep. Tizoc-tzin had many brothers, but, should he attain the Turquoiseand-Gold Crown, Teomitl was likely to be anointed Master of the House of Darts in his stead, heir apparent to the Mexica Empire. Ignoring him would have been a mistake.
Teomitl made a dismissive gesture. "There's no time for pomp. Acatl-tzin, you have to come. Someone just killed a councilman. In the palace."
TWO
The Moon Hungers to Outshine the Sun
The murdered man did not live in the Imperial Chambers, or in those of the high nobility: his rooms were as far down the palace hierarchy as they could be without being an outright insult. They were on the ground floor, opening up onto a small courtyard away from the bustle of palace activity with a very simple fountain to make up the garden. The walls were decorated with rich frescoes, but without the outright ostentation that marked the imperial family.