Harbinger of the Storm (31 page)

Acamapichtli smiled again. “That’s why they want you in here.”

”And I suppose…” I paused, gathering my thoughts. “I suppose you’re with them?” I could see no other reason for him to be back at Court so soon.

”Don’t be a fool.” He snorted.

”You came back…”

He shrugged, a thoughtless, arrogant gesture. “I needed some time to make myself forgotten, but it seems events are moving faster than I foresaw.”

”You’re out of the game,” I said.

”Xahuia-tzin is out of the game,” Acamapichtli said, thoughtfully. “That doesn’t mean I am. But I don’t have Quenami’s powers, alas.”

His face had the same haughty cast as when he’d told Teomitl the envoys weren’t his. “That’s a lie, isn’t it?” Gingerly, I pulled myself upwards, careful to remain near the jaguar’s fang. My head brushed against the ceiling and, up there, further away from the magic, I could feel it, the skittering at the edge of my mind, the force that wanted to erode my whole being. How could Acamapichtli stand it?

No doubt he had his own protections. No doubt he had planned for it. He was not the prisoner here.

He was still watching me. The shadows sculpted his face, made it seem as distant as that of a carved statue in the darkness of a shrine. “That’s a lie, isn’t it?” I repeated. “You’re more than strong enough to blast us all out of the Fifth World.”

”Perhaps.” He bent his head sideways, as if considering me in a new light. Without a doubt, I was no longer the High Priest that he had seen in the corridors, perhaps no longer his peer. I had no doubt he’d cast me aside without a moment’s doubt if I was no longer useful to him.

But still, he had come to visit me. He had spent the power of a human sacrifice to speak with me. Just to gloat? “What do you want?”

”What I’ve always wanted,” Acamapichtli said. “The Fifth World to survive, and our new Revered Speaker to lead us to glory.” He cocked his head again. “One that would remember that the Great Temple is more than the Southern Hummingbird’s territory.”

Finally, we were there, at the crux of the matter. “You had influence before,” I said. “Before the Storm Lord tried to seize power.”

”I’m not responsible for His actions.” He sounded almost annoyed at that, as if he could pretend to control the will of his god.

”And you think I can help you?”

”No,” Acamapichtli said. “Of course you can’t, Acatl. Let’s be honest here. You blunder into Court day after day, doing your best to follow intrigues you are utterly ignorant of.”

”What compliments,” I said. My vision had started to fade again, but I wasn’t fool enough to touch one of Tlaloc’s artefacts without any protection of my own. Much like Huitzilpochtli’s spells, that magic was opposite to my own.

”You’re admirable, in your own way.” He snorted, but with much of the usual aggressiveness gone. “Choosing not to meddle in what you can’t grasp. You know your own limits.”

If I’d had more strength, I wasn’t quite sure of what I’d have done. For all his arrogance and hasty judgments, he had a point. I had never been made for politics, or for the post of High Priest; I weathered as best as I could, did my best to rise up to the occasion. But I would never breathe it in as Quenami did, as Acamapichtli did, as all the birth-noblemen did, the ones who had watched their parents and grandparents swim in the currents of politics like children in the waters of Chalchiuhtlicue’s streams and lakes. “He who remains bound by his own limits is the worst kind of prisoner,” I said.

”True.” Acamapichtli shifted. “But you’re still a foolish man, Acatl. One does not dive into the bees’ hives without knowing where the queen is.”

”If that’s all you have to say, I wonder why you bothered to come at all.”

His lips curled up, in a smile without sincerity. “As I said, I’m not their ally. With you removed, they’ll turn their attention to me. I’ve come to make sure you last as long as you can.”

More than anything, his matter-of-fact tone chilled me. “They’ve decided, then?”

”They’ll find a pretext,” Acamapichtli said. He snorted. “They lack imagination, but it won’t be hard to concoct something they can blame on you. And then the next Revered Speaker can appoint a High Priest more malleable than you are.”

There were two ways to appoint a new High Priest: when the old one was demoted, or when he died. “They won’t strip me of my rank,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

Acamapichtli said nothing. The cold at my nape could have been that of the underworld. Death held no secrets for me anymore, but sometimes, knowing was worse than being in the dark; it left no place for hope, none at all. Like all the souls I guided down into darkness, I would make my way to the throne of Lord Death, and dissolve into oblivion, everything left unfinished forever. There was no recourse. There had never been.

I took a deep breath, refusing to think about the chasm yawning at my feet. “Very well. If that’s the way it’s going, I’ll need information.”

Acamapichtli nodded, as one craftsman to another. “You’ll have an audience, a closed one, with only Tizoc-tzin and perhaps a few of the faithful in attendance. They planned for you to be insensate long before this, to make it fast and short.” He gestured to the fang on the ground. “This won’t hold until then, but it should deflect part of the Southern Hummingbird’s magic.”

”I see.” I sat down again, my hand straying towards the fang. The earth was warm underneath, but I wasn’t fooled. Like Grandmother Earth in the Fifth World, it was nothing but hunger, and would not rest until all the blood had left my veins. “I’m surprised they let you do this.”

He snorted again. “As I said, fools, the lot of them. They think I’m settling accounts with you for my disgrace.”

He, too, was a much better actor than he had appeared to be at first. I had underestimated him, perhaps even more so than Quenami. Never again.

”Any defence I have wouldn’t be much good, would it?” I asked.

Acamapichtli did not move for a while. “It might. I don’t know. You have one chance, Acatl, and one only. The SheSnake will be part of the audience. They won’t be able to do anything but include him, since they want to expedite this before the election.”

The She-Snake? He was much too canny to be caught doing anything in favour of a convicted traitor. Not much of a chance. The hollow in my stomach wouldn’t close.

”What about Teomitl?” I asked.

”He’s not in a position to help you. Tizoc-tzin has him confined to his quarters, ostensibly for his own safety.”

”And Nezahual-tzin?”

”Too smart to let himself be dragged into something like this,” Acamapichtli said.

I hated to admit this, but he was right. Nezahual-tzin had known how fragile his position was all along, although ironically his offer to help find Xahuia and clear his name was the one thing that would allow Tizoc-tzin to accuse him of collusion and treason.

”I see,” I said again, though all I could feel was the abyss yawning under my feet. “It’s not much.”

”There isn’t much I can do.” Acamapichtli shifted, slightly.

”Do you know anything about the murders of the councilmen?”

”Do you think this is going to help you?”

”If I have to die, then at least let it be for something I can understand.”

He snorted, almost gently. “We all die in the end, Acatl. We all drift out of the Fifth World, our destination determined by the manner of our deaths. But…” He was silent, for a while. “All I know is that the council had a frightful quarrel, five days before Axayacatl-tzin died.”

”What kind of quarrel?” And then I remembered what Echichilli and Manatzpa had told me. “Pezotic,” I said. The Master on the Edge of the Water, the councilman who had been dismissed for running away. “Pezotic disappeared.”

”Yes.”

”What was the quarrel about?”

”I don’t know.” Acamapichtli shook his head in an annoyed manner. “I’m not privy to the secrets of the gods. I never was. But I’ve heard they were threatened – badly enough to fear for their lives. They’d turned into pitiful wrecks, both of them.”

It made me feel as though I had crossed a great lake, only to see mountains ahead of me. “You’re right. It’s not much help.”

”Believe me. If I had any idea what they were up to in truth, I would make sure everyone else knew.”

”I have no doubt you would.”

Acamapichtli’s lips curled up a fraction. “Good. So long as we understand each other. Any other questions, Acatl?” He’d started to move out of the cell, back towards the entrance-curtain.

I couldn’t think of any. He went out, leaving me in darkness with not a flicker of light to be seen.

I must have slept again, watching the jaguar fang by my side. I came to with my hand wrapped around it, and a stinging pain in my palm, a trace of the Storm Lord’s power engraved into my skin. My mind skittered, refused to hold on to anything.

He had said…

Acamapichtli had said that the audience would be soon, that they wanted this done with before it was too late. That they–

Images drifted across my field of vision, faded into darkness again. The smoky, wavering outline of the entrance-curtain – a faint light I could barely make out – sank further and further out of sight as time passed. I had no way of knowing if it was still day outside or if it was night, and I had missed my devotions.

I made them, regardless, in the encroaching darkness, spilled blood that had no potency, whispered prayers the Fifth Sun or Lord Death might never hear. It was what I had always done.

When they came for me I jerked out of a dreamless sleep to find a Jaguar Knight bending over me, his face framed between the jaws of his animal-shaped helmet. For a brief, timeless moment, he seemed like my brother Neutemoc, but then I saw they had nothing in common.

He hauled me to my feet without ceremony and out into a corridor and a succession of courtyards. Outside, the Fifth Sun’s light hurt my eyes and a hundred spots flickered at the edge of my vision like star-demons streaming down. I caught a vague glimpse of noblemen, clustering in a sea of gold and turquoise ornaments, of palace slaves in their wooden collars, of warriors in feather regalia. Banners flashed across my field of vision, a riot of bright colours all merging into one.

I kept my hands clenched, focused on the prayers I had learnt as a novice priest in the
calmecac
school, and repeated day after day at dawn and at sunset, the prayers that kept the world whole.

“As grass becomes green in spring

Our hearts open and give forth buds

And then they wither

This is the truth

Down into darkness we must go…”

Over and over, a familiar litany washing over my broken thoughts, the words I knew by heart, the words that defined me. I thought of Nezahual-tzin, doing his ritual in the sweatbath, under the gaze of the Smoking Mirror, his god’s eternal adversary.

“Enemy territory is where you prove yourself – where you’re most
sharply defined against what you’re not, what you’ll never be”.

Time to see if he was right.

The light flickered, and my captor flung me to the ground. My knees connected with something hard, and the rest of my body followed. I barely had the time to bring up my hands to stop my fall. Pain shot up my wrists, an agony I silently pledged to Lord Death.

Slowly, like a hurt animal, I pulled my hands back, lifted my head to look at my surroundings.

More riots of colours – frescoes against the wall, the painted gods and goddesses wavering as if in a great heat, feather fans negligently propped against the pillars, carvings, rearing into sudden focus and just as suddenly vanishing into blurriness.

Close my eyes… I had never wanted so much to close my eyes, but I couldn’t. I needed to see… I needed to…

”We convene here today for the trial of Acatl, High Priest for the Dead. The charge is treason.”

Quenami. He stood somewhere to my left and ahead of me. I blinked, struggling to bring the world into focus. I could feel saliva drip down the side of my mouth again. I must have looked like an imbecile. Good. I needed them to underestimate me, even though I wasn’t entirely sure what I would gain by it.

Ahead was a dais I recognised from another lifetime. This time it held two people. The one to my left, decked in emerald-green, had to be Tizoc-tzin, and the patch of black, placed slightly lower than Tizoc-tzin, could only be the She-Snake.

”I’ve read the charges,” the She-Snake said. “I’m not quite sure what to make of them.” The volume of his voice wouldn’t remain steady, it kept hovering between a whisper and a shout. The Duality take me, why couldn’t I focus on anything useful?

”I don’t see what there is to add,” Quenami said. “First Xahuia, and then Nezahual-tzin. There is a definite pattern.”

”I admit to not knowing him as well as you do.” I couldn’t make out the tone of the She-Snake’s voice. “But, nevertheless, I’m surprised. His record is impeccable.”

”Biding his time,” Tizoc-tzin said, sharply.

”Until Axayacatl died?”

”Until such time as he could damage us most,” Tizoc-tzin said. “You have seen him worming his way into the court, weaving his webs like a spider for a few years now. First the appointment, then the taking on of my brother as a student, and finally, his sister…”

Mihmatini. I had to do something, I had to… My mouth wouldn’t move. The Southern Hummingbird blind Acamapichtli, couldn’t he have carved a stronger talisman?

”Much of that seems irrelevant, if not outright defamatory.” The She-Snake’s voice was mild, but I felt Quenami recoil. “And I don’t see the point of this farce, Tizoc. It’s also quite obvious he can’t speak. I’ll remind you that pain is an offering to the gods, not a means to silence people or interrogate them.”