Obsidian & Blood

SEVENTEEN

Ahuizotl

"What in the Fifth World is that?" one of the warriors asked, but the ahuizotl was moving again with supernatural speed. Its tail swept down and sent us all crashing down onto the stone floor.

Another one appeared, leapt over us. I lost it from sight, struggling to pull myself upright on shaking muscles. One of the warriors reached out for his macuahitl sword to stop me, but the ahuizotl was on him before he could react, its full weight resting on his chest. The tail uncoiled again, plunging towards the eyes.

I turned my gaze away, even as he started to scream.

The second warrior had his macuahitl sword, was pointing it in my direction. Given my painfully slow speed, I had no hope of avoiding it. I threw myself to the ground nevertheless.

Nothing happened. I felt the wind of something else's passage and heard the warrior tumble to the ground.

"What is the meaning of this?" Tizoc-tzin asked, from inside.

I crawled away from the scene of the carnage. The ahuizotls watched me – and so did the last thing – the huge, ghostly serpent rearing in the air, drops of water and blood shining on its feathered collar – for a moment only, and then it lunged towards me. I couldn't avoid it. I remained where I was, fully expecting something unpleasant, but it twisted at the last moment, knocking me off the ground, and before I could understand what had happened, it was under me, its body supporting me as it rose again.

The ahuizotls joined it, framing it like an escort. With a single powerful leap, they leapt up and hung onto the serpent's tail; and the whole assemblage started to glide upwards at a greater speed than a boat in rapids.

Hanging on to the serpent as well as I could, I cast a glance backward. Tizoc-tzin, the She-Snake, and Quenami stood on the platform. Quenami was frantically whispering a spell, dabbing blood on the ground. But the She-Snake… He just stood, watching the serpent glide away through the courtyard. He could have done something, too. Unlike Quenami, he had come fully prepared, but he didn't.

I could have sworn he was smiling.

The serpent flew to a deserted spot outside of the city, in the midst of the Floating Gardens, the series of island-fields that grew our crops. It landed in the middle of a patch of newly-planted tomatoes – the green leaves just opening – and, with a great sigh, it sank back down into the earth.

The ahuizotls remained. They watched me with unblinking yellow eyes, as if daring me to put a step wrong. I pulled myself into an upright position, the most I could do. It wasn't only the weakness induced by the heartland – less than an hour ago, I had been convinced this day was my last – to find a sudden reprieve was heartening, but it was the sort of unwelcome episode I'd have been glad to avoid altogether.

Four silhouettes walked towards me from the single hut on the edge of the floating garden, wading through the maize stalks. I wasn't surprised when they turned out to be Teomitl, Nezahual-tzin, and the two Texcocan warriors I had seen earlier.

Wordlessly, Teomitl handed me a couple of obsidian knives which I put back into their sheathes.

"Impressive," I said, slowly.

"Just a trick." Nezahual-tzin smiled.

Teomitl looked more preoccupied. "Acatl-tzin? You don't look–"

"I'll be all right," I said, raising a shaking hand. "I just need a moment to recover."

"See?" Teomitl said, with a scornful glance at Nezahual-tzin. "I told you it would work."

Nezahual-tzin grimaced. "I've heard better plans. But yes, it worked. Only because they got sloppy."

"I thought you were confined to your rooms," I said to Teomitl, the only thought that occurred to me.

"I broke out." He smiled again – pure Teomitl, carelessly proud.

"Right. Right. So did I, it seems." I stared at the ground under my feet, took a deep breath. The air was clean and crisp, nothing like that of my cell. "What now?"

They both looked at me as if it were obvious that I held the answer. The gods help me, I didn't need another adolescent struggling with nascent responsibility, Teomitl on his own was enough trouble for a lifetime, and I had a suspicion Nezahual-tzin would be even worse.

"We need to move," I said. "We can sort out the rest later. Tizoctzin isn't going to let you get away with it for long, and neither is Quenami." I looked at Nezahual-tzin, who was currently focusing on the water lapping at the floating garden's edge. Ah well. Lost for lost, I might as well get a chance to commit the crime they'd accused me of. "How soon can we be in Texcoco?"

Nezahual-tzin's gaze drifted back towards me. He didn't look surprised in the slightest. "One, two days? We have boats and supplies, but we'll have to get past the dyke as soon as we can."

Texcoco lay east of Tenochtitlan, across the lake of the same name, and a great dyke had been built to prevent the waters of the lake from flooding us. It was manned by a few forts, though its main purpose wasn't military. Any invading army would come by land, which meant one of the three causeways rather than the lake.

"Two days?" I asked.

"A little less if the gods are with us."

"Or the ahuizotls," Teomitl said. "But not in Tenochtitlan, we'd stand out too much. Let's wait until we're out of the city."

"And Mihmatini?" I asked.

Teomitl grimaced. "She's gone to the Popocatepetl volcano. On a pilgrimage of, ah, indefinite length."

And I could imagine how much she'd have protested at being taken away for her own safety. "Good," I said. "Let's go. We can sort out the details later."

• • • •

Nezahual-tzin's boats were two flat-bottomed barges, a slightly larger version of the canoes fishermen steered all over the lake. They looked as if they had been specifically purchased for the rescue rather than brought with him. A Revered Speaker such as him would normally travel with more pomp, and the boats looked more utilitarian than grand and imposing.

The first boat was packed with the supplies he had mentioned – wrapped maize flatbreads and fruit, as well as cages holding owls and rabbits. The second one was packed with men – a dozen Texcocan warriors who all looked old enough to be veterans of Nezahual-tzin's coronation war.

Nezahual-tzin caught my glance, and smiled. "It never hurts to be prepared, Acatl."

I climbed gingerly into the boat, found myself a comfortable spot wedged against a particularly large bale, and determined not to move again in a lifetime.

Two of the warriors took the oars. Teomitl's ahuizotls slid into the water with a splash, and swam by our side as we moved away from the floating garden.

We cruised through row upon row of floating gardens, a whole district on a grid pattern, like the rest of the city. Soon the floating gardens thinned away, to become streets where peasants carried cloth and maize kernels to the marketplace and where the steady clack of looms from the women's weaving floated to us through the open entrances of their thatch houses. We were swinging around Tenochtitlan, keeping to the more populated areas in order not to stand out.

In between the houses I caught a glimpse of the Sacred Precinct's tallest buildings – the Great Temple under which the Moon Goddess Coyolxauhqui was imprisoned, and the circular Wind Tower, where I had prayed to Quetzalcoatl for Ceyaxochitl's life. The Feathered Serpent had not answered that prayer, but it occurred to me that perhaps He had given me something else to see me through my hour of need.

Nezahual-tzin stood near the prow, watching the houses go past. He looked much like any other nobleman's son, his cloak of thin cotton, his jade lip-plug glinting in the sunlight, his hair pulled back and caught in the base of his feather headdress.

We swung east into ever-smaller streets. The boats wove their way through the traffic – peasants coming back from the marketplace, warriors standing tall and proud in the regalia they had earned on the battlefield, priests with blood-matted hair on their way to the Sacred Precinct – with preternatural ease. If I didn't have Nezahualtzin in my sights, I could have sworn that there was more to this than the agility of two warriors.

Teomitl was a little further down our boat, his hand trailing just above the water. His face was furrowed in concentration, his eyes focused on the dark shapes trailing the boat.

We came out into an expanse of open water. Ahead of us was the bulk of Nezahualcoyotl's Dyke, keeping back the saltwater and regulating the level of the lake during the flood season.

I had expected trouble at this juncture, but the few warriors manning the fort on the dyke looked bored, and the boats were carried over to the other side without any major incident. While Nezahualtzin and I engaged the guards in idle conversation, the ahuizotls leapt over the wall and slid noiselessly back into the water, dark shapes gone past in an eye blink.

Behind the dyke were only a few boats, going either to Teotihuacan or Texcoco, merchants with goods to sell and wider barges belonging to noblemen on pilgrimages.

Teomitl moved to stand near Nezahual-tzin. "Time to go a little faster."

The ahuizotls dived, two under each boat. I felt a slight jerk as they moved to bear the weight of the keel, and then we were gliding across the water at a greater speed than oars alone could have managed. Teomitl's face shone the colour of jade, the light flickering across his features.

"How long can he hold?" Nezahual-tzin asked, sliding next to me.

"I don't know." Teomitl's eyes were two pits of darkness, and sweat ran down his face. I had seen him control more ahuizotls, but it had been for a much shorter amount of time. He had to have summoned these early in the morning for my rescue, and he hadn't released them since.

"I see." Nezahual-tzin stroked one of the owls in the cages, his fingers nimbly avoiding its beak stabs. "You're tutoring him well in magic, but his grasp of politics is appalling."

"So is mine," I said, and it wasn't an admission of shame. "Quenami's, however, is excellent."

"Point taken. But still…"

"You think Tizoc-tzin will be Revered Speaker?" I asked.

Nezahual-tzin's head moved a fraction. "I don't like the idea any more than you do, but we have to face this fact: Tizoc-tzin is likely to have been elected Revered Speaker by the time we come back."

"I know," I said. I hated myself for lending reality to his words, but he was right. There was nothing we could do. "But he won't want Teomitl to succeed him."

"You forget." Nezahual-tzin's lips curled up in a smile. "He's the only one who doesn't get a vote in his succession."

"His opinion matters."

"It does." Nezahual-tzin was silent for a while. "But Teomitl is destined to be a great warrior. He'll honour the Southern Hummingbird much better than I ever did, and the council will see that, in time."

"You're a politician," I said, slowly. To think I was having idle chitchat with the Revered Speaker of Texcoco…

"To each his own. I leave war to those with more heart for strife." Nezahual-tzin smiled. His eyes rolled up in their orbits, as white as pearls. "My face and heart are turned towards knowledge."

A fitting devotee of the Feathered Serpent indeed. "You didn't have to come with us," I said.

"No," Nezahual-tzin said. He watched the water for a while.

"But it was getting a little uncomfortable in Tenochtitlan?" I guessed.

"I'm a fair man, Acatl," Nezahual said. "I know exactly what my faults are, but the Smoking Mirror curse me if I'm going to let Tizoctzin run amok. A Revered Speaker may be Lord of Men, but he has a responsibility to them. He is the servant of the people. He is humble and an example of the law he upholds."

Hardly Tizoc-tzin's qualities. "Still," I said. "You can't ask that of everyone."

Nezahual-tzin's eyes drifted briefly towards Teomitl, whose grip on the boat had become so strong it seemed to be eating into the wood. "No. But some people will do it, regardless." He looked down again. "Axayacatl was one of them, but not any more."

He seemed angry or embarrassed. I couldn't be sure. "There was nothing more you could have done," I said.

"No," Nezahual-tzin said. "It's not that." He looked into the water. "I'm Revered Speaker of Texcoco, Acatl. My role is to vote on his designated successor, and to make the first speech at his funeral. That's the only reason I came into Tenochtitlan."

And now it looked as though he would fail at both.

I lifted my gaze against the glare of the sun, watching the shore grow closer and closer. "You'll probably not be in time for the vote. Tizoc-tzin has made sure of it. But, at the rate we're going, you might make the funeral."

And I was startled to see him smile for the first time, surprised and careless, like the boy he was.

We reached Texcoco sometime in the evening. Teomitl was white. As the boats wove their way through the canals of the city, he came down, and sat next to me, his shoulders sagging against my chest. I could hear the thunder of his heartbeat and feel his skin, as cold and as clammy as underwater algae. The Duality curse me, I shouldn't have let him go so far. It was my responsibility to tutor him in magic and to teach him his limits, even if I had a suspicion I would lose that particular battle. Teomitl thought limits were for the weak.

The boat bumped against a dock. Nezahual-tzin stretched himself, looking at the tall adobe houses critically. The warriors in the other boats spread themselves around him in a tight knot. "We're not staying here," he said. "Let's go to the summer palace."

Teomitl did not answer. "He's in no state to walk," I said. I had a dim memory of the summer palace, somewhere in the mountains above Texcoco. It did not exactly sound like an easy trip, and I was in only marginally better shape than Teomitl.

"He won't have to," Nezahual-tzin said. His eyes shone white in the darkness, without pupils or cornea, white as the full moon hanging over us. He had never looked so alien. He shifted aside slightly and two litters loomed out of the darkness, a massive chair of carved mahogany, with a canopy of feathers and gold, and another, simpler one of wood and cloth, with enough sitting space for two. "Get on."

He couldn't have sent word ahead so fast, could he? I didn't know any spells of the living blood to communicate across distances, but he might not have been operating on quite the same rules as most priests. As Quetzalcoatl's servant, his power would come from fasts and vigils, and the occasional sacrificed animal.

Nevertheless, the timing was eerie. I wasn't sure if the point was to disorient us, or whether there was some other, more sinister purpose to his moves, and I had no way of knowing.

Enough. I wasn't Tizoc-tzin, and now wasn't the time for paranoia.

Teomitl did not stir as I set him into the second chair. I climbed on as best as I could, helped by one of the silent bearers. As soon as I was in, the litter started moving with a rocking tilt, away from those few lights I could see.

Nezahual-tzin had climbed in with the ease of someone who had ridden in litters all his life, he sat negligently in his chair, with the casual arrogance of the ruler, and looked at the land around him with the eyes of its owner. The warriors spread behind us, closing the march.

As in Tenochtitlan, the adobe houses gave way to wattle-anddaub, first with triangular, brightly-coloured roofs, and then simple structures of twigs and branches. The road snaked through the mountain, and soon the only lights were those of the torch-bearers by our side as we climbed higher and higher. Scraggly trees went past us in the darkness, the only noise was that of the bearers' feet scattering rocks and gravel on the path.

I dozed off. When I woke up again a huge structure loomed over us, a mass of stone and light clinging to the face of the mountain, with the smell of flowers and copal incense drifting towards us. Slaves rushed to help us dismount and I stood on shaking legs, looking at the sculptures of the Feathered Serpent framing the massive entrance, their jaws open as if to swallow us whole. Above the lintel was carved an image of the Storm Lord, fangs protruding from His lower lip and a snake shaped like lightning in His left hand. His blackened eyes seemed to be following me a little too closely for comfort.

And there was magic on the ground, arcing through my legs and spine, a slow ponderous heartbeat that seemed to link the Heavens and the earth, a compound of spells I couldn't identify. Wards shimmered all over the stone, shivering like a sea of crawling insects. From the ground to the sky above, endlessly renewed, endlessly forged anew. My hand itched where Acamapichtli's talisman had burnt me.

Nezahual-tzin was all but subsumed in a crowd of slaves and servants but he turned towards me, his eyes still rolled up in their orbits, shining like pearls in the murk of the lake, his smile like that of a jaguar. Something cold descended from my throat to my stomach, coiling like a venomous serpent – a sense of disquiet, a pressure against my chest.

I had felt this once before, a year ago, moments before the Fifth World slid all the way into chaos.

Tlaloc. The whole complex was dedicated to the Storm Lord.

"Welcome to my humble abode, Acatl," Nezahual-tzin said. "I'm sure you'll find the stay worth your while."