Treasures. Multiple. Then several things had been taken from the body. I tried to remember if there were any spots on the dead one’s cloak where something might have been torn off. Or perhaps they had been attached directly to the skin and that was why it had been cut up.
The huetlacoatl spoke for the first time except in response to the translator: a long collection of hisses, squeaks and squeals that ended with a clash of teeth like a gunshot. All three of the Speakers turned towards the creature and froze in identical postures, one foot in front, bowing forward from the waist and the right fist pressed to the forehead.
“We waste the Great One’s time,” the Speaker spat as he turned back to me. “If an animal you act, then an animal you shall be treated.”
“We are civilized,” the Speaker snapped. “We do not offer ourselves in the marketplace for food.”
I wondered just what it was the huetlacoatls were trading for—or what they thought they were trading for. “But it is meat that our enemies be hunted in a civilized manner, to expiate their crimes.” He gestured to the slaves holding my arms, turned and strode away with me being dragged alter him.
“There!” The Speaker gestured over a balcony and down to a courtyard below.
At first I couldn’t see anything but a flagged stone yard with a water I rough. Then there was a “wheeping” sound from beneath the balcony, and another, and another. Then four huetlacoatls came bounding into the court, wheeping and craning their necks to see what was on the balcony.
There was nothing to give me scale, so it took me a minute to realize these huetlacoatls were smaller than usual. It took me a minute longer to infer from their clumsy movements and their tussling that these were immature huetlacoatls. As a group they were as cute as a nest of baby rattlesnakes. Only I didn’t think they had the high ethical standards of rattlesnakes. And I didn’t like the way they were looking up at me and wheeping expectantly.
“We tie you by your arms,” the Speaker said. “Then we lower you down so the young can practise hunting. Just your feet and ankles first, then your legs. So you may reconsider your theft from the Great Ones.”
Well, at least I’ll be able to kick the little bastards’ teeth in. Not much comfort, but you take what you can find.
The Speaker leaned close. “Only first we break your legs so you cannot hurt the little Great Ones.”
I was digesting this information and trying desperately to come up with a plausible lie when a huetlacoatl whistled so high that it almost hurt. I managed to twist around in the slaves’ grip and see that a new group of humans had entered the room.
There were six of them, cloaked in grey, with grey hoods drawn over their heads, and grey masks covering their faces. I’d never seen that outfit before, but I knew what it was. It was the closest thing to a uniform ever worn by the Emperor’s Shadow.
There was a long palaver between the Speaker and one of the Shadows. I divided my attention between trying to overhear them and listening to the plaintive cries of the young huetlacoatls below me, who obviously weren’t used to waiting for their supper. Finally, after an extended, involved discussion, the adult huetlacoatl made a slashing gesture and a steam whistle bellow. The Speakers bowed and stepped aside, letting the Emperor’s Shadow have me. Personally, I would have preferred the huetlacoatls, but my wishes didn’t count for a whore’s fart.
Another hood, another journey, but this time I was awake. I know we walked for a ways, there was a boat ride across the bay, a slower, smellier ride through the city’s canals, and then more walking. No one spoke, and the ones who held me never loosened their grip.
This time when the hood came off I was in a low-ceilinged room with stone beneath my feet. There was a single blinding light shining in my eyes. I squinted and tried to twist my head away but the ones behind me forced me to look straight ahead.
“Young sir,” came a voice from the darkness, “you must learn to associate with more wholesome companions.” He hobbled into the light and I saw it was old Foureagle, the menagerie keeper. “If you consort with those who want to be huetlacoatls, evil will befall you.”
“What about the company you keep? What’s a tender of caged beasts doing with the Emperor’s Shadow?” I remembered his remark about having seen the insides of a lot of people and tried not to show it.
He smiled. “A man is many things. It not only keeps life interesting, but it is necessary in times such as these.” I decided I had liked the old man a lot better when we were sucking down pulque outside the menagerie. I also realized I had gone fishing for information on a very sensitive matter by questioning a high officer of the Emperor’s Shadow. Shit! One thing about my luck. It’s consistent.
“But come, young sir, you do not seem pleased to see me.”
“I think I’d be better off with the huetlacoatls.”
Wrong answer. It made Foureagle frown and earned me a kidney punch from one of the Shadows. I sagged forward, retching.
“These ones with their costumes and silly antics have no idea of what they are doing,” Foureagle said. “They’ve got it all wrong, dead wrong.”
“They speak to the huetlacoatls well enough.”
Foureagle snorted. “They speak as a dog speaks to its master. They sense emotion well enough but they understand only a little. The rest is deception. They deceive themselves and the huetlacoatls deceive and use them.”
“Like you use the beasts in the menagerie?”
“The relationship between man and beast can be understood,” he said, his eyes narrowed into slits, “but between man and these thinking, talking creatures? Where do we begin to know anything? How can we trust?”
“You understand them.”
He shrugged. “I know when they are afraid. Even if their language is mostly a mystery, the prattling of the Speakers is easy to understand. The huetlacoatls are upset and they are driven to the point of hysteria. The thing you took from the body was very important to them.” He smiled. “Important enough that the huetlacoatls brought the affair—forcefully—to the attention of the Emperor Himself. You were unwise to upset them so, young sir. If we cannot understand each other, we cannot trade, and the Emperor values the trade with the huetlacoatls very highly.”
We were still in the intellectual fencing stage, which meant I would remain whole and functioning for a least another few minutes. What Foureagle said made sense. The huetlacoatls hadn’t been really upset until they recovered the body with whatever-it-was missing. Then it took time for the word to reach the capital and for the Emperor to turn his Shadow’s interest to this new case. All very logical, but I was damned if I could see how it helped me.
“Uncle, I swear to you I took nothing from the body.”
“So Ninedeer maintained,” the old man said, as if savouring a memory.
I shook off the sudden chill down my spine. “If something was taken, it must have been by someone else. The sailor who found the body, for instance. Or the city guards who investigated it.”
A gauntleted fist slammed into my face. I had to cough and hack to clear the blood so I could breathe.
“These possibilities have been explored—thoroughly,” Foureagle said. “So we come to you by a process of, ah, ‘elimination’.”
“But I took—” This time the blow was from the front and knocked the breath out of me. Somewhere off to one side there was the sudden odour of burning charcoal as someone lit a brazier. I twisted and gasped and knew this was only the bare beginning of what they’d do to me before I died.
Unless…
The Speakers kept referring to the missing thing as “part of” the huetlacoatl. The huetlacoatls themselves might have continued that use, but the Speakers would have known enough to employ human usage when questioning a human.
Another blow to the face ended my speculation.
“Uncle,” I gasped. “These things, how do they bear their young?”
“Eh?” This wasn’t the way he expected the conversation to go. “Why, eggs, of c
ourse. Like crocodiles, or birds.”
Shit! Another beautiful theory murdered by a gang of ugly facts.
“Although,” Foureagle continued slowly, “not all of them lay the eggs in a nest. Some of them, like some snakes, hold the eggs in their bodies until the young hatch.” He looked at me sharply. “Like the huetlacoatls.”
“And the one who died was female.” It wasn’t a question. “Toltectecuhtli keeps talking about a great joining of humans, English, and even huetlacoatls. To make that work he’s going to need something like the Speakers.” The effort made me cough, which hurt my ribs even more. I wondered how many were broken.
“Except they would be huetlacoatls raised among humans rather than the other way around,” the old man finished my thought. “Young sir, I believe you have it.” He smiled, and I felt the grip on my arms loosen imperceptibly. Then he frowned. “But it is still just a theory, of course. And it does not tell us where the eggs are.”
“I think I know,” I said slowly. “Uncle, may I beg the boon of a handspan of days to find out?”
Foureagle rubbed his chin. “I will give you one day,” he said.
Considering the obvious alternative, I took it.
One thing about being beaten up, it makes disguise easier—if you’re disguising yourself as a cripple, that is. And I was. Some artificial scars and pockmarks helped the effect. But the bruises on my face and the swollen eye were real. So were the limping, halting gait and the painful, gasping breath. The ragged tunic was my servant’s, but the sword underneath was mine.
The public parts of the temple were easily accessible. There was no service tonight, but a fair number of pilgrims wandered the halls, pausing at small shrines to pray and make offerings. No guards, of course. One would have to be truly mad or very young and stupid to profane or steal from a temple, even a temple of such an odd religion.
I hadn’t really seen much of the place the last time. It turned out the inside was just as gaudy and probably just as disturbing as the outside. “Probably” because the place was lit by torches rather than gas lamps and much of it was lost in the gloom.
Now if I were a huetlacoatl egg, where would I be?
Someplace secure, of course. Out of the way, yet an important place. A sacred place. Then I remembered the use the Frogs traditionally made of their temples that the Reed folk did not. If this place followed the custom, there would be a crypt beneath the structure, a place for the burial of kings. Or the birthplace of kings.
The place had probably been a maze to begin with and the group’s alterations hadn’t improved that any. I drifted along the corridors, stopping at shrines to pay my respects and generally trying to look like I belonged.
Toltectecuhtli came striding down the corridor, resplendent in a headdress of quetzal plumes and beaten gold. He still wore the lizard-skin stomacher and the gold Quetzalcoatl gorget, but his elaborately embroidered kilt was new. From his belt hung a maquahatl, the flat wooden war club fitted with blades of keen obsidian along the edges. With his sloped head he looked like he had stepped out of a temple wall painting.
What the hell? I followed him. He went to the centre of the ground floor, then down a stairway that was framed by the masterfully sculpted gaping jaws of gigantic huetlacoatls. It reminded me of stories of the underworld, the many Hells beneath the earth. An undistinguished soul on his way to oblivion, or one of the Lords of Death?
Down the stairs it grew dark, and the air became clammy. I heard moaning. Horrible moaning. I shuddered. Could the myths be true?
At the end of the narrow stair was a long corridor, with light showing from a side passage far down and off the right. I pressed myself against the wall and glided towards the light. The dank silence was broken only by an occasional moan.
Toltectecuhtli stood in the middle of a wide chamber lit with many lamps. The light flickered and shifted, making it hard to see things. Which was, perhaps, for the best.
The place was a ghastly parody of the Death Master’s laying-out room. Stone tables dotted the room and forms covered with sheets lay on most of them. Toltectecuhtli was bending over one of the tables with his back to the door. He did something, and the thing on the table moaned like one who has been flayed but is not quite dead yet.
As Toltectecuhtli stood up I could see that the person on the table still had her skin, at least from the waist up. The priest strode away from the table to a door in the rear of the room. He unlocked it, passed through, and I heard the lock click as he relocked it from the inside.
I stayed where I was, listening hard. There was no sound through the damp, close air, not even from the tables. But there was a smell: the stink of strong tequila.
I moved carefully into the room and approached the table where Toltectecuhtli had uncovered the woman. She was young, with breasts that were full but had not yet begun to sag. She might have been pretty once, but suffering had drained all the beauty, and most of the humanity, from her.
“Fourflower?” I whispered. She turned drug-dimmed eyes to me. They were like the eyes of a dumb animal. No hope, no pleading.
Then I saw why. There was a gaping red wound from breastbone to groin. The belly skin was pink and healthy with no flush of infection, but the edges of the wound were separated by a hand-breadth and the belly was pushed out, as if bloated.
I looked closer and saw there was something in the wound, inside the woman.
It was greyish, rounded and netted all over like a melon. I didn’t have Foureagle’s knowledge of human insides, but I knew that this thing didn’t belong in a human belly. I shifted to get a better view and saw it was about twice the size of a large goose egg.
Eggs? Then all the fragments fell together. Like a shattered obsidian butterfly reassembling itself and flying away.
There are priest-surgeons, specialists, who can open a man up without killing him to treat a sickness of the body. They use the finest obsidian blades, take the greatest care not to cut into the bowels and carefully sew the flesh and skin together after dousing the area with the purest double-distilled tequila. Most of the time the patient even recovers.
Toltectecuhtli wanted a blending of huetlacoatl and human. What better way to blend the two essences than incubating huetlacoatl eggs within human bodies?
There was a crash behind me of something shattering on the stone. I whirled and saw Toltectecuhtli standing in the door I had come through. The remains of a jug at his feet and the stronger smell of tequila told me where he’d been. In the semi-darkness with the lamps hitting him from below he looked like a vengeful wall painting come to life. About a ten-foot-tall wall painting.
“Good evening,” I said pleasantly, to distract him while I figured out whether I’d have to take him out or could just run.
If Toltectecuhtli’s eyes were crossed, there was nothing wrong with his hearing.
“You do not belong here, Tworabbit.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more,” I said amiably. “So I’ll just be going.”
“Your part was ignorance! I told you to play your part in the great change.”
“Ignorance is an expensive commodity,” I said, moving sideways towards the main door. “Too expensive for a lowly person such as me.”
He growled in inarticulate fury and leaped to the door, blocking my way out. In a single swirling motion he went for the bladed war club at his belt and launched a furious overhand swipe at my head.
I ducked and barely got my sword up to parry. The force of the blow drove my forearm down onto my forehead and twisted my sword in my grip. But the club went skittering off my sword and missed my body altogether. I tried a fast counterslash to his chest, but the old man twisted away easily and brought his maquahatl up in a disembowelling blow. I parried and gave ground and he came after me swinging left-and-right at my head.
That damn club was heavy, which made it hard to parry, and the obsidian blades set along the edge could open me up as efficiently as any steel sword. In spite of his age this priest was str
ong as an ox and fast as a teenager. I was neither and I was in a lot of trouble.
I tried to dodge around to his left side, but he spun on his toes before I could complete the move. He aimed another at my head. I raised my sword to parry and with a twist of the wrist he dropped the blow towards my legs. I scrambled back, but the tip raked me across the shins, leaving bright wellings of blood on both legs.
Frantically I dodged around a stone table. He struck at me over it and I flinched back, feeling the air stir as the maquahatl whistled past my face. The person on the table looked at me with dumb, pain-ridden eyes.
As Toltectecuhtli came around the table, I whipped my cloak off and threw it at his face, trying to blind him. While the cloak was still in the air I followed through with a lunging thrust. I missed but his reflexive return stroke didn’t—quite. The club came down on the point of my right shoulder and tore an ugly gaping wound that left my whole arm numb.
He saw what he had done to me and started forward in triumph, his club coming up for an overhand blow.
I tossed the sword to my left hand and parried. This time his eyes widened and he stepped back. “Huitzilopitchli,” he whispered hoarsely. “Lord Left-Handed Hummingbird.”
I don’t know what was going on in that god-ridden, madness-fogged brain, but obviously I had triggered something. I pressed the advantage ruthlessly, striking left and right in my turn before he could recover his composure.
He parried, but more clumsily. Madness aside, fighting a left-handed swordsman is difficult for a right-handed. You have to do some things backward and very few nobles ever train in the art because left-handedness is considered unlucky. Uncle Tlaloc’s retainers are more practical about such things.
Then I remembered there was another difference between a maquahatl and a sword. I faked a downward slash at his belly, which brought his club up in a parry that made my blade slip off. Then instead of continuing with another slash, I brought the point up and lunged towards his belly with my hand low.
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