Harbinger of the Storm

by Aliette de Bodard

  I hesitated, loath to break the moment by focusing on murder and intrigue once again. "I promised the councilmen protection from the Duality, for those who desired it."

  "We can provide," Ceyaxochitl said. "Though I imagine many of them will already have their own protections."

  "Echichilli?" I said, thinking of the old councillor.

  "He was always a strong magician." There was an expression on her face I found hard to read in the moonlight, and then I realised it was nostalgia. "A good man, one of the few on the council."

  "The others…"

  "The others like the sound of their own voice, and the power they hold – at ordinary times, and in circumstances like these. But you knew this already."

  "Perhaps," I said, non-committal. "What did you find?"

  "Not much. Quenami moves to Tizoc-tzin's tunes, but I shouldn't think this is much of a surprise. The boy always did like power and pomp."

  I wondered who in the palace she didn't know – whom she couldn't dissect as effectively as she dissected me. It was a terrifying thought.

  "How goes the courtship?" she asked.

  There was only one courtship I was aware of. "Well, I suppose," I said, cautiously. I had not seen Mihmatini in a while. "Enthusiastically, knowing Teomitl."

  "But Tizoc-tzin doesn't approve, does he?" Ceyaxochitl's flat gaze bored into mine.

  "I shouldn't think you need to be a calendar priest to divine that," I said.

  "He's a fool, Acatl." She appeared unconcerned by the fact she'd just uttered treasonous words. "The Master of the House of Darts is a military leader, first and foremost. He plans our campaigns, he oversees the movements of troops within and without the capital. Tizoc-tzin uses it for prestige, and as a stepping stone to the Turquoise-and-Gold Crown."

  "He'll be Revered Speaker, soon," I said slowly.

  "Yes." She closed her eyes. "Yes. There is that. Well, there isn't anything you or I can do about that, sadly." She rose and walked slowly, leaning on her cane, which rapped on the ground. She'd always looked old and frail, but I'd never seen her move so cautiously. "Ceyaxochitl?"

  "Yes?"

  "Can you do it?" Could she hold us together, keep the stardemons from the Fifth World?

  The woman I'd known all my adult life would have shaken her head and berated me for being a silly, sentimental fool. This one – the old, weary one by my side – simply shook her head. "I don't know. Things have changed. The previous Guardian was still young when Moctezuma-tzin died, and her husband was still alive."

  "Husband?" I asked, startled. Most priests were celibate. I'd assumed the Guardian would be, too.

  "Of course." Her voice was light, ironic again. "The Duality is male and female, the creator principle that drives the Fifth World. Guardians can marry."

  "And you–"

  She shrugged. "When I was very young. But it didn't last."

  I tried to imagine her with a man in tow, an equal, not a slave, a man she'd have loved. My mind refused to wrap itself around the idea. I had always known her old and single, as a quasimentor figure. It was hard to discard all this. "Did he die?"

  "Weak heart."

  "I'm sorry–"

  "Don't be, Acatl." She didn't sound grieved; but of course it would have happened decades ago.

  "But there is only one Guardian. I've never heard–"

  "He was a symbol," Ceyaxochitl said, patiently. "Of the male principle. Not a Guardian, not even a priest. But when you don't have the luxury of living blood, symbols turn out to be important. Vital."

  "And…"

  "And the signs are here," Ceyaxochitl said. "As I told you. I'm an old, lone woman past childbearing age. Hardly the ideal vessel for the Duality's powers."

  "We've always held." I didn't need to say "because of you", because she already knew it.

  "We have. And everything comes to an end, as you are uniquely placed to know."

  "Don't mock me," I said. "The stakes–"

  "The stakes will always be high," Ceyaxochitl said. "But I might not rise to it. Be prepared, Acatl."

  She left the courtyard without looking back. I stood there, shaking, a hollow opening in my belly. If the Guardian couldn't hold us…

  In my temple, I found my second-in-command Ichtaca anxiously waiting for me outside. "Palli has been looking for you all over the palace and the Sacred Precinct. He says he has some information you sent him for."

  The sorcerers on the registers, and the room search.

  "I'll see him now," I said. I was tired, but this was more important. I had to see Palli or I'd lose his respect.

  Ichtaca led me through the courtyard, past the numerous examination rooms that opened into the frescoed walls. Students were crowding around one of the entrances. I could hear snatches of sound from inside, a lesson on how bodies changed after death, and how to look for the signs of poison.

  "How did it go?" Ichtaca asked.

  "Not well." I couldn't quite keep the frustration out of my voice.

  "They're all bickering about who gets to be Revered Speaker."

  Ichtaca's gaze drifted upwards, towards the star-studded sky.

  "I know about the star-demons. But they don't seem to." There was one star there which shone more brightly than the others: He who was the Evening Star and the Morning Star, Quetzalcoatl the Feathered Serpent, the God of Knowledge and Creation – the god of all priests, whoever they served. He was the only one on our side, but His powers, like those of all the gods, were constrained in the Fifth World.

  "Not a time for games," Ichtaca said. "But, if that's their will…"

  I had no constructive answer, merely a prayer to the Duality that we weather the transition without too much bloodshed.

  Palli, the offering priest in charge of Axayacatl-tzin's funeral, was waiting cross-legged in one of the smaller examination rooms, under a fresco that showed the progress of the soul through the levels of Mictlan, from the river that marked the boundary, to the ninth level, to Lord Death's throne. The god sat, bathed in blood, on a chair made of bones, skeletal and hunched, with his ribs poking out of His chest, His clawed hands empty.

  Palli rose when we came in. "Acatl-tzin. Ichtaca-tzin."

  I bowed, a fraction, as befitted our respective functions. I hated the formalities, but I knew he and Ichtaca lived by them. "I apologise. I ran into some trouble in the palace, but that's not an excuse."

  His gaze suggested, very clearly, that I was High Priest, and that it wasn't his place to question me, an attitude I'd always found unhealthy. At least Ichtaca always made it clear when I erred. I sighed. "What have you found?"

  He handed me a list written on maguey paper in a neat hand, every glyph aligned and detailed, as if it had been written by a high-level scribe. Names and dates.

  "I thought you might need to know birth-signs," Palli said.

  A man's birth-sign determined his access to different kinds of magics and his innate talent. I had been born on a day One Reed, which put me under the gaze of the Curved Point of Obsidian, Lord of Justice, of the Feathered Serpent, and of course of Lord Death.

  I scanned the list. Many names I knew. The She-Snake was near the top, as was Echichilli the old councilman; and even Manatzpa. In fact, most of the council was.

  There were some notable absences, though. "Xahuia?" I asked.

  Palli shook his head. "The Texcocan wife? She wouldn't be in here, Acatl-tzin, and neither would her retinue. They seldom get out of the women's quarters, and never out of the palace, so there is no need."

  No need to register them, because they'd never need to enter the palace again. I smoothed the paper carefully. "I see." One name caught my attention. "Who is Pezotic?"

  Palli bent over me, trying to read the glyphs upside-down. I turned the paper towards him, and pointed to one name near the bottom.

  "Master on the Edge of the Water?" Palli asked. "That's a councilman's title, isn't it?"

  "It sounds like one," I said, slowly. "But I would have remembered if
I'd interviewed him." And I had interviewed the whole council. Manatzpa and Echichilli had told me as much.

  "There are many other names on the list," Ichtaca said, in a conciliatory tone. "Surely you need not waste your time with this one."

  "If he's a councilman and he's not there anymore, then I want to know. And I want to know why." Quenami had made it clear one did not demote councilmen, but it seemed like this had in fact happened. I'd have to ask Manatzpa next time I saw him.

  I looked over the list some more, but I couldn't see anything else that was surprising. "Thank you," I said to Palli, and folded the paper back into a fan-shape. "What about the rooms?"

  Even before he grimaced, I'd guessed what his answer would be. "I can only spare six or seven priests, and it's a large palace. If you want, I can get more. "

  "No," I said. "I appreciate it, but we can't afford to let the Revered Speaker go without funeral rites, or leave the city unattended. Do what you can."

  Palli nodded. "I might be able to send more priests if we rearrange the rituals a bit," he said thoughtfully. "Make sure that there's someone on guard all the time."

  We left him to think things through. Ichtaca and I walked back to the circle we'd drawn on the ground on the previous night, a lifetime ago, to check on the wards. As Ichtaca said, best make sure the city stood; we could see about the Court later on.

  After we were done I checked on the temple's doings – on a few ongoing investigations into suspicious deaths, the death-vigils and the few offerings we got from the living. But my mind was elsewhere, and I retired to my house soon after the Hour of the Lord of Princes, with the night still young. Teomitl had been right about at least one thing – better get some sleep while I could.

  I woke up briefly to the blare of conch-shells that announced the rise of the Fifth Sun then sank back into darkness.

  When I woke again it was mid-morning, and the bustle of the Sacred Precinct filtered into the courtyard – the prayers and the chants, the drum-beats that accompanied the sacrifices, the familiar smell of incense mingling with that of animal blood.

  I knelt and sliced my earlobes to make my own offerings – to Lord Death, and to the Fifth Sun, He who would see us through those difficult times, for it looked as though His human servants were sadly lacking.

  I sat for a while in the courtyard, under the lone pine tree, chewing a day-old maize flatbread, the only edible thing I had left in the house. I should have thought of asking Ichtaca for supplies on the previous evening, but I had been too preoccupied with Teomitl.

  The Storm Lord blind him, what was wrong with the boy?

  Perhaps he had outgrown me. After all, I had known that he couldn't remain my student – or, indeed, Mihmatini's suitor – forever, that he was destined for politics and war, wholly outside my purview. Tizoc-tzin had taken him under his protection, and was teaching him what was necessary.

  Still, it wasn't as if I could shed my responsibility when it suited me. A man who would pick quarrels with the most powerful individuals in the Mexica Empire was not yet an adult and would not rise far, even through feats of arms. If even Tizoc-tzin, a canny politician, could not teach Teomitl that then it was also my responsibility to try. Perhaps he would listen to me more than to his brother.

  Admittedly it did not look very likely at this point.

  The sky was clear and blue, its colour as crisp and as vivid as a new fresco. I walked to my temple, intending to pick up Palli before going back to the palace. Instead, the first person I saw when entering the courtyard was Yaotl, Ceyaxochitl's personal slave, in the midst of a conversation with Ichtaca.

  My sandals on the paved stones of the entrance made enough noise that they stopped talking. "There he is," Ichtaca said.

  Yaotl turned, his embroidered cloak rippling in the breeze. "Acatl-tzin."

  I braced myself for more sarcasm, but his face under the blue-and-black paint was grim, an expression I had never seen on him before.

  Fear reached inside my chest and closed a fist around my heart. "What is it?"

  "It's Mistress Ceyaxochitl. She's been poisoned."

  SIX

  Princess of Texcoco

  The Duality House, unlike the palace, was silent and dark, and those few priests we crossed were in courtyards, down on their knees to beseech the favour of the Duality for their ailing superior.

  "She came back from the palace late at night," Yaotl said. "Everything was fine at first but then she started complaining of tingling in her hands and feet. And then it spread."

  "Something she came into contact with?" I asked. I had seen her yesterday, and she had seemed tired and weary, but I had attributed it to a long day, not to poison.

  Would it have changed anything, if I had noticed?

  I hoped it wouldn't have. I needed to believe it would make no difference. Regrets wouldn't serve us now; what we needed was to move forward.

  We reached the main courtyard of the shrine, a vast space from which rose a central pyramid of polished limestone. Ceyaxochitl's rooms were just by the stairs. Their entrancecurtain, usually opened to any supplicant, was closed, unmoving in the still air.

  Inside, Ceyaxochitl was propped up against the wall, her skin sallow, her whole frame sagging. A frowning physician was holding a bowl of water under her chin.

  "No shadow. Her spirit is still unaffected," he said. "It's a physical poison."

  "You know about poisons," Yaotl said.

  I couldn't help snorting. "Yes, but after death. Generally, I don't have patients. I have corpses."

  The physician withdrew the bowl of water. "That's as close to a corpse as you can get to, young man. Nothing is responding. She can't speak, or move any muscle." He turned to Yaotl. "I'd need to know the day and hour of her birth, to know which god is in charge of her soul."

  Yaotl's hands clenched, slightly. The physician's asking for her nameday could only mean that he intended a full healing ritual, which in turn meant the situation was desperate. "Quetzalcoatl. The Feathered Serpent." God of creation and knowledge, and the only other god to accept bloodless offerings. I couldn't say I was surprised.

  "I'll send for supplies, then," the physician said.

  I knelt and touched Ceyaxochitl's warm skin. Nothing responded. Her heartbeat was fast and erratic, as if the organ itself were bewildered.

  "She's in here," the physician said. "Conscious. It's just that her body is completely paralysed."

  About as cowardly and as nasty a poison as you could think of. They could have had the decency to make it clean, at least.

  "Acatl-tzin," Yaotl insisted.

  "Do you have any idea what she could have been poisoned with?" I asked the physician. He was the expert, not I.

  "What other symptoms have you seen?"

  Yaotl thought for a while. "She was rubbing at her face before the numbness came. And having some difficulty walking, as if she'd been drunk, but Mistress Ceyaxochitl never drinks."

  Indeed not. She might have been old enough to be allowed drunkenness, but she'd always seen that as a sign of weakness. She'd always been strong.

  Gods, what would we do without her?

  "Something she ate, then, in all likelihood," the physician said.

  "Something?" I asked. Surely things hadn't degenerated so fast at the palace that food and drink couldn't be trusted anymore? "Can't you be more precise?"

  "Not without a more complete examination," the physician said. His voice was harsh. "But I think you'd want me to see if I can heal her first."

  "Yes," Yaotl said. "But I also want to make sure that the son of a dog who did this does not get away with it."

  The physician looked at Ceyaxochitl again and scratched the stubble on his chin. "I seem to remember a similar case some time ago. I'll send back for my records, to see if anything can be inferred from it. In the meantime the best we can do is keep her warm."

  And breathing. It didn't take a physician to know that if the paralysis was progressing, the lungs would stop functio
ning at some point, not to mention the heart.

  I moved my hand from Ceyaxochitl's hands to her chest, feeling the heart within fluttering like a trapped thing. "I know you can hear us. We'll find out who did this. Stay here. Please."

  Please. I knew we'd had our dissensions in the past, our disagreements on how to proceed, but they had been spats between friends, or at least between peers. To think that she was dying, that she might not see the next day…

  The Flower Prince strike the one who had done this, with an illness every bit as bad and as drawn-out as the poison that now coursed through Ceyaxochitl's veins. "Did she say anything?" I asked Yaotl. "Any clues?" Anything we could use…