Master of the House of Darts

by Aliette de Bodard

  The prisoners captured during a war were normally the property of their captors, and as such were lodged by the clan, fed and taken care of until the time came for sacrifice. But on this occasion, either because there hadn't been enough time since the army's return, or because Tizoctzin had wanted to keep a watch on the forty captives for his confirmation ceremony, they had been accommodated in the palace itself, in a secluded section to the west of the building, away from the bustle of life in either the Revered Speaker's or the She-Snake's quarters. The mood, when we entered, was subdued – but I got the feeling it was usual, and not due to their losing a comrade.

  It might have been any warrior camp before a battle: the air reeked of the blood of penances, and several of the prisoners I crossed had bloody earlobes and bloody loincloths, their worship-thorns casually thrust through the upper part of their cotton clothes. Somewhere would be an altar to the Southern Hummingbird or the Smoking Mirror – with an accumulation of worship balls, the grass stained red and shimmering with raw power.

  We followed the priest to the back of a small courtyard, where another priest was keeping watch on a closed room, with a gloomy countenance. "Here for the body?" he asked.

  "To examine it."

  "You have the courage of eagles," the priest said. He jerked a finger towards the entrance curtain, gently swaying in the breeze. "It's in there."

  I paused before entering, and slashed my earlobes, taking the time to cast a brief spell of protection calling on Lord Death's power. I waited until the cold of the underworld spread through my veins like melted ice before I passed the threshold.

  For all my protection, I felt it when I entered – and by Teomitl's sharp intake of breath, he did, too. The air was tight, somehow more rarefied than it ought to have been: it reminded me of walking atop Mount Popocatepetl, where everything seemed thinner, and yet more sharply defined than at lake level.

  I knelt, and rubbed my earlobes until my recently opened wounds bled again. With the blood, I drew a careful quincunx around myself, all the while singing a hymn to Lord Death to grant me true sight:

  "We all must die

  We all must go down into darkness…"

  The air tightened again – like water, drawing back together after a pebble had been thrown into it. It cut my breath for a single, painful moment; and then everything was back to normal.

  Or, at least, as much of normal as was possible, given the circumstances.

  The room receded in the background, becoming thin and translucent – letting me see the shadows. They played, lazily, between the walls, passing through the black-painted columns and the clay brazier as if they didn't exist. Again, I caught glimpses of flailing arms and legs within – of raised rashes, covering a torso like the scales of a snake, of pus, spurting out from broken skin while the body beneath contorted in a soundless scream.

  Nausea welled up in my throat, and I had to steady myself within the circle.

  Teomitl was already kneeling by the victim's side. "Don't touch him!" I said. He jerked back as if burnt. The shadows congregated around him – I couldn't help but be reminded of a curious shoal of fish, gathering around a drowned body. Tlaloc's lightning strike me, I didn't need macabre imagery right now. If I couldn't even focus on the task at hand…

  Nothing leapt from the body to him, and I might as well have been invisible for all the attention the shadows paid me. Perhaps Teomitl, who was a warrior protected by Huitzilpochtli the Southern Hummingbird – just as Eptli had been – was a better target?

  Cautiously, I stepped out of the quincunx, half-waiting for something to happen, but nothing did. I looked at the body: a young, well-muscled warrior, who looked barely old enough to have left the House of Youth. His face was slack and blank, like all corpses, and I could see no obvious wounds. Though…

  I knelt, being careful not to touch the body. The smell of wet earth and burning coal wafted up to me – the corpse itself didn't smell yet, it was too early. The limbs were locked in an unnatural position: the man had been dead for some time. I couldn't find any wounds, but there was a slight raised pattern on the skin, like scales on the skin of a lizard – sores which hadn't yet formed.

  "Acatl-tzin," Teomitl said, "the death–"

  "I know," I said. "It's not that recent. I don't know who was contaminated first, him or Eptli."

  "It's the same symptoms. Or lack of," Teomitl said, sombrely.

  I shook my head. "Same symptoms. You can't see them, but the same shadows are in the room."

  "And?" He looked as if he expected me to have the answer. Of course. I was still his teacher – never mind that I wasn't sure whether he needed me at all. The Master of the House of Darts, the heir apparent, the joint commander of the army: he seemed to be doing well for himself, regardless of my interventions.

  "I don't know." I bit my lips. "But I very much doubt it's one of Tlaloc's random interventions." I'd have to ask Acamapichtli for help, but Tlaloc's fancies ran more to dropsy, leprosy or other disease, the kind that turned a man's skin as loose and as flowing as water, or made their breath rattle in their fluid-drowned lungs.

  There was a single sleeping mat in the room, on which the dead man lay, and little else in the way of furniture. I rose from my crouch, ducked out of the room for a moment, in order to address the priest on guard at the entrance.

  "Do you know if this was his room?" I asked.

  "They all share rooms," the priest said in a bored tone. "But this one didn't."

  "Oh?" Why the special treatment?

  "I guess he was an important man."

  "He was sick," a thickly accented voice said.

  I hadn't seen the warrior by the priest's side. He looked… alien, in a way that I couldn't quite place. The coat of hardened cotton was the wrong cut; and the single tuft of hair atop his shaved head reminded me of the Otomi elite warriors, but not quite – it was not long enough and not thick enough, and the man had no stripes of paint across his face.

  "You're one of the prisoners," I said.

  He nodded. He held himself with pride – and why wouldn't he? He'd die for the confirmation, earning his place in the Fifth Sun's Heaven – the dream of all warriors. Surely the minor wound to his pride, that of having been captured by the despised Mexica, was worth all of this.

  "I'm Cuixtli, the eldest." He spoke Nahuatl with a thick, barely recognisable accent – but then Metztitlan, his birth country, was far away, a good six days' march to the northeast. "Their leader, you might say."

  "I see. I'm Acatl – High Priest for the Dead."

  "I know who you are. We worship Lord Death, too, in Metztitlan." Cuixtli nodded again, almost as one equal to another.

  "You say he was ill?" I asked. "Before you arrived here?"

  Cuixtli spread his hands. "I don't know. When they put us here, Zoquitl was shivering – that's why we gave him his own space, to be sure."

  Sacrifices were meant to be unblemished, and in perfect health – no wonder Zoquitl had been handled with such caution, in case his bad luck passed on to his companions.

  "And you noticed nothing before?"

  "We were on the road," Cuixtli said. "Marching. I didn't see him lag, but I wasn't paying so much attention."

  So, if the prisoner – Zoquitl – had indeed been sick, it would have been barely perceptible. But then again, he was a warrior, and would want to avoid a show of shameful weakness.

  Who had been ill first? He, or his captor? "Did Eptli visit Zoquitl? While you were on the road."

  Cuixtli shrugged. He radiated a serenity that was almost uncanny – something I knew all too well, the growing detachment of those about to lay down their lives for the continuation of the world. One by one, he would be cutting the bonds that tied him to the Fifth World, preparing himself to die in the Southern Hummingbird's name – just as the gods themselves had died in the beginning of the Fifth Age, to bring forth life from the barren earth, and move Tonatiuh the Fifth Sun across the Heavens. "Eptli?" he asked.

&nb
sp; "The man who captured him?"

  "The one who was awarded Zoquitl." Serene didn't mean unobservant, either. "He came several times."

  Beloved father, beloved son, I thought. That was the ritual for capturing another warrior: acknowledging they were as precious as your own blood, as your own flesh – making them into a living offering. "And how did he look?"

  "Angry," Cuixtli said. "Elated. He was a man of many moods."

  "You're sure?" It wasn't what Coatl had told me about Eptli, and I could see no reason for Coatl to lie. Unless… unless something particularly large were going on in Eptli's life. The trial before the war-council, to get his prisoner awarded to him? Would that be enough to account for the mood-swings? "When was Eptli awarded Zoquitl?"

  Cuixtli shrugged. "Early on, before we set out on the march."

  So, not that. Unless the argument hadn't been resolved? But could Chipahua and Coatl both be lying? I made a note to ask Teomitl about the case. With any luck, he'd remember it – though I very much doubted that anything outside of the battlefield would have interested my headstrong, glory-obsessed student. "But Eptli didn't look sick either?"

  "Not that I could see. I wouldn't know. But illnesses can be a long time brewing."

  "I see."

  A rattle of bells cut the conversation short, as Teomitl yanked the entrance-curtain open. "Acatl-tzin!"

  "What is it?" I asked.

  Teomitl threw a wary glance at the priest – who had resumed his expression of studied indifference – and then a more respectful one to the warrior, as one equal to another. He held out his hand to me, unfolding tanned fingers one after the other for maximum effect.

  Inside was a single notched bead of clay – which, unfortunately, meant nothing whatsoever to me. "Would you mind explaining?" I said.

  "I found it inside," Teomitl said. "It had rolled under the brazier." He raised a hand, to forestall my objection. "I didn't touch the body, Acatl-tzin. I swear."

  "I still don't see–"

  "This belongs to a woman," Cuixtli said.

  "How do you know so much about Mexica women?" I asked.

  He snorted. "How can you know so little about them? Any fool knows that. It's too delicate to be a man's ornament."

  Teomitl shook his head, impatiently. "It doesn't matter, Acatl-tzin. Don't you see? A woman was here."

  I glanced at Cuixtli, who was looking at the bead thoughtfully. "I didn't know sacrifices were granted spouses." In very rare cases, such as the sacrifice of Tezcatlipoca's incarnation, the victim was granted all his earthly desires – and, as he ascended the steps of the Great Temple, everything was stripped away from him: wives and jewellery, and then finally clothes, to leave him as empty-handed as in the hour of his birth.

  Cuixtli spread his hands. "Our last hours are spent with the gods, like those of our afterlife. How men make peace with that varies. I don't begrudge them." But his frown suggested he didn't approve.

  "So you didn't know about the woman?"

  He shook his head. "No. But I can enquire. Do you want me to send word?"

  "Send it to me," Teomitl said.

  "Indeed." Cuixtli looked at him, waiting for something – an introduction?

  "Ask for Ahuizotl, the Master of the House of Darts."

  The man's face froze – it was barely perceptible and didn't last long, but I saw it clearly. "I see. And why does the Master of the House of Darts concern himself with such lowly folk?"

  "Lowly? You are the bravest in this palace." Teomitl's voice was low and intense. "You give your life; you give your blood on the altar-stone for the continuation of the Fifth Age. You die a warrior's death for all our sakes."

  The warrior's face puckered, halfway between puzzlement and pride. "I see," he said again. "Thank you."

  Teomitl made a dismissive gesture, and ducked back into the room. I followed him after bowing to the warrior.

  "Teomitl?" I asked, once we were inside.

  He was looking once more at the dead man, with that peculiar frown on his face – anger? I'd only seen him truly angry once, when Tizoc-tzin had belittled his wifeto-be in front of the court – but that hadn't been the same. His face had gone as flat as obsidian, his eyes dark. Now he just looked thoughtful – but much like a jaguar looked thoughtful before the hunt.

  Southern Hummingbird strike me, I needed to stop this. Paranoia was all well and good, but applying it to those few people I trusted was stabbing myself in the throat.

  "Yes, Acatl-tzin?"

  "Eptli's case," I said. "What happened? Coatl told me the prisoner was contested between him and Chipahua."

  "The case?" Teomitl looked surprised. "I don't remember – there was nothing special, Acatl-tzin. Those two claimed the same prisoner. They wore near-identical battle-garb, with similar standards."

  "Coatl told me it was a difficult decision to make."

  Teomitl's eyebrows went up. "Coatl likes simple decisions. He's a warrior, through and through. There is your side, and the enemy's side, and you shouldn't have to wonder about more than that."

  "And you're not like him?" I asked. Not that I was surprised: politics couldn't be dealt in such a simplistic fashion. Mind you, I couldn't blame Coatl: I preferred my divisions clear-cut, but I was aware that the gods seldom gave you what you liked best.

  "I can think," Teomitl said, contemptuously. "At any rate – we questioned the warriors of the clan-unit, and the prisoner Zoquitl, and we thought it likely Eptli was in the right."

  "Wait," I said. "Zoquitl was willing to testify before a Mexica tribunal?" I couldn't see for what gain. Either way, he would die his glorious death on the altar-stone – and if there was no conclusive evidence, he would be given to the Revered Speaker, and the end-game would be the same.

  "He's a warrior," Teomitl said, with a quick toss of his head that set the feathers of his headdress aflutter. "He wouldn't cheat a fellow warrior."

  I had my doubts. After all, as my brother Neutemoc had proved, warriors – even Jaguar Knights – were like the best and the worst of us. They walked tall above us, but sometimes, like any mortal, they stumbled and fell. "Fine," I said, grudgingly. "You listened to the testimonies and decided to award the prisoner to Eptli. Why?"

  "You want a detailed argumentation? Now?" Teomitl's gaze moved to the dead prisoner.

  "The gist of it," I said.

  "He was more likely to be in the area, his description fitted Zoquitl's testimony better, and he was more muscular than Chipahua, more likely to be able to capture him with one blow, as Zoquitl testified." Teomitl's voice was monotonous, bored.

  "And you never had doubts?" I asked.

  "No. Acatl-tzin, why go over this again? We ruled and there is no appeal."

  Why? I frowned, not quite sure why myself. "I thought an inconclusive trial conclusion would explain why Chipahua was so angry at Eptli, and vice-versa."

  "Well, it's not that." Teomitl hesitated. "There was someone who didn't agree with this, originally."

  "On the war-council?" I asked.

  "Yes. Itamatl. He's the deputy for the Master of the Bowl of Fatigue. He was sceptical at first, and argued against the evidence. But not for long."

  That didn't sound much like a divided war-council, no matter how I turned it.

  "We need more evidence," I said.

  "I should say we've got more than enough here," Teomitl said, sombrely.

  "That's not what I meant."

  I needed to see how ordinary warriors had considered Eptli. I needed inside information, but Teomitl would be useless on this one: like Coatl, he moved in spheres that were too exalted to pay attention to the common soldiers. What I needed was someone lower down the hierarchy.

  I needed–

  Tlaloc's Lightning strike me, I needed my brother.

  I had caught a glimpse of Neutemoc at the banquet, so I knew that not only had he come home safe, but also that he had gained from the campaign. But the formalised banquet hadn't left me time to have a quiet chat with him, and I
had been looking forward to visiting him.

  I just hadn't intended that my visit – the first for months – to come with strings attached: the last thing we needed was for my High Priest business to interfere in our fragile and budding relationship.

  FOUR

  Brother and Sister

  First, we needed to make it out of the palace – preferably without running into Acamapichtli and his absurd notions of quarantine again.

  Luckily, the priest who'd brought us into the prisoners' quarters had vanished, and his replacement at Zoquitl's door was more interested in doing his job as a guard than checking on our departure.