Harbinger of the Storm - By Aliette De Bodard Page 0,137
of the Mexica Empire,” I said.
He noticed the omission of his name, that much was clear. His eyes narrowed. I fully expected him to demand something more of me, some show of obeisance, but he didn’t.
”I see,” he said, again. “So that’s how things are.” He leant back, his back straight once more, and turned back to Quenami. “The council is still empty, and we have to see about appointments. Teomitl?”
Teomitl rose from his crouch. For a moment, he and Tizoc-tzin faced each other, and I wasn’t quite sure what I read in their gazes. It wasn’t love, or even respect. Perhaps simply what my brother Neutemoc and I shared – the knowledge that, no matter how distant we might be, how difficult we might find getting on together, we still shared the same blood.
At length Tizoc-tzin nodded. “I need a Master of the House of Darts.”
”I don’t think–” Teomitl started.
”Nonsense. You’ll do fine,” Tizoc-tzin said. “If I can’t trust family–”
”That’s not the problem.” Teomitl’s face hovered on the edge of divinity again. “You know what’s wrong.”
”Do I?” Tizoc-tzin looked at him for a while more. His pale face was unreadable; his skin pale and translucent, enough to reveal the bones and the shape of the skull. He’d died. He’d come back. We couldn’t pretend things were normal. “We’ll have to see about another appointment for her. Some gift of jewellery or perhaps a grant of land. It would be unseemly for my brother to marry beneath him.”
What? I looked at Tizoc-tzin. I had misheard. But, no, Teomitl still stood, as if struck by Tlaloc’s lightning. “Brother–”
”You have objections?”
”No, no, I don’t. But–”
”Don’t get me wrong.” Tizoc-tzin was still scowling, like an unappeased spirit back from the underworld. “I don’t like this. I don’t approve of this. I’ll stand by what I think of your priest.”
Always pleasant, I could see. But as long as he agreed…
”But you’re my brother, and there will be no war between us.”
Because he couldn’t afford it, or because he loved Teomitl? I couldn’t tell, not any more, what those two felt for each other. It seemed to me that something had broken in the hours before my arrest, when Tizoc-tzin had cast doubts on Mihmatini’s reputation, something had come apart then, a mask broken into four hundred pieces, and things would never be the same.
Teomitl stood straight, as if to attention. “Thank you.”
Tizoc-tzin scowled. “But you’re getting the other appointment as well. Don’t flatter yourself. It’s time you took part in imperial affairs.”
”I know,” Teomitl said. He bowed, very low, a subject to his Revered Speaker, but I could feel the impatience brimming up in him.
”That will be all,” Tizoc-tzin said. “You may leave.”
“Don’t look so sad,” Acamapichtli said, as he raised the entrance-curtain in a tinkle of bells. We walked down the steps into the courtyard – deserted at this hour of the afternoon – almost companionably.
”I’m not,” I said, stiffly. “We got what we wanted, didn’t we?”
He looked at me, a smile spreading on his face. “Of course. Because we worked together.”
I wasn’t in the mood for a moral, especially coming from him. “It’s not an experience I’m anxious to repeat too often. Still, I suppose I don’t have a choice.”
Acamapichtli smiled. “You’re learning.” He clapped me on the back, like an old friend. “We’ll meet again.” And then he was gone, striding down the stairs as if nothing had happened, ready to play his little games once again.
Learning? I supposed, in a way, that I was, but not lessons he’d ever have understood.
Teomitl caught up with me at the exit to the courtyard under a fresco of butterflies and moths, a stream of souls rising up from the ground towards the huge face of the Fifth Sun. Nezahual-tzin fell in with us, casually and innocently, though he never did anything without cause. “So, I take it I’m invited to the wedding?”
Teomitl scowled, an expression reminiscent of Tizoc-tzin at his best. “You’re the Revered Speaker of Texcoco. I don’t think I could leave you out if I tried.”
”How nice,” Nezahual-tzin said. “I’ll come with pleasure.”
”I have no doubt.” Teomitl shook his head, as if to scare off a nagging fly. “Acatl-tzin –”
”Yes?”
”He hasn’t changed, has he?”
I shook my head.
”People seldom change,” Nezahual-tzin said. We passed the imperial aviary where the birds pressed themselves against the bars of their huge cages, the quetzal-birds and the parrots, the herons and the quails, everything laid out for the Revered Speaker’s pleasure. “They think they do, but