Harbinger of the Storm - By Aliette De Bodard Page 0,14
themselves ready for an opening, knowing it couldn’t be long until the ailing Revered Speaker passed into Mictlan.
Palli grimaced again, an expression he was a little bit too fond of. “I’ll see who I can spare. For the ritual’s end…”
Only the High Priest for the Dead could ease a soul’s passage into the underworld. “I’ll be there.” One way or another. I wouldn’t rob a dead man to serve another one.
I just hoped the corpses would stop arriving.
Teomitl and I dropped briefly by Ocome’s room, which still stank of death. Two guards were keeping watch by the entrance-curtain, looking as if they would have given anything to be elsewhere.
In the room itself, there was not much new to see: the magic was slowly dissipating, absorbed by the wards. I’d expected the scattered gobs of flesh would have started to rot, but they remained in the same state, as if the star-demon’s removal of the soul had put a stop to the decomposition process.
I’d made more cheerful discoveries. No matter; he would still burn on his funeral pyre as well as any corpse, provided we could scrape the flesh from the floor and from the walls. For once, I was glad to be High Priest, which meant someone further down the hierarchy would do the exhausting, distasteful work.
When we came out in the courtyard in the dim light of late afternoon, I turned towards the burliest of the guards. “How long ago were you assigned to this room?”
I could see him hesitating, his eyes roving over my regalia, weighing the possibility that he could get away with a lie.
It was his companion who spoke, a much thinner man, with the white lines of scars crisscrossing his legs identifying him as a veteran of some battlefield. He held his macuahitl sword – a wooden club studded with obsidian shards – with the ease of those who had carried it nearly all their lives. “We’ve been guarding this place for three weeks.”
”I see,” I said. And, as casually as I could, “I take it you weren’t standing guard when this happened?”
The burly guard grimaced. “We thought we heard something on the other side of the courtyard, so we went to investigate.”
”And didn’t come back?” This from Teomitl, who had been standing with one hand on the entrance-curtain.
The guard grimaced again. “It turned out to be nothing, but we still wanted to make sure. I went to ask the others who were on guard in the next courtyard.” He wouldn’t meet my gaze, but in any case I knew he was lying. His companion the veteran was even less talkative.
”Really?” Teomitl started, but I lifted a hand.
”Someone called you away?”
The burly guard had the grace not to answer; the veteran shifted uncomfortably. There was a light in his eyes I couldn’t read, anger or fear, or a bit of both. What had been promised to them, in exchange for their silence?
I sighed. Whoever had done this had influence, a currency I was short on. “You do know who this is?” I asked, pointing to Teomitl, who stood up even straighter. “Tizoc-tzin’s brother, who will soon become Master of the House of Darts. Do you truly wish to lie to him?”
The burly guard shook his head, a minute gesture that he stopped before it became too visible, but it had already betrayed him. He didn’t believe in Tizoc-tzin; or at least, didn’t want him to wear the Turquoise-and-Gold Crown.
I didn’t know whether to be relieved I wasn’t the only one to dislike Tizoc-tzin, or terrified that the divisions within the Court ran so deep.
”I can have them dismissed,” Teomitl said. His gaze was on me, his whole stance had hardened. This wasn’t my student anymore, but the man who would one day become Revered Speaker. “Master of the House of Darts or not, I’m still imperial blood.”
The guards’ faces did not move, but the veteran’s hands clenched around his macuahitl sword, slightly tilting it towards us. The obsidian shards embedded in the wood glinted in the sunlight.
”My lord,” the burly guard said, cautiously. “We don’t seek to deny you, but surely you must understand that there are higher powers–”
Teomitl cut the guard off with a stab of his hand. A pale green light was dancing in his pupils, the power of Jade Skirt, his protector. The Duality only knew what he thought Chalchiuhtlicue could accomplish in this situation. She was more subtle than her husband the Storm Lord, but not by much.