Harbinger of the Storm - By Aliette De Bodard Page 0,26

“I’m not sure,” I said.

”You don’t know him. He was always like this.” His hands clenched. “He can’t see the world through other people’s eyes, but he knows his own faults, all too well.”

No, I didn’t know Tizoc-tzin. But, somehow, I doubted that Teomitl, who was ten years his junior and had grown up in the seclusion of a priests’ school, would know him any better. “He’s your brother,” I said. I’d do the same for any of mine. Heavens, I’d even defended my brother Neutemoc last year, even though I’d believed him to be as guilty as the evidence indicated. “Your loyalty–”

”It’s not about loyalty.” Teomitl paced in the courtyard, around a small basin decorated with coloured stones. His eyes were still on the sky. “I know how he is.”

”You didn’t grow up together–”

”No, of course not. But he’s grooming me to be Master of the House of Darts in his stead.”

”That doesn’t mean–”

”I’m not a fool!” He stabbed the empty air with his right hand.

”I never said you were.” I’d never seen him in such a state, and it worried me. Throughout the previous day, he’d gone into the palace, more or less picking quarrels with everyone he met. He seemed to have reverted to the prickly boy Ceyaxochitl had entrusted to me a year ago, one who had “grown up like a wild flower”, as she had said. It was as if all my teachings, all my exercises, had been for nothing. Was it Axayacatl-tzin’s death? His brother had been Revered Speaker for most of Teomitl’s life. It would be hard to admit the world was about to change irretrievably.

”You don’t understand. I take his lessons, and I learn.” His voice was softer now, almost spent.

I asked the question he wanted me to ask. “And what do you learn, Teomitl?”

”Not the lessons he wants to teach me.” He stopped pacing, and would not look at me. “I learn that he stopped trusting others a long time ago. I learn that he has enemies and sycophants, but no friends. I learn,” and his voice was a whisper by now, “that power took him and gnawed him from the inside out, and that he is but a frightened shell, that the only goal he can still dream of is to sit on Axayacatl’s mat. Everything else tastes like ashes.”

I was silent for a while. “That’s what you learnt. But not what I see.” Not to mention that this gave him a motivation to influence the vote, perhaps to the point of using supernatural help to do it.

“Acatl-tzin–”

I had always been honest with him, and even when it came to this moment, I could not give him some comforting lie. “No,” I said. “I can only believe what I see.”

He looked at me for a while. His hands were still, preternaturally so. “I see. I see.”

”Teomitl–”

”No, you’re right. It’s not that at all, and I am a fool. Good night, Acatl-tzin.”

”Teomitl!”

But he was already gone.

I remained for a while, sitting in the courtyard, wondering what I could have said that would have made things go differently. I didn’t like those bleak moods, or the quick way he took offence. He’d always been susceptible, but tonight he had looked as though his nerves were rubbed raw.

Something was wrong, but I couldn’t work out what.

Footsteps on the stones tore me from my reflection. Looking up, I saw Ceyaxochitl looming over me, her slight silhouette highlighted by moonlight. “I thought I’d find you here.”

”Here?” I said, gesturing to the small courtyard. The only remarkable thing about it was that it contained us both.

”In the palace.” She grimaced, and slid to sit cross-legged next to me on the warm stones. “I’ve told you before: you don’t get enough sleep.”

”I should think I’ve outgrown the need for a mother.”

Ceyaxochitl’s gaze grew pensive. “Yes, I should think you have. Most impressively.”

A small, almost muted jab. Even though they’d both been dead for years, my parents had loomed large over my life, until the previous year, when I’d finally realised I was no longer beholden to them. “What do you want, Ceyaxochitl? I assume you didn’t come here to talk.”

She shrugged. “Perhaps I did. Perhaps I do care about your welfare.”

Now she scared me. The last time Ceyaxochitl had interfered in my life, she’d got me nominated as High Priest, a position I didn’t want and didn’t particularly appreciate. That I’d grown into it over the years didn’t change the original intent. “You can’t get me higher