Harbinger of the Storm - By Aliette De Bodard Page 0,47

the pale faces of women peered at us through the cotton. The sounds of battle were dying out. Whatever had happened, it was over.

As we approached the courtyard where Xahuia had received me, the air became tighter, as if we were tumbling down a mountain towards denser climates – and magic saturated the air, an unhealthy, suffocating tang that crept over my whole field of vision. I could have extended my priest-senses, but I already knew what it was – Tezcatlipoca’s touch, a miasma that rose from the deep marshes, from corpses and from rotten plants.

Teomitl’s face seemed to be made of jade now, as he ran forward.

But, in the last courtyard, all that we found was an exhausted Yaotl, standing over three bodies. Two were Duality warriors, and the third I would have known anywhere, even without the aura of sorcery that hung around him.

Something had changed with the courtyard. It took me a while to realise that a new entrance-curtain had appeared where there had been only a frescoed wall. It opened in the midst of a fresco depicting the Southern Hummingbird. As the curtain fluttered in the breeze I saw that it was only the start of a series of holes pierced through several walls, a path that led through courtyard after courtyard, until…

”Where does it go?” I asked.

Yaotl nodded, grimly. “I sent the remaining warriors to check, but I would think outside.”

Manatzpa bowed, briefly, to Yaotl, and wandered near the entrance-curtain to get a better look.

”Of course it goes outside.” Nettoni’s voice was a spent whisper. “Don’t be a fool like them, Acatl.”

I knelt by his side. He had no wounds, and the strength of his magic was still gathered around him, potent enough to give me nausea. And yet… his face was as pale as muddy milk, his mouth curled back, showing the blackness of his teeth. “That’s where you sent Xahuia.”

His lips moved, as much a grimace of pain as a smile. “I told you. I was privileged to serve her.”

Axayacatl-tzin had told me otherwise; that they only served each other because their goals lay in the same direction. But he could have been wrong.

Nettoni grimaced again. “Not much point, in any case. You’d have caught me easily enough. Sometimes, you have to admit defeat.”

Teomitl’s hand brushed Nettoni’s forehead, and withdrew as if scalded. “Acatl-tzin.”

”She’s not a goddess of healing,” Nettoni said. The whites of his eyes were slowly filling with blood – red at first, and then darkening as if it was drying inside. “She’s never been. And She’s not your servant.”

”I’m not naïve enough to think She is,” Teomitl snorted.

We had other things to worry about than Jade Skirt’s motivations. “I think it’s your god we should be talking about, Nettoni. The one you tried to help.”

He smiled again, and it looked like the death-grin of a skull. “That I tried to help? In many ways, I was as ineffective as you were, Acatl.”

”We put Xahuia to rout, and killed you. I hardly think that’s ineffective.” I kept nothing back; there was no point in being polite or kind – not to a dying man, not to a servant of the Smoking Mirror.

He snorted. His eyes were now as black as obsidian, glimmering with the same harsh light. “Then perhaps I’ve been more ineffective than you.”

”You killed Ceyaxochitl.” Yaotl’s voice was harsh. “You poisoned her, you son of a dog.”

Nettoni smiled again. “Have you understood nothing?” His hand closed around my wrist before I could pull away – his touch burnt, and cuts blossomed everywhere he touched me. “You fool…”

I tried to free myself, but every movement I made widened the cuts. I sucked in a breath against the myriad pinpricks of pain climbing up my arm. “Let me go, the Southern Hummingbird blind you!”

Yaotl and Teomitl moved, each seizing their obsidian weapon, but Nettoni just smiled, his face taking on the harsh cast of one possessed by the gods. The shadow of black and yellow paint hung on his features, and, like Axayacatl-tzin, I could guess at the shape of a feather-headdress, crowning him in glory. “You’re a fool, then… But even fools can learn… Do you not see, Acatl? Do you not see?”

Teomitl’s macuahitl sword swung down, connecting with Nettoni’s arm just below the elbow. It sheared through the skin and bone as if through air. Blood spurted in a warm fountain that sank into my clothes. The smell of sacrifices filled the air. Nettoni’s face went a little paler,