Harbinger of the Storm - By Aliette De Bodard Page 0,58
the place of the star-demon summoning? I put all the priests the order could spare into this. So far, no one has reported anything useful.”
I suppressed a curse. A full dozen priests searching the palace, I knew the place was huge, but they had the help of spells, and surely one of them would have found something useful by now. “I see. Send to me the moment they find something.”
Palli nodded. He hesitated, then said, “Acatl-tzin, one more thing. You remember the tar you noticed on the floor?”
I had to cast my mind back a day and night, to the ritual in which I’d spoken to Axayacatl-tzin. It seemed a lifetime ago. “Yes,” I said. “It seemed odd, but…”
Palli’s face was pale. “I did think it was familiar,” he said. “Someone died in this room.”
”The Revered Speaker,” I said, carefully, without irony.
”It’s an older death. A… sacrifice.”
In the Revered Speaker’s private rooms… Not in a temple, not on an altar?
”An older death,” I said, slowly. “A powerful one, then, if you can still detect it.” I thought, uneasily, of the missing councilman both Manatzpa and Echichilli had been angry about, the one that seemed to have vanished from the records and from the palace. What had been his name again?
Pezotic.
”Yes,” Palli said. “A powerful death.” His lips twisted. “I’m not sure, Acatl-tzin, but something is wrong about this.”
”What?”
”Too much power,” Palli said.
I bit my lips. There were ways and means of amplifying the power received from a human sacrifice, but almost all of the ones I could think of required a High Priest’s initiation. “Can you look into this?”
Palli grimaced. “I can try,” he said.
A full human sacrifice. An old, powerful death. Something was going on in this palace. Something… untoward. Even before the Revered Speaker’s death, then. But he’d died of natural causes; we were sure of that, at least.
Then what was happening? Some ritual to undermine the Empire at its core? “Do you know what they used the magic for?”
Palli shook his head. “Something very large.”
”But not the summoning of a star-demon.” If that had been the case, he’d have told me long beforehand.
”No. The magic’s wrong for that,” Palli said. “It feels beseeching. Desperate.”
”Hmm,” I said, thoughtfully. I didn’t like this; I couldn’t see how it fitted in with anything – with Manatzpa, with Ceyaxochitl’s death – but it didn’t augur anything good. I added it to my questions for Manatzpa, once I managed to see him.
I finished with Palli, and wrote a message to Ichtaca, asking him to send someone to the Duality House in order to prepare the funeral rites for Ceyaxochitl.
Then, still weak and trembling, I went to see the She-Snake, the only person who might have an idea of what was going on in the palace.
I’d expected to have much further to go, but I found him in the council room, sitting on the reed mat at the centre, eating a meal. As he ate he listened to a report from one of his blackclad guards. His round face was grave.
”Acatl?”
I didn’t feel in the mood for apologies or pomp, but I did gingerly bow.
”Glad to see you recovered,” the She-Snake said. He dipped his chin, and the guard moved away slightly. I was left with the full weight of his gaze on me. It was peculiar, he was soft, and middle-aged, and I would have expected him to be drab. But the gaze, piercing and shrewd, gave him away.
”I, er, understood you visited me,” I said.
”Indeed.” His voice was grave. “Had I known about Manatzpa, I might have done more than visit. But no matter. It is done now.”
I waited, but nothing more seemed to be forthcoming. “I need your help,” I said.
”My help?” He sounded mildly amused.
”You keep the order in the palace. Don’t tell me this situation makes you happy.”
His lips thinned to a muddy line, but his expression didn’t change. “I expected trouble when Axayacatl-tzin died. I’m not surprised.”
I doubted much would ever surprise him. “But you want the attacks to cease?” I pressed. I remembered, uneasily, what Axayacatl-tzin had told me about the She-Snake’s unorthodox manner of worship. But even if it was true, he would want to be seen maintaining order.
”I see. What did you have in mind?”
”I want men.”
”They are in short supply.”
”Look,” I said. “Those star-demons, they’re being summoned here, inside the palace wards. Someone, somewhere, has converted a room for the purpose.”
He was quick to seize my meaning. “And it’s a large palace.”