Harbinger of the Storm - By Aliette De Bodard Page 0,61

of the army, the true warriors, the ones who would support only a veteran, not a mediocre fighter like Tizoc-tzin.

If nothing else, things were starting to get ugly here, with factions openly declaring themselves.

Teomitl, oblivious, strode into a smaller courtyard, a mirror image of the House of Animals, loaded with exotic trees and bushes. It seemed as though we had stepped into another world altogether, a land to the south where the heat was stifling and quetzal-birds flew in the wild, raucously calling to each other. Cages dotted the landscape at regular intervals, huge, empty, their wooden bars almost merging with the foliage of the trees. The air smelled of churned mud, with the faint, heady fragrance of flowers. What was not expected, however, was the reek of magic, so strong it burnt my lungs.

”Something is wrong,” I said, but did not have time to go further.

She stepped out of the caged wilderness as if She belonged within it; tall, Her skin as black as the night sky, and stars scattered at Her elbows and knees, stars that were also the eyes of monsters. Her cloak spread behind Her – no, it was not a cloak, but wings made of a thousand shards of obsidian, glinting in sunlight – and her face was pale skin, stretched over the hint of a skull, with bright, malevolent eyes that held me until I fell to my knees, shaking.

”Priest. Warrior. Slave.” Her gaze swept through us all. I clenched my hands to stop my fingers from shaking. “You’re too late,” She said.

Something shone clung to Her wings, a light that was neither sunlight nor starlight; the memory of something that had once belonged in the Fifth World. A soul, ripped from its body.

Manatzpa.

She threw me a last searing glance, and leapt over me with an agility I wouldn’t have expected from something so monstrous.

And then She was gone, with only the reek of magic to remind us of Her presence.

My obsidian knives were warm, quivering under my touch, as if She had affected them too. I looked around. The air smelled of charnel and blood, and the single cage ahead of us had its bars broken.

We’d arrived too late.

Both Yaotl and Teomitl had gone down. Yaotl was still shaking, and Teomitl was pulling himself up, with the wrath of Chalchiuhtlicue filling his face.

”What was that?” he asked.

”I–” She had looked like a star-demon; but different, too: not a mindless thing, but a goddess in Her own right, unmistakably female. “Itzpapalotl,” I said, fighting past the constriction in my chest. “The Obsidian Butterfly, Goddess of War and Sacrifice.” Leader of the star-demons, She who would take us all into Her embrace, when the time came.

”That’s impossible,” Yaotl remained sitting in the mud, oblivious to the growing stain on his cloak. “She’s–”

”I know.” Imprisoned, like Coyolxauhqui of the Silver Bells, like the star-demons.

”Why now, Acatl-tzin?”

”Because someone did not want Manatzpa to talk.” A chill had descended into my stomach and would not be banished. Because he had known something, because he would, indeed, have revealed it to me?

Whoever it was they were in the palace, and aware of what was happening in Tizoc-tzin’s closest circle. Either Xahuia still had agents inside, or…

Or it was someone else entirely.

”Acatl-tzin!” Teomitl’s voice was impatient. “Come on.”

I must have looked blank, for he shook his head impatiently, the whites of his eyes shifting from jade to white and back again as he did so, an eerie effect.

”It’s still in the city. We have a chance to catch up to it. Come on!”

Still in the city? Why hadn’t it–

No time to think. I picked up my cloak from the ground, shook some of the mud loose, and ran after Teomitl.

As we exited the palace, running down the stairs leading up to the Serpent Wall and the Sacred Precinct, the ahuizotls came, slithering out of the canal besides the palace. Their faces wrinkled like those of a child underwater for too long, their tails curling up into a single clawed hand, which opened and closed as they moved.

On ground, they looked wrong, as black and sleek as fish out of the water, crawling on their four clawed legs like salamanders or lizards, and yet still moving with a fluid, inhuman speed that seemed to surprise even Teomitl.

The star-demon was ahead of us, moving through the Sacred Precinct. The crowd fought to avoid Her, the pilgrims elbowing each other, sacrificial victims being pulled aside by their keepers, the priests hastily kneeling on