Harbinger of the Storm - By Aliette De Bodard Page 0,73

tried speaking again, a little more forcefully. “I told Acatl-tzin I would–”

”I can guess what you told him. We both know it’s not what you want that matters most,” Mihmatini said, with a small sigh. “Otherwise it would have gone differently. Courtships don’t last a year, Teomitl.”

This time, he reddened. “I’ll find a way.”

”I don’t see what would make it different.”

”You think I’ll renege on a promise?” Teomitl drew himself to his full height, Jade Skirt’s magic hovering around him, lengthening his shadow on the ground.

”I think you’ll do what you can,” Mihmatini said. “I very much doubt it will be all you want, but it doesn’t matter. Come on, Acatl, let’s go.”

She walked out of the courtyard without a backward glance for the spluttering Teomitl. Yaotl followed, leaving both of us alone under the Fifth Sun’s gaze.

”She’s angry,” I said. “She doesn’t mean what she says.”

Teomitl’s face was dark with something more than anger. “I think she means exactly what she says when she’s angry, Acatl-tzin. That’s always been the problem. But it doesn’t matter. This is a promise I intend to keep.” His hands had clenched into fists, so tightly his nails had drawn blood.

Not for the first time, I wished – desperately – that I could believe him.

The ritual for Mihmatini’s designation was a fairly lengthy one; not quite as complicated as the investiture of a new Revered Speaker, but still heavy enough to need a night and a morning to be prepared.

We arrived at the Duality House early on the following morning. While the priests explained the ritual to Teomitl and Mihmatini, I excused myself; and went inside Ceyaxochitl’s rooms to pay my respects.

My second-in-command Ichtaca sat cross-legged on the ground by the side of the funeral mat. His lips moved, silently intoning a litany for the Dead; he looked up at me when I came in, but left me time to contemplate the corpse.

Ceyaxochitl had been washed and garbed in manycoloured cotton. The jade bead had been threaded through her lips. In death she looked small and pathetic, her vibrancy extinguished. Yaotl had said he kept expecting her to rise and take charge. Looking at the thin, bloodless lips, at the pale, blue-tinged face, I knew she wouldn’t come back. She was down there in the underworld, making her slow way to the throne of Lord Death, just as the rest of us would, someday.

It was unfair; she had been so much more than the rest of us.

”Acatl-tzin.” Ichtaca bowed to me.

I nodded, briefly. “Thank you for undertaking the vigil.”

His gaze suggested that I didn’t need to thank him; that he was doing nothing more than his work.

”She will be missed,” Ichtaca said. His round face was grave, and he wasn’t talking about sentiments.

”I know,” I said. She had held us together. No matter how abrasive, or authoritative, she had cared for all of us.

”You could…” He swallowed. “You could summon her.”

I shook my head. “Not until her vigil is complete.” I could go down into the underworld to hunt her soul, but it was starting to be dangerous. I could feel the world, lurching slightly out of kilter. To further breach the boundaries at this stage might not be a good idea. Not to mention a summoning would force Ceyaxochitl to turn aside, slowing down her progression in the underworld. I had no wish to make her stay there longer than it had to be.

I spoke a little more with Ichtaca, mostly over administrative matters; and left the room in a much worse mood than I’d entered it.

The shrine to the Duality was atop a pyramid, like the shrine in my own temple. From the smooth marble platform, I could see all the way into the courtyard, into the silent room, its entrance-curtain fluttering in the breeze, where Ceyaxochitl’s body would be resting, washed and garbed for her funeral vigil. And, further on, into the city, the canals glittering in the afternoon sun like strings of jewels, the houses of noblemen gradually giving way to the high, steepled roofs of peasants’ dwellings, all the heart and blood of our empire, as vulnerable as a jaguar with its throat bared.

Below, in the courtyard, most of the high-ranking priests had gathered, dressed in sober blue and black, a dizzying sea of feather-headdresses and ash-stained faces.

There were stars overhead, pinpoints of lights in the sky that were the eyes of monsters, shining in full daylight with no fear of the Fifth Sun. Yaotl was right, the end