Harbinger of the Storm - By Aliette De Bodard Page 0,95
to accuse him of collusion and treason.
”I see,” I said again, though all I could feel was the abyss yawning under my feet. “It’s not much.”
”There isn’t much I can do.” Acamapichtli shifted, slightly.
”Do you know anything about the murders of the councilmen?”
”Do you think this is going to help you?”
”If I have to die, then at least let it be for something I can understand.”
He snorted, almost gently. “We all die in the end, Acatl. We all drift out of the Fifth World, our destination determined by the manner of our deaths. But…” He was silent, for a while. “All I know is that the council had a frightful quarrel, five days before Axayacatl-tzin died.”
”What kind of quarrel?” And then I remembered what Echichilli and Manatzpa had told me. “Pezotic,” I said. The Master on the Edge of the Water, the councilman who had been dismissed for running away. “Pezotic disappeared.”
”Yes.”
”What was the quarrel about?”
”I don’t know.” Acamapichtli shook his head in an annoyed manner. “I’m not privy to the secrets of the gods. I never was. But I’ve heard they were threatened – badly enough to fear for their lives. They’d turned into pitiful wrecks, both of them.”
It made me feel as though I had crossed a great lake, only to see mountains ahead of me. “You’re right. It’s not much help.”
”Believe me. If I had any idea what they were up to in truth, I would make sure everyone else knew.”
”I have no doubt you would.”
Acamapichtli’s lips curled up a fraction. “Good. So long as we understand each other. Any other questions, Acatl?” He’d started to move out of the cell, back towards the entrance-curtain.
I couldn’t think of any. He went out, leaving me in darkness with not a flicker of light to be seen.
I must have slept again, watching the jaguar fang by my side. I came to with my hand wrapped around it, and a stinging pain in my palm, a trace of the Storm Lord’s power engraved into my skin. My mind skittered, refused to hold on to anything.
He had said…
Acamapichtli had said that the audience would be soon, that they wanted this done with before it was too late. That they–
Images drifted across my field of vision, faded into darkness again. The smoky, wavering outline of the entrance-curtain – a faint light I could barely make out – sank further and further out of sight as time passed. I had no way of knowing if it was still day outside or if it was night, and I had missed my devotions.
I made them, regardless, in the encroaching darkness, spilled blood that had no potency, whispered prayers the Fifth Sun or Lord Death might never hear. It was what I had always done.
When they came for me I jerked out of a dreamless sleep to find a Jaguar Knight bending over me, his face framed between the jaws of his animal-shaped helmet. For a brief, timeless moment, he seemed like my brother Neutemoc, but then I saw they had nothing in common.
He hauled me to my feet without ceremony and out into a corridor and a succession of courtyards. Outside, the Fifth Sun’s light hurt my eyes and a hundred spots flickered at the edge of my vision like star-demons streaming down. I caught a vague glimpse of noblemen, clustering in a sea of gold and turquoise ornaments, of palace slaves in their wooden collars, of warriors in feather regalia. Banners flashed across my field of vision, a riot of bright colours all merging into one.
I kept my hands clenched, focused on the prayers I had learnt as a novice priest in the calmecac school, and repeated day after day at dawn and at sunset, the prayers that kept the world whole.
“As grass becomes green in spring
Our hearts open and give forth buds
And then they wither
This is the truth
Down into darkness we must go…”
Over and over, a familiar litany washing over my broken thoughts, the words I knew by heart, the words that defined me. I thought of Nezahual-tzin, doing his ritual in the sweatbath, under the gaze of the Smoking Mirror, his god’s eternal adversary.
“Enemy territory is where you prove yourself – where you’re most sharply defined against what you’re not, what you’ll never be”.
Time to see if he was right.
The light flickered, and my captor flung me to the ground. My knees connected with something hard, and the rest of my body followed. I barely had the time to bring up my