Harbinger of the Storm - By Aliette De Bodard Page 0,99
men – a dozen Texcocan warriors who all looked old enough to be veterans of Nezahual-tzin’s coronation war.
Nezahual-tzin caught my glance, and smiled. “It never hurts to be prepared, Acatl.”
I climbed gingerly into the boat, found myself a comfortable spot wedged against a particularly large bale, and determined not to move again in a lifetime.
Two of the warriors took the oars. Teomitl’s ahuizotls slid into the water with a splash, and swam by our side as we moved away from the floating garden.
We cruised through row upon row of floating gardens, a whole district on a grid pattern, like the rest of the city. Soon the floating gardens thinned away, to become streets where peasants carried cloth and maize kernels to the marketplace and where the steady clack of looms from the women’s weaving floated to us through the open entrances of their thatch houses. We were swinging around Tenochtitlan, keeping to the more populated areas in order not to stand out.
In between the houses I caught a glimpse of the Sacred Precinct’s tallest buildings – the Great Temple under which the Moon Goddess Coyolxauhqui was imprisoned, and the circular Wind Tower, where I had prayed to Quetzalcoatl for Ceyaxochitl’s life. The Feathered Serpent had not answered that prayer, but it occurred to me that perhaps He had given me something else to see me through my hour of need.
Nezahual-tzin stood near the prow, watching the houses go past. He looked much like any other nobleman’s son, his cloak of thin cotton, his jade lip-plug glinting in the sunlight, his hair pulled back and caught in the base of his feather headdress.
We swung east into ever-smaller streets. The boats wove their way through the traffic – peasants coming back from the marketplace, warriors standing tall and proud in the regalia they had earned on the battlefield, priests with bloodmatted hair on their way to the Sacred Precinct – with preternatural ease. If I didn’t have Nezahual-tzin in my sights, I could have sworn that there was more to this than the agility of two warriors.
Teomitl was a little further down our boat, his hand trailing just above the water. His face was furrowed in concentration, his eyes focused on the dark shapes trailing the boat.
We came out into an expanse of open water. Ahead of us was the bulk of Nezahualcoyotl’s Dyke, keeping back the saltwater and regulating the level of the lake during the flood season.
I had expected trouble at this juncture, but the few warriors manning the fort on the dyke looked bored, and the boats were carried over to the other side without any major incident. While Nezahual-tzin and I engaged the guards in idle conversation, the ahuizotls leapt over the wall and slid noiselessly back into the water, dark shapes gone past in an eye blink.
Behind the dyke were only a few boats, going either to Teotihuacan or Texcoco, merchants with goods to sell and wider barges belonging to noblemen on pilgrimages.
Teomitl moved to stand near Nezahual-tzin. “Time to go a little faster.”
The ahuizotls dived, two under each boat. I felt a slight jerk as they moved to bear the weight of the keel, and then we were gliding across the water at a greater speed than oars alone could have managed. Teomitl’s face shone the colour of jade, the light flickering across his features.
”How long can he hold?” Nezahual-tzin asked, sliding next to me.
”I don’t know.” Teomitl’s eyes were two pits of darkness, and sweat ran down his face. I had seen him control more ahuizotls, but it had been for a much shorter amount of time. He had to have summoned these early in the morning for my rescue, and he hadn’t released them since.
”I see.” Nezahual-tzin stroked one of the owls in the cages, his fingers nimbly avoiding its beak stabs. “You’re tutoring him well in magic, but his grasp of politics is appalling.”
”So is mine,” I said, and it wasn’t an admission of shame. “Quenami’s, however, is excellent.”
”Point taken. But still…”
”You think Tizoc-tzin will be Revered Speaker?” I asked.
Nezahual-tzin’s head moved a fraction. “I don’t like the idea any more than you do, but we have to face this fact: Tizoc-tzin is likely to have been elected Revered Speaker by the time we come back.”
”I know,” I said. I hated myself for lending reality to his words, but he was right. There was nothing we could do. “But he won’t want Teomitl to succeed him.”