Gods of Jade and Shadow - Silvia Moreno-Garcia Page 0,65

your whole sordid trap. Instead I concealed your plans, found the mortal man you needed.”

“You did,” Vucub-Kamé conceded.

Vucub-Kamé stood behind Xtabay, letting a hand trail down her hair, the inattentive gesture of a master with an annoying pet rather than a lover, although they had at one point been lovers and he had offered her godhood, a seat by his side, in order to sway her hand and secure her assistance. Gods have appetites, more voracious than those of men, and how quickly they turn from one pursuit to another, like uncorking a wine, taking a sip, then tossing the rest down a drain.

There was no measure of affection between Vucub-Kamé and Xtabay at this point. When they had plotted together, he had enjoyed the plotting, but now that it was all done and arranged, he’d grown disenchanted with her and she with him.

“Did he say anything interesting?” Vucub-Kamé asked, ceasing in his half-hearted caress. He was bored already and yearning to return home. Xibalba called to him; he was tied to the shadow realm. Xtabay was not bound to Xibalba, since she had not been born there, and did not feel that same invisible chain around her waist. Middleworld interested him, yes, but only because it housed within its borders the mortals who might adore him. It was Xibalba he loved, Xibalba and himself and no other.

“We hardly spoke. My magic was of no use, it could not hold him, and I gave him the box. He asked who held the next piece of him, and I said it is the Uay Chivo.”

“And he did not inquire any further?”

“What would he inquire about?” Xtabay asked, sitting on her couch, her bracelets clinking as she pressed a hand against her forehead. “He was rather in a hurry. I could tell he is growing weaker, becoming more human.”

“I thought my brother would have more stamina,” Vucub-Kamé said.

Perhaps Hun-Kamé would not make it to Baja California, after all. Who knew. If he was truly diminishing, consumed like a quickly burning candle, his encounter with the Uay Chivo could prove difficult. The uay was much more…forceful than Vucub-Kamé’s other associates.

“Apparently not. If you should have seen him when he left, you would not have believed it, he moved like someone who has never walked the Black Road. That girl was reflected in his eye.”

Vucub-Kamé had been serene, but when Xtabay said those simple words a shiver went down his spine. He had a talent for soothsaying. He read fortunes in the blood of myriad creatures, but sometimes an augury would present itself without being requested. The words were unpleasantly close to an omen. They made him pause and stare at Xtabay.

“What is it?”

“Quiet,” Vucub-Kamé ordered, seized with a mad need.

He moved toward the parrot. The bird shivered. Vucub-Kamé stretched out a hand, opened its cage and grabbed the bird, snapping its neck.

“Now why did you have to—” Xtabay began.

“I said quiet,” Vucub-Kamé replied.

His voice was more dangerous than the knife that materialized in his hand and Xtabay, who had risen from her couch at the indignity of having her pet treated this way, sat again, folding her hands. Vucub-Kamé sliced the parrot in two and dropped the body, feathers and blood scattering on the floor wildly.

Before, he had not been able to observe his triumph, even if he could see Hun-Kamé’s arrival in Tierra Blanca. But now even this arrival was missing. A hundred branching futures wove before him, and the more he pushed and tried to see through the chaos, the more they tangled, they knotted, they broke before his eyes. When he did glimpse something, it was the young woman’s face he’d seen before and then, for a second, his brother on the black throne. Hun-Kamé, crowned anew.

This image, brief as it was, shocked Vucub-Kamé so much it made the scars on the palms of his hands vibrate with pain, as if they were being burned a second time. The knife slipped from his hand, turning to smoke when it touched the floor.

It was not possible. He was the ruler of Xibalba now! Nothing could change this, nothing could ruin his plans.

And the branching paths, as if to soothe the daykeeper, offered him another brief glimpse, this time of Vucub-Kamé on the obsidian throne.

But the balm was not sweet. He was unsettled.

Vucub-Kamé knocked down the parrot’s cage and turned to Xtabay.

“Like a man,” Vucub-Kamé said. “He walked like a man and she in his gaze. I hope he