Gods of Jade and Shadow - Silvia Moreno-Garcia Page 0,90

and it could mean she was nothing, strictly an ordinary girl with ordinary thoughts and the weak flesh of all things that will die. Or she could be something else. How to tell, there was no clue. There was magic in the air, the dance of chaos and fate, and Vucub-Kamé grew grayer in his discontent, wondering how to dislodge this bit of sand that had sunk into his eyes and irritated him greatly.

The girl.

Had Vucub-Kamé been able to kill Casiopea, no doubt he would have. But it was impossible, with her human body protected by the strength of a god.

He had thought to bribe the girl. That was why he’d sent Martín to find her in Mexico City, hoping he’d convince her to side with him. He could offer her the bounty of the seas, strings of pearls and jewels from the earth, the kind of promises that make fools of men. Or else a way with magic, the capacity to weave necromantic spells and bid the dead speak. Power, too, over an entire city, an entire length of coast—he might even keep his end of the bargain.

Vucub-Kamé could attempt to sway her this way, but he suspected she would turn him away.

What to do, then.

Vucub-Kamé’s owl had brought him an interesting tidbit that day. Before, the owl had captured Hun-Kamé’s full laughter in a white shell. This time it brought two shells. Tucked neatly inside a black snail shell lay Casiopea’s sigh. It was a delicate thing, like a nocturnal butterfly. Pretty too. In strokes of crimson and blue it painted a picture of the most exquisite heartache.

Vucub-Kamé was able to somewhat re-create the mind of the woman who had breathed this sigh. He could not know everything, but he drew conclusions, and they were sharp and accurate since he was, after all, a daykeeper, used to teasing stories out of the smallest leaf and pebble lying on the road.

He thus surmised that Casiopea Tun, rather than being drawn by treasure chests and pageants of power, was infatuated with his brother. Hun-Kamé was the prize she desired.

Vucub-Kamé knew he must play upon this weak point, but he had not quite determined how he might accomplish it. Now, however, as he pondered the waters of the lake, his thoughts solidified.

If Hun-Kamé she wanted, Hun-Kamé he could grant, in a fashion. Truly, there was no other way they might expect to be together, for otherwise such an exercise would be immediately doomed.

And Hun-Kamé? Would he not oppose such a scheme if he were made aware of it?

But, ah, there was the matter of the second shell. This one was yellow. Hidden in it was another sigh. The mind of the one who had uttered this sigh, Vucub-Kamé could not re-create as fully as in the case of Casiopea: it was Hun-Kamé’s sigh, his immortal Xibalban essence shielding naked thoughts and desires. However, enough of the mortal element was audible to Vucub-Kamé that, although haltingly, it painted a different picture. Not exquisite in its construction, nor light like Casiopea’s, but crude like an unfinished carving. The sketch of a man in that sigh.

Here was the mortality that afflicted Hun-Kamé, and that Vucub-Kamé had thought would lead to a contest and a decapitation. Now he glimpsed another path, more subdued but less onerous. Left or right the road splits, what did it matter the direction it took if Vucub-Kamé obtained his crown?

Because Hun-Kamé’s sigh made one matter clear. That, unbelievably, immortality weighed on him, it chafed, he struggled against it.

Has a god ever abdicated his eternity for a woman? No. Such idiocies cannot be expected of anything immortal. But mortals descend into paroxysms quite often. And what was Hun-Kamé now but half a fool, his voice young, his eye almost bereft of shadows? He sighed and he yearned, and in that yearning lay a weakness to exploit.

Both of them stupid puppets of harmless flesh.

Vucub-Kamé tossed the shells into the water. They caused ripples, but in those waters he could see no futures, nor did he intend to. The gesture was one of defiance against the chaos that conspired against him.

“It is my kingdom, for me alone and for me to keep,” he told the water.

Silver eyes and a smile like the edge of the voracious sea, Vucub-Kamé whirled away and walked back to his palace.

The tracks changed in Mexicali. The rail became a narrow gauge, and this smaller train they had swiched to rattled painfully, finally reaching Tijuana. It was