Gods of Jade and Shadow - Silvia Moreno-Garcia Page 0,95
his presence tonight during dinner?” Hun-Kamé asked.
“I wouldn’t know. I’ll see you at eight. If you need anything, do ring for it,” Martín said, making his exit.
Casiopea turned and went back into the room, leaning against the balcony door, watching Hun-Kamé. He walked around, looking at the ceiling, inspecting the windows, all the finery, his hands behind his back. He was smiling.
“Vucub-Kamé is up to his clever games. Very, very clever, my brother.”
“I don’t understand.”
Hun-Kamé continued his inspection, now running his hands along a wall, scratching with a nail its blue paint. Casiopea saw the expensive room and the elaborate décor, but he was clearly finding something unusual about the setup. “I told you about the chu’lel, remember? Vucub-Kamé wanted to connect two points of power together. Look at this place. Look at the glyphs, the shape of it, each wall, each angle, it sings with magic. It’s not an ordinary hotel.”
Casiopea cocked her head, staring at the motifs on the ceiling and the walls. It reminded her of the images in history books, drawings of temples in the midst of the jungle or the ruins dotting the peninsula where she’d grown up. “It’s a pyramid without being a pyramid,” she ventured.
“Precisely,” Hun-Kamé said, looking very pleased, although she wasn’t sure why he would be so happy.
“You said he had not connected the two points of power.”
“No, he hasn’t. This place is thrumming with potential, it’s a sleeping beast, one of your engines before it’s been set in motion.”
In her dream there had been an obsidian throne, the Lord of Xibalba on it. Now she recalled other details: piles of bones as tall as houses, littering the land, skulls that formed walls, blood slick upon the earth. Yes, she had glimpsed something that was not, but which could well be.
“Why hasn’t it been set in motion?” she asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Hun-Kamé replied. “There must be a mortuary chamber somewhere. He intends to kill me and rule across this whole vast expanse of land; my blood is bound to be the final stone. Oh, I can feel it.”
“Why aren’t you afraid, then?”
He smiled even more, as if she’d made a particularly clever joke. “Because, Casiopea Tun, he hasn’t killed me yet, has he?”
“He could come barreling down that door, ready to fight you,” she said, pointing in that direction. It was unlikely, but there was no sense in dismissing the possibility either.
“Gods don’t fight each other with shields and swords. That would be improper.”
“He cut off your head.”
“I’m aware of it. When I am done with him I’ll have this place hauled off, bit by bit, into the sea, not a speck of his work left behind. How glorious that will be. The misery of his cries when he gets to enjoy a few centuries in a carved box, and the added misery of watching his creation crumble into nothing.”
“That’s your plan, then. You’re going to do exactly the same as he did to you,” she said, taken aback by the harshness of his words. “It hardly seems right.”
“It’s always been the plan.”
Casiopea stepped away from Hun-Kamé, rubbing her left arm. The ache reached far beyond the wrist, a constant though dull pain, but worse when it came to her hand. “Then gods don’t fight with swords, but they can be as petty as men,” she mused.
“Do not chide me. I’ve waited too long for this vengeance, and I intend to enjoy it.”
“It’s unnecessarily cruel.”
“Then maybe I should rap his fingers with a ruler instead, what do you say?” he asked her. “What would you have me do, hmmm?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. She could not even begin to imagine how the conflicts between divinities played out, but she had not liked the sight of the decapitation of the Uay Chivo, even if he’d risen afterward, a strange cloud of smoke that spoke to them. She did not fancy observing the decapitation of Hun-Kamé’s brother, either.
Hun-Kamé sat down on a chair, which was upholstered in a vibrant yellow, crossing his arms. He was shy of twenty, an angry boy and nothing more. Casiopea shook her head and took a seat across from him.
“You’ve never told me what he was like, before your fight,” she said. She had not asked. Likely she wanted to imagine Hun-Kamé as a unique creature, no other like him, even if this was illogical, since the existence of his sibling proved this a false notion.