Servant of the Underworld Read online

The House itself was always a centre of activity, bustling with Jaguar Knights and sacred courtesans, but today it was oddly silent.

  There was a single guard at the gates, instead of the usual pair. He stared at me levelly as I approached. "Looking for something?" His pose and his voice exuded arrogance – not deliberately, but something that had become second nature to him. And yet he was a boy, impossibly young to have already been admitted into the ranks of the elite.

  "I need to see a knight," I said.

  "I have no doubt you do." His gaze lingered on me a little longer. In his eyes was the familiar contempt of warriors for priests. "That's currently impossible."

  "Currently?" I asked.

  His lips curled, in what might have been amusement. "They're at the Imperial Palace. There's a ceremony they have to practise for."

  "All of them?" I asked, my heart sinking.

  "All but me." He looked again at me, as if wondering what a shabbily dressed priest could possibly want of Jaguar Knights. Yaotl and Ceyaxochitl had been right; I should have put on my full regalia before coming here.

  "When will they be back?" I asked.

  He shrugged. "Tezcatlipoca only knows."

  In other words, it was beneath his dignity to answer me. I bit back a curse. Antagonising the guard would bring me nothing but trouble.

  "Noon?" I asked, insisting.

  "They might be back then," the guard said. "You can try." His slightly mocking tone made it clear he believed I'd be thrown out of the House, regardless of whether the knights were back.

  "I certainly will try," I said, determined not to let him get the better of me. "I'll see you then."

  He didn't say anything as I walked away from the House. Privately, I doubted the knights would be back before a while. An Imperial ceremony was no small matter.

  Curse it! Well, if I couldn't interview Mahuizoh, I could see about Xochiquetzal instead – not a pleasant thought, by any standards.

  From the Jaguar House, it was but a short walk to my temple; and by the time I arrived there, most of the novice priests had already left for the market at Tlatelolco.

  My second-in-command Ichtaca was in the courtyard, giving instructions to a handful of offering priests in grey-and-blue cloaks. As usual, he was acquitting himself so well I wasn't sure how I could have helped him. Why ever had Ceyaxochitl thought I'd make a good High Priest? I'd hoped to slip by Ichtaca undetected, but he was quite observant.

  "Acatl-tzin!"

  I suppressed a sigh. "Yes?"

  "There's a message for you," Ichtaca said. "From Guardian Ceyaxochitl."

  The location of Xochiquetzal's house, a message I'd hoped to recover discreetly. I nodded, and felt obliged, now that I was standing in front of him, to ask, "How are things going?"

  He shrugged. "The usual. Two deaths in the district of Moyotlan. The examination revealed no trace of magic or other foul play, so I let the priests of the district handle it. A woman dead in childbirth in the district of Cuepopan. We'll have to supervise the burying rites, and make sure she's honoured properly."

  As the woman had died struggling to bring a life into this world, her soul would already be flying upwards, to accompany Tonatiuh on His journeys; but the family's grief would be eased if the rites were said accordingly.

  "I see," I said. "Well… I'll leave you to it."

  Ichtaca looked at me. He seemed to be expecting something more of me, but I couldn't see what. Some orders? He had absolutely no need for that.

  "I'll see that message," I said finally.

  Ichtaca shrugged. Clearly, I had not given him what he had expected. "It's in the shrine. Come."

  Before leaving, I detoured through the storehouse to take a parrot and a handful of marigold flowers: offerings for Xochiquetzal. Palli had been replaced by a younger novice priest, one whom I didn't know. He bowed to me, making me feel ill at ease.

  Carrying the parrot's cage against my hip, I went to the address Ceyaxochitl had given me: a house on the outskirts of Moyotlan, the south-west district of Tenochtitlan. The city was on an island, of which the Sacred Precinct was the heart. Streets and canals snaked out from the central plaza, leading to the four districts – and further out, to the fields where we grew our crops. I walked away from the centre, into streets bordered by canals on either side. Small boats passed me by, ferrying their owners to their business: to the artisans' districts, to the marketplace, or an audience at a nobleman's house. The aqueduct canals were crossed at regular intervals by bridges. On each bridge stood a water-porter, ready to dip his bucket into the water, and to offer it to anyone who paid.

  From the houses around me came the familiar grinding sound of maize pounded into powder, and the wet slap-slap of flatbread rolled onto the stones. That sound had woken me up every day when I was a child: Mother's daily ritual, making the food that Father would take to the fields. Long before I took the path to my humble priesthood, back when my parents had still been proud of my thirst for knowledge.

  Lost in reminiscence, I finally reached my destination: a small, unremarkable alley, half street, half canal. At the back of the alley were the featureless walls of a huge house, one that seemed to waver in the morning light, even though there was barely any mist.

  Magic hung thick around it: the familiar, bold strokes of Ceyaxochitl's spells, woven into a cocoon around the house, hiding it from the world. An uninitiated person could not have seen enough of that house to open its door.

  The house had two storeys, a luxury reserved for noblemen. A lush garden of poinsettias and marigolds adorned its roof. In the courtyard, pines grew by the side of a stone pool, the water within, clear, cloudless, reflecting the perfect blue of the sky.

  "And you would be?" a voice asked.

  Startled, I turned, and met the eyes of a youth wearing the wooden collar of slaves – though he had jade and silver bracelets on his arms, and heavy amber earrings weighing down his lobes.

  "No," I said. "I've come to see Xochiquetzal."

  His face didn't move, save for some fleeting contempt in his eyes as he scrutinised me. "A priest, eh? I don't think She wants to see your kind."

  "Someone's life is at stake," I said, more sharply than I'd intended.

  He shrugged. "It's always the case. Life is cheap in the Fifth World, priest." He half-turned away from me, walking back into the building he had come from.

  Life is cheap. My own brother's life, cheap?

  My fists clenched of their own volition. Before I realised it, I was halfway through the courtyard, following him into the house.

  What stopped me wasn't anything material – but rather a slow, prickling sensation running along the nape of my neck, and spreading to my entire back, like fiery embers touching my skin: raw power, coalescing in the sunlight. I had the feeling of being watched and dissected by something vast and unknowable, though there was no one but the slave and I in the courtyard.

  The slave had turned. He watched me, his smile mocking me. "And you think this will solve anything?"

  I struggled to find words, to mouth an abject apology, but could not bring myself to. "No. Nor will your arrogant attitude. I asked for an audience."

  He spread his hands in a blaze of silver. "You did. And it's my right to refuse it."

  "You–"

  He shook his head. "Still not understanding? Defiance brings you nothing." He smiled again, displaying teeth as yellow and as neat as maize kernels. "But you're in luck. It has been a boring week. Wait here. And don't think you can look around. I'll know if you do."

  I had no doubt he would.

  He entered one of the rooms around the courtyard, the bells jingling as he pulled aside the entrance curtain. He came out again almost immediately. "My, my. You're definitely in luck, priest. She has nothing better to do, so She'll see you."

  His arrogance was staggering, but I bit back the angry reply that came to me. I had already seen anger or despair would earn me nothing in such a house.

  The slave pointed lazily
to my obsidian knives. "Those will stay outside."

  "My weapons?" I asked. He was observant: the knives, which were those of the temple, had been blessed by Mictlantecuhtli, and were saturated with His magic.

  His smile was malicious. "Consider them payment for an audience. You'll get them back – maybe."

  "I will get them back," I said, as I undid my belt and gave them to him. "Or else I won't be the only one hunting you."

  He smiled an even wider smile. "Do you think you can touch me?"

  I wanted, desperately, to try – to summon a minor deity from the underworld, to teach him fear and humility. But I knew I couldn't. He was Xochiquetzal's, and I'd already seen what kind of power She wielded.

  Inside the room, it was dark, and cool: the fire in the three-stone hearth had sunk to smouldering embers, and yellow cotton drapes hung over the only window. The air smelled of packed earth, overlaid with copal incense. There was no need for light, though. The figure seated on the dais made Her own: a softly lapping radiance that played on the floor, on the frescoes of flowers on the walls, and on the backs of my callused hands.

  In the silence, I knelt, laying the marigold flowers at the feet of the dais. Then I opened the cage and, using one of Xochiquetzal's own knives, slit the parrot's throat. Blood spurted out, covered my hands. I laid the bird by the side of the flowers and, bowing my head until it touched the ground, started singing a hymn to the Quetzal Flower.

  "By the side of the roads

  And the steep mountain paths

  By the Lake of the Moon

  And on the faraway battlefields

  Grow Your flowers

  Marigolds and buttercups, flowers of corn and maguey

  Flowers to adorn the maidens' necks

  To be carried by amorous warriors

  Flowers to remind us

  Of Your presence everywhere."

  When I was finished, there was only silence. I dared not look up.

  "Well, well," Xochiquetzal said, finally. "It's not often that I have visitors."

  "My Lady."

  "A priest, too. Although" – she sounded disappointed, like a jaguar that had missed its prey – "not one of my own."

  I swallowed, wondering how much I could tell Her. "Your priests still think you in the Heaven Tamoanchan, my Lady Xochiquetzal."

  The light over my head grew brighter, and in Her voice was the anger of the storm. I kept my gaze on the beaten earth. "They don't know because the Guardians have not seen fit to inform them."

  And with reason. The last thing we needed was a religious war within Tenochtitlan. But I guessed it would have hurt, all the same, to be expelled from Tamoanchan by the Duality, for a mere sin of lust.

  "I'm not a Guardian," I said, finally.

  "No," She said. Her voice was toneless. "I can see that. You may rise, priest. What do you want?"

  Carefully, I approached the dais, all my muscles poised to flee. Gods were capricious, caring little about the balance of the world – and one who had been expelled from the gods' company even more so. "I have come for a favour."

  The Quetzal Flower smiled. She wasn't young, not any more. A network of fine wrinkles marred Her cheeks, and She kept rubbing at Her eyes, so often that the cornea had turned red with blood vessels. "You rarely come for anything else." She reached out, and took the parrot in Her hands. Something seemed to pass from the animal into Her: some light, fleeing the corpse and nesting under Her skin, coursing through her veins like blood. "Very well. Ask your question."

  "My name is Acatl. There is a priestess," I said, slowly. "Eleuia–"

  "I know who Eleuia is," Xochiquetzal said. "I may be fallen from grace, but I'm not completely powerless. What do you want?"

  "She has disappeared, and we are looking for her."

  The Quetzal Flower didn't move. "Eleuia," She said. "I don't know where she is."

  "That wasn't–"

  "What you needed? You would have asked for it, at some point."

  "Why don't you know?" I asked, unable to resist my curiosity. "Isn't she your servant?"

  The light dimmed, for a bare moment. Xochiquetzal said, finally, "I'm on earth. In a world where My body doesn't belong, where everything fights My existence. It takes its toll. No god can remain on earth and keep more than token powers."

  "Except if they entrust them to a human agent," I said, thinking of Revered Speaker Axayacatl-tzin, and of the last time I'd seen him at the Major Festival: rising from the limestone altar of the sacrifices atop the Great Temple, his hands and obsidian knife reddened with human blood; his whole body brimming with the magic of Huitzilpochtli, the magic that kept the Mexica Empire strong.

  Xochiquetzal smiled, and this time Her voice was bitter. "Not all of us are upstarts, ready to give our powers to anyone. Humans are unreliable. They have wishes and desires of their own. One day, what the Southern Hummingbird does will come back to haunt Him."

  I said nothing. The affairs of gods were not my own; even less so those of the Quetzal Flower, whom I did not worship.

  Xochiquetzal went on. "But it's the way of things. Huitzilpochtli rises to power, becomes the protective deity of your Empire. And We – the old ones, the gods of the Earth and of the Corn, We who were here first, who watched over your first steps – We fade."

  The melancholy in Her voice was unexpected; and, because She was a goddess, it saturated the room, until my throat ached with regret for the days of my childhood. "You still have priestesses," I managed to whisper.

  "Yes," She said, "but the greatest temple within the Sacred Precinct isn't Mine, and the sacrifices they offer Me are paltry little things, to keep Me amused. People believe in war and in the sun, more than they believe in rain or in love." She shook Her head, as if realising what She'd just said. "Enough. We haven't come here to wallow in My own misery."

  "I just want to know…" I swallowed, trying to blot out the image of Neutemoc, grunting over the supine body of a shadowy priestess. "I was told Eleuia had a child. I want to know–"

  "Whether it's true?" The Quetzal Flower didn't move.

  "You know," I whispered.

  "Of course. I'm a goddess of childbirth, among other things."

  Goddess of love, of carnal desire; of lust and all the base instincts that made fools out of us. The Duality curse me, why couldn't I stop thinking of Neutemoc?

  Xochiquetzal rubbed at Her eyes, absent-mindedly. "Eleuia. Yes, she had a child. Sixteen years ago. But it was stillborn."

  "Stillborn?" I asked.

  Her eyes slid away from me, focused on the jade flowers by Her dais. "Dead. She buried the umbilical cord on a battlefield, to ensure the child's safe passage into the afterlife."

  That's not the custom, was my first thought. The second, which I spoke aloud, was, "Would you tell me who the father was?" Not Neutemoc. Please, not Neutemoc.

  Xochiquetzal shrugged. "I have no idea. Why does it matter so much to you?"

  She was toying with me again, batting me to and fro, like a guinea pig between the paws of a jaguar…

  "My brother is involved," I said at last. "I need to know–"

  "Whether he had a child? How amusing, priest."

  "Please," I whispered. Her radiance had become blinding.

  Something landed at my feet, wet and soft. It took me a moment to realise, squinting through the strong light, that it was the body of the parrot, small and pathetic in its death, cast aside like a rag.

  "One sacrifice," Xochiquetzal said. "One paltry, bloodless little bird. An insult. You're fortunate that I was inclined to accept it. I don't owe you anything more." She rose from Her dais – and, for a mere moment, She was every woman I had ever desired, passion and need searing through my bones at the sight of Her. Burning, my skin was burning, and I was on my knees before Her, scarcely aware of having thrown myself to the ground…

  She laughed then: the sound of water crashing into underground caves. "Better," She said. "Much better." She walked by my side, even as I struggled to rise. I
could have sworn Her radiance had grown stronger, sharper: deprived of the potency of blood sacrifices, did She now feed on simpler things, on fear, on abject obedience?

  I rose on shaking hands, met Her gaze: ageless amusement, uncomfortably close to malice.

  "You might yet be of some use," the Quetzal Flower said. She was back on Her dais, reclining on Her low chair like a playful jaguar. "You know the proper sacrifices for Me. Bring them here, and I may feel in the mood to give you more."

  I knew what She wanted: offerings, proper worship offered before Her; not the distant sacrifices of Her priestesses, their smoke rising into the Heavens She'd been cast out of, but the blood of living animals, and perhaps of humans. I didn't have any hold over Her: certainly not here, on Her own ground, and perhaps not even in my own temple, with Lord Death's protection over me.