FIVE

Tlatelolco

 

 

The night was short – too short, in fact. I woke up in a room I didn't recognise – and it took me a moment to remember I was in Neutemoc's house, and not in a room belonging to some parishioner, or in some quarters of the palace unknown to me. I made my devotions, drawing my worship-thorns through my ears to greet the Fifth Sun, and to honour my patron Mictlantecuhtli, Lord Death.

From outside came the familiar rhythm of pestle striking mortar – and another sound I couldn't quite place, a dull knock of wood on wood – but no, not quite either. I got up, and followed it to the courtyard – where I found Neutemoc and Teomitl sparring together. Their macuahitl swords, lengths of wood with embedded obsidian shards, were the ones making that odd noise, every time they crossed.

"Men," Mihmatini said, with a snort. She'd raised her hair in the fashion of married women, piling it above her head to form two slight horns; but her dress still marked her as a Guardian. "They're going to be at it for a while. Come on, let's get breakfast."

"I don't think–" I started.

"There's always time."

I didn't agree – I kept having this vision of the blue and white cloaks of Tlaloc's priests overrunning the courtyard, demanding to speak to us, to put every single one of us into enforced containment. By now, Acamapichtli was going to be in full flow – and knowing him and his natural antagonism for warriors, he would want to add Neutemoc's household to his list of potential sickness carriers.

But Mihmatini looked in a mood to make water flow uphill, so I merely followed her into the reception room, where I hastily swallowed a bowl of maize porridge, before pronouncing myself ready to leave.

By that time, Teomitl and Neutemoc had come back. Teomitl grabbed a handful of maize flatbreads, folded them deftly into a small package, and nodded. "We need to go," he said to Mihmatini.

"Why?"

Teomitl shook his head. "I'll tell you at the palace."

"You'd better." Mihmatini grumbled, but she made no further objection.

No, that was left to Neutemoc.

As we left the courtyard, neither Teomitl nor I paid attention to him, beyond a simple goodbye gesture – and we all but jumped when he said, "Acatl."

I turned. He wore a simple feather headdress, the plumes falling down on the nape of his neck; and the sunlight emphasized the small wrinkles at the corner of his eyes, making him older than he seemed, like some kind of family patriarch. "You're going to warn us."

Neutemoc didn't have much of a sense of humour, especially for grave matters. "Yes, I am."

"Go ahead. I'm listening."

He looked surprised. Did he expect me to ignore him? I would have, a year before. But things had changed, and he had to know that. "Look, Acatl. You're not in the army, so you don't have much information on how it's going."

"I am, though," Teomitl said.

Neutemoc stubbornly avoided his gaze. "The army is losing faith with Tizoc-tzin. The deaths of the council a few months ago were bad enough, but the campaign was just one series of setbacks after the other. Some of the higher-level warriors are still with him, some others are wavering. And some never had faith at all."

I didn't ask him which of those categories he fitted into; neither, I noticed, did Teomitl. "And now the death of the warrior and a prisoner… it's a lot. You're going to have touchy people, and not only among the warriors."

"The merchants?" I asked. They preceded the armies on campaigns, and followed them, too, gathering goods from newly conquered provinces.

"Yes. Tensions everywhere," Neutemoc said. "It's a bad time for a priest to come barging in with questions." He raised a placatory hand. "I don't see you that way, but I'm your brother."

I thought about it for a while. Being High Priest didn't make me exempt from the contempt of warriors for noncombatants – but then again, what choice did I have? "It's my calling," I said. "Making sure this stops before it becomes a threat to us all. Keeping the Fifth Sun in the sky, Grandmother Earth fertile. I don't have a choice."

"I know." Neutemoc grimaced. "Nevertheless – Chicomecoatl walk ahead of you, brother. You're going to need Her luck."

• • • •

Mihmatini insisted on giving Teomitl and me amulets to protect against magical attacks. I had no idea how effective they were, but she had had a point on the previous night – much as I hated to admit it, she and Acamapichtli might be right. The last thing we needed was Teomitl and I carrying the sickness everywhere over Tenochtitlan.

I left Mihmatini at my temple – the last I saw of her, she was in deep conversation about the epidemic with Ichtaca, my moon-faced second-in-command. He looked a little dazed, as if unsure of what had happened to him – he had expected her to be meek and compliant, like most women; criteria which had never applied to my sister – and even less now that she had become Guardian.

Teomitl went back to the palace, to find the mysterious woman who had been visiting our prisoner, and I set out to see Yayauhqui, the merchant who had had such a blazing argument with Eptli.

I'd thought that Yayauhqui would be from Pochtlan, like Eptli and his father, but he was unknown there. After spending a good hour enquiring from one blankfaced compound to another, I finally gave up. The man had been with the army and his return couldn't have passed unnoticed: therefore, the more probable explanation was that he wasn't from Tenochtitlan at all. That left Tlatelolco, our sister city to the north – where the largest market in the Anahuac valley congregated daily.

I dared not take a boat from the temple docks, and in any case it wasn't far. I walked on foot through the canals, gave the Sacred Precinct a wide berth – and went on north, into the district of Cuopepan. Then north again, crossing the canals on foot – I stopped to buy water from a porter by a bridge, handing him a few cacao beans.

At last, I reached the markers: the huge grey-stone cacti driven into the ground that marked the separation between Tenochtitlan and Tlalelolco. They were, by now, purely symbolic, since Tlalelolco's last Revered Speaker had perished in a short and messy war, eleven years before – putting the Tlatelocan merchants under the direct authority of the Mexica.

I headed straight for the marketplace, reckoning that a merchant such as Yayauhqui wouldn't waste an opportunity for profit, even after having barely returned from the war.

The marketplace of Tlatelolco was a city within the city, its stalls aligned in orderly rows according to the category of goods sold, so that there was one section for live animals and another for jewellery, and yet another for slaves. At this hour of the morning the crowd was out, humming and murmuring: friends greeting each other in the alleys; men out to pay a debt, loaded under the weight of the precious cloth-rolls; women entertaining themselves by watching an Otomi savage, who had descended from the hills to sell a few deer-hides. I wove my way through the crowd, making for the section of the market reserved for luxury goods.

Everything dazzled: the merchandise was spread on coloured cloths, and encompassed everything from the vibrant feathers of the southlands, to gold and silver jewellery, to mounds of precious items such as turquoise and coloured shells.

Behind one such stall, I found Yayauhqui. The merchant certainly believed in sampling his own merchandise: though his cloak was of sober cotton, he compensated by wearing jewels of translucent jade, from his necklace to the rings on his fingers. I'd expected a man running to fat; but he was still as lean as a well-toned warrior, his face as sharp as hacked obsidian, his eyes deeply sunk into his tanned face.

The stall was full when I arrived – one serious buyer, engaged in negotiations with Yayauhqui, and dozens more who had come to stare at the wealth on display. When Yayauhqui saw me, though, he dismissed his buyer with a wave of his fingers, pointing to one of the two collared slaves who kept an eye on the merchandise. "See to the details with him. I have other business."

If the buyer protested, I didn't hear it. Yayauhqui pulled himself to his feet without apparent effort, and bowed – very low, almost as a peasant would to the Revered Speaker. "The High Priest for the Dead. You honour my modest stall."

I tore my gaze from the crowd gathered around it. "Not so modest."

Yayauhqui laughed – briefly, without joy. "Perhaps not."

"I need to speak to you," I said. "Privately."

He shrugged. He didn't seem surprised. "Let's go somewhere quieter, then."

We strolled out of the merchants' quarters, into the slave section – the slaves stood with their wooden collars, waiting resignedly for their purchasers – and then further on, outside of the market, into a quieter street bordering a small canal. There was only one old woman there, selling tamales. The smell of meat, chillies and beans wafted up, a pleasant reminder of the meal I'd had. I waited while Yayauhqui bargained for her to leave.

He came back with a tamale in his hand – and a disarming shrug. "She didn't mind leaving while we had our conversation, but she insisted I buy some of the food. I don't suppose you're hungry."

"I ate this morning," I said, spreading my hands.

"Pity." Yayauhqui gazed speculatively at the tamale. "I hate to waste food. So, you're here because of Eptli."

Taken aback by the abrupt change of subject, I said only, "News travels fast."

"I'm not without friends in the army," Yayauhqui said. "I can't say I'm surprised to see officials here. I was expecting something a little more – energetic, shall we say?"

His voice was low and cultured – the accents of the calmecac school unmistakable. Like Eptli, he'd have sat with future priests and warriors, learning the songs and the rituals, the dance of the stars in the sky – all things he might well have found useful in his travels to faraway lands.

"It's only me for the moment. Though the others might not be long in catching up," I said.

One corner of Yayauhqui's mouth twitched upwards. "You reassure me."

I decided to take the offensive – or we'd still be standing there when the Fifth World collapsed. "If you were expecting me, then you know what I'm going to ask."

Yayauhqui shook his head. "Please. My quarrel with Eptli was hardly a secret matter."

"No," I said. "I was a little unclear on what it was about, though."

"Eptli–" and, for a moment, his expression shifted, slightly, into something that might have been anger, that might have been disdain – "Eptli was a conceited fool. His father was elevated into the nobility – do you even imagine how rare that is, for merchants to be recognised that way?"

"I can imagine," I said. His sudden intensity frightened me.

"I don't think you can." Yayauhqui's gaze took in my finery – the embroidered cloak, the feather headdress, the fine mask of smoothened bone – and he shook his head, contemptuously. "Anyway, Eptli's father is another matter. He might have moved out of Pochtlan entirely, but he still kept his ties with us. Never forgot to tell us when a child was born in his family, or to invite us to banquets. Never forgot to consult us for important decisions. Why, I attended Eptli's birth myself – of course, I was a youth at the time, barely returned from my first expedition."

He didn't look young, not anymore, but he didn't look old, either: well-preserved, but there was something about him that bothered me, something I couldn't quite grasp even though it was right there in front of me.

"So Eptli and you–"

Yayauhqui spread his hands, in what seemed like a peaceful gesture, but I wasn't fooled. "Eptli was a conceited fool. I despised him, but I wouldn't have killed him."

"Even when he captured his prisoner?" I asked. "That would have elevated him higher than his father – into the Jaguars and Eagle Knights."

Yayauhqui shook his head. "Eptli wasn't smart enough to see that there is more to life than riches and honour, and the consideration of warriors."

He sounded sincere – but then, he was a merchant, and he would have been a skilled liar. Not only for negotiation with customers, but also because if he was indeed with the army, it meant he was no harmless merchant, no trader obsessed with his own profit. It meant that he was a spy, ranging ahead of the army to gather information on the country we were about to fight. "You quarrelled with Eptli on this campaign," I said. "In quite a visible fashion."

Yayauhqui looked mildly irritated. "I let the young fool goad me past endurance. I was coming back from a thirteen-day gruelling mission into Metztitlan, and here he was, laughing with his cohorts on how merchants were all useless bags of flesh."

I bit my lip. I liked what I heard of Eptli less and less – I could understand his behaviour, but that didn't mean I condoned it.

On the other hand, if he had been well-liked, he probably wouldn't have died in such a horrific fashion. "So you shouted at him."

"We both shouted, to some extent." Yayauhqui appeared peeved – more, I suspected, because he'd lost his calm than out of any sympathy for Eptli.

I looked at him again – something was still bothering me. "I was given the impression that it was far more than an ordinary quarrel. That Eptli was a calm man with no reason for provoking people, and that you'd both been noticed by the whole encampment."

"I don't see what you mean."

"I think you do," I said. I had nothing more than that, and he likely knew it; but I could bring more pressure to bear, and he also knew that. "Or shall we take that up with the war council?"

Yayauhqui's lips pinched into an unamused smile. "As you very well know, as a merchant, I am subject only to the elders of my clan." He looked as if he might add something, but didn't.

"But the elders of your clan are subject to the Mexica Emperor," I said.

His features shifted again – he was too canny to show naked hatred, but I could catch some of it, in the folds of his eyes, in the tightening of his lips. "I haven't forgotten that," Yayauhqui said. His voice could have broken obsidian.

He hadn't liked the question. And I, in turn, couldn't quite understand why. "What did Eptli say?"

It was a stab in the dark, but it worked. "He insulted Tlatelolca. Said we were all cowards, and it was no wonder we'd been thrown into the mud."

"Did you fight in the war?" I asked. Seven years wasn't such a long time, and Yayauhqui looked old enough to have been a hot-headed youth at the time – assuming he'd ever been hot-headed, which wasn't that likely. A man raised by merchants, just like one raised by priests, would learn the value of calm and decorum early in life.

Yayauhqui hesitated. Trying to decide whether to lie to me, or to twist the truth? "We were merchants. Not fighters. And the invasion was unjustified."

I had been much younger then, cloistered in my temple in the small city of Coyoacan, and paying little attention to the affairs of the great. But I remembered some things of how the war had started. The Revered Speaker of Tlatelolco, Moquihuix, had been married to a Mexica wife – elder sister to Tizoc-tzin and Teomitl. When she grew old, he mocked her, set her aside and, crucial to the war, denied her the finery and luxurious apartments which had been her right.

Our previous Revered Speaker, who had long itched for an excuse to invade our sister city, had leapt at the chance and called to arms the whole valley of Anahuac to avenge the insult to his family.

And, of course, we both knew how the war had ended. "Wars aren't just," I said, finally. "Just necessary."

Yayauhqui shook his head. "Still the old lies? That our destiny is to triumph for the Fifth Sun's sake."

I looked at him, aghast. "What do you mean, lies?"

Yayauhqui spread his hands. "It seems to me the gods aren't choosy about who spills the blood."

His words terrified me. "You fought in the war, didn't you? What did you see?"

"A god, abandoning us." Yayauhqui's voice was bitter. "He had chosen me, elevated me – promised me a destiny of glory. But, in the end, when your warriors stormed the temples, took His idols, and set fire to the altars, I saw Him. I saw Him laugh, and turn away. They feed on blood and fear and pain, and it doesn't matter whose…"

"You can't say things like that," I said. Of course the gods weren't fair – of course They expected our offerings and our devotion. But it was right; it was the order of the world. Mortals had no right to expect anything from gods. "The gods can't be judged by your standards."

"Why not?" Yayauhqui shrugged. "The warriors of Tenochtitlan then took my wives, priest. Pierced a hole through their nostrils, and threaded rope through to tie them to the other slaves, and they led everyone away into Tenochtitlan, to serve your hearth-fires. And the god didn't lift a finger to help us. So yes, I judge."

Warriors were killed; women taken as slaves. It was the way of the world – and, had Tlatelolco defeated us, we would have suffered the same fate.

He terrified me. It was as if he had weighed everything that held us together, all the rules and the morality that bound the Fifth World and judged them not worthy to be followed – discarded them as easily as a worn-out cloak.

Such a man would have no compunction on summoning an epidemic to deal with an enemy. He might even relish it – especially if the epidemic worked against Tenochtitlan.

"And so you decided to do something about it. You cast a spell on Eptli." My voice was low and calm – every word dragged from a faraway place. I hadn't thought I'd meet someone like this, I hadn't thought the Fifth World could even hold such beliefs…

Yayauhqui snorted, gently amused. "Look at me, priest. Look at me."

I didn't understand. But he was still standing with the tamale in his hands, thin and harsh, moulded by war and by years of travelling into strange lands, serving the men who had led his people into slavery – helping them to conquer more lands.

I took up the obsidian knife at my belt, and slashed my earlobes.

"We all must die

We all must go down into darkness…"

A grey veil crept over everything: the canal water became insignificant, distant glimmers and the blue sky receded, opening up to reveal the darkness of tar. The wind over the city faded into the lament of dead souls, and the cold of the grave rose up, like thousands of corpses' hands stroking the inside of my arms and legs. I shivered.

Through the remnants of the adobe walls, I could feel the bustle of the marketplace: thousands of souls bartering and trading, the animals and the slaves, the magical amulets and charms – everything combining into a rush of life I could feel, even from the remove of Mictlan. It burned like a fire, shimmering and twisting out of shape, endlessly tearing itself apart, endlessly renewed.

It took me some time, therefore, to tear my sight from the large radiance of Tlatelolco, and to look at Yayauhqui.

But when I did, I forgot all about the marketplace.

Human beings usually shone in the true sight – the three souls, the tonalli in the head, the teyolia in the heart and the ihiyotl in the liver combining into a swirling mass of radiance. So, to a lesser degree, did the souls of living beings like animals, or summoned creatures.

Yayauhqui, however, was dark – not merely faded and colourless, like the water or the adobe walls, but completely opaque, as if something had reached out and snuffed everything out of him.

Not something, I thought, chilled. Someone.

"The god," I said, slowly.

His voice was mocking. "As I said. They feed on pain."

He had no souls – he might as well have been dead, save that even in death, some semblance of life would remain in the body, some scattered pieces of soul. He was – cut off from everything in the Fifth World. Was he even able to taste the tamale in his hand, could he even feel the wind on his skin? For him, everything had to have been receding into a numinous, uniformly grey background.

"You should have gone to see a priest," I said. Not one of my order – for we parted the souls from the body for the final time, helping them slip into the underworld. But a priest of Patecatl, God of Medicine, or of Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent of Wisdom – they would have known what to do.

Yayauhqui's smile was bitter. "I have seen one. Several, in fact. They tried to convince me I was an abomination, and should retire from public life. After that – well, I didn't feel so keen to go back to them. Perhaps the Revered Speaker might be able to do something, but…"

And, of course, he wouldn't present himself to the man who had destroyed his city – even if Tizoc-tzin had been willing to help him. "It was Huitzilpochtli, then, who did this to you?"

Yayauhqui shook his head. "Let me keep secrets, priest. They're of no use to anyone save an old man like myself."

He didn't look old – but then again, without souls, how would he age? How would the Fifth World leave any kind of mark?

"So, you see," Yayauhqui said. "I couldn't care less about spells."

He was dead, or worse. The blood in his veins would have no energy; the teyolia in his heart wouldn't dissipate into the underworld, or into the Fifth Sun's Heaven. Magic, such as it was, would be anathema to him. "You could have hired someone," I said. Or used someone's blood, though it would have been a dangerous venture.

"Of course. There's always that," Yayauhqui agreed, gravely.

There was something about him I couldn't pin down. "Why serve as a merchant-spy, then?"

His lips stretched. It would have been amusement with anyone else, but with him it was just a shadow of what it could have been. That was what had been bothering me about him: everything was subdued, lacking the inner fire of the living, or even the weaker radiance of the dead. "I fear you still don't understand, Acatl-tzin. Now that we are one city, the glory of Tenochtitlan is also that of Tlalelolco. My relatives prosper on your coats of feathers, your cacao beans, your precious stones and your war-takings. Why should I wish to upset the established order? We'd be left with nothing."

His speech had the intensity of truth – and for a bare moment, he seemed to shine with the souls he had lost, though it was only an illusion. "You could destabilise us, and hope for Tlatelolco to secede."

Yayauhqui snorted. "And I could expect the Fifth Sun to tumble down. I'm no fool. I've seen what happens when you cross the gods, and you have the gods' protection."

And if we didn't have it anymore, he'd be the first to trample us into the ground. But, all the same – lying, especially in such an impassioned speech, would have cost him a great deal of energy, enough for the strain of it to be visible. Perhaps he was telling the truth, as much as I disliked the possibility.

"You'll want to stay in Tlatelolco," I said, finally. "It's not over yet."

Yayauhqui's lips stretched again in that smile that wasn't quite one. "Of course. It's never over."