Mihmatini shook her head, more amused than angry. "Help? Can't you accept, for once in your life, that you can't do it on your own?"

A groundless accusation: I had taken Teomitl's help. And then I thought, uneasily, of the way I'd summarily sent him home, getting rid of him before the climax.

Mihmatini watched me, silent a not judging, she'd never judged me. For her, I'd always be the brother who helped her climb trees, and brought her treats from the festivals. No, not quite; for the priestesses at the calmecac had changed her, moulded her into this coolly competent girl whom I hardly recognised.

"I'll take the boat," I said, finally.

Her face relaxed, a minute sag of her skin that made her less alien. "Go," she said.

"With not even a warning?" I asked.

"You know them all, Acatl. And you'll still ignore them. Go."

But, as I left the garden, she still called after me, "Try to come back standing on your feet, will you?"

Feeling even more broken than before, I limped out, bent on finding the Wind before he found Huei.

Given my present state, it was a hopeless undertaking, but I had to try. For Huei's sake, and also for my own.

ELEVEN.

Servant of the Gods In the canal before Neutemoc's house, Oyohuaca, a slave-girl clad in a rough maguey-fibre shift, was waiting for me in a long, pointed reed boat. I climbed in, wincing as my bandages shifted.

"Where to?" Oyohuaca asked, straightening up the lantern at the boat's bow.

I closed my eyes, feeling for the Wind's presence. He was a few streets away from us. He had slowed down, oddly enough, and was going in a slow, wide circle towards the south-western edge of the Moyotlan district.

"Left," I said.

She rowed in silence, with the easy mastery of one who had lived all her life at the water's edge. With each gesture, she whispered the same words, over and over like a litany for the dead. It took me a while to realise that the words were those of a prayer asking for the blessing of Tlaloc, the Storm Lord, God of Rain, and of His wife Chalchiutlicue, the Jade Skirt, Goddess of Lakes and Streams.

"O Lord, Our Lord, The people, the subjects a the led, the guided, the governed, Their flesh and bones are stricken with want and privation They are worn, spent and in tormenta"

There was something eerie about the sound of Oyohuaca's voice, floating over the canals in counterpoint to the splash of her oars. As we moved into deserted canal after deserted canal, it seemed to call up the mist, to trail after us. And something else trailed too, something dark and quiet that swam after the boat, biding its time.

Under the splash of the oars a in, out of the water, in, out a was its song: a quiet, hypnotic air that wove itself within my mind, melding with Oyohuaca's prayers until I no longer knew what belonged to whom.

"In Tlalocan, the verdant house, The Blessed Land of the Drowned The dead men play at balls, they cast the reeds Go forth, go forth to the place of many clouds To where the thick mists mark the Blessed Land The verdant house, the house of Tlaloc and Chalchiutlicue"

For too long, it had bided its time at night, quieting its hunger with fish, with newts, with algae: the sustenance of the poor, the abandoned. But now it smelled blood: a living heart, so tantalisingly close. Soon, it would feast until satiation...

"Let the people be blessed with fullness and abundance Let them behold, let them enjoy the jade and the turquoise a the precious vegetation The flesh of Your servants, the Providers, the Gods of Rain Let the plants and animals be blessed with fullness and abundancea"

The song stopped; the oars fell against the boat's frame with a dull sound that resonated in my bones. "Acatl-tzin," Oyohuaca said, urgently.

With some difficulty, I tore myself from my reverie. "What?"

"Don't," Oyohuaca said. The slave-girl sounded frightened.

"I don't understand." The Wind was moving again, picking up speed, straight towards the edge of Tenochtitlan.

"An ahuizotl," I said, aloud. A hundred memories came welling up from my childhood. The water-beasts were Chalchiutlicue's creatures; they lived in the depths of Lake Texcoco, and would drag a man to the bottom, feasting on his eyes and fingernails.

Oyohuaca's face in the moonlight was drained of all colours. "Don't listen to its song."

"I didn't know they sang."

Oyohuaca shook her head. "They don't. Not unless they truly want you. Don't listen," she said, picking up her oars again.

I thought of Huei's spell, which had so bewildered the Wind. It certainly was possible she'd summoned the beast to cover her tracks, in case some more mundane agency attempted to follow her.

How in the Fifth World had she become proficient enough to know all of this?

Oyohuaca and I followed the Wind's trail across the canals of Moyotlan. As the night became older, the houses had become silent and dark, their thatch-roofs wavering in the light of the torch; and the only sounds that came to us were the distant shell-blasts from the Sacred Precinct.

Oyohuaca kept singing her hymn, but now I could discern its urgency: it was her only protection against the ahuizotl. It didn't cover its song, though. That kept insinuating itself in my mind, whispering promises of happiness below the water a easy, it would be so easy to lean over the edge of the boat, lose myself in the Blessed Land of the Drowned...

I came to with a snap, sharply aware of how close I'd come to yielding. The smell of churned mud a and a faint, faint one of rotten flesh a filled my nostrils.

Don't listen, Oyohuaca had said. They don't sing. Not unless they truly want you.

The ahuizotls, like any magical creatures, would be drawn to power: to my own magic, embedded within the obsidian knives in my belt.

Focus. I needed to focus. I closed my eyes and thought of the Wind of Knives, of the dry emptiness of Mictlan, and how it would fill my skin and bones.

The song receded, fading to an insinuating whisper.

I opened my eyes. We were in one of the last canals in the district of Moyotlan. Beyond the houses on the right lay the open expanse of Lake Texcoco. There was no place to hide. Water wouldn't stop the Wind of Knives. Where in the Fifth World had Huei gone?

"Turn right," I told Oyohuaca.

We squeezed through a small canal between darkened houses, and emerged from the maze of Tenochtitlan's waterways onto open water. On the left was the Tlacopan causeway, its broad stone path snaking into the distance; on the right were more Floating Gardens: rows of fields bearing the crops that fed the city.

"And now?" Oyohuaca asked.

The Wind of Knives wasn't far away. No, not far at all. On the nearby bank was the familiar glimmer of obsidian. He wasn't moving. Was He waiting for something? I couldn't see Huei anywhere.

I pointed to the bank. "Leave me here," I said.

The slave Oyohuaca didn't look reassured. In fact, as soon as I'd managed to disembark, she rowed away from the bank, and waited in the midst of the water, away from us.

The Wind of Knives didn't move. Mud squelched over my sandalled feet as I climbed the muddy rise a as cold, I imagined, as the touch of the ahuizotl would have been on my skin.

"Acatl," the Wind of Knives said when I came near him.

I tensed, one hand closing on the hilt of an obsidian knife.

He did not move. He watched something below, in the Floating Gardens: a flickering light on one of the islands. "No need," He said.

"Youa" I started.

"She is out of my reach."

"I don't understanda"

"It is a simple thing," He said, without irony.

"You are justice," I said, slowly, not yet daring to believe that Huei was safe. "You cannot be swayed, or set aside."

"Not by you," the Wind of Knives said. "But there are higher powers than I. Goodbye, Acatl. We shall meet again." He was fading even as He spoke, the obsidian shards receding into the darkness until shadows extinguished their polished reflections.

"Wait!" I said. "You haven't told mea" He hadn't told me anything. But He was gone, or perhaps would not answer to me.

I could summon him again, but I didn't have any of the proper offerings at hand. It would take time: more time than walking down the rise, towards the light that He had been watching.

I signalled to the boat again. After a while, the slave Oyohuaca rowed back. No doubt she had ascertained that the Wind of Knives was truly gone before she would approach again. She was a cautious girl.

"Can you row me to that Floating Garden?" I asked.

Oyohuaca spoke as I painstakingly climbed into the boat. "It's not a Floating Garden," she said.

But... "Then what is it?"

"A temple," Oyohuaca said, picking up her oars again. "To Chalchiutlicue, Our Lady of Lakes and Streams. It's where they host the sacrifices for Her festivals."

The flickering light turned out to be a torch, held by a priestess who kept watch over the temple complex.

It was a simple affair: a long building of adobe, firmly set onto a terrace of stone. Part of it appeared to be a calmecac for hosting the priestesses and the students; and another part of it a the part that hummed with a coiled power I could feel a had to be the shrine to the goddess.

There are higher powers than I, the Wind of Knives had said. It must have taken quick thinking on Huei's part to see that here, under the gaze of the goddess, was a place the Wind couldn't enter, and to reach it in time.

The priestess of Chalchiutlicue raised the torch when I approached. Her severe gaze swept up and down, taking in the whole of who I was. For the second time that night, I found myself wishing I had dressed better. Neutemoc's slaves and Mihmatini had done their best, but maguey-soaked bandages were nothing like the full regalia of a High Priest.

"Yes?" the priestess asked.

"I'm looking for my brother's wife," I said.

Her face shut, as if a veil had been drawn across it. "At this time of the night, the temple is closed to visitors."

"I don't think you understand," I said, slowly, although I suspected she did. "She isn't a student. She came here, about half an hour ago at most."

Her eyes didn't move. "No one came."

A lie. But I wouldn't disconcert her that easily.