"So?" Ceyaxochitl asked.

I shrugged. "His story holds together."

"But you don't like it," she said, as shrewd as ever.

"No," I said. "There's something he's not telling me." And my brother had tried to sleep with a priestess; had tried to cheat on his wife. I was having trouble accepting it. It did not sound like something that would happen to my charmed-life brother.

"Where does the world go, if you can't trust your own brother?" Yaotl asked, darkly amused.

As far as I knew, Yaotl, a captive foreigner Ceyaxochitl had bought from the Tlatelolco marketplace, had a wife a a slight, pretty woman who seldom spoke to strangers a but no other family. At least, not the kind that lived close enough to get him embroiled in their troubles. Lucky man.

"What about the nahual trail?" Ceyaxochitl asked.

"It vanishes into thin air, halfway up a wall no animal could jump."

"Hum," Ceyaxochitl said. "Odd. We've searched every room, and the nahual isn't here."

"They don't just vanish," I said.

"I know," Ceyaxochitl said. She frowned. "We're no nearer finding Priestess Eleuia than we were one hour ago. I'll instruct the search parties to cast a wider net."

She waited, no doubt for my acquiescence. It was an unsettling thought to be in charge of the investigation. Eleuia had been about to become Consort of Xochipilli. This meant that she would have been connected to the Imperial Court, in one way or another. Given the political stakes, I had better be very careful of where I trod; and politics had never been my strength. "Shouldn't you be back at the palace?" I asked her.

Ceyaxochitl snorted. "I can spare one night to help you start. But only one."

I nodded. She'd been clear enough on that. I couldn't fault her for her frankness, even if sometimes she wounded me without realising she did so.

If the blood in the room and on Neutemoc's hands had indeed belonged to Eleuia, time was against us.

"Send them out," I said. "I'll go and talk to Zollin."

THREE.

Dancers When I arrived, the courtyard was deserted again, and the entrance-curtain to Eleuia's room hung forlornly in the breeze. But from the other set of rooms a Zollin's a came light, and the slow, steady beat of a drum. Music, at this hour?

I pulled aside the curtain, and took a look inside.

In a wide room much like Eleuia's, two young adolescents went through the motions of a dance. One was tall, her hair cascading down her back, and the seashell anklets she wore chimed with each of her slow gestures. The other wove her way between the tall one's movements, like water flowing through stone. It was not all effortless: beads of sweat ran down the first dancer's face, and the other one kept whispering under her breath, counting the paces.

The drum-beater was older than either of her dancers: her seamed face had seen many a year, and she kept up her rhythm, even though her eyes were focused on the girls. Smoke hung in the room: copal incense, melding with the odour of sweat in an intoxicating mixture.

I released the curtain. The chime of the bells crashed into the music, a jarring sound that made both dancers come to a halt. The drum-beater laid her instrument on the ground, and looked at me, appraising me in a manner eerily reminiscent of Ceyaxochitl. It was very uncomfortable.

"Priestess Zollin?" I asked her. "I am Acatl."

The drummer nodded. She turned, briefly, to the girls, "That was good. But not enough. A dance should be done without thinking, in much the same way that you breathe." She waved a dismissive hand. "We'll practise again tomorrow."

The girls remained standing where they were, staring at me in fascination.

The older woman's full attention was on me. "The High Priest for the Dead, I suppose. Come to question me. I've had the Guardian already, you know, and you've already arrested a culprit. I don't see what good it will do."

She was sharp. Used to getting her own way, to the point of discarding Neutemoc as of no importance to her. Already, I longed to break some of that pride. She was also singularly unworried, if she could dispense music lessons in the middle of the night, with one of her priestesses missing, or killed.

"One of your priestesses has vanished," I said. "Doesn't thata"

She shrugged. "Why should it interfere with the running of this house? I grieve for Eleuia" a that was the worst lie I'd ever heard, for she made no effort to inflect any of those words, or to put sadness on her face a "but she was only one woman. The education we dispense shouldn't halt because of that."

"I see," I said. "So you think she's dead." I closed my eyes, briefly, and felt the magic hanging around the room like a shroud, clinging to the frescoes of flowers and musical instruments: not nahual, not quite, but something dark, something angry. Zollin was clearly powerful.

"There was so much blood," the tallest dancer said suddenly. Her face was creased in an expression that didn't belong: worry or fear, or perhaps the first stirrings of anger.

"Cozamalotl," Zollin snapped. The girl fell silent, but she still watched her teacher. Her younger companion hadn't moved. A faint blush was creeping up her cheeks.

"Eleuia could still be alive," I said.

"Then go look for her," Zollin said. She was truly angry, and I had no idea why. "Do your work, and I'll do mine."

The Duality curse me if I was going to let her dominate me. "My work brings me here," I said, softly. "My work leads me to ask you why you're not more preoccupied by the disappearance of a priestess in your own calmecac."

Zollin watched me. "She never belonged to this calmecac. It was only a step on her path to better things."

"Becoming Consort?" I asked.

"Whatever she could seize," Zollin said.

Cozamalotl spoke up again, moving closer to Zollin as if she could shield her. "Everyone knows Eleuia grasped at power the way warriors grasp at fame."

The younger dancer did not answer. She was shaking her head in agreement or in disagreement, though only slightly. It seemed that Cozamalotl wasn't only Zollin's student, but her partisan. If Eleuia was indeed dead, or incapacitated, Cozamalotl would have her reward, just as Zollin would.

The Southern Hummingbird blind my brother. How in the Fifth World had he managed to embroil himself in such a bitter power struggle?

I probed further. "So you think someone didn't like what Eleuia was doing?"

Zollin snorted. "No one did. It's not seemly for a woman."

Hypocrite. She condemned Eleuia for her ambition, but she still wanted that office of Consort for herself. I liked Zollin less and less as the conversation progressed, though I couldn't afford to be blinded by resentment if I wanted to solve this.

"Women have few paths open in life," I said, finally, thinking of my own sister Mihmatini, who would be coming of age in a few months, and would either join the clergy or look for a husband of her own.

"But we know our place," Zollin said. "Eleuia's behaviour was hardly appropriate. Flaunting herself before men with her hair unbound and her face painted yellow a red cochineal on her teeth, as if she were still a courtesan on the battlefielda"

"When did she come here?" I asked, knowing I had to regain control of the conversation if I wanted to find anything to help Neutemoc.

Zollin looked bewildered for the first time. "Nine, ten years ago? I'm not sure."

"And how long have you been here?"

"A long time," Zollin said.

"Long enough to feel you should have been Consort, instead of Eleuia?" I asked.

She looked at me with new eyes. Yes. I might look harmless, but I could still wound.

When she answered, some of the acidity was gone from her voice. "Some of us," she said, "take what we have. And we do the tasks we were charged with, and do them well for years. Eleuia was young and inexperienced. But she was alluring. And men like that in a woman."

Of course they did a the warriors, and maybe even some of the priests, though they shouldn't have. And the men, as she had no need to remind me, held the power: the clergy of Xochiquetzal was subordinate to that of her husband, Xochipilli.

"She had power," Zollin went on. "A great mastery of magic, and a reputation won on the battlefield. But all that doesn't make a good Consort of Xochipilli."

"Then what does?" I asked.

"Dedication," Zollin said shortly. "Eleuia's heart wasn't in the priesthood. You could see it was only her pathway to something larger."

"I see," I said. She was only repeating herself. But her final assessment of Eleuia sounded more sincere than everything she'd said before. A woman bent on power a and wouldn't Neutemoc, with his status as a Jaguar Knight, have been a good embodiment of that power? My hands clenched. I wouldn't think about Neutemoc, not now. I couldn't afford to. "What were you doing tonight?"

"None of your concern."

Had she and Neutemoc decided to act together to vex me? "I've had my share of foolish excuses for tonight," I said. "Tell me what you were doing."

It was the dancer Cozamalotl who answered. "She was with us," she said. "Teaching us the proper hymns for the festivals."

Given the slight twitch of surprise on Zollin's face, that was clearly a lie.

"I see," I said, again. "Would you swear to that before the magistrates?"

She gazed at me, defiant, but it was Zollin who spoke. "Cozamalotl," she said. "The penalty for perjury is the loss of a hand. Don't waste your future."

Cozamalotl did not look abashed, not in the slightest. Her young companion, though, was bright red by now, and looked as if she wanted to speak but couldn't get the words past her lips. I would have to talk to her later.

"Ia" Cozamalotl started.