I managed to utter words, through chattering teeth. "You can... see."

"Yes," the Wind of Knives said. His voice was like the water of the cenote, dark, without warmth or sunlight. "I see."

Before I could say anything more, He flowed, fluid, inhuman, towards the star-demon.

The creature had turned, its pale head shifting between the Wind of Knives and Manatzpa, who had pulled himself on an elbow and was daubing Echichilli's blood into the beginning of a huge arc around himself, chanting all the while in harsh words I couldn't make out. The dim light glinted against the tears in his eyes.

The Wind of Knives met the star-demon with a screeching sound, obsidian blades sliding on shell rattles. They fought each other, flowing across the room in an embrace. Obsidian shards glinted. Here and there pale fragments of skin flashed blue in the darkness as they moved past, again and again, spraying drops of Echichilli's blood all over the room like warm rain. It was almost hypnotic, that play of colours, of darkness on light, if the consequences hadn't been so absurdly terrifying...

"Acatl-tzin!" Teomitl screamed.

With growing horror, I realised that the star-demon was coming straight at me. Behind it, the Wind of Knives lay pinned to the floor by something jagged and white a a huge fragment of shell under which the Wind struggled to free Himself.

Of course. It thought to kill me, and thus cut the Wind of Knives' link to the Fifth World.

It was almost close enough to touch, Its eyes held me, and my hands started to shiver and contract. I held onto the knife, to the stretched emptiness of Mictlan, the only part of my body that seemed not to writhe in pain.

Teomitl bypassed me, his macuahitl sword at the ready. He moved more slowly as the star-demon's gaze transferred to him, but his features became harsher, the whites of his eyes glazing into green. His sword came up, hundreds of obsidian shards glittering in the light, ready for a strike.

The star-demon was faster. It sidestepped in a rattle of shells, and threw itself at me.

I went down in a tangle of flailing limbs, fighting to regain control of my own body. Up close, it seemed almost human, its face as pale as a corpse, with the bluish tinge of death, its cheeks swollen and tinged with black spots, its eyes without corneas or pupils...

The Wind of Knives was still down. Manatzpa was still chanting, but it did not seem to be having any effect on the star-demon. I was the only one who could save myself...

Fighting all the while, I raised the knife, sank it into whatever I could reach. It howled, but remained upon me. I watched its hands rise as if from a great distance. The fingers curled into claws as sharp as broken obsidian, tiny stars at the joints that were also the eyes of monsters. The claws fell, and swiped across my chest, opening my flesh in a flower of pain.

The star-demon howled, shaking its head. Through the growing haze, I saw Teomitl's face, transfigured into jade. He was going to strike again, and I couldn't remain inactive. I tried to roll over, but my chest felt as if it was splitting open. I raised my hand again, flailing, desperately trying to focus on what I needed to do. The blade of the knife quivered in a blur of black reflections as I drove it up to the hilt into the star-demon's chest.

The blade slid into its flesh without resistance, as if there had been no substance to it at all. Something warm and pulsing fell over me, a suffocating river that smelled of cold, dry earth, nothing like blood. Every one of its eyes closed for a moment, leaving us in darkness, and then they opened again, and its claws swept down, faster than I could follow.

Everything went dark in a burst of pain.

TEN.

Aftermath I woke up, tried shifting, and almost screamed when the pain in my chest flared again.

"Don't move, Acatl-tzin." Teomitl's face swam into focus, his skin dark brown again, all traces of the goddess purged from him.

I managed to shift my gaze down to see my chest swathed in a mass of bandages. That feeling of emptiness was still there, and I wasn't sure any more whether it was the hole left by Axayacatltzin's death, or simply a remnant of the magic of Mictlan that had arced through me as I stabbed upwards.

"If I'm still here, I imagine it's gone?"

Teomitl nodded. "Disappeared the moment it was stabbed. Couldn't have done it without the Wind of Knives, though."

The Wind. I could no longer feel Him in my mind. He had vanished at the star-demon's death.

I lay back, and breathed a sigh of relief.

Teomitl's face hovered between horror and fascination. "That's what we have to deal with?"

"A lot more of them, yes," I said. If only Quenami had seen that, even he would have had to admit that this was a genuine threat.

I pulled myself upwards cautiously. The surroundings were unfamiliar. Frescoes depicted the triumphant march of Huitzilpochtli across the marshes, our enemies trampled underfoot, the sorcerer Copil vanquished and his heart torn out, the founding of Tenochtitlan after two hundred years of wandering and our rise to glory. "Wherea?"

"Manatzpa's rooms," Teomitl said. "A different part. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some ahuizotls to send away." He frowned. "The other high priests are at Tizoc-tzin's banquet. I've sent for a priest of Patecatl. He'll be here any moment."

Healing spells required a heavy sacrifice to obtain, their cost all but restricted their use to the Imperial Family. "I'm not sure..."

Teomitl's face was pale, but determined. "You're High Priest for the Dead in Tenochtitlan, Acatl-tzin. Of course he'll come."

Of course. I lay back, feeling infinitely weary. "Thank you. Just go see to those ahuizotls before the screaming starts."

I watched him leave and reflected that he could have sent the ahuizotls away from the room; this meant he had something else to do, something he didn't want me to be privy to. I wasn't sure I wanted to know, in my current state.

A tinkle of bells at the entrance-curtain heralded the entrance of Manatzpa, who was carrying a tray with two bowls of warm chocolate. His own wounds were bandaged, but he walked very carefully, as if the least sudden movement would take him apart.

"I thought you worse off." I managed to pull myself up into a sitting position, wedged against the wall.

He didn't smile. "We both have looked better." He set the tray between us, and sat down facing me. "But, no, it just knocked me out." His lips curled upwards. "A good thing your student is strong."

There was an expression in his eyes I couldn't quite read; as if he had some strong feeling that he was trying to hide from me, either hatred or fear or... "He's your candidate, isn't he?"

Manatzpa looked away. "He's young." His voice was toneless. "A minor, inexperienced member of the Imperial family, with only one prisoner to his name, and a reputation as an uncontrollable element dabbling in sorcery. And he won't have a chance to improve it before the coronation war."

"So you won't vote?"

"You already know what I think of the other candidates." Somehow my questioning appeared to have put him off. He pushed a bowl towards me. The bitter smell of cacao, mingled with that of spices and vanilla, wafted up to my nostrils, tantalising.

"And you know..."

He made a quick, stabbing gesture with his hand, and grimaced as he was reminded of his wounds. "I know, Acatl-tzin, I know. But, as I said before, I'd rather have a good leader than the first that came to mind."

"Even after seeing this?"

For a moment, anger stole across his stately features. "I won't forget what happened to Echichilli, or leave it unpaid. But I'll stand by what I believe."

Perhaps I was deluding myself, then. If even such a measured man as Manatzpa could bring himself to wait, having seen what a stardemon could do, then how would I stand a chance of convincing Quenami or Tizoc-tzin that we had to choose a Revered Speaker now?

Manatzpa drained his bowl in one gulp. He still appeared angry; at my questions, or at Echichilli's death? "I disturb you. I'll leave you to your rest. We'll have visitors soon enough."

Left alone, I drank my own chocolate, enjoying the familiar hint of bitterness taste on my tongue before the chilli overwhelmed it. Manatzpa's rooms were as devoid of furniture and ornaments as Teomitl. No wonder he liked his nephew enough to support him for the Turquoise-and-Gold Crown.

All the same...

Something felt wrong, and I couldn't have said what. A premonition, such as the ones the adepts of Quetzalcoatl sometimes received? But I did not worship the Feathered Serpent, or claim any more than a distant allegiance to Him. Perhaps just the wounds and the lightness in my whole body, which would have been enough to make any man feel moody? But, no, it wasn't that.

My mind could not seem to focus on anything. It drifted, watching the frescoes blur and merge into each other. Huitzilpochtli's blue-striped face loomed larger and larger, shifting into the grin of a star-demon, and the darkness swarmed over me and swallowed me whole.

In my dreams, I stood on one of the hills around Tenochtitlan, garbed as a High Priest in my cloak embroidered with owls and the skull-mask over my face.

By my side stood other high priests, Quenami in jaguar skins and Acamapichtli with his heron-plumes, and others, lesser ones I could not recognise. Above us were the stars, blinking slowly and coldly; and they were coming down, one by one, trails of light against the dark sky, growing larger and larger, until we could see the eyes in the joints of their elbows and knees, feel the cold of their passage. The sun had faded into darkness, and the earth underneath rumbled, splitting itself apart...

There was a chant, in the background, harsh, sibilant words in a language that I had heard before and couldn't place. And then, as everything split apart in a shower of sparks, I could finally make it out.

"From darkness I call you For the broken, for the discarded For the imprisoned, wailing in the world below The world is desiccated bones, twisted and gaunt faces It is the time of my mastery The opening of my reign."

And I knew, too, where I had heard them: they were the words of the invocation Manatzpa had been attempting to make to defend himself against the star-demon a words no one but a devotee of She of the Silver Bells should have been able to use.

I woke up with a start, my heart hammering painfully against the confines of my chest. I felt stiff and sore; but when I attempted to move I only felt the dull, distant pain of healed wounds. It looked as if the priest of Patecatl had indeed come, and healed me while I was asleep a leaving me whole but weak and drained of everything. Great.

The dream remained hovering at the edges of my mind. But, like ice brought from the mountains, it thawed, leaving its revelations mercilessly clear.

Manatzpa. No wonder he had been angry when I had questioned him about his allegiances; no wonder he was willing to temporise, if it would buy the return of his goddess a to lie, to smile, to poison Ceyaxochitl to prevent her from prying any further.

Which meant...

I cast a glance at the empty bowl. I wasn't feeling any worse, but Ceyaxochitl had not felt the symptoms for a few hours after her return. There was no tellinga Enough. If he had poisoned me a and I could not see why he would take such a risk, not when he had defused my suspicions so deftly with the mention of Teomitl a then there was nothing I could do. Yaotl had said there was no antidote.

In the meantime... in the meantime, I lay alone, exhausted and defenceless with a sorcerer, a murderer and a poisoner as my sole company.

The Duality curse me, where were the other high priests when you needed them?

There was no way in the Fifth World I could get out discreetly. In my current weakened state I wouldn't stay up long, and Manatzpa would catch up with me fast.

Not to mention the possibility he'd summon a star-demon, of course. But, even keeping to mundane happenings, the odds did not look good.

If the priest of Patecatl had already come, then the only person I was still waiting for was Teomitl a but he still hadn't come back.

I was going to need all of the gods' luck if I wanted to survive the night.

I must have slept, sliding in and out of consciousness, waking up with a vague dread before remembering my predicament, muttering confused prayers and letting darkness overtake me again. I dreamt of coldly amused stars watching me, of the gods turning Their faces away from the city, of Tizoc-tzin's coronation under the Heavens where shone a bright, cold moon that kept growing larger and larger against the thunderous rattle of huge bells...

I woke again, and the sky through the pillars was grey. Huitzilpochtli grinned at me from the frescoes, far away and powerless, resting in the heartland with no care for us. The air was bitterly cold. I shivered, and drew my cloak closer around me.

"I see you're awake."

I had half-expected the voice, what I had not expected was that it would come from so close to me. It took all the nerves I possessed not to jerk in surprise. "Manatzpa?"

He was sitting across from my sleeping mat. A bowl of maize porridge lay between us, along with dried algae. His face in the dim light was unreadable. "I brought you breakfast."

"Someone..." I fought to part my tongue from the palate where it seemed to have become stuck. "Someone has come."

Manatzpa looked curious. "Yes. The high priests, the She-Snake and the Master of the House of Darts. They brought a priest of Patecatl with them, but couldn't wake you up even after the healing. I told them it wasn't worth disturbing you."

Quenami, Acamapichtli, the She-Snake and Tizoc-tzin a all the help I could have expected, but he had sent them away. No one would come back before daybreak. "And Teomitl?"

Manatzpa's eyes narrowed. Did I seem too eager to leave? He could not possibly have guessed that I knew. "I feel like I'm imposing on you," I said, with what I hoped was my most embarrassed smile.

"Not at all." His lips curled up, in that peculiar approximation of a smile. "Anything for the High Priest for the Dead. It's people like you that keep us safe."

He would know, of course. I lowered my gaze, as if embarrassed. In reality, I was wondering if Teomitl had come or not, if I could expect him.

Not that it mattered. I made as if to rise, but could not find the strength.

"Acatl-tzin." Manatzpa shook his head. "Surely you can't think of leaving so soon. Look at yourself."

"I have duties," I gasped, falling back on the sleeping mat.

"Your duties can wait." His eyes were dark, knowing. "Have some maize porridge."

And some poison? "I don't feel very hungry," I started, but when I saw the shadow steal across his face, I knew I'd gone too far. If he hadn't been suspicious before, he was now. "But I do appreciate all the trouble you're going through for my sake." I reached across, took the bowl, and raised it to my lips, hoping that I wasn't courting my own death.

The porridge was hot and spicy; my lips tingled from the first sip, but surely it was just my imagination? It couldn't possibly be that fast-acting.

Better not tempt luck, though. I took a few sips, made a face like a sick man who has discovered he can't stomach food so soon, and carefully laid the bowl down again. "I'd have thought a man of your stature would have slaves," I said.

Manatzpa shrugged, an expansive gesture that racked his whole frame. "I have several, but they're often on errands. I'm young enough to take care of myself, Acatl-tzin."

He sounded uncannily like Teomitl. If circumstances had been different, I might even have liked him. As it was...

Manatzpa was looking at me, his gaze thoughtful, as if trying to work out something. "Is anything wrong?" I asked.

His lips thinned to a pale brown line against the dark skin of his face, as if he were angry, or amused. "Nothing is wrong, Acatl-tzin. I just have many things to do, as I have no doubt you have."

I inclined my head, inhaling the sharp, spicy smell of the maize porridge. "I have no doubt the council will be in a panic after what happened last night."

Manatzpa's face did not move. "Two deaths in so little time. Yes, that would be cause for concern." He gestured again towards the bowls. "You've barely eaten anything, Acatl-tzin. Please."

His eyes were too eager, too hungry. That was when I knew for sure that there was something in that porridge, something he wanted me to consume. My lips itched again, as if blood had just returned to numb flesh. Was that what had happened with Ceyaxochitl? "I've already told you," I said, very carefully. "I feel like my stomach has been overturned." I pointed to the bandages on my chest. "That tends to cut the appetite." It was hardly a lie. In the past few moments, the feeling of emptiness had seemed to increase a hundredfold a not like the coming of a star-demon, but as if the existing hole in the centre of the Fifth World had spread a had become a maw, sucking me into its depths.

"I see." Manatzpa's lips curled up again. He didn't believe a word of it. "But you need it, believe me." His voice was flat, his eyes as dull as quarried stone. "If necessary, I'll force it down your throat."

My heart missed a beat; I tried to convince myself I'd misheard, but I knew I hadn't. "Manatzpa."

He knew. The sensation of emptiness was increasing in my chest. A hollow grew in my stomach, as if dozens of lumps of ice were forming there.

Manatzpa's face had changed; contempt and hatred filled the emptiness of his eyes, but he had it under control again in a heartbeat, becoming once again the harmless, round-faced man I'd first met. That was more frightening than anything I'd seen that night. "Let's not dance around each other like warriors at the gladiatorial sacrifice, Acatl-tzin. You know I can't possibly let you walk out of this room alive."