Nevertheless... Nevertheless, accidents could happen, and he was canny enough; and he had his own goals. Axayacatl-tzin's warning still echoed in my head. What need was there to take risks? I was already doing enough accepting Nezahual-tzin's help, why did I need to further abase myself?

But I couldn't shake the memory of the star-demon's taint on Tizoc-tzin, and the way his fear seemed to have eaten him, not only fear for his life, but the annoyance of someone denied a treasure in his grasp.

"I'll send that messenger," I said.

The She-Snake sent for two spiders a not the small harmless ones in our houses, but the ones found in the southern jungles a hairy and twice as big as my open hand. He took them as if they were pets, stroking them gently in a way that made me distinctly uncomfortable. For all that they were Lord Death's animals, connected to darkness and the end of all things, it was no reason to favour them so much.

"I'm not sure I understand," I said, watching him cut into his earlobes to draw a circle on the ground.

He smiled. "We're not invited where I'm taking you, Acatl. Better make sure we're not seen."

"You know a spell of invisibility?" I asked. I had never heard of one. I'd been told by Lord Death that it would cost Him too much power, but I had always wondered whether there wasn't a deeper, more selfish reason for this. Such a spell would have removed the wearer from the sight of all creatures, including the gods and Their agents. And I would imagine the gods wouldn't want to have mortals blundering around where They couldn't see them.

"In a manner of speaking," the She-Snake said. "Come in the centre, will you?" The blood on the ground was already shimmering, as if reflecting the light of the stars above.

Axayacatl-tzin's warning echoed once more in my head, but I silenced it.

He sacrificed both spiders in a swift, professional way. Of course, he was the She-Snake, and would have taken the lead in the major sacrifices while the Revered Speaker was away on the battlefield. Their blood was not red, but rather an amber ichor that coated his hands like glue, dull and dark, as if it were eating the starlight.

However, when he started his hymn, it was to a goddess I had never heard of.

"In darkness You dwell In darkness You thrive You of the shell skirt, You of the star skirt..."

Smoke spread inside the circle, rising from the She-Snake's hands a warm and smelling of herbs, a pungent odour that reminded me of something infinitely familiar, and yet that I could not place. What goddess was this? It almost sounded like Itzpapalotl, the large star-demon who had consumed Manatzpa's soul before disappearing under the Great Temple. But it couldn't be. It couldn't possibly be.

"You of the large teeth, You of the shrivelled mouth Darkness Your inheritance, darkness Your kingdom Darkness that hides Darkness that smothers."

The smoke thinned, flowing out, but it remained on the edges of my vision. I tried shaking my head, but it was as if it had become stuck to my cornea. Its tendrils shifted on the edges of my vision, and never left no matter what I looked at. Magic crept along the nape of my neck, cold and unforgiving, almost like underworld magic, but without its comforting familiarity. It wasn't the resigned acceptance of a god who took whatever dead souls were left to Him, but the endless hunger of something that lived between the stars, something that had been there since the start, and would be there in the end, that would see the night swallow us all, our hymns and our poems, our flowers and our songs, our fires and our blood-offerings, and make us all as nothing.

What goddess had the She-Snake called upon?

"Come," the She-Snake said, bending his head with a smile. His grey eyes had become bottomless pits in the darkness, a window into the deepest cold, the one that had settled across the world before the Fifth Sun had risen.

I followed because I no longer had any choice; but my fingers clenched around the obsidian knife at my belt, feeling the arc of Lord Death's power, a reassurance that I wasn't alone, come what may.

We walked through the palace, and it was as if we had become ghosts. No one, not a single slave, not a single servant or nobleman turned to look at us. It seemed to me, too, that we were moving faster than we should have been. We passed the House of Animals in what seemed barely a heartbeat, and were in the other half of the palace, the one belonging to the Revered Speaker, before I could even accustom myself to this strange magic.

The She-Snake was already walking ahead, into a courtyard I would have recognised anywhere a Tizoc-tzin's.

Like the previous time, it was deserted and silent; but this time the palpable smell of neglect became something else, a thin veneer over decay and rot and fear. As I climbed the stairs in the SheSnake's wake, I saw traces of blood clinging like black splotches to the limestone, and the smoke spread to wreathe the whole building, making it seem pallid and distant.

Inside, the same silence, the same smell. The She-Snake crossed between the pillars, hardly looking up to avoid them. He stopped at the back of the room, by a window overlooking the tropical garden. To the left was an entrance-curtain, the bells tinkling out a muted lament.

"Here."

"I don't seea" I started.

"Go inside," the She-Snake said, bowing his head. "And ask me any questions you might have, afterwards."

I threw him a suspicious glance. But if he wanted to kill me this was a singularly complicated way to go about it. Suppressing a sigh, I lifted the entrance-curtain. It slid between my fingers like raindrops; I hissed in surprise, but then took the smarter approach, and merely pushed through it. It was like walking through a waterfall, a little resistance, like the crossing of a veil, and then nothing more.

Inside, the room should have been a riot of colours. Vivid frescoes, and luxuries such as feather-fans and bronze braziers lay piled on reed mats; but they were muted by the smoke, highlighting the impermanence of such a gluttonous display of wealth.

Tizoc-tzin sat on a reed mat in the further corner; and the silhouette by his side, with the blue feather head-dress, could only be Quenami. He wasn't a particularly tall man, but even seated he seemed to tower over the hunched figure of Tizoc-tzin.

I dared not creep too close to their whispered conversation a Quenami, for all his bluster, was High Priest, and might have a way of seeing me a but the smoke was making it difficult for me to hear: it cut their words into four hundred meaningless pieces, carried away by the cold wind between the stars.

"...crown... mine..."

"...Lord of Men... sacrifice... regrettable deaths, but necessary..."

"...that they would dare disobey..."

Carefully, I walked closer. Quenami stiffened. I stopped, my heart hammering against my throat, but he relaxed again, and bent closer to Tizoc-tzin.

Southern Hummingbird blind me, why did he always find a way to thwart me?

Closer... The smoke whirled around me; the world shifted and blurred, a prelude to being torn apart.

"You worry too much, my lord," Quenami was saying, smooth and smiling. I was close enough to see the paint on his face, the jade, obsidian and carmine rings on his fingers, made almost colourless by the smoke.

Tizoc-tzin shivered, and did not answer. He was staring at a cup of hot chocolate; the bitter, spicy smell wafted up to me, not pungent but oddly muted, as if the smoke plugged my nose.

Quenami went on, "Everything is going according to plan."

I didn't like the idea that those two had a plan. "You call this a" Tizoc-tzin's voice was a hiss a according to plan? No wonder priests are such appalling strategists."

Quenami's face went as smooth as carved jade. "You're tired, my lord."

Tizoc-tzin looked up sharply. For a heartbeat I thought he was looking straight at me, but he was merely staring at Quenami, his face tense. "Yes," he said, thoughtfully. "You're right. I grow weary of this nightmare, Quenami." He lifted his cup of chocolate: the bitter smell wafted up stronger, as unpleasant as a corpse left alone for too long. I shook my head to clear the smell; the tendrils moved across Quenami's arms and hands in an unsettling effect. And as the smoke shifted, so did their voices, receding into the background.

"...over soon..." Quenami was saying. "Tomorrow... opposition removed quite effectively..."

What was happening tomorrow? What opposition? I needed to know. I bent further, and all but lost my balance as Quenami shifted positions. My hand passed a finger's breadth away from his head. He stopped, then, looked around him suspiciously. One of his hands drifted downwards, to pick an obsidian knife from his belt.

Time to go. I didn't know whether his spell would be effective, but I had no intention of finding out.

When I came out, the She-Snake was waiting for me, sitting on his haunches on the platform, watching darkness flow across the courtyard, as if it were the most natural thing in the Fifth World.

I said, slowly, "It can't be true. He wouldn't darea" Do what, exactly? I hadn't heard much, but the little Quenami had said had made it clear those two were no longer playing by any rules I might have known. "It's some trick of your spell."

"No tricks," the She-Snake said. "Do you think me capable of inventing something that complicated? I'm a much more straightforward man than you take me for, Acatl."

"It's not what Axayacatl-tzin thought," I blurted out.

"He had his own opinions; and he had lived for too long in my father's shadow."

"Fine," I said. But I couldn't trust him. I couldn't possibly face the enormity of what he had shown me. "Then tell me Whose protection we are under, tonight."

"Do you not know?" the She-Snake said. "Ilamantecuhtli."

"The Old Woman, She who Rules?" I asked. The title meant nothing to me.

"Another aspect of Cihuacoatl, the She-Snake." He smiled when he saw my face. "Did you think my title was purely honorific? I serve a goddess, as much as the Revered Speaker serves Huitzilpochtli."

"The goddess ofa"

He smiled again. "There is a temple, in the Sacred Precinct, the walls of which are painted black. Its entrance is a small hole, and no incense or sacrifices ever trouble the quietude. Inside are all the vanquished gods, the protectors of the cities we conquered, kept smothered in the primal night. The name of that temple is Tlillan."

Darkness. "And youa"

He looked at me, and his eyes were bottomless chasms. "In the beginning was darkness, and in the end, too. She is the space between the stars, the shield that keeps us safe."

"And She is on our side?"

"As much as a goddess can take sides."

"Why would she be?"

"I told you. She is darkness, anathema to all light. She holds our enemies to Her withered bosom." The She-Snake rose, staring into the sky above.

"Huitzilpochtli is light," I said. The only light, the one that kept the Fifth World safe and warm, the earth fertile and the rain amenable.

"Every great light must cast a great shadow. And every shadow knows it cannot exist, without that light."

"I still can'ta"

"It was not illusion." His voice was grave. "Think on it, Acatl, think on what you have seen. Think on what and whom you believe in."

I didn't know, not anymore.

FIFTEEN.

A Prayer to Quetzalcoatl I walked back to my house in much the same state as a base drunkard, one foot in front of the other, scarcely able to focus on where I was going. The tendrils of smoke were slowly dissipating, taking with them the coldness at the back of my neck. But the memory remained, of the She-Snake's face, pale against the darkness he had summoned, of Tizoc-tzin, hunched and frightened, of Quenami, plotting the gods knew what magic to dispatch his opponents.

Inside my house I all but collapsed on the reed mat. My sleep was dark and restless; I woke up several times, gasping for air, my eyes hunting vainly for any light that would dissipate the shadows gathering at the edge of my field of view, and fell back again into darkness, oblivion swallowing me whole.

When I woke up for good, the grey light before dawn suffused the room, and the long, pale shadows seemed too distorted and unreal to be much of a threat. I sat cross-legged on my sleeping mat, breathing deeply, until my heart stopped beating like a sacrificial drum within my chest.

"Think on what you have seen, Acatl. Think on what and whom you believe in."

The Southern Hummingbird blind me, this looked to be the worst in a series of bad days.

I made my offerings of blood to the Fifth Sun and to my patron Mictlantecuhtli, then strode into the courtyard, determined to find Nezahual-tzin, locate Xahuia and put an end to the whole sordid business before the council started to vote.

However, I had not expected Quenami, who, by the looks of him, had been sitting under the pine tree in my courtyard for a while. "Ah, Acatl," he said. "We need to talk."

I raised an eyebrow. "That sounds ominous."

Quenami shook his head, annoyed. "Between high priests, that is." As usual, he made me want to hit something.

"Have you decided to play your part in the order of the Fifth World, then?" I asked, unable to restrain myself. "That would be novel indeed."

"Oh, Acatl." Quenami shook his head, a little sadly. "Such lack of tact. You are so unsuited for the Court. "

"Perhaps," I said. "But I don't intend to shy away from my responsibilities."

"I'm glad," Quenami said.