Flower of War: The Path of the Mirror
Mar. 22nd, 2006 09:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aithne[I'm a bit behind on this. Let's just say that a couple of stories from now, things are going to start getting all kinds of fucked up.]
Fatigue was beginning to dog Jade's heels. It had been an exceptionally long day, and the morrow promised to be not only long but both physically and emotionally taxing. I ought to try to get some sleep, she thought. Maybe after I talk to Spider.
She longed to talk to Jaguar about her conversation with Mantis, to ask him how he had managed to get through the confusion and the pain that came with realizing that the sacrifices were not what Huitzilopochtli wanted, that the deaths she had caused were meaningless. For the moment, though, her fellow heretic was unreachable. All she wanted was a word, a sign that someone else had gone down this path before and it had not destroyed them.
She found Spider in her rooms, apparently getting ready to go out. She was dressed in rough work clothes, the sort of thing that a man would wear to do dirty jobs in. She grinned as she let Jade in. "Back so soon?"
"I had a question. See what you can make of this--I got it off Eclipse. She said that Mirror gave it to her, and said to keep it close in case of his death. It's evidently the location of something important. It's not magical that I can tell, though it might have something in it that would be triggered by proximity to something it belongs to." She handed the locket she had gotten from Eclipse to Spider, who turned it over in her hands, frowning.
"Oh, here," Spider said, as she dug her thumbnail into a barely-visible seam. "See, this peels right off." She pulled from both halves of the locket a thin layer of flexible metal, with holes where the diamonds were. "It's a city map. That location--" and she pointed at the single diamond--"would be under the new temple that's about to be dedicated. See how the corridors are depicted, there? Strange."
"Perhaps I'll go looking there and see what I find," she said, musing.
Spider nodded and handed her the locket. "As you wish, Jade."
Jade turned to go, and then turned back. "Oh, and I spoke with Mantis. I'm not sure that all is as it seems with him. A very strange man, that one. "
The other woman wrinkled her nose. "He is not all there. Wanted me to be this mysterious woman that he seeks, but one day said, you are not the one and has left me alone ever since."
"Well, since he's looking for the woman who will kill him, or so he thinks, it's probably a good thing he thought better of the idea. I think he's starting to fixate on me." Jade shook her head.
"He does that. Thankfully it is not the sexual type of fixation. Unlike Monkey. That one is a lech."
I wonder. "He is, is he? Good to know. Of course, most men don't know what to make of me, really." She spread her hands and gave Spider a wry smile. It was the simple truth--warriors generally avoided her. The ones who sought her out seemed always to be trying to prove that they were something greater than death, that somehow by sleeping with her they could prove that they were greater than what she represented. After a few of those, Jade had stuck to sleeping with her fellow priests as a matter of policy.
"Yes, Monkey only really cares about his next conquest in the bedroom." Spider grinned. "I have the same trouble as you."
Jade could imagine that she did. If the unnerving information seller had been male, Jade definitely wouldn't ever have been comfortable enough with her to sleep with her. She wondered briefly about Spider's personal life and then stopped herself, almost shivering. She brought herself back to the conversation. "Sounds like a definite weakness, on his part. Who's he friends with among the advisors, do you know?"
She wrinkled her nose. "Pretty much none of the women. I know he brags to Coal a lot about his women. But Coal despises him. Other than that, he bothers Raven quite a bit."
"He's a warrior? What does he generally do for Aziuhoatl, do you know?"
"Warrior, some mage abilities." Spider shifted in her seat. "He does information gathering, I think. He spends a lot of time in the darkside but not with the prostitutes."
Good to know, that. "Interesting. Perhaps I'll run into him. Why does he bother Raven, any idea?"
Spider grimaced. "He thinks that Raven is his friend. Raven just has a high tolerance level for idiots."
"I can see that. Oh, before I go, I was going to ask. Have you heard of a mage who calls herself Fox? She's supposed to be very good, probably at least Coral's equal."
The other woman raised an eyebrow. "I have. She is amazing. She is probably better than Coral."
Jade nodded. "Keep an ear out for her. There's something going on with her, and I don't know what yet. I can't look for her, myself. She has a grievance against me, I hear."
Spider's voice was sharp. "Rumor has it you killed her family on the altar. Jaguar keeps her in check. Otherwise you might be dead already."
She inclined her head, acknowledging the truth of that statement. "So I hear. She appears to have become a bit erratic in the last few days. Whether she's been compromised, or something else is going on, I don't know. I'm hoping she doesn't decide to come after me, she sounds like a very, very bad enemy. And it's not like I can claim I'm innocent."
It was impossible to tell what Spider was thinking from her expression--emotions seemed to flit over her face like clouds driven by high winds. "As long as Jaguar lives, I think you are safe. Rumor has it that she was touched by Spirit. Her abilities have increased greatly in the last few weeks."
Spirit, again. "This Spirit seems to be everywhere, all of a sudden. It makes me wonder if he's not just another nahual. Something more powerful, perhaps." A god, perhaps? It would almost make sense.
"He has to be something more than just a nahual." She shrugged. "What, I don't know."
"There are a lot of things he could be. He could even be a trick that the nahuales are playing, to try to scare people." Spirit as not one but several people was an appealing idea, one that explained some things about him.
"I have considered that as well," Spider said, nodding and wriggling in her seat again.
"Impossible to say. I should go. I will speak with you later, Spider," Jade said, and rose.
Spider waved and then rose herself, going to a box and rummaging through it. "See you."
Summarily dismissed, Jade gauged her energy level. She could go find Boa, she thought, and then possibly take a look at what the locket had revealed. Boa was a dancer, she recalled. Spider, when mentioning her, had called her a dancer rather than a dancer in a House of Joy, which meant that she was likely one of those who were more like acrobats than anything else. There was a place where they gathered, in one of the larger markets, and Jade headed down there.
Boa was easy to find. Jade was pointed to a young woman who looked a little familiar, sitting at the edge of the square, watching a pair of twins who were really quite remarkably flexible perform in the open space. Jade seated herself beside the young woman and said, "Boa? My name is Jade. Can I speak with you for a minute?"
The young woman turned her head. She was thin, her face the kind of pretty that would likely be beautiful in a few years. Jade thought that she didn't look much like her father--and then she moved, shifting to turned towards Jade. How she moved was very reminiscent of Mantis, though she had none of his disturbing presence. "Certainly. Jade, the high priestess?"
"I am that, yes. I remember you--I saw Aziuhoatl take you from the sacrifices, just before you reached the killing stone. I understand your father Mantis asked Aziuhoatl for your life."
Boa nodded. "He did, yes."
Gently, Jade asked, "What were the circumstances surrounding that? How did you come to be a sacrifice in the first place?"
The girl looked away from her, and her curved mouth firmed briefly. "My father was absent for most of my life. My mother described him as crazy. So for years I thought every time I saw the homeless people on the streets that talked to themselves, that one of them was my father. I put it out my mind and became a dancer. Putting on a show for some important people, I came to meet a man that I took a fancy to. It got serious and we were going to start a new life together. He was involved in the underground movement." She shook her head, pain crossing her face. "He died on the altar and I was to go as well. Then suddenly my father shows up, says he is an advisor and he can get me out. A few minutes pass and this large man releases me back to the city."
"Do you have much contact with your father, these days?" she asked.
Boa shrugged. "I have only talked to him once since and that was about a week ago."
"Really? What did he want to talk to you about?"
"He didn't say much. He handed me money, quite a bit of it. Said that change was coming and to use the money to leave the city or to bribe people, if necessary. Told me to go to Mountain if I need anything and then gave me directions to a place in dark side."
Still trying to do what you can, Mantis. "Ah. I notice you're still here, though."
She lifted an eyebrow. "He is crazy, after all."
How much could Jade say here? "I...might not discount his warning quite so lightly. Just my opinion, of course."
"After many years of no contact, it's hard for me to believe much of what he says is real or something he thinks is real." Boa twisted her mouth, and there was anger in her eyes.
Jade could see why this girl would be angry at her father. "I can imagine it would be. Do you have any idea what made him the way that he is?" she asked.
"Mother said he was always a bit paranoid, but he was a warrior, spent time she said as a spy," Boa said. "Then one day, a few days after I was born, he came home after a mission to the north and packed his things. Said he was moving into the palace and not to follow him."
She shook her head. "I think, in his own way, he may have been trying to protect you. He has a very strange way of looking at life. Just between you and me...the portents lately have been troubling, and I have been hearing things that worry me. Your father may be mad, but that doesn't stop him from being right once in a while. However, it's your life."
Boa nodded. "I will wait and see, I think. I still have the money, the advice about Mountain and the address."
"Don't leave it until too late, is all. Thank you, Boa, I think that was all I needed to know." Jade rose and took her leave, walking quickly away from the square.
The stars were out, the moon rising as she walked towards the old Temple. When she reached it, she asked a runner to fetch Shale for her. "I will meet him in his quarters." The boy nodded and ran off, and Jade made her way to Shale's room.
Shale met her at the door. "Jade, I wasn't expecting to see you until tomorrow morning," he said as he opened the door to his room. "What can I do for you?"
She waited until the door was closed behind her to speak. "First, Shale, you can drop the polite act. I'm still Jade. Second, you're a heretic."
He froze. His light eyes narrowed, and he said, "I--"
Jade laughed. "As am I. Huitzilopochtli told me you'd had a certain conversation with him, the same one I had. It's quite a thing, isn't it?"
"You're telling me." He rubbed his forehead. "It's only been a couple of days. God. How long have you known?"
She stopped to think about it. "Today is the third day. Right before I was made high priest, as a matter of fact. There are things happening that you need to know about. And then I'm going to ask for your help."
He sat up from where he had slumped. "My help?"
"I want you to walk into the jaguar's den with me, Shale." She was watching him closely. "I want you to become the newest advisor to Aziuhoatl."
Shale was looking at her as if he couldn't quite believe his eyes. "You're not kidding, are you," he said. "All right, Jade, you'd better fill me in on what's going on."
She did, telling him about Jaguar and the resistance, her promotion, finding out that Ocelot was angling to take the throne, realizing that Aziuhoatl didn't deserve the throne he had. As she talked, she considered Shale, in whose eyes there was beginning to burn a relentless light. Shale and she had been through so much in the last seventeen years, and if there was anyone she trusted absolutely to have her back, it was him. So fierce on the field and in the kill, with an unexpected streak of compassion in him.
There had been a night, years ago, when he had come to her with a confession, one he had never told anyone before and would likely never tell to anyone else. She'd finally understood then why Shale was celibate and always had been, why though they were as close as brother and sister they had never fallen into bed together.
This, now, was one more secret they shared. It felt good to have him on the same side as her once more.
She concluded with, "And so another friendly face among the advisors won't go amiss. But you have to know that this is going to be dangerous. I won't force you."
The light was still in Shale's eyes. "Of course I want in, Jade. Are you crazy? This is a chance to do something about what Huitzilopochtli told me. Plus, like you mentioned, it exempts you from the sacrifices. I managed to avoid it today, but I was dreading tomorrow."
Jade quirked her mouth. "You and me both. I have to sacrifice Molten at dawn." Without stopping to let him express sympathy, she continued. "Let's go introduce you to Aziuhoatl, and get most of your things moved to the palace. We've got work to do."
"What do you want me to do?" he asked as he rose. "Help you dig out more of Ocelot's people?"
"No, I want you to see if you can get close to Teal and Thunder. I'm still occupying myself with the lower ranks, right now. But I need to know what they're doing."
Introducing Shale to Aziuhoatl took little time, and Aziuhoatl accepted her nomination of Shale without complaint. She arranged for his things to be brought to the palace and sent a runner to Mountain to tell him that there was a new advisor.
She left Shale to his own devices then, and slipped out of the palace. The new Temple was only a little way away, and she knew the layout of the place well. She followed the map in the locket as best she could, but was stymied when she came upon a place that the map said should be a corridor but was actually a blank wall. She must have taken a wrong turn--or, wait. Had she?
She knocked on the wall in front of her. It sounded almost hollow. A door? She looked around for a latch or a way to open it, and found a stone that had a subtle imprint of a hand in it. Experimentally, she pushed the stone.
Beside her, the wall moved.
Jade pushed harder, and the stone depressed, the wall swinging outward with a scraping noise. She caught it in one hand and pulled up open farther, enough to admit her. In front of her now was a corridor.
She'd been holding a magical light in her hand, and now she raised her hand so she could see better. There was a handle carved into the stone of the door behind her, and she used it to pull the door shut. No need to advertise that she was in here.
Carefully, she walked down the corridor, stepping lightly. It ended in a large, round room, the floor bare except for a trapdoor in the center. Around the side of the room she was facing were shelves built into the stone, loaded with books and bottles. Behind her, the wall was lined with polished mirrors, reflecting her as she moved.
She glanced up and saw a larger version of the map that was engraved in the locket. There were three crystals in the map, one in the new temple at her approximate location, one in the old temple, and one in the palace. It was difficult to tell exactly where in the palace the crystal was indicating--it was large enough to cover one whole wing of the palace.
Two more places like this one, perhaps? Jade slid into the half-trance that allowed her to see magic emanations. Many of the bottles on the shelves were magical, and there was a glow coming from below that trap door.
Curious, she knelt by the trap door and put her ear to it, listening. There was a sound like rushing water beneath the wood, and she frowned. She pulled up on the door and looked beneath.
It was a pool of swirling blue water, running in a whirlpool-like pattern. The water itself glowed with magic, and Jade frowned. What on earth? Cautiously, she took out a dagger and extended it towards the water.
The water did not react except to part around the blade, and Jade dipped it in to the hilt then pulled it out. There was a faint oily sheen on the obsidian of the knife, and as she watched it seemed to disappear into the dagger.
This was something Jade had never encountered before, and she laid the knife down. There were empty bottles on the shelves, and a pair of leather gloves; carefully, she filled three bottles and set them near the door.
She closed the trap door and went to look at the mirrors on the wall behind her. They were clear and fine, and could probably be used to cast seeing spells on. As she looked over the shelves, she saw that many of them were labeled, and most of them were scrying potions.
Jade was thinking about whether she wanted to take any of them when she heard a noise from down the corridor. It was the scraping sound that the door made when it was opening. She was about to have company.
She closed her hand, dousing her light, and stepped towards the corridor. She flattened herself against a mirror on one side of the opening of the corridor into the room, and held her breath. The door continued to scrape, and a bobbing light told her that someone with a torch had just come into the corridor. Scrape again as the door was closed behind whoever had entered.
Jade forced herself to wait watchfully. Hold, hold, hold-- Footsteps approached and a small woman entered the room.
She was wiry, her arms and legs heavily ritually scarred, much more than Jade's were. Her head was shaved bald, and she moved like a warrior. Jade recalled having someone like this described to her. It was Serpent, an advisor some ways above Jade.
Serpent walked right to the trap door and began to open it, setting her torch down. Choosing to see if she could get the woman to talk, Jade stepped forward, away from the wall. The blade she had dipped in the water was still in her hand. "What are you doing here?" she asked.
The other woman jumped up, swung around and for a moment just stared at Jade. Then seemingly out of nowhere, she produced a knife, which she whipped at Jade. Jade was already in motion, and the dagger cut a good gash in her side, but didn't hit anything vital. She ignored the bloom of pain and closed with Serpent.
Jade slashed out with her own obsidian blade, catching her on the shoulder. She'd meant to make Serpent fall back a step, bring her guard up. But at the moment the blade cut the woman's skin, the water oozed out of it and disappeared into the cut it had left behind.
Serpent stiffened, then doubled over. She collapsed as her body seemed to clench all of its muscles at once, and then a thin whistle escaped her throat as she died.
The silence fell like a blanket in the room, and Jade's ears were ringing with adrenaline. She put a hand over the wound Serpent had given her, and let healing flow into it as she considered the body that lay in front of her.
A quick and thorough search revealed that she carried money, a lot of knives, and a Tlaloc tattoo on one hip. I could bring her to Aziuhoatl, Jade thought. But I think at that point Ocelot would decide that me killing both her and Mirror wasn't just a coincidence. Let's see, how to do this--
She cleaned the dagger that she'd hit Serpent with and then opened the trap door. Kneeling beside it, she thought hard. If she had been dipping a dagger, and her hand slipped on the hilt--Serpent might have tried to catch the dagger without thinking.
And if she'd had an open cut on one of her fingers...that would do nicely. With just a trickle of healing she managed to close the wound she'd given the other woman, then used her own knife to give her a cut on one of her fingers. Then she dropped the dagger into the whirlpool, arranged Serpent with her fingers trailing in the poison, her surprised eyes forever open. She slammed the trapdoor down on her arm, hoping that it would leave at least a little bruising, then backed off and looked critically at her work.
"If anyone but Ocelot finds her, I'm all right. If Ocelot gets her..." The first thing she would do, given this scenario, would be to do some auguries to see if all was as it seemed. She assumed Ocelot would do the same.
She couldn't do anything about it, so instead she picked up her vials, lit her light once more, and retreated, closing the door behind her. Let's see if I can avoid getting myself into any more trouble tonight, she thought. She avoided being seen on her way back to the palace, and managed to make it back to her own room without incident. She nodded at Spear on her way in; evidently, he had been given door duty tonight.
Exhaustion hit her like a rock once she sat down. It was all she could do to pull off her clothes as she lay down and pulled the blanket up over her shoulders. Three hours before dawn, she reminded herself. I'll need to supervise the final preparations...
That was the last she remembered until morning.
She was up at the hour she'd expected to be, met at the doors of the new Temple by nervous acolytes who had brought her regalia for her. She put on the headdress and the short white cape that marked her as one of the leaders of the Temple, the flag that would be drenched in blood before the morning was too much older.
The Temple was in a flurry of activity, with the sacrifices being brought up and stood in line. There were killing stones set up about on every other tier of the pyramid, and four hundred priests would be sacrificing from sunset to midnight.
With a word, she could stop the massacre. It was her Temple. Her rule. Her responsibility.
But if she stopped it, she would put herself openly against Aziuhoatl, which was the last thing she wanted right now. Best let it go.
At dawn, she was standing at the top of the Temple, watching the sky go to rose and then blue in the east. Aziuhoatl stood beside her, and a smile twisting his lips. Jade stood stock still, the quetzal feathers in her headdress and at her wrists and ankles shimmering in the gentle breeze. Her hair was unbound, as was the hair of the four hundred priests below her.
There was no evidence of humanity in her eyes.
As the sun began to come over the horizon, four Temple guards brought Molten, the former high priest, to the killing stone. He didn't look at Jade as he came towards her and Aziuhoatl, as he was bent backwards over the stone. Jade stepped forward, her dagger out. She stopped and looked down at Molten, seeking his gaze. "I accepted the bargain," she said quietly.
She saw the realization of what she meant come over his face, and broke eye contact. Her knife flashed down.
It was over in a matter of seconds, Molten's heart cast into the flame. Her white cape was stained with his blood, and she raised a cry to the rising sun. It was the signal that the rest of the priests had been waiting for, with their own first sacrifices.
Jade was never able to remember the details of the rest of that day. She saw it in flashes, her hair matted with blood as she walked between the sacrifices, making sure that all went as planned. Aziuhoatl performing some of the sacrifices himself, laughing as he did so. The smells of the killing stone, the bodies flung off the edge of the Temple. The way Jade had to become, if only for the day, the person she had been four days ago. And how much she enjoyed that, despite herself, how she reveled in the simplicity of the sacrifice.
Sometime that evening, Ocelot brought Serpent's body to Aziuhoatl, claiming that he had found out that she was a Tlaloc worshiper, and that he'd killed her. He drained the woman's blood, and painted her door and his own with it.
It was an old warrior custom, to take the strength of an enemy by using their blood as paint. It had another meaning, as well: vengeance. A warning that the warrior would stop at nothing to avenge this death. Jade could not remember feeling anything about this when it was told to her; she was still deep in the persona she'd taken on for the sacrifices.
After midnight, when all of the sacrifices had been taken and the cleanup had begun, she had made her way back to her room in the palace. She sank into her pallet and finally, blessedly alone, she had balled her blanket in her hands and buried her face in it.
She screamed herself hoarse, her voice muffled by the blanket, feeling as if she had somehow been wounded somewhere invisible. There were no words to go with the horror at what she had done, and what she'd had to become. She had gone against the wishes of her god, more or less with his permission, but she had still done something she knew he didn't want.
Another stain on her soul, to add to the rest. Another weight to carry.
After she had screamed herself out, she lay on her pallet and closed her eyes. She suddenly missed Jaguar fiercely, wished he was here to talk to. He would understand, she thought. He had been through this. Perhaps he would be able to tell her how to deal with this.
And perhaps--
She banished the thought before it was even half-formed, and closed her eyes.
That night, the nightmares began.
Fatigue was beginning to dog Jade's heels. It had been an exceptionally long day, and the morrow promised to be not only long but both physically and emotionally taxing. I ought to try to get some sleep, she thought. Maybe after I talk to Spider.
She longed to talk to Jaguar about her conversation with Mantis, to ask him how he had managed to get through the confusion and the pain that came with realizing that the sacrifices were not what Huitzilopochtli wanted, that the deaths she had caused were meaningless. For the moment, though, her fellow heretic was unreachable. All she wanted was a word, a sign that someone else had gone down this path before and it had not destroyed them.
She found Spider in her rooms, apparently getting ready to go out. She was dressed in rough work clothes, the sort of thing that a man would wear to do dirty jobs in. She grinned as she let Jade in. "Back so soon?"
"I had a question. See what you can make of this--I got it off Eclipse. She said that Mirror gave it to her, and said to keep it close in case of his death. It's evidently the location of something important. It's not magical that I can tell, though it might have something in it that would be triggered by proximity to something it belongs to." She handed the locket she had gotten from Eclipse to Spider, who turned it over in her hands, frowning.
"Oh, here," Spider said, as she dug her thumbnail into a barely-visible seam. "See, this peels right off." She pulled from both halves of the locket a thin layer of flexible metal, with holes where the diamonds were. "It's a city map. That location--" and she pointed at the single diamond--"would be under the new temple that's about to be dedicated. See how the corridors are depicted, there? Strange."
"Perhaps I'll go looking there and see what I find," she said, musing.
Spider nodded and handed her the locket. "As you wish, Jade."
Jade turned to go, and then turned back. "Oh, and I spoke with Mantis. I'm not sure that all is as it seems with him. A very strange man, that one. "
The other woman wrinkled her nose. "He is not all there. Wanted me to be this mysterious woman that he seeks, but one day said, you are not the one and has left me alone ever since."
"Well, since he's looking for the woman who will kill him, or so he thinks, it's probably a good thing he thought better of the idea. I think he's starting to fixate on me." Jade shook her head.
"He does that. Thankfully it is not the sexual type of fixation. Unlike Monkey. That one is a lech."
I wonder. "He is, is he? Good to know. Of course, most men don't know what to make of me, really." She spread her hands and gave Spider a wry smile. It was the simple truth--warriors generally avoided her. The ones who sought her out seemed always to be trying to prove that they were something greater than death, that somehow by sleeping with her they could prove that they were greater than what she represented. After a few of those, Jade had stuck to sleeping with her fellow priests as a matter of policy.
"Yes, Monkey only really cares about his next conquest in the bedroom." Spider grinned. "I have the same trouble as you."
Jade could imagine that she did. If the unnerving information seller had been male, Jade definitely wouldn't ever have been comfortable enough with her to sleep with her. She wondered briefly about Spider's personal life and then stopped herself, almost shivering. She brought herself back to the conversation. "Sounds like a definite weakness, on his part. Who's he friends with among the advisors, do you know?"
She wrinkled her nose. "Pretty much none of the women. I know he brags to Coal a lot about his women. But Coal despises him. Other than that, he bothers Raven quite a bit."
"He's a warrior? What does he generally do for Aziuhoatl, do you know?"
"Warrior, some mage abilities." Spider shifted in her seat. "He does information gathering, I think. He spends a lot of time in the darkside but not with the prostitutes."
Good to know, that. "Interesting. Perhaps I'll run into him. Why does he bother Raven, any idea?"
Spider grimaced. "He thinks that Raven is his friend. Raven just has a high tolerance level for idiots."
"I can see that. Oh, before I go, I was going to ask. Have you heard of a mage who calls herself Fox? She's supposed to be very good, probably at least Coral's equal."
The other woman raised an eyebrow. "I have. She is amazing. She is probably better than Coral."
Jade nodded. "Keep an ear out for her. There's something going on with her, and I don't know what yet. I can't look for her, myself. She has a grievance against me, I hear."
Spider's voice was sharp. "Rumor has it you killed her family on the altar. Jaguar keeps her in check. Otherwise you might be dead already."
She inclined her head, acknowledging the truth of that statement. "So I hear. She appears to have become a bit erratic in the last few days. Whether she's been compromised, or something else is going on, I don't know. I'm hoping she doesn't decide to come after me, she sounds like a very, very bad enemy. And it's not like I can claim I'm innocent."
It was impossible to tell what Spider was thinking from her expression--emotions seemed to flit over her face like clouds driven by high winds. "As long as Jaguar lives, I think you are safe. Rumor has it that she was touched by Spirit. Her abilities have increased greatly in the last few weeks."
Spirit, again. "This Spirit seems to be everywhere, all of a sudden. It makes me wonder if he's not just another nahual. Something more powerful, perhaps." A god, perhaps? It would almost make sense.
"He has to be something more than just a nahual." She shrugged. "What, I don't know."
"There are a lot of things he could be. He could even be a trick that the nahuales are playing, to try to scare people." Spirit as not one but several people was an appealing idea, one that explained some things about him.
"I have considered that as well," Spider said, nodding and wriggling in her seat again.
"Impossible to say. I should go. I will speak with you later, Spider," Jade said, and rose.
Spider waved and then rose herself, going to a box and rummaging through it. "See you."
Summarily dismissed, Jade gauged her energy level. She could go find Boa, she thought, and then possibly take a look at what the locket had revealed. Boa was a dancer, she recalled. Spider, when mentioning her, had called her a dancer rather than a dancer in a House of Joy, which meant that she was likely one of those who were more like acrobats than anything else. There was a place where they gathered, in one of the larger markets, and Jade headed down there.
Boa was easy to find. Jade was pointed to a young woman who looked a little familiar, sitting at the edge of the square, watching a pair of twins who were really quite remarkably flexible perform in the open space. Jade seated herself beside the young woman and said, "Boa? My name is Jade. Can I speak with you for a minute?"
The young woman turned her head. She was thin, her face the kind of pretty that would likely be beautiful in a few years. Jade thought that she didn't look much like her father--and then she moved, shifting to turned towards Jade. How she moved was very reminiscent of Mantis, though she had none of his disturbing presence. "Certainly. Jade, the high priestess?"
"I am that, yes. I remember you--I saw Aziuhoatl take you from the sacrifices, just before you reached the killing stone. I understand your father Mantis asked Aziuhoatl for your life."
Boa nodded. "He did, yes."
Gently, Jade asked, "What were the circumstances surrounding that? How did you come to be a sacrifice in the first place?"
The girl looked away from her, and her curved mouth firmed briefly. "My father was absent for most of my life. My mother described him as crazy. So for years I thought every time I saw the homeless people on the streets that talked to themselves, that one of them was my father. I put it out my mind and became a dancer. Putting on a show for some important people, I came to meet a man that I took a fancy to. It got serious and we were going to start a new life together. He was involved in the underground movement." She shook her head, pain crossing her face. "He died on the altar and I was to go as well. Then suddenly my father shows up, says he is an advisor and he can get me out. A few minutes pass and this large man releases me back to the city."
"Do you have much contact with your father, these days?" she asked.
Boa shrugged. "I have only talked to him once since and that was about a week ago."
"Really? What did he want to talk to you about?"
"He didn't say much. He handed me money, quite a bit of it. Said that change was coming and to use the money to leave the city or to bribe people, if necessary. Told me to go to Mountain if I need anything and then gave me directions to a place in dark side."
Still trying to do what you can, Mantis. "Ah. I notice you're still here, though."
She lifted an eyebrow. "He is crazy, after all."
How much could Jade say here? "I...might not discount his warning quite so lightly. Just my opinion, of course."
"After many years of no contact, it's hard for me to believe much of what he says is real or something he thinks is real." Boa twisted her mouth, and there was anger in her eyes.
Jade could see why this girl would be angry at her father. "I can imagine it would be. Do you have any idea what made him the way that he is?" she asked.
"Mother said he was always a bit paranoid, but he was a warrior, spent time she said as a spy," Boa said. "Then one day, a few days after I was born, he came home after a mission to the north and packed his things. Said he was moving into the palace and not to follow him."
She shook her head. "I think, in his own way, he may have been trying to protect you. He has a very strange way of looking at life. Just between you and me...the portents lately have been troubling, and I have been hearing things that worry me. Your father may be mad, but that doesn't stop him from being right once in a while. However, it's your life."
Boa nodded. "I will wait and see, I think. I still have the money, the advice about Mountain and the address."
"Don't leave it until too late, is all. Thank you, Boa, I think that was all I needed to know." Jade rose and took her leave, walking quickly away from the square.
The stars were out, the moon rising as she walked towards the old Temple. When she reached it, she asked a runner to fetch Shale for her. "I will meet him in his quarters." The boy nodded and ran off, and Jade made her way to Shale's room.
Shale met her at the door. "Jade, I wasn't expecting to see you until tomorrow morning," he said as he opened the door to his room. "What can I do for you?"
She waited until the door was closed behind her to speak. "First, Shale, you can drop the polite act. I'm still Jade. Second, you're a heretic."
He froze. His light eyes narrowed, and he said, "I--"
Jade laughed. "As am I. Huitzilopochtli told me you'd had a certain conversation with him, the same one I had. It's quite a thing, isn't it?"
"You're telling me." He rubbed his forehead. "It's only been a couple of days. God. How long have you known?"
She stopped to think about it. "Today is the third day. Right before I was made high priest, as a matter of fact. There are things happening that you need to know about. And then I'm going to ask for your help."
He sat up from where he had slumped. "My help?"
"I want you to walk into the jaguar's den with me, Shale." She was watching him closely. "I want you to become the newest advisor to Aziuhoatl."
Shale was looking at her as if he couldn't quite believe his eyes. "You're not kidding, are you," he said. "All right, Jade, you'd better fill me in on what's going on."
She did, telling him about Jaguar and the resistance, her promotion, finding out that Ocelot was angling to take the throne, realizing that Aziuhoatl didn't deserve the throne he had. As she talked, she considered Shale, in whose eyes there was beginning to burn a relentless light. Shale and she had been through so much in the last seventeen years, and if there was anyone she trusted absolutely to have her back, it was him. So fierce on the field and in the kill, with an unexpected streak of compassion in him.
There had been a night, years ago, when he had come to her with a confession, one he had never told anyone before and would likely never tell to anyone else. She'd finally understood then why Shale was celibate and always had been, why though they were as close as brother and sister they had never fallen into bed together.
This, now, was one more secret they shared. It felt good to have him on the same side as her once more.
She concluded with, "And so another friendly face among the advisors won't go amiss. But you have to know that this is going to be dangerous. I won't force you."
The light was still in Shale's eyes. "Of course I want in, Jade. Are you crazy? This is a chance to do something about what Huitzilopochtli told me. Plus, like you mentioned, it exempts you from the sacrifices. I managed to avoid it today, but I was dreading tomorrow."
Jade quirked her mouth. "You and me both. I have to sacrifice Molten at dawn." Without stopping to let him express sympathy, she continued. "Let's go introduce you to Aziuhoatl, and get most of your things moved to the palace. We've got work to do."
"What do you want me to do?" he asked as he rose. "Help you dig out more of Ocelot's people?"
"No, I want you to see if you can get close to Teal and Thunder. I'm still occupying myself with the lower ranks, right now. But I need to know what they're doing."
Introducing Shale to Aziuhoatl took little time, and Aziuhoatl accepted her nomination of Shale without complaint. She arranged for his things to be brought to the palace and sent a runner to Mountain to tell him that there was a new advisor.
She left Shale to his own devices then, and slipped out of the palace. The new Temple was only a little way away, and she knew the layout of the place well. She followed the map in the locket as best she could, but was stymied when she came upon a place that the map said should be a corridor but was actually a blank wall. She must have taken a wrong turn--or, wait. Had she?
She knocked on the wall in front of her. It sounded almost hollow. A door? She looked around for a latch or a way to open it, and found a stone that had a subtle imprint of a hand in it. Experimentally, she pushed the stone.
Beside her, the wall moved.
Jade pushed harder, and the stone depressed, the wall swinging outward with a scraping noise. She caught it in one hand and pulled up open farther, enough to admit her. In front of her now was a corridor.
She'd been holding a magical light in her hand, and now she raised her hand so she could see better. There was a handle carved into the stone of the door behind her, and she used it to pull the door shut. No need to advertise that she was in here.
Carefully, she walked down the corridor, stepping lightly. It ended in a large, round room, the floor bare except for a trapdoor in the center. Around the side of the room she was facing were shelves built into the stone, loaded with books and bottles. Behind her, the wall was lined with polished mirrors, reflecting her as she moved.
She glanced up and saw a larger version of the map that was engraved in the locket. There were three crystals in the map, one in the new temple at her approximate location, one in the old temple, and one in the palace. It was difficult to tell exactly where in the palace the crystal was indicating--it was large enough to cover one whole wing of the palace.
Two more places like this one, perhaps? Jade slid into the half-trance that allowed her to see magic emanations. Many of the bottles on the shelves were magical, and there was a glow coming from below that trap door.
Curious, she knelt by the trap door and put her ear to it, listening. There was a sound like rushing water beneath the wood, and she frowned. She pulled up on the door and looked beneath.
It was a pool of swirling blue water, running in a whirlpool-like pattern. The water itself glowed with magic, and Jade frowned. What on earth? Cautiously, she took out a dagger and extended it towards the water.
The water did not react except to part around the blade, and Jade dipped it in to the hilt then pulled it out. There was a faint oily sheen on the obsidian of the knife, and as she watched it seemed to disappear into the dagger.
This was something Jade had never encountered before, and she laid the knife down. There were empty bottles on the shelves, and a pair of leather gloves; carefully, she filled three bottles and set them near the door.
She closed the trap door and went to look at the mirrors on the wall behind her. They were clear and fine, and could probably be used to cast seeing spells on. As she looked over the shelves, she saw that many of them were labeled, and most of them were scrying potions.
Jade was thinking about whether she wanted to take any of them when she heard a noise from down the corridor. It was the scraping sound that the door made when it was opening. She was about to have company.
She closed her hand, dousing her light, and stepped towards the corridor. She flattened herself against a mirror on one side of the opening of the corridor into the room, and held her breath. The door continued to scrape, and a bobbing light told her that someone with a torch had just come into the corridor. Scrape again as the door was closed behind whoever had entered.
Jade forced herself to wait watchfully. Hold, hold, hold-- Footsteps approached and a small woman entered the room.
She was wiry, her arms and legs heavily ritually scarred, much more than Jade's were. Her head was shaved bald, and she moved like a warrior. Jade recalled having someone like this described to her. It was Serpent, an advisor some ways above Jade.
Serpent walked right to the trap door and began to open it, setting her torch down. Choosing to see if she could get the woman to talk, Jade stepped forward, away from the wall. The blade she had dipped in the water was still in her hand. "What are you doing here?" she asked.
The other woman jumped up, swung around and for a moment just stared at Jade. Then seemingly out of nowhere, she produced a knife, which she whipped at Jade. Jade was already in motion, and the dagger cut a good gash in her side, but didn't hit anything vital. She ignored the bloom of pain and closed with Serpent.
Jade slashed out with her own obsidian blade, catching her on the shoulder. She'd meant to make Serpent fall back a step, bring her guard up. But at the moment the blade cut the woman's skin, the water oozed out of it and disappeared into the cut it had left behind.
Serpent stiffened, then doubled over. She collapsed as her body seemed to clench all of its muscles at once, and then a thin whistle escaped her throat as she died.
The silence fell like a blanket in the room, and Jade's ears were ringing with adrenaline. She put a hand over the wound Serpent had given her, and let healing flow into it as she considered the body that lay in front of her.
A quick and thorough search revealed that she carried money, a lot of knives, and a Tlaloc tattoo on one hip. I could bring her to Aziuhoatl, Jade thought. But I think at that point Ocelot would decide that me killing both her and Mirror wasn't just a coincidence. Let's see, how to do this--
She cleaned the dagger that she'd hit Serpent with and then opened the trap door. Kneeling beside it, she thought hard. If she had been dipping a dagger, and her hand slipped on the hilt--Serpent might have tried to catch the dagger without thinking.
And if she'd had an open cut on one of her fingers...that would do nicely. With just a trickle of healing she managed to close the wound she'd given the other woman, then used her own knife to give her a cut on one of her fingers. Then she dropped the dagger into the whirlpool, arranged Serpent with her fingers trailing in the poison, her surprised eyes forever open. She slammed the trapdoor down on her arm, hoping that it would leave at least a little bruising, then backed off and looked critically at her work.
"If anyone but Ocelot finds her, I'm all right. If Ocelot gets her..." The first thing she would do, given this scenario, would be to do some auguries to see if all was as it seemed. She assumed Ocelot would do the same.
She couldn't do anything about it, so instead she picked up her vials, lit her light once more, and retreated, closing the door behind her. Let's see if I can avoid getting myself into any more trouble tonight, she thought. She avoided being seen on her way back to the palace, and managed to make it back to her own room without incident. She nodded at Spear on her way in; evidently, he had been given door duty tonight.
Exhaustion hit her like a rock once she sat down. It was all she could do to pull off her clothes as she lay down and pulled the blanket up over her shoulders. Three hours before dawn, she reminded herself. I'll need to supervise the final preparations...
That was the last she remembered until morning.
She was up at the hour she'd expected to be, met at the doors of the new Temple by nervous acolytes who had brought her regalia for her. She put on the headdress and the short white cape that marked her as one of the leaders of the Temple, the flag that would be drenched in blood before the morning was too much older.
The Temple was in a flurry of activity, with the sacrifices being brought up and stood in line. There were killing stones set up about on every other tier of the pyramid, and four hundred priests would be sacrificing from sunset to midnight.
With a word, she could stop the massacre. It was her Temple. Her rule. Her responsibility.
But if she stopped it, she would put herself openly against Aziuhoatl, which was the last thing she wanted right now. Best let it go.
At dawn, she was standing at the top of the Temple, watching the sky go to rose and then blue in the east. Aziuhoatl stood beside her, and a smile twisting his lips. Jade stood stock still, the quetzal feathers in her headdress and at her wrists and ankles shimmering in the gentle breeze. Her hair was unbound, as was the hair of the four hundred priests below her.
There was no evidence of humanity in her eyes.
As the sun began to come over the horizon, four Temple guards brought Molten, the former high priest, to the killing stone. He didn't look at Jade as he came towards her and Aziuhoatl, as he was bent backwards over the stone. Jade stepped forward, her dagger out. She stopped and looked down at Molten, seeking his gaze. "I accepted the bargain," she said quietly.
She saw the realization of what she meant come over his face, and broke eye contact. Her knife flashed down.
It was over in a matter of seconds, Molten's heart cast into the flame. Her white cape was stained with his blood, and she raised a cry to the rising sun. It was the signal that the rest of the priests had been waiting for, with their own first sacrifices.
Jade was never able to remember the details of the rest of that day. She saw it in flashes, her hair matted with blood as she walked between the sacrifices, making sure that all went as planned. Aziuhoatl performing some of the sacrifices himself, laughing as he did so. The smells of the killing stone, the bodies flung off the edge of the Temple. The way Jade had to become, if only for the day, the person she had been four days ago. And how much she enjoyed that, despite herself, how she reveled in the simplicity of the sacrifice.
Sometime that evening, Ocelot brought Serpent's body to Aziuhoatl, claiming that he had found out that she was a Tlaloc worshiper, and that he'd killed her. He drained the woman's blood, and painted her door and his own with it.
It was an old warrior custom, to take the strength of an enemy by using their blood as paint. It had another meaning, as well: vengeance. A warning that the warrior would stop at nothing to avenge this death. Jade could not remember feeling anything about this when it was told to her; she was still deep in the persona she'd taken on for the sacrifices.
After midnight, when all of the sacrifices had been taken and the cleanup had begun, she had made her way back to her room in the palace. She sank into her pallet and finally, blessedly alone, she had balled her blanket in her hands and buried her face in it.
She screamed herself hoarse, her voice muffled by the blanket, feeling as if she had somehow been wounded somewhere invisible. There were no words to go with the horror at what she had done, and what she'd had to become. She had gone against the wishes of her god, more or less with his permission, but she had still done something she knew he didn't want.
Another stain on her soul, to add to the rest. Another weight to carry.
After she had screamed herself out, she lay on her pallet and closed her eyes. She suddenly missed Jaguar fiercely, wished he was here to talk to. He would understand, she thought. He had been through this. Perhaps he would be able to tell her how to deal with this.
And perhaps--
She banished the thought before it was even half-formed, and closed her eyes.
That night, the nightmares began.
