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aithne[This is the story in which everything gets blown all to hell. Literally. Poor Jade.]
At the little stone house in the swamp, Jade raised her hand and knocked on the wood of the door. "Hello? Is anyone home?"
Within, she heard footsteps, and the door opened. Walker gestured at her. "Jade, come in."
As she did so, she glanced around. Jaguar was not present and she felt a bit of disappointment, then confusion. She hadn't realized that she was looking forward to seeing him. She turned to Walker and bowed slightly. "I spoke with Thunder. He--told me a few things."
Walker smiled. "Ah, good. What did he leave out? Dragging words from him is like pulling teeth."
"I noticed," she said ruefully. "Well, let's see. He said you sent him to get Monkey and the bottle from my room--thank you for that, by the way. I am in your debt. He also said that...you had claimed me. In a manner of speaking. And that you were his teacher. And I can evidently summon hummingbirds."
The mage chuckled. "Not all that useful, but it's a start. A bit of training, I can get you up to at least a sparrow."
Jade smiled and shrugged. "Well, it saved my life once, but it's unlikely to do that again. He also said that he was working on bringing Ocelot down."
"We are. Aziuhoatl, too, really. But Ocelot first."
She nodded. "Aziuhoatl comes down first and it all comes unraveled."
"Yes, it will. This all becomes a problem if Ocelot kills Aziuhoatl before we can get to Ocelot."
"I've been getting closer, but I haven't yet found an opening."
"He is hard to get to," Walker said as he took a seat in one of the chairs. Jade sat down cross from him. "Thunder is the only one that can with any regularity."
Jade asked a question that had been bothering her since Thunder had told her that his mission was to destroy Ocelot. "What's stopping Thunder? I imagine there's something--he strikes me as very determined."
Walker made a wry face. "Thunder wouldn't last ten minutes with him."
"I'd say he wouldn't need ten minutes, but I imagine Ocelot is hard to sneak up on."
"Very, the man layers magic on him."
Jade thought about how se would go about layering protective spells for the best effect. Yes, someone as strong as Ocelot would be very difficult indeed to sneak up on. Unless... "I imagine this is where I would come in."
Walker nodded. "Yes, it needs to come down. And you have the best chance of bringing it down. "
It was Jade's turn to make a face. "I'm strong, but I don't know if I'm that strong yet."
"Time is what you need, and that is what we lack," he said. "But there is an advantage. We need to keep him off-balance."
"I don't know the man enough to know how to accomplish that. I expect you have an idea or three." She sighed, thinking about it. "God, if only I could convince Aziuhoatl to cool it on a few things for a while. You say the wrong thing around him, though, and you're dead."
"Then make someone else do it. Coral comes to mind. She has his ear and some other body parts."
Jade chuckled. "Before about a couple of hours ago, I would have told you that I didn't have any leverage with Coral. I think I might now, though." If Coral were a nahual, Jade could probably get her to at lest open her mind to the possibility.
"Make her convince him. And all you have to do is convince her."
She thought about it. "Hm. Maybe. Convincing her may be easier said than done, but I'm sure I can do something. If Aziuhoatl backs off on some of the things he's doing, Ocelot may back off as well, maybe thinking Aziuhoatl has something up his sleeve."
Walker nodded. "It's an escalation process and if you can get them to calm down a bit, we can buy more time."
"Especially with the nahuales and the resistance, and his search for worshipers of Tlaloc. That might give me time to learn how to use this talent of mine when I'm not terrified out of my mind. Speaking of, I assume I need to come out on a regular basis for you to teach me?"
"Whenever you have a chance, come out here and I'll teach you things abut your talent," he told her. "The more you come, the faster you will learn."
"I'll try to come out as much as I can without attracting too much attention to myself." People would become suspicious if she went out of the city on a regular basis, but if she varied when she went, she might escape notice for a bit.
"I understand. Your job is going to keep you busy but your talent may help you, so come as much as you can. It helps that you have magical abilities already. The focusing part will be easy, unlike Thunder."
Jade smiled, remembering her first years as a novice priest. "True. I've been doing that so long that it's second nature, but I remember how hard it was in the beginning."
There was a knock on the door, and it opened. Jaguar stepped inside. Jade had been about to ask Walker if he knew where she might find him, and sat up in her chair. "Jaguar! Just the person I was looking for. Come, sit."
He did so, dropping into the chair next to her. "Jade, what can I help you with?"
"A few things. I have information for you. And I have a question...but that's for later. This is more important. So, let's see. We have another ally within the advisors--remember Spider, who I mentioned to you? She's on our side. She's working with Cinder, Smoke's mother. Cinder is trying to put together a force that can take out Ocelot and Aziuhoatl both."
Jaguar nodded. "Good, we can use another ally. Similar goals. Good."
"The advisors Serpent and Monkey are both dead," she said, spreading her hands.
Her fellow priest raised an eyebrow. "My, you work fast. That's, what, four in four days?"
"Four in five, actually, but yes. Serpent was more or less an accident, honestly. A good accident, but an accident none the less. The Tlaloc folks have a secret chamber in the new temple of Huitzilopochtli that has a very interesting pool of poison in it. That's where I ran into Serpent and found out what the poison does."
"Nicely done, Jade. I had heard something about Serpent being a Tlaloc worshipper and was killed by Ocelot or something."
She chuckled. "That's the official story. What really happened was that she surprised me, I scratched her with the dagger I'd dipped in the poison, and she died. Very, very quick and effective, that stuff is. I arranged it to look like she accidentally cut herself with her own poisoned dagger, but Ocelot didn't buy it, I don't think. She was a Tlaloc worshiper, though. And I know Mirror had access to that room--and now I know Ocelot does, too."
"No, he probably didn't believe it. He may have divined it," Jaguar said.
It was what Jade would have done, certain enough. "Ocelot may have been behind the attempt that Raven made on my life last night, but that might have been something he did on his own."
"Raven is one of his, according to my information." Jaguar's attention was intent on her, drinking in everything she was telling him.
She nodded. "Oh, yes, and it's now believed that Monkey was behind the murder of Torch. I needed to take Coal's eyes off of the resistance, basically. Raven belonging to Ocelot doesn't surprise me, in the least."
Jaguar shook his head. "No, he tends to work behind the curtains."
"I didn't quite see what Raven was doing coming, but Thunder, on Walker's orders, managed to salvage the situation," she told him, watching Jaguar's reaction.
Consternation chased surprise over Jaguar's features. He turned to Walker. "You knew Thunder was on our side and you didn't tell me?" Walker shrugged, silently. "Well then, three on our side. Any other possibilities?"
Jade nodded. "There's one, but....I honestly don't know how good of an ally he'd make. He's pretty much nuts. Mantis. Not on our side yet, but he might be turnable."
Jaguar blinked in surprise. "Mantis the nahual killer? I think you are the crazy one."
"I talked to him, and he said things I wasn't expecting to hear. Like the fact that this fight isn't just between Aziuhoatl and Ocelot and maybe a few other people, but between Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc. He more or less told me that if I could find a third path for him to walk, he'd follow me. I don't know if I trust that, though."
He sat back, seeming to consider this. "He is very odd. But I did notice that he isn't pressing forward today. His troops seem to taking it rather lax."
Oh, good, he's listened to what I told him. "I asked him to delay in his search for Spirit, if he could. It's only a reprieve, not an end to this. And now I know that he'll never find Spirit. Though he claims to be closing in on him. Mantis told me that he doesn't do what he does because he likes it, he does it so nobody else will have to take the burden of it on their soul. It makes a certain sort of sense, if you're insane."
Jaguar was giving her a sharp look. "That is a bit strange. Noble, but strange. What do you mean, he will never find Spirit?"
She gave Walker an interrogatory glance, and in return he just lifted an eyebrow. She returned her gaze to Jaguar. "Thunder told me that Spirit isn't one person."
"A group of them. That makes more sense. Any idea how many of them are this Spirit?"
Jade spread her hands. "Thunder didn't say. He only said that there were many of them, and not all were nahuales. He wouldn't tell me any more than that. I was starting to suspect that, myself. Spirit, I think, is an idea, a monster in Aziuhoatl's closet. Though I know Aziuhoatl is a nahual, now."
"That we assumed, from his frantic pursuit of a cure from Coral," Jaguar said.
"Right. Of course, I suspect Coral is a nahual herself." She shifted in her seat. "So Mantis might find one Spirit, but he'll never get them all."
"He might not, but one might satisfy him. Can you blame Raven and have Mantis kill him?"
Jade inclined her head. "I might. And, as a matter of fact, Raven might actually be one of the Spirits. His specialty lends itself to that sort of thing. I'd need to find a way to link Raven back to Spirit, though. I'll dig, and see."
At this point, Walker broke in, his deep voice carrying an emotion Jade couldn't name. "No, he's not."
She thought, for a moment, about Thunder telling her that they were part of the same spirit, and her suspicions about that statement. "Really? How do you know?"
Walker smiled. "Because only the people that I train are Spirit, and I didn't train him."
Jade glanced at Jaguar, who looked rather stunned, an emotion she was sharing. She'd thought Walker was connected to Spirit, but training all of them? "I...wondered if you weren't connected to the Spirit thing."
"You would have soon learned that, Jade, so it's best to tell you now." He shrugged again.
"I assume you would have told me eventually, yes. Since I'm going to be one of those people." She turned back to Jaguar, who seemed to have recovered from being stunned and was directing a questioning look at her. "I forgot to mention. I appear to have the ability to summon hummingbirds when I'm afraid. Walker will be teaching me how to use that talent for something that might actually be useful." She paused, and let out a breath. "It's been a busy few days."
"Sounds like it." He smiled at her gently. "Well, hummingbirds are a great thing to summon but not terribly useful."
She laughed and spread her hands again, making a gesture indicating the absurdity of the universe. "It saved my life once, the first time the power manifested. I'm hoping to learn how to summon other animals."
"That could be useful. So, what's your next step?"
Jade thought about it for a moment. "I'm going to try to do something about Raven. What, I don't know yet, but siccing Mantis on him might work. I'm also going to try to get Aziuhoatl to back off on the hunting Tlaloc worshipers thing, as well as the hunt for the nahuales and Spirit. I need more time, and if he keeps doing what he's doing, I'm not going to get it."
"Going to be tough to do," he said, sympathy in his voice.
She shrugged. "I'm going to be trying to work on Coral, I think. Aziuhoatl might not listen to me, but he probably would listen to her. We'll see. Coral's smart, and she has her own agenda." Jade paused, and took a long breath, leaning towards her fellow priest a bit. "I did have a question for you, Jaguar. I know you've been through this, being told that the sacrifices weren't necessary. How did you make it through that? I'm managing by keeping my mind on what I'm doing, but the moment it wanders..." She shook her head. "Having to sacrifice the former head priest the other day didn't help. Now the people I've killed have faces, and families they've left behind."
He looked away from her, and his voice dropped low. "I wish I could help, but I can't. I have nightmares about the people every night. They don't go away."
They don't go away? "That...isn't what I really wanted to hear. It seems like a huge burden, to have to carry for the rest of our lives."
Jaguar nodded and looked back at her. "I hope that it will fade, but it's been a short while for me too. I sleep some better than in the first few weeks after I learned."
"I tell myself that it was what I was told to do, but I know that I enjoyed it," she said, feeling as though she were offering her heart up to Jaguar, confessing her sins to one of the few people in the world who might understand.
He met her eyes, and she saw compassion in them. "We all did. We were in a religious frenzy and blood was our drug. We believed that we were sending people to a better place. Maybe we did, but...we did commit murder."
He, too, was carrying that burden. She let out a slow breath. "We did, and there's no getting around it. I don't know if there's anything we can do to balance that." She glanced away, her lips tightening. "Especially not me."
"I wish I knew sometimes if Huitzilopochtli will forgive us for what we have done and let us ascend to him when we die. I can only hope that he does, as he pulled us aside to help him. Maybe the nightmares and knowing are our penance."
There was fear in his voice, as he spoke a fear that Jade had been starting to have herself. How can people like us be admitted into the presence of the god after we die? "Maybe. It's not just the murders." She felt suddenly, savagely angry at herself. "It's the wasted time, the wasted energy, every little thing that twists us into the people we eventually became. And there's still a part of me that rather wishes I could go back to my former life."
Jaguar's eyes widened, and she saw that her confession had a reflection in his own soul. "He offered me a choice, did he to you?" he asked her.
Jade nodded. "He did. And I made my choice because the part of me which had come to doubt that we were doing the right thing was larger than the part that loved the sacrifice and wanted things to stay the same. That's the part of me I'm hoping to convince that this choice was the best one."
"It's a hard choice, but I made the same one. And there are days when I curse myself about it." There was almost relief in his voice as he spoke.
God. I'm sorry, Jaguar. This is a horrible thing to carry by yourself, and you've been doing it for three years. She had always known Jaguar was strong; it was what had first attracted her to him, years ago. But she hadn't suspected that his strength of soul ran this deep.
He continued, "And then you talk to him, and it's really not what you expect."
Jade chuckled. "No...it really isn't, is it? I always envisioned him as a stern god, but he's....whimsical."
He smiled. "Very. I don't know how to react sometimes."
"A sense of humor seems to be required. Unfortunately, I think I managed to kill mine after I became a priest," she said, rueful. I was--still am--so serious all the time.
"I sometimes think that is why he does it. To make us laugh some."
"I don't know about you, but I think having a little humor about the whole thing is the only way I'm going to get through." She caught and held his gaze. "Because every time I think I know what's going on, someone come along and points out that I'm standing on thin air again. Talking to Mantis was like that. He's a rather disturbing man."
Jaguar nodded. "So I have heard. He is disturbing in battle as well. I have never seen a man fight like that."
"I haven't seen him. What does he do?"
"He has no care for his own well-being. He fights like he is trying to die. But he moves so fast, it's like trying to see the wings of a hummingbird in flight."
"He is trying to die. Rather, he's seen that a woman is going to be his downfall, and he's looking for her. He thinks it's going to be me, but--" She shrugged. "I think I'm the latest in a long line of fixations for him."
"I don't know either, but you slowing him down has to be a good thing. Any way you can get him to take on Ocelot? Just a thought."
Jade nodded. "It's a thought I'd had, as well. I was thinking that I could show him this third path he so desperately wants, and have it be right through Ocelot. I don't know if even he could kill Ocelot, though. Ocelot's a powerful priest."
"Might get him killed, but it might alleviate the problem." Jaguar paused, the lines at the corners of his eyes deepening as he thought. "I know. Here's a thought, maybe you are the woman to get Mantis killed. Helping him fight to the death against Ocelot. Your powers to rid Ocelot of those spells, and his to kill him."
She frowned, thinking about it. "Maybe. I'm not sure I'm strong enough to get rid of all of his spells, especially not if he's as powerful as they say he is. I'm strong, but I know when I'm outclassed. And if it doesn't work, I'm dead, Tlaloc wins, and Huitzilopochtli loses a whole lot of power."
"Then we get rid more of his power base as best we can. The less he can rely on others for his dirty work, the more he has to do and fewer people he can blame."
Jade nodded. "That's the theory I was going on. That, and I'm cleaning house, getting rid of the worst advisors so that when Smoke takes the throne, she won't be immediately killed by them."
"That's good, as well. Let me know if I can help in any way. Sounds like maybe the rebellion should cool off a bit and give you some time to work."
"That would help me with convincing Aziuhoatl to lay off a bit, yes. If we can lead him to think that Torch managed to seriously hurt the resistance before he died, so much the better," she said.
"We can scatter for a bit, let it become peaceful for a time. I can tell them to hold for a bit, but after a week or two they are going to get restless."
Jade smiled. "Even a week or two might be helpful. Look at what I've managed in five days." It seemed like a lifetime ago that Huitzilopochtli had appeared to her, telling her that he did not want her sacrificing. It was hard to believe that it had only been a few days.
"True. Well, I had better go and start the word around. I found Smoke and Onyx, by the way. They are fine, and hidden again."
"Oh, good," she said, very glad to hear it. "When you see Smoke next, tell her that her mother's still fighting for her."
"I will," Jaguar said. He reached out to her and took her hands in his, squeezing them briefly. He leaned forward and kissed her cheek gently.
It was the first time they had touched each other in over three years, except for when she'd carried him out of the city when he was wounded a few days ago. The feel of his hands on hers was more familiar than she had thought it would be. She squeezed his hands back, not letting them go. "Thank you, Jaguar," she said quietly. "This has meant more than you know." Her words were heartfelt.
"It has helped me, too," he said, warmth in his voice.
"I'm glad. At least we're not alone with this."
He nodded, still looking into her eyes. "No, we aren't. And that's good to know."
"It really is." She finally let go of his hands. "Are you heading back into the city now, or are you going to stay out here?"
"Out here for a bit," he replied. "Let them cool off and let Coal go through the tunnels until we can make more."
"I'll be out here on as regular a basis as I can manage, so I'll be seeing you, then."
Jaguar smiled. "Yes, I hope so."
Jade sat back a bit. "I should let you go find your people. I'll see you later, Jaguar."
"Goodbye, Jade." He rose, nodded to her and Walker, who had moved across the room, and walked out the door, closing it behind him.
for a few moments after he'd left, Jade sat, lost in thought. She roused herself and looked at Walker. "I think I have an hour or two before I'm missed back at the palace. Do you want to start my training now?"
He nodded, and they began.
By the time the sun was sinking in the west, Jade, when she concentrated, could feel the animals outside moving around, without the spark of fear that had caused the hummingbirds to come. She thanked Walker and headed back to Tenochtitlan. With any luck, people would think she'd just been elsewhere on the city, not outside of it.
Jade returned to the Temple to see how things were going, and found that it had been a low-key day among her fellow priests. The temple dedication had been a lot of work, and all of the priests seemed to be grateful for the break that her order to suspend the sacrifices for the next week afforded them. After taking care of a few minor matters, including welcoming three young boys into the Temple who had been sent there by their teachers at the Houses of Youth, she returned to the palace to sleep. The nightmares came again and once again she woke screaming, not once this night but three or four times.
The next morning, as she was combing her hair, preparing to braid and bind it, she frowned as she saw silver threads glinting in the morning light. Had she had that many a week ago? Her hair was one of her few vanities, and the white hairs in it were a reminder that she was getting older more quickly than she'd have liked.
I can't say I haven't earned the white hairs, though. She sighed and finished binding her hair, the dressed. It was early enough in the morning that Spider might still be up from the night before, if Jade were lucky.
She was indeed in luck. Spider answered her door, preternaturally alert for so early in the morning. She was barefoot but otherwise dressed, and the little ball that she had been playing with the first time Jade had met her was putting in another appearance. "Hello, Spider," she said. "I need to pick your brain about Coral."
Spider was tossing her ball from hand to hand. "Sure, pick away. Not literally but you know what I mean."
"How widely is it known that she's sleeping with Aziuhoatl?" Jade asked.
"Most of the advisors know, which is why she is kind of off limits. Kill her and you may end up on the altar."
"How long has she been sleeping with him, do you know? And I don't need to kill her. I need to convince her of something."
The ball's motion was oddly hypnotic. "Three months and three days now," Spider said.
"You know it to the day?"
"It's my job to know." Spider shrugged, then grinned and rolled the ball over her knuckles. "That's the first night she was there all night. The courtship was short, maybe 2 days."
Jade thought about this. "Hm. Did Spirit threaten Aziuhoatl before or after she started sleeping with him?"
"The first time Aziuhoatl went over the edge was one month later." Toss; catch. "I never found the time of Spirit's arrival exactly."
"Does Coral actually appear to like Aziuhoatl, or is he a part of some game she's playing?"
"Game, for certain. Can't tell if she is one of Ocelot's, but I think so."
They continued talking for a while, Jade forming a strategy for what she was going to tell Coral. Spider pointed out that Ocelot knew the spell to cure one of being a nahual, and Jade told her that it was a spell she was likely to know, one of these days. "It's in Ocelot's interest, I think, to make sure there are no priests powerful enough to do that spell in the city."
Spider nodded. "Which will sooner or later make you a target." She'd switched to rolling the ball over her hands.
"I have a feeling that I'm going to be a target eventually anyway. Ocelot and I are on a collision course. It may be a little while, but it will likely come." Jade shrugged. "I don't look forward that that day. Ocelot's got quite a bit more power than I do."
"He does. But I begin to wonder sometimes about Teal."
Jade gave Spider a searching look. "What about her?"
"Ever look at her with mage sight? Fairly glows from it. Not something you see often. Ocelot is the same."
"Interesting. I'll have to try it when I see her." Jade raised an eyebrow. "I didn't know you were a spellcaster."
"Not." Spider's grin was swift and brilliant. She fished at the neck of her shirt and pulled up a thong, to the end of which was attached a golden pendant in the shape of an eagle. "But this is very useful."
Ah, the amulet which she'd mentioned before. "Is that the amulet that told you I was lying in the first place?"
"Sure is. Has a lot of powers. Problem is only one can run at a time."
"Ah, so you can see magic or tell if someone is lying, but not both at the same time. Still a useful little thing, though." Spider nodded and dropped the pendant back down her shirt. "By the way--Raven is definitely on Ocelot's side, and don't ever drink anything he's touched, ever. If you could carry that one back to Cinder, I think she needs to know."
Spider nodded. "Good to know."
"And..." Jade trailed off, thinking. How many of her secrets did she want to spill to this woman? "I am not sure that Thunder is what he appears to be."
"I was spying on him. This a problem for you?"
Jade shrugged. "You might want to concentrate on Teal, instead. I may have a better chance of figuring out what Thunder is up to."
Spider nodded and flipped the ball into the air, catching it one the way down. "I'll do that."
"I do know that Teal's sleeping with Ocelot, not Thunder. Whatever's between Thunder and Teal, I don't think it's sexual," she said.
The corners of the other woman's mouth twitched. "They have been friends for a long time, for sure. Might have been lovers once, then."
"That might be it. Maybe you can find out."
The other woman wriggled a bit in her seat, and then pulled one leg up underneath of her. "I probably can. So Coral is your next step?"
"I think so. I also need to report in to Aziuhoatl. I think I'm going to tell him that I think someone is attempting to cover their tracks--whatever group let the sacrifices out, it's shut down operations. I think I'll say that there's one person left, and it's definitely an advisor."
"Who are you going to blame?" Spider asked. "Ocelot will have an excuse."
"I haven't decided yet. I was thinking Raven. I don't think I'll get Ocelot this way. He's another problem entirely."
Spider wrinkled her nose. "I heard he was up to something, with Monkey's room being searched and him winding up dead."
"He tried to frame me for something. It didn't stick, fortunately." Jade's smile was sharp. "But the fact that he tried to frame me means that I can take him down."
"Raven is tricky like that. Did he give you anything that is still in your possession?" Spider asked.
Jade shook her head. "He gave me something, but I don't have it any more. Which is a good thing, since my room was searched."
Her voice was sharp and urgent. "Whatever clothes you were wearing at the time or wherever you placed that item. Take it out of your room and destroy them."
Jade blinked. "I will. You think there was a marker on the outside of the object?"
Spider nodded, her hand clenched around her ball. "He uses a powder that tracks your movements, once it's on your clothes, you have to burn them to get rid of it. And if you touch the item again or anything it was sitting on, you get more of the powder on you all over."
Damn, Raven's a tricky one. "I'll do that, then. Fortunately, I didn't wear the clothes I was wearing that night out of my room."
"Good," she said, and nodded. "He's a problem that does need elimination."
She made a face. "He really does. Especially because I managed to deflect him, he's going to come after me in particular now. I think I was just convenient, before. A very smooth liar he is, though. I found out, more or less by accident, that he has a drug that he can use to help implant suggestions in people's minds."
Spider opened her mouth to respond, but at that moment the floor beneath their feet shook, as if the earth had shifted. "What was that?
"I have no idea. Felt like an either an earthquake or an explosion. We'd better move," Jade said, getting to her feet.
Spider jumped out of her chair. "You find out what it was. I will see if I can catch anyone running away."
"Can do." And Jade was gone, running towards where she thought the vibration had come from. In a moment, it was obvious that there was smoke coming from the corridor that she had her room on, as well as from the corridor that led to the Chief Speaker's family quarters. People were stumbling out of both corridors, many of them with soot on their faces and hands.
Making a quick decision, Jade ran towards Aziuhoatl's quarters. The corridor was filled with smoke, and she covered her mouth with her hand. As she reached the end of the corridor, she found doors blasted open, the bodies of men lying by the door, apparently killed by the blast.
Jade cast a protection from fire spell as a precaution and stepped into the quarters. To her left, doors leading into what appeared to be a bedroom stood wide open. She looked into the room and found that it was indeed a bedroom. On the floor, through the smoke, she could see Cinder lying on the floor, crumpled awkwardly on the stone. A pool of blood surrounded her.
Heedless of the blood on the floor, Jade dropped to her knees beside Cinder. The woman was still breathing, though probably not for very much longer. She lay her hands on Cinder's shoulders, closed her eyes, and concentrated.
A minute later, the worst of Cinder's wounds were closed, and she was no longer bleeding. She was still unconscious, but she wouldn't die in the next few minutes. Jade took a moment to shift her so she was no longer lying in such an uncomfortable position, so if she woke up she wouldn't injure herself further trying to move. "I'll be back in a few minutes," she promised the unconscious woman, and rose.
The smoke was starting to clear a bit, and in the corridor there were bloody footprints leading towards the back. Frowning, Jade followed them. After a few feet, the footprints changed from human to big cat. "Damn it all," she muttered, as she picked up her pace.
From the open door to Aziuhoatl's library issued low growling sounds. As she drew near the door, Jade could also hear some wet ripping noises, and her stomach turned. She paused at the door and poked her head around the corner.
As was sprawled on the floor, unconscious. Crouched next to him was a large jaguar whose fur was black as the darkest midnight. It was tearing into Aziuhoatl's shoulder, using teeth and claws to shred muscle and tendon.
Anger flared in Jade. She stepped into the room. "You need to stop that right now, little brother."
The jaguar whipped around, growling. Its eyes were rimmed with red, and glowing slightly. Without thought, Jade reached for her power and sent it spinning at the jaguar, her spell smashing into the spell on it and dispersing it. The big cat blinked as the red faded from its eyes, and it made a strange noise, staggering back and away from Jade.
"Stay right there, don't move," she ordered the cat, and stepped forward to look at Aziuhoatl. His left shoulder and the left half of his chest were shredded, bones showing through the blood. She could heal him, but he would likely never use that arm again. He was dying, that was for sure, but he would live another few minutes.
She closed her eyes and reached for her power. In her mind, the voice of Huitzilopochtli sounded. You could let him die, you know. When he wakes up, the campaign against the nahuales will get worse.
Jade opened her eyes to look at the small man who lay sprawled on the floor. I could. But if he dies, Ocelot takes over unless I do something completely rash in order to stop him. She clenched her jaw, trying to come to a decision. Then she stood and looked at the jaguar. "I need to talk to you. Not here, though. Come with me."
She retreated from the room, and the jaguar followed. In the next room, Jade said softly, "All right. If you're going to live through this, I need you to answer some questions."
The jaguar contorted and changed. It was a swift and painful-looking process, and ended with a young woman standing naked before her. She was tall and thin, her hair long enough to shroud her breasts. Jade asked her, "Someone had you under their control, correct?"
The girl shook her head. "I don't know." Her voice was soft and tentative. "I was in the market, and now I am here. I don't remember anything from that time until I saw you standing over Aziuhoatl's body."
Jade tilted her head, considering. "What's the last thing you remember? Did you see anyone casting a spell or using some sort of wand?"
"A man and a woman. Man looked important. The woman was probably paid to hang on his arm."
An advisor then, likely. One of the men. "Can you describe them for me?"
"Man was medium build, medium size. Long hair, pulled back. Didn't look like a warrior or a merchant, maybe a bol player. Woman, probably a prostitute or a dancer, very pretty, long dark hair."
"The woman--I don't suppose she was on the small side? Very delicately boned?" The man was Raven, Jade would bet on it. "Did you see either of them do anything?"
"No, she was tall, almost as tall as the man," the girl said. Not Coral, then. "The woman touched her throat and then I don't remember a thing."
Jade nodded at the nahual. The girl was shifting, obviously uncomfortable. Jade gave her the date and the time, and asked, "The last you remember, what day and time was it?"
"Today. About two hours ago."
She took a long breath. "All right. I'm going to do what I can to get you out of this alive, but I can't guarantee it. If you want to see the sunset, you'll need to be quiet, obedient, and act dazed. Let's get a blanket or something for you, and then you need to come with me. What's your name, by the way?"
The girl wrapped her arms around herself. "Morning is my name."
Jade snatched up a blanket that she'd spied on a nearby table and handed it to the girl. "All right. Come with me."
Back in the library, Aziuhoatl was, unfortunately, still breathing. Not for much longer, fortunately. She blinked and looked around; there was no knife, and she didn't remember seeing one dropped in the hallway. Morning had not been the one to stab Cinder, very likely. She shook her head. "No recalling him, now. There's someone closer to the front who needs help."
She stepped back and out into the corridor, her decision made. He wouldn't last more than another thirty heartbeats, if that. People were running into the corridor now, and it was becoming a very crowded place. Jade took a firm hold on Morning's elbow, and felt the girl shaking and shivering.
There was Thunder, coming down the hallway, and the smaller man next to him had to be Ocelot. Behind him was Mountain. Jade slid by Thunder and grabbed Mountain's sleeve. "We have a situation," she said in a low voice. "I found Aziuhoatl dead. The weapon was a nahual, but Raven was the one in control of it."
"Positive?" he asked.
"Yes. There was a woman with him, but from the description I can't tell who. A prostitute or a dancer or something."
Mountain nodded, turned on his heel, and rushed away. Jade wished she could get close to Thunder, but he was sticking close to Ocelot and she couldn't get near one without the other. She headed towards Cinder's room, but stopped outside the door. A scuffle was going on farther down the hallway. Jade broke into a run, Morning following her.
She arrived in time to see Mountain run Raven through with his spear. Jade smiled fiercely, turned on her heel, and headed back towards Cinder's room.
Cinder, thankfully, was still alive. Jade gathered her up, cradling her in her arms like she would a sleeping child. Out of the Speaker's wing she headed, looking for a quiet place to set Cinder down and do some healing.
She found an unoccupied alcove, and set Cinder down on the floor. Concentrating once more, she spun her power into a net around Cinder, tightening it so it fell against her skin. It took just a touch to bring her awake. "What--" Cinder said as she opened her eyes, then groaned in pain.
"Do you think you can walk?" Jade asked. Cinder nodded, her lips pressed together. "Good. Come with me." She lifted Cinder to her feet and stooped so she could drape one of the other woman's arms over her shoulders.
"What happened?" Cinder asked as they walked, Morning following them.
"Aziuhoatl is dead," she replied shortly. "Raven did it."
"He stabbed me," Cinder said. "Right after the doors blew. That was the last thing I remember. He had someone with him, a woman--" She broke off.
Jade nodded. "Her name is Morning, and she was under his control. No longer. Come on, let's get you to the Temple."
Inside the Temple, she handed Cinder off to Gull with instructions to heal her and find a secure and comfortable room for her. She handed Morning to a pair of priests, with instructions to put her into one of the holding cells, the ones that weren't used for potential sacrifices. "She is a guest of the Temple," Jade told them. "If anything happens to her, I will be very upset, and I will hold you both personally responsible." The priests nodded solemnly and hustled Morning off.
Jade took a deep breath and headed back to the palace at a run. She turned into her corridor and skidded to a stop as she saw that her door had been shattered by an explosion. Spear and Leaf were both lying across the corridor from her room, fetched up against the wall like dolls tossed aside by an angry child.
Leaf was dead, his empty eyes looking startled, staring at the ceiling. Spear was still alive, though breathing poorly and bleeding heavily from a gash in his scalp. She dropped down next to him, calling her power into her hands, screening out the whole world. He was bleeding inside, his lungs were starting to fill with blood, his right arm was broken in two places, and his right collarbone had snapped. It looked like he'd hit the wall with that shoulder. She repaired the worst of the damage, stopping the bleeding.
If I'd gotten here earlier, I might have saved Leaf, she thought. At the price of Cinder's life. Damnit, I liked Leaf. Under her hands, Spear roused and stirred. "Honored--one--" he croaked and began to cough. Jade helped him sit up as he coughed, clearing his lungs of the blood in them.
"You'll be all right," she told him. "What happened, Spear?"
He coughed again. "Door exploded from the inside out. Blew us across the corridor."
"Was there anyone in the corridor besides you and Leaf?" she asked.
He tried to shake his head, then groaned as the movement evidently hurt. "No, not until the door blew. Then Advisor Raven stepped out and walked away."
Raven had been here? But he had been in the Speaker's quarters, stabbing Cinder. Jade blinked. "What was the man thinking? He can't have thought he would get away with this," she muttered. He didn't think he was going to get away with this. Something fishy is going on here. "Anyway. I'm going to have some of your fellows here take you to the healers."
"Thank you," Spear said, and closed his eyes. She ordered several of the guards on the corridor to take Spear to the palace healers.
"Was Coal here when the explosion happened?" she asked a man that she recognized as one of Coal's guards.
"No, he was away. Investigating something, I think."
Jade nodded, then stepped into what had once been her room. It was almost unrecognizable, everything blackened and burned. Her daggers, except for the ones she had on her, were all shattered, her atlatl burned, most of her worldly possessions destroyed.
And there were feathers everywhere. Long black feathers. "Raven," she muttered, snarling. "A murder attempt if I'd been here, a warning because I was not."
The loss of her possessions didn't really bother her, except for the annoyance of needing to replace her clothing and a fleeting sadness over the loss of her weapons. She looked around her, looking for magic, and found a fading magic on what had once been the door. She stooped to pick up the one dagger that had been spared, her favorite sacrificial knife. Everything else in the room was unsalvageable.
She stepped out, taking a breath, then headed outside. Spider was outside the palace, and looked up as Jade approached. "Spider. Things have changed. Come with me, we need to go talk with Cinder," she said, and Spider silently followed her to the Temple.
Within the Temple, she found the room where Cinder had been stashed. Someone had brought clean clothing for her, and she sat looking out the window as they came in. Jade took a seat and waved Spider to a chair. "Well. We have a situation on our hands, it looks like," she said. "Ocelot just forced our hand."
"How so?" Cinder asked.
"Aziuhoatl is dead."
Emotions flitted across Cinder's face: surprise, relief, anger, a bit of sorrow. She settled into determination, her lips firm. "Then we have a problem. Aziuhoatl the younger will take power, and Ocelot soon after."
Jade nodded. "What we do depends on this--are we willing to start a civil war here? Because we can. I think I can get Mountain onto our side, at least for a while, and with him come the city and palace guards. I have the priests. And we have Smoke, who's the actual heir."
"Our numbers are small, his are not," Cinder replied. "Darkside is pretty much Ocelot's."
Spider said, "He has more warriors on the take than I can count."
Jade winced. She hadn't thought about the fact that Mountain's troops might not be entirely loyal to him. "We have another option. Strike directly at Ocelot. He's a very strong priest, but if I managed to catch him alone or nearly alone, and with backup...the odds would probably be about even. With Ocelot dead, Smoke can take the throne. There is another option still, but I don't like it much."
"Let's hear it," Cinder said.
"Play along. Let him think he's beaten us. Offer to marry Smoke to him. Being married to her will give his rule an air of legitimacy that he otherwise lacks. We use the time we gain to become stronger, until we can kill him." Jade grimaced. "I don't like using Smoke like that, though. And I don't know if she'll agree. Time is what we lack, and what we're swiftly running out of."
Cinder nodded. "She will have to agree to that. It would be very dangerous. He might let her live a month and then kill her."
"True. He might also let her live long enough to get a child on her. Like I said, I don't like it."
"It's the best option," she said, though she sounded as if she liked it about as much as Jade did. "You don't want a civil war. More people are going to die. If you think you can take Ocelot we can try that, but I have seen the man work. It's not going to be easy."
Jade suggested, "The other option is for you both to run. I don't have the option, I'm here until the bitter end, no matter how close it might be."
Spider shook her head. "That would be suspicious on my part. I think I will stay for a bit."
Cinder answered as well, and there was determination in her voice. "I knew I was going to die doing this. I would like to see it to the end. Ocelot will track me. He will never let me leave alive even if I sneak out."
Jade nodded, not having expected anything different. "All right. Cinder, I'm going to see what protection I can arrange for you. I think you'll need to be the one to bring the proposition to Ocelot, however. At this point, I can safely assume that Ocelot knows what I've been up to. Though I think I have a few surprises for him. Raven tried to kill me at the same time he was having Aziuhoatl killed. Raven's dead, now. I can assume that Raven told Ocelot that he was going to try for me as well as Aziuhoatl."
"When did Raven die?" Spider asked.
"Right after I told Mountain that he was responsible for Aziuhoatl's death. I came upon him in the library, a nahual crouched over him. She was under someone's control, which I ridded her of. The last person she remembered seeing before waking up in the library was Raven, and a woman who might be any one of a number of women."
Spider shook her head, bouncing in her seat. "No way, two seconds before you found me, I saw Raven leave with Eclipse."
"Are you serious? Damn. Someone who looks an awful lot like Raven died on Mountain's spear, then."
"Spelled I would bet. Only one way to tell. Get to the body."
Jade sighed. "I don't like Ocelot, but that was very nicely played, then."
"Yes, gets a killer for Aziuhoatl that conveniently dies and takes the blame. Aziuhoatl is dead, he gets the throne. No one going to complain much." Spider shrugged.
She spat an oath. "Yes, damnit. I was hoping I was going to have more time. Getting in to see the body shouldn't be a problem, if I go now. Cinder, stay here a bit, you'll be guarded by the priests." Cinder nodded. "I'll see you later, both of you. Unless you want to come with me, Spider? It might be best for us not to be seen together much. I have a feeling I'm going to start coming under heavy fire."
Spider shook her head. "No, I will wait it out here."
Jade nodded and rose, heading back to the palace at a pace a bit less than a run. She went to the Chief Speaker's quarters, which were crowded with servants cleaning things, workmen looking at the blown doors and discussing how they were to be replaced. Raven's body was not there, but Mountain was.
"Good work," she told him. "I saw the end of your battle with Raven. What happened to the body?"
His eyes narrowed in apparent annoyance, and he handed her a pot that appeared to be filled with ashes. "Teal came by and blew him to dust before we could react."
Jade took a sharp breath. "I was hoping to see what I could see."
"You can have those if you want. Not much to see, though."
"As much good as they'll do me, but I'll take them. A mage might be able to do something with them."
"Odd thing is, I have seen Teal do that before but it usually leaves items behind. Clothing, no, but rings and other things." He gestured at the jar. "Nothing."
The small hairs on the back of Jade's neck prickled. "That is strange. Unless he wasn't wearing anything to leave behind."
Mountain nodded. "And that's very unlike Raven. I have never seen him without a knife or several weapons and rings."
Jade frowned. "What if the Raven you got wasn't the real one, then?"
"Looked like him," the big man said, but she could see his mind working.
"Well, if the body was intact, I could have told you if it was the real one. Mages can make people look like people they're not. As it is..." She shrugged.
"Raven had Teal cover his tracks."
"Might have. They did work together on occasion," she said. "This whole business smells crooked."
"It does," he replied. "I will have the guards try to locate him but he's probably gone."
Jade nodded. "If I were you--try the darkside. The woman who was with him when the nahual he used as a weapon was taken looked a lot like Eclipse."
Mountain nodded, turned away, and started issuing orders to his guards. Jade took the opportunity to slip away, towards the streets of the city.
She needed to speak to Mantis, she needed to consult with the creature in the box, and she needed to talk to Jaguar. So she headed out into the sunshine of the morning, the sky a clear and crystalline blue, the only clouds in the sky safely on the horizon for the moment.
She could do nothing but keep moving, keep putting one foot in front of another. She had made her decisions, and it was now time to live with her choices. She could only hope that her choice to let Aziuhoatl die had been the correct one...
At the little stone house in the swamp, Jade raised her hand and knocked on the wood of the door. "Hello? Is anyone home?"
Within, she heard footsteps, and the door opened. Walker gestured at her. "Jade, come in."
As she did so, she glanced around. Jaguar was not present and she felt a bit of disappointment, then confusion. She hadn't realized that she was looking forward to seeing him. She turned to Walker and bowed slightly. "I spoke with Thunder. He--told me a few things."
Walker smiled. "Ah, good. What did he leave out? Dragging words from him is like pulling teeth."
"I noticed," she said ruefully. "Well, let's see. He said you sent him to get Monkey and the bottle from my room--thank you for that, by the way. I am in your debt. He also said that...you had claimed me. In a manner of speaking. And that you were his teacher. And I can evidently summon hummingbirds."
The mage chuckled. "Not all that useful, but it's a start. A bit of training, I can get you up to at least a sparrow."
Jade smiled and shrugged. "Well, it saved my life once, but it's unlikely to do that again. He also said that he was working on bringing Ocelot down."
"We are. Aziuhoatl, too, really. But Ocelot first."
She nodded. "Aziuhoatl comes down first and it all comes unraveled."
"Yes, it will. This all becomes a problem if Ocelot kills Aziuhoatl before we can get to Ocelot."
"I've been getting closer, but I haven't yet found an opening."
"He is hard to get to," Walker said as he took a seat in one of the chairs. Jade sat down cross from him. "Thunder is the only one that can with any regularity."
Jade asked a question that had been bothering her since Thunder had told her that his mission was to destroy Ocelot. "What's stopping Thunder? I imagine there's something--he strikes me as very determined."
Walker made a wry face. "Thunder wouldn't last ten minutes with him."
"I'd say he wouldn't need ten minutes, but I imagine Ocelot is hard to sneak up on."
"Very, the man layers magic on him."
Jade thought about how se would go about layering protective spells for the best effect. Yes, someone as strong as Ocelot would be very difficult indeed to sneak up on. Unless... "I imagine this is where I would come in."
Walker nodded. "Yes, it needs to come down. And you have the best chance of bringing it down. "
It was Jade's turn to make a face. "I'm strong, but I don't know if I'm that strong yet."
"Time is what you need, and that is what we lack," he said. "But there is an advantage. We need to keep him off-balance."
"I don't know the man enough to know how to accomplish that. I expect you have an idea or three." She sighed, thinking about it. "God, if only I could convince Aziuhoatl to cool it on a few things for a while. You say the wrong thing around him, though, and you're dead."
"Then make someone else do it. Coral comes to mind. She has his ear and some other body parts."
Jade chuckled. "Before about a couple of hours ago, I would have told you that I didn't have any leverage with Coral. I think I might now, though." If Coral were a nahual, Jade could probably get her to at lest open her mind to the possibility.
"Make her convince him. And all you have to do is convince her."
She thought about it. "Hm. Maybe. Convincing her may be easier said than done, but I'm sure I can do something. If Aziuhoatl backs off on some of the things he's doing, Ocelot may back off as well, maybe thinking Aziuhoatl has something up his sleeve."
Walker nodded. "It's an escalation process and if you can get them to calm down a bit, we can buy more time."
"Especially with the nahuales and the resistance, and his search for worshipers of Tlaloc. That might give me time to learn how to use this talent of mine when I'm not terrified out of my mind. Speaking of, I assume I need to come out on a regular basis for you to teach me?"
"Whenever you have a chance, come out here and I'll teach you things abut your talent," he told her. "The more you come, the faster you will learn."
"I'll try to come out as much as I can without attracting too much attention to myself." People would become suspicious if she went out of the city on a regular basis, but if she varied when she went, she might escape notice for a bit.
"I understand. Your job is going to keep you busy but your talent may help you, so come as much as you can. It helps that you have magical abilities already. The focusing part will be easy, unlike Thunder."
Jade smiled, remembering her first years as a novice priest. "True. I've been doing that so long that it's second nature, but I remember how hard it was in the beginning."
There was a knock on the door, and it opened. Jaguar stepped inside. Jade had been about to ask Walker if he knew where she might find him, and sat up in her chair. "Jaguar! Just the person I was looking for. Come, sit."
He did so, dropping into the chair next to her. "Jade, what can I help you with?"
"A few things. I have information for you. And I have a question...but that's for later. This is more important. So, let's see. We have another ally within the advisors--remember Spider, who I mentioned to you? She's on our side. She's working with Cinder, Smoke's mother. Cinder is trying to put together a force that can take out Ocelot and Aziuhoatl both."
Jaguar nodded. "Good, we can use another ally. Similar goals. Good."
"The advisors Serpent and Monkey are both dead," she said, spreading her hands.
Her fellow priest raised an eyebrow. "My, you work fast. That's, what, four in four days?"
"Four in five, actually, but yes. Serpent was more or less an accident, honestly. A good accident, but an accident none the less. The Tlaloc folks have a secret chamber in the new temple of Huitzilopochtli that has a very interesting pool of poison in it. That's where I ran into Serpent and found out what the poison does."
"Nicely done, Jade. I had heard something about Serpent being a Tlaloc worshipper and was killed by Ocelot or something."
She chuckled. "That's the official story. What really happened was that she surprised me, I scratched her with the dagger I'd dipped in the poison, and she died. Very, very quick and effective, that stuff is. I arranged it to look like she accidentally cut herself with her own poisoned dagger, but Ocelot didn't buy it, I don't think. She was a Tlaloc worshiper, though. And I know Mirror had access to that room--and now I know Ocelot does, too."
"No, he probably didn't believe it. He may have divined it," Jaguar said.
It was what Jade would have done, certain enough. "Ocelot may have been behind the attempt that Raven made on my life last night, but that might have been something he did on his own."
"Raven is one of his, according to my information." Jaguar's attention was intent on her, drinking in everything she was telling him.
She nodded. "Oh, yes, and it's now believed that Monkey was behind the murder of Torch. I needed to take Coal's eyes off of the resistance, basically. Raven belonging to Ocelot doesn't surprise me, in the least."
Jaguar shook his head. "No, he tends to work behind the curtains."
"I didn't quite see what Raven was doing coming, but Thunder, on Walker's orders, managed to salvage the situation," she told him, watching Jaguar's reaction.
Consternation chased surprise over Jaguar's features. He turned to Walker. "You knew Thunder was on our side and you didn't tell me?" Walker shrugged, silently. "Well then, three on our side. Any other possibilities?"
Jade nodded. "There's one, but....I honestly don't know how good of an ally he'd make. He's pretty much nuts. Mantis. Not on our side yet, but he might be turnable."
Jaguar blinked in surprise. "Mantis the nahual killer? I think you are the crazy one."
"I talked to him, and he said things I wasn't expecting to hear. Like the fact that this fight isn't just between Aziuhoatl and Ocelot and maybe a few other people, but between Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc. He more or less told me that if I could find a third path for him to walk, he'd follow me. I don't know if I trust that, though."
He sat back, seeming to consider this. "He is very odd. But I did notice that he isn't pressing forward today. His troops seem to taking it rather lax."
Oh, good, he's listened to what I told him. "I asked him to delay in his search for Spirit, if he could. It's only a reprieve, not an end to this. And now I know that he'll never find Spirit. Though he claims to be closing in on him. Mantis told me that he doesn't do what he does because he likes it, he does it so nobody else will have to take the burden of it on their soul. It makes a certain sort of sense, if you're insane."
Jaguar was giving her a sharp look. "That is a bit strange. Noble, but strange. What do you mean, he will never find Spirit?"
She gave Walker an interrogatory glance, and in return he just lifted an eyebrow. She returned her gaze to Jaguar. "Thunder told me that Spirit isn't one person."
"A group of them. That makes more sense. Any idea how many of them are this Spirit?"
Jade spread her hands. "Thunder didn't say. He only said that there were many of them, and not all were nahuales. He wouldn't tell me any more than that. I was starting to suspect that, myself. Spirit, I think, is an idea, a monster in Aziuhoatl's closet. Though I know Aziuhoatl is a nahual, now."
"That we assumed, from his frantic pursuit of a cure from Coral," Jaguar said.
"Right. Of course, I suspect Coral is a nahual herself." She shifted in her seat. "So Mantis might find one Spirit, but he'll never get them all."
"He might not, but one might satisfy him. Can you blame Raven and have Mantis kill him?"
Jade inclined her head. "I might. And, as a matter of fact, Raven might actually be one of the Spirits. His specialty lends itself to that sort of thing. I'd need to find a way to link Raven back to Spirit, though. I'll dig, and see."
At this point, Walker broke in, his deep voice carrying an emotion Jade couldn't name. "No, he's not."
She thought, for a moment, about Thunder telling her that they were part of the same spirit, and her suspicions about that statement. "Really? How do you know?"
Walker smiled. "Because only the people that I train are Spirit, and I didn't train him."
Jade glanced at Jaguar, who looked rather stunned, an emotion she was sharing. She'd thought Walker was connected to Spirit, but training all of them? "I...wondered if you weren't connected to the Spirit thing."
"You would have soon learned that, Jade, so it's best to tell you now." He shrugged again.
"I assume you would have told me eventually, yes. Since I'm going to be one of those people." She turned back to Jaguar, who seemed to have recovered from being stunned and was directing a questioning look at her. "I forgot to mention. I appear to have the ability to summon hummingbirds when I'm afraid. Walker will be teaching me how to use that talent for something that might actually be useful." She paused, and let out a breath. "It's been a busy few days."
"Sounds like it." He smiled at her gently. "Well, hummingbirds are a great thing to summon but not terribly useful."
She laughed and spread her hands again, making a gesture indicating the absurdity of the universe. "It saved my life once, the first time the power manifested. I'm hoping to learn how to summon other animals."
"That could be useful. So, what's your next step?"
Jade thought about it for a moment. "I'm going to try to do something about Raven. What, I don't know yet, but siccing Mantis on him might work. I'm also going to try to get Aziuhoatl to back off on the hunting Tlaloc worshipers thing, as well as the hunt for the nahuales and Spirit. I need more time, and if he keeps doing what he's doing, I'm not going to get it."
"Going to be tough to do," he said, sympathy in his voice.
She shrugged. "I'm going to be trying to work on Coral, I think. Aziuhoatl might not listen to me, but he probably would listen to her. We'll see. Coral's smart, and she has her own agenda." Jade paused, and took a long breath, leaning towards her fellow priest a bit. "I did have a question for you, Jaguar. I know you've been through this, being told that the sacrifices weren't necessary. How did you make it through that? I'm managing by keeping my mind on what I'm doing, but the moment it wanders..." She shook her head. "Having to sacrifice the former head priest the other day didn't help. Now the people I've killed have faces, and families they've left behind."
He looked away from her, and his voice dropped low. "I wish I could help, but I can't. I have nightmares about the people every night. They don't go away."
They don't go away? "That...isn't what I really wanted to hear. It seems like a huge burden, to have to carry for the rest of our lives."
Jaguar nodded and looked back at her. "I hope that it will fade, but it's been a short while for me too. I sleep some better than in the first few weeks after I learned."
"I tell myself that it was what I was told to do, but I know that I enjoyed it," she said, feeling as though she were offering her heart up to Jaguar, confessing her sins to one of the few people in the world who might understand.
He met her eyes, and she saw compassion in them. "We all did. We were in a religious frenzy and blood was our drug. We believed that we were sending people to a better place. Maybe we did, but...we did commit murder."
He, too, was carrying that burden. She let out a slow breath. "We did, and there's no getting around it. I don't know if there's anything we can do to balance that." She glanced away, her lips tightening. "Especially not me."
"I wish I knew sometimes if Huitzilopochtli will forgive us for what we have done and let us ascend to him when we die. I can only hope that he does, as he pulled us aside to help him. Maybe the nightmares and knowing are our penance."
There was fear in his voice, as he spoke a fear that Jade had been starting to have herself. How can people like us be admitted into the presence of the god after we die? "Maybe. It's not just the murders." She felt suddenly, savagely angry at herself. "It's the wasted time, the wasted energy, every little thing that twists us into the people we eventually became. And there's still a part of me that rather wishes I could go back to my former life."
Jaguar's eyes widened, and she saw that her confession had a reflection in his own soul. "He offered me a choice, did he to you?" he asked her.
Jade nodded. "He did. And I made my choice because the part of me which had come to doubt that we were doing the right thing was larger than the part that loved the sacrifice and wanted things to stay the same. That's the part of me I'm hoping to convince that this choice was the best one."
"It's a hard choice, but I made the same one. And there are days when I curse myself about it." There was almost relief in his voice as he spoke.
God. I'm sorry, Jaguar. This is a horrible thing to carry by yourself, and you've been doing it for three years. She had always known Jaguar was strong; it was what had first attracted her to him, years ago. But she hadn't suspected that his strength of soul ran this deep.
He continued, "And then you talk to him, and it's really not what you expect."
Jade chuckled. "No...it really isn't, is it? I always envisioned him as a stern god, but he's....whimsical."
He smiled. "Very. I don't know how to react sometimes."
"A sense of humor seems to be required. Unfortunately, I think I managed to kill mine after I became a priest," she said, rueful. I was--still am--so serious all the time.
"I sometimes think that is why he does it. To make us laugh some."
"I don't know about you, but I think having a little humor about the whole thing is the only way I'm going to get through." She caught and held his gaze. "Because every time I think I know what's going on, someone come along and points out that I'm standing on thin air again. Talking to Mantis was like that. He's a rather disturbing man."
Jaguar nodded. "So I have heard. He is disturbing in battle as well. I have never seen a man fight like that."
"I haven't seen him. What does he do?"
"He has no care for his own well-being. He fights like he is trying to die. But he moves so fast, it's like trying to see the wings of a hummingbird in flight."
"He is trying to die. Rather, he's seen that a woman is going to be his downfall, and he's looking for her. He thinks it's going to be me, but--" She shrugged. "I think I'm the latest in a long line of fixations for him."
"I don't know either, but you slowing him down has to be a good thing. Any way you can get him to take on Ocelot? Just a thought."
Jade nodded. "It's a thought I'd had, as well. I was thinking that I could show him this third path he so desperately wants, and have it be right through Ocelot. I don't know if even he could kill Ocelot, though. Ocelot's a powerful priest."
"Might get him killed, but it might alleviate the problem." Jaguar paused, the lines at the corners of his eyes deepening as he thought. "I know. Here's a thought, maybe you are the woman to get Mantis killed. Helping him fight to the death against Ocelot. Your powers to rid Ocelot of those spells, and his to kill him."
She frowned, thinking about it. "Maybe. I'm not sure I'm strong enough to get rid of all of his spells, especially not if he's as powerful as they say he is. I'm strong, but I know when I'm outclassed. And if it doesn't work, I'm dead, Tlaloc wins, and Huitzilopochtli loses a whole lot of power."
"Then we get rid more of his power base as best we can. The less he can rely on others for his dirty work, the more he has to do and fewer people he can blame."
Jade nodded. "That's the theory I was going on. That, and I'm cleaning house, getting rid of the worst advisors so that when Smoke takes the throne, she won't be immediately killed by them."
"That's good, as well. Let me know if I can help in any way. Sounds like maybe the rebellion should cool off a bit and give you some time to work."
"That would help me with convincing Aziuhoatl to lay off a bit, yes. If we can lead him to think that Torch managed to seriously hurt the resistance before he died, so much the better," she said.
"We can scatter for a bit, let it become peaceful for a time. I can tell them to hold for a bit, but after a week or two they are going to get restless."
Jade smiled. "Even a week or two might be helpful. Look at what I've managed in five days." It seemed like a lifetime ago that Huitzilopochtli had appeared to her, telling her that he did not want her sacrificing. It was hard to believe that it had only been a few days.
"True. Well, I had better go and start the word around. I found Smoke and Onyx, by the way. They are fine, and hidden again."
"Oh, good," she said, very glad to hear it. "When you see Smoke next, tell her that her mother's still fighting for her."
"I will," Jaguar said. He reached out to her and took her hands in his, squeezing them briefly. He leaned forward and kissed her cheek gently.
It was the first time they had touched each other in over three years, except for when she'd carried him out of the city when he was wounded a few days ago. The feel of his hands on hers was more familiar than she had thought it would be. She squeezed his hands back, not letting them go. "Thank you, Jaguar," she said quietly. "This has meant more than you know." Her words were heartfelt.
"It has helped me, too," he said, warmth in his voice.
"I'm glad. At least we're not alone with this."
He nodded, still looking into her eyes. "No, we aren't. And that's good to know."
"It really is." She finally let go of his hands. "Are you heading back into the city now, or are you going to stay out here?"
"Out here for a bit," he replied. "Let them cool off and let Coal go through the tunnels until we can make more."
"I'll be out here on as regular a basis as I can manage, so I'll be seeing you, then."
Jaguar smiled. "Yes, I hope so."
Jade sat back a bit. "I should let you go find your people. I'll see you later, Jaguar."
"Goodbye, Jade." He rose, nodded to her and Walker, who had moved across the room, and walked out the door, closing it behind him.
for a few moments after he'd left, Jade sat, lost in thought. She roused herself and looked at Walker. "I think I have an hour or two before I'm missed back at the palace. Do you want to start my training now?"
He nodded, and they began.
By the time the sun was sinking in the west, Jade, when she concentrated, could feel the animals outside moving around, without the spark of fear that had caused the hummingbirds to come. She thanked Walker and headed back to Tenochtitlan. With any luck, people would think she'd just been elsewhere on the city, not outside of it.
Jade returned to the Temple to see how things were going, and found that it had been a low-key day among her fellow priests. The temple dedication had been a lot of work, and all of the priests seemed to be grateful for the break that her order to suspend the sacrifices for the next week afforded them. After taking care of a few minor matters, including welcoming three young boys into the Temple who had been sent there by their teachers at the Houses of Youth, she returned to the palace to sleep. The nightmares came again and once again she woke screaming, not once this night but three or four times.
The next morning, as she was combing her hair, preparing to braid and bind it, she frowned as she saw silver threads glinting in the morning light. Had she had that many a week ago? Her hair was one of her few vanities, and the white hairs in it were a reminder that she was getting older more quickly than she'd have liked.
I can't say I haven't earned the white hairs, though. She sighed and finished binding her hair, the dressed. It was early enough in the morning that Spider might still be up from the night before, if Jade were lucky.
She was indeed in luck. Spider answered her door, preternaturally alert for so early in the morning. She was barefoot but otherwise dressed, and the little ball that she had been playing with the first time Jade had met her was putting in another appearance. "Hello, Spider," she said. "I need to pick your brain about Coral."
Spider was tossing her ball from hand to hand. "Sure, pick away. Not literally but you know what I mean."
"How widely is it known that she's sleeping with Aziuhoatl?" Jade asked.
"Most of the advisors know, which is why she is kind of off limits. Kill her and you may end up on the altar."
"How long has she been sleeping with him, do you know? And I don't need to kill her. I need to convince her of something."
The ball's motion was oddly hypnotic. "Three months and three days now," Spider said.
"You know it to the day?"
"It's my job to know." Spider shrugged, then grinned and rolled the ball over her knuckles. "That's the first night she was there all night. The courtship was short, maybe 2 days."
Jade thought about this. "Hm. Did Spirit threaten Aziuhoatl before or after she started sleeping with him?"
"The first time Aziuhoatl went over the edge was one month later." Toss; catch. "I never found the time of Spirit's arrival exactly."
"Does Coral actually appear to like Aziuhoatl, or is he a part of some game she's playing?"
"Game, for certain. Can't tell if she is one of Ocelot's, but I think so."
They continued talking for a while, Jade forming a strategy for what she was going to tell Coral. Spider pointed out that Ocelot knew the spell to cure one of being a nahual, and Jade told her that it was a spell she was likely to know, one of these days. "It's in Ocelot's interest, I think, to make sure there are no priests powerful enough to do that spell in the city."
Spider nodded. "Which will sooner or later make you a target." She'd switched to rolling the ball over her hands.
"I have a feeling that I'm going to be a target eventually anyway. Ocelot and I are on a collision course. It may be a little while, but it will likely come." Jade shrugged. "I don't look forward that that day. Ocelot's got quite a bit more power than I do."
"He does. But I begin to wonder sometimes about Teal."
Jade gave Spider a searching look. "What about her?"
"Ever look at her with mage sight? Fairly glows from it. Not something you see often. Ocelot is the same."
"Interesting. I'll have to try it when I see her." Jade raised an eyebrow. "I didn't know you were a spellcaster."
"Not." Spider's grin was swift and brilliant. She fished at the neck of her shirt and pulled up a thong, to the end of which was attached a golden pendant in the shape of an eagle. "But this is very useful."
Ah, the amulet which she'd mentioned before. "Is that the amulet that told you I was lying in the first place?"
"Sure is. Has a lot of powers. Problem is only one can run at a time."
"Ah, so you can see magic or tell if someone is lying, but not both at the same time. Still a useful little thing, though." Spider nodded and dropped the pendant back down her shirt. "By the way--Raven is definitely on Ocelot's side, and don't ever drink anything he's touched, ever. If you could carry that one back to Cinder, I think she needs to know."
Spider nodded. "Good to know."
"And..." Jade trailed off, thinking. How many of her secrets did she want to spill to this woman? "I am not sure that Thunder is what he appears to be."
"I was spying on him. This a problem for you?"
Jade shrugged. "You might want to concentrate on Teal, instead. I may have a better chance of figuring out what Thunder is up to."
Spider nodded and flipped the ball into the air, catching it one the way down. "I'll do that."
"I do know that Teal's sleeping with Ocelot, not Thunder. Whatever's between Thunder and Teal, I don't think it's sexual," she said.
The corners of the other woman's mouth twitched. "They have been friends for a long time, for sure. Might have been lovers once, then."
"That might be it. Maybe you can find out."
The other woman wriggled a bit in her seat, and then pulled one leg up underneath of her. "I probably can. So Coral is your next step?"
"I think so. I also need to report in to Aziuhoatl. I think I'm going to tell him that I think someone is attempting to cover their tracks--whatever group let the sacrifices out, it's shut down operations. I think I'll say that there's one person left, and it's definitely an advisor."
"Who are you going to blame?" Spider asked. "Ocelot will have an excuse."
"I haven't decided yet. I was thinking Raven. I don't think I'll get Ocelot this way. He's another problem entirely."
Spider wrinkled her nose. "I heard he was up to something, with Monkey's room being searched and him winding up dead."
"He tried to frame me for something. It didn't stick, fortunately." Jade's smile was sharp. "But the fact that he tried to frame me means that I can take him down."
"Raven is tricky like that. Did he give you anything that is still in your possession?" Spider asked.
Jade shook her head. "He gave me something, but I don't have it any more. Which is a good thing, since my room was searched."
Her voice was sharp and urgent. "Whatever clothes you were wearing at the time or wherever you placed that item. Take it out of your room and destroy them."
Jade blinked. "I will. You think there was a marker on the outside of the object?"
Spider nodded, her hand clenched around her ball. "He uses a powder that tracks your movements, once it's on your clothes, you have to burn them to get rid of it. And if you touch the item again or anything it was sitting on, you get more of the powder on you all over."
Damn, Raven's a tricky one. "I'll do that, then. Fortunately, I didn't wear the clothes I was wearing that night out of my room."
"Good," she said, and nodded. "He's a problem that does need elimination."
She made a face. "He really does. Especially because I managed to deflect him, he's going to come after me in particular now. I think I was just convenient, before. A very smooth liar he is, though. I found out, more or less by accident, that he has a drug that he can use to help implant suggestions in people's minds."
Spider opened her mouth to respond, but at that moment the floor beneath their feet shook, as if the earth had shifted. "What was that?
"I have no idea. Felt like an either an earthquake or an explosion. We'd better move," Jade said, getting to her feet.
Spider jumped out of her chair. "You find out what it was. I will see if I can catch anyone running away."
"Can do." And Jade was gone, running towards where she thought the vibration had come from. In a moment, it was obvious that there was smoke coming from the corridor that she had her room on, as well as from the corridor that led to the Chief Speaker's family quarters. People were stumbling out of both corridors, many of them with soot on their faces and hands.
Making a quick decision, Jade ran towards Aziuhoatl's quarters. The corridor was filled with smoke, and she covered her mouth with her hand. As she reached the end of the corridor, she found doors blasted open, the bodies of men lying by the door, apparently killed by the blast.
Jade cast a protection from fire spell as a precaution and stepped into the quarters. To her left, doors leading into what appeared to be a bedroom stood wide open. She looked into the room and found that it was indeed a bedroom. On the floor, through the smoke, she could see Cinder lying on the floor, crumpled awkwardly on the stone. A pool of blood surrounded her.
Heedless of the blood on the floor, Jade dropped to her knees beside Cinder. The woman was still breathing, though probably not for very much longer. She lay her hands on Cinder's shoulders, closed her eyes, and concentrated.
A minute later, the worst of Cinder's wounds were closed, and she was no longer bleeding. She was still unconscious, but she wouldn't die in the next few minutes. Jade took a moment to shift her so she was no longer lying in such an uncomfortable position, so if she woke up she wouldn't injure herself further trying to move. "I'll be back in a few minutes," she promised the unconscious woman, and rose.
The smoke was starting to clear a bit, and in the corridor there were bloody footprints leading towards the back. Frowning, Jade followed them. After a few feet, the footprints changed from human to big cat. "Damn it all," she muttered, as she picked up her pace.
From the open door to Aziuhoatl's library issued low growling sounds. As she drew near the door, Jade could also hear some wet ripping noises, and her stomach turned. She paused at the door and poked her head around the corner.
As was sprawled on the floor, unconscious. Crouched next to him was a large jaguar whose fur was black as the darkest midnight. It was tearing into Aziuhoatl's shoulder, using teeth and claws to shred muscle and tendon.
Anger flared in Jade. She stepped into the room. "You need to stop that right now, little brother."
The jaguar whipped around, growling. Its eyes were rimmed with red, and glowing slightly. Without thought, Jade reached for her power and sent it spinning at the jaguar, her spell smashing into the spell on it and dispersing it. The big cat blinked as the red faded from its eyes, and it made a strange noise, staggering back and away from Jade.
"Stay right there, don't move," she ordered the cat, and stepped forward to look at Aziuhoatl. His left shoulder and the left half of his chest were shredded, bones showing through the blood. She could heal him, but he would likely never use that arm again. He was dying, that was for sure, but he would live another few minutes.
She closed her eyes and reached for her power. In her mind, the voice of Huitzilopochtli sounded. You could let him die, you know. When he wakes up, the campaign against the nahuales will get worse.
Jade opened her eyes to look at the small man who lay sprawled on the floor. I could. But if he dies, Ocelot takes over unless I do something completely rash in order to stop him. She clenched her jaw, trying to come to a decision. Then she stood and looked at the jaguar. "I need to talk to you. Not here, though. Come with me."
She retreated from the room, and the jaguar followed. In the next room, Jade said softly, "All right. If you're going to live through this, I need you to answer some questions."
The jaguar contorted and changed. It was a swift and painful-looking process, and ended with a young woman standing naked before her. She was tall and thin, her hair long enough to shroud her breasts. Jade asked her, "Someone had you under their control, correct?"
The girl shook her head. "I don't know." Her voice was soft and tentative. "I was in the market, and now I am here. I don't remember anything from that time until I saw you standing over Aziuhoatl's body."
Jade tilted her head, considering. "What's the last thing you remember? Did you see anyone casting a spell or using some sort of wand?"
"A man and a woman. Man looked important. The woman was probably paid to hang on his arm."
An advisor then, likely. One of the men. "Can you describe them for me?"
"Man was medium build, medium size. Long hair, pulled back. Didn't look like a warrior or a merchant, maybe a bol player. Woman, probably a prostitute or a dancer, very pretty, long dark hair."
"The woman--I don't suppose she was on the small side? Very delicately boned?" The man was Raven, Jade would bet on it. "Did you see either of them do anything?"
"No, she was tall, almost as tall as the man," the girl said. Not Coral, then. "The woman touched her throat and then I don't remember a thing."
Jade nodded at the nahual. The girl was shifting, obviously uncomfortable. Jade gave her the date and the time, and asked, "The last you remember, what day and time was it?"
"Today. About two hours ago."
She took a long breath. "All right. I'm going to do what I can to get you out of this alive, but I can't guarantee it. If you want to see the sunset, you'll need to be quiet, obedient, and act dazed. Let's get a blanket or something for you, and then you need to come with me. What's your name, by the way?"
The girl wrapped her arms around herself. "Morning is my name."
Jade snatched up a blanket that she'd spied on a nearby table and handed it to the girl. "All right. Come with me."
Back in the library, Aziuhoatl was, unfortunately, still breathing. Not for much longer, fortunately. She blinked and looked around; there was no knife, and she didn't remember seeing one dropped in the hallway. Morning had not been the one to stab Cinder, very likely. She shook her head. "No recalling him, now. There's someone closer to the front who needs help."
She stepped back and out into the corridor, her decision made. He wouldn't last more than another thirty heartbeats, if that. People were running into the corridor now, and it was becoming a very crowded place. Jade took a firm hold on Morning's elbow, and felt the girl shaking and shivering.
There was Thunder, coming down the hallway, and the smaller man next to him had to be Ocelot. Behind him was Mountain. Jade slid by Thunder and grabbed Mountain's sleeve. "We have a situation," she said in a low voice. "I found Aziuhoatl dead. The weapon was a nahual, but Raven was the one in control of it."
"Positive?" he asked.
"Yes. There was a woman with him, but from the description I can't tell who. A prostitute or a dancer or something."
Mountain nodded, turned on his heel, and rushed away. Jade wished she could get close to Thunder, but he was sticking close to Ocelot and she couldn't get near one without the other. She headed towards Cinder's room, but stopped outside the door. A scuffle was going on farther down the hallway. Jade broke into a run, Morning following her.
She arrived in time to see Mountain run Raven through with his spear. Jade smiled fiercely, turned on her heel, and headed back towards Cinder's room.
Cinder, thankfully, was still alive. Jade gathered her up, cradling her in her arms like she would a sleeping child. Out of the Speaker's wing she headed, looking for a quiet place to set Cinder down and do some healing.
She found an unoccupied alcove, and set Cinder down on the floor. Concentrating once more, she spun her power into a net around Cinder, tightening it so it fell against her skin. It took just a touch to bring her awake. "What--" Cinder said as she opened her eyes, then groaned in pain.
"Do you think you can walk?" Jade asked. Cinder nodded, her lips pressed together. "Good. Come with me." She lifted Cinder to her feet and stooped so she could drape one of the other woman's arms over her shoulders.
"What happened?" Cinder asked as they walked, Morning following them.
"Aziuhoatl is dead," she replied shortly. "Raven did it."
"He stabbed me," Cinder said. "Right after the doors blew. That was the last thing I remember. He had someone with him, a woman--" She broke off.
Jade nodded. "Her name is Morning, and she was under his control. No longer. Come on, let's get you to the Temple."
Inside the Temple, she handed Cinder off to Gull with instructions to heal her and find a secure and comfortable room for her. She handed Morning to a pair of priests, with instructions to put her into one of the holding cells, the ones that weren't used for potential sacrifices. "She is a guest of the Temple," Jade told them. "If anything happens to her, I will be very upset, and I will hold you both personally responsible." The priests nodded solemnly and hustled Morning off.
Jade took a deep breath and headed back to the palace at a run. She turned into her corridor and skidded to a stop as she saw that her door had been shattered by an explosion. Spear and Leaf were both lying across the corridor from her room, fetched up against the wall like dolls tossed aside by an angry child.
Leaf was dead, his empty eyes looking startled, staring at the ceiling. Spear was still alive, though breathing poorly and bleeding heavily from a gash in his scalp. She dropped down next to him, calling her power into her hands, screening out the whole world. He was bleeding inside, his lungs were starting to fill with blood, his right arm was broken in two places, and his right collarbone had snapped. It looked like he'd hit the wall with that shoulder. She repaired the worst of the damage, stopping the bleeding.
If I'd gotten here earlier, I might have saved Leaf, she thought. At the price of Cinder's life. Damnit, I liked Leaf. Under her hands, Spear roused and stirred. "Honored--one--" he croaked and began to cough. Jade helped him sit up as he coughed, clearing his lungs of the blood in them.
"You'll be all right," she told him. "What happened, Spear?"
He coughed again. "Door exploded from the inside out. Blew us across the corridor."
"Was there anyone in the corridor besides you and Leaf?" she asked.
He tried to shake his head, then groaned as the movement evidently hurt. "No, not until the door blew. Then Advisor Raven stepped out and walked away."
Raven had been here? But he had been in the Speaker's quarters, stabbing Cinder. Jade blinked. "What was the man thinking? He can't have thought he would get away with this," she muttered. He didn't think he was going to get away with this. Something fishy is going on here. "Anyway. I'm going to have some of your fellows here take you to the healers."
"Thank you," Spear said, and closed his eyes. She ordered several of the guards on the corridor to take Spear to the palace healers.
"Was Coal here when the explosion happened?" she asked a man that she recognized as one of Coal's guards.
"No, he was away. Investigating something, I think."
Jade nodded, then stepped into what had once been her room. It was almost unrecognizable, everything blackened and burned. Her daggers, except for the ones she had on her, were all shattered, her atlatl burned, most of her worldly possessions destroyed.
And there were feathers everywhere. Long black feathers. "Raven," she muttered, snarling. "A murder attempt if I'd been here, a warning because I was not."
The loss of her possessions didn't really bother her, except for the annoyance of needing to replace her clothing and a fleeting sadness over the loss of her weapons. She looked around her, looking for magic, and found a fading magic on what had once been the door. She stooped to pick up the one dagger that had been spared, her favorite sacrificial knife. Everything else in the room was unsalvageable.
She stepped out, taking a breath, then headed outside. Spider was outside the palace, and looked up as Jade approached. "Spider. Things have changed. Come with me, we need to go talk with Cinder," she said, and Spider silently followed her to the Temple.
Within the Temple, she found the room where Cinder had been stashed. Someone had brought clean clothing for her, and she sat looking out the window as they came in. Jade took a seat and waved Spider to a chair. "Well. We have a situation on our hands, it looks like," she said. "Ocelot just forced our hand."
"How so?" Cinder asked.
"Aziuhoatl is dead."
Emotions flitted across Cinder's face: surprise, relief, anger, a bit of sorrow. She settled into determination, her lips firm. "Then we have a problem. Aziuhoatl the younger will take power, and Ocelot soon after."
Jade nodded. "What we do depends on this--are we willing to start a civil war here? Because we can. I think I can get Mountain onto our side, at least for a while, and with him come the city and palace guards. I have the priests. And we have Smoke, who's the actual heir."
"Our numbers are small, his are not," Cinder replied. "Darkside is pretty much Ocelot's."
Spider said, "He has more warriors on the take than I can count."
Jade winced. She hadn't thought about the fact that Mountain's troops might not be entirely loyal to him. "We have another option. Strike directly at Ocelot. He's a very strong priest, but if I managed to catch him alone or nearly alone, and with backup...the odds would probably be about even. With Ocelot dead, Smoke can take the throne. There is another option still, but I don't like it much."
"Let's hear it," Cinder said.
"Play along. Let him think he's beaten us. Offer to marry Smoke to him. Being married to her will give his rule an air of legitimacy that he otherwise lacks. We use the time we gain to become stronger, until we can kill him." Jade grimaced. "I don't like using Smoke like that, though. And I don't know if she'll agree. Time is what we lack, and what we're swiftly running out of."
Cinder nodded. "She will have to agree to that. It would be very dangerous. He might let her live a month and then kill her."
"True. He might also let her live long enough to get a child on her. Like I said, I don't like it."
"It's the best option," she said, though she sounded as if she liked it about as much as Jade did. "You don't want a civil war. More people are going to die. If you think you can take Ocelot we can try that, but I have seen the man work. It's not going to be easy."
Jade suggested, "The other option is for you both to run. I don't have the option, I'm here until the bitter end, no matter how close it might be."
Spider shook her head. "That would be suspicious on my part. I think I will stay for a bit."
Cinder answered as well, and there was determination in her voice. "I knew I was going to die doing this. I would like to see it to the end. Ocelot will track me. He will never let me leave alive even if I sneak out."
Jade nodded, not having expected anything different. "All right. Cinder, I'm going to see what protection I can arrange for you. I think you'll need to be the one to bring the proposition to Ocelot, however. At this point, I can safely assume that Ocelot knows what I've been up to. Though I think I have a few surprises for him. Raven tried to kill me at the same time he was having Aziuhoatl killed. Raven's dead, now. I can assume that Raven told Ocelot that he was going to try for me as well as Aziuhoatl."
"When did Raven die?" Spider asked.
"Right after I told Mountain that he was responsible for Aziuhoatl's death. I came upon him in the library, a nahual crouched over him. She was under someone's control, which I ridded her of. The last person she remembered seeing before waking up in the library was Raven, and a woman who might be any one of a number of women."
Spider shook her head, bouncing in her seat. "No way, two seconds before you found me, I saw Raven leave with Eclipse."
"Are you serious? Damn. Someone who looks an awful lot like Raven died on Mountain's spear, then."
"Spelled I would bet. Only one way to tell. Get to the body."
Jade sighed. "I don't like Ocelot, but that was very nicely played, then."
"Yes, gets a killer for Aziuhoatl that conveniently dies and takes the blame. Aziuhoatl is dead, he gets the throne. No one going to complain much." Spider shrugged.
She spat an oath. "Yes, damnit. I was hoping I was going to have more time. Getting in to see the body shouldn't be a problem, if I go now. Cinder, stay here a bit, you'll be guarded by the priests." Cinder nodded. "I'll see you later, both of you. Unless you want to come with me, Spider? It might be best for us not to be seen together much. I have a feeling I'm going to start coming under heavy fire."
Spider shook her head. "No, I will wait it out here."
Jade nodded and rose, heading back to the palace at a pace a bit less than a run. She went to the Chief Speaker's quarters, which were crowded with servants cleaning things, workmen looking at the blown doors and discussing how they were to be replaced. Raven's body was not there, but Mountain was.
"Good work," she told him. "I saw the end of your battle with Raven. What happened to the body?"
His eyes narrowed in apparent annoyance, and he handed her a pot that appeared to be filled with ashes. "Teal came by and blew him to dust before we could react."
Jade took a sharp breath. "I was hoping to see what I could see."
"You can have those if you want. Not much to see, though."
"As much good as they'll do me, but I'll take them. A mage might be able to do something with them."
"Odd thing is, I have seen Teal do that before but it usually leaves items behind. Clothing, no, but rings and other things." He gestured at the jar. "Nothing."
The small hairs on the back of Jade's neck prickled. "That is strange. Unless he wasn't wearing anything to leave behind."
Mountain nodded. "And that's very unlike Raven. I have never seen him without a knife or several weapons and rings."
Jade frowned. "What if the Raven you got wasn't the real one, then?"
"Looked like him," the big man said, but she could see his mind working.
"Well, if the body was intact, I could have told you if it was the real one. Mages can make people look like people they're not. As it is..." She shrugged.
"Raven had Teal cover his tracks."
"Might have. They did work together on occasion," she said. "This whole business smells crooked."
"It does," he replied. "I will have the guards try to locate him but he's probably gone."
Jade nodded. "If I were you--try the darkside. The woman who was with him when the nahual he used as a weapon was taken looked a lot like Eclipse."
Mountain nodded, turned away, and started issuing orders to his guards. Jade took the opportunity to slip away, towards the streets of the city.
She needed to speak to Mantis, she needed to consult with the creature in the box, and she needed to talk to Jaguar. So she headed out into the sunshine of the morning, the sky a clear and crystalline blue, the only clouds in the sky safely on the horizon for the moment.
She could do nothing but keep moving, keep putting one foot in front of another. She had made her decisions, and it was now time to live with her choices. She could only hope that her choice to let Aziuhoatl die had been the correct one...
