notapaladin

“Enjoying yourself, love?”

“Mm.”

Honestly, part of him still can’t believe he let Teomitl talk him into this. Well, alright, he can, but he thinks he should probably have put up more of a fight for the sake of his dignity, no matter how much the whole thing makes him melt. In his defense, they’d been lounging in a pleasant postcoital haze, his head on Teomitl’s shoulder, when his lover had tugged on a loose curl and asked if he’d let himself be spoiled for once. What do you call this? he’d asked. And Teomitl had smiled, smiled like the dawn of the Fifth World, and said Not enough. With that smile, he would have agreed to anything.

“We shouldn’t be doing this.”

Acatl can think of half a dozen reasons why they shouldn’t be doing this, just off the top of his head. Teomitl is the Master of the House of Darts. He will one day be Emperor. He is his brother-in-law, married to his most beloved sister who is also the Guardian of the Duality in Tenochtitlan. Tizoc would happily have them both killed if he ever found out—for adultery, for treason, for corrupting an upstanding young warrior, for debauching a priest. And Teomitl is—was, was—his student.

Like a son to me, he’d thought once. And at the time, he’d even believed it.

But then Teomitl had turned to him and smiled (like the sun, like the first dawn of a new age, like gold given life) and...

In the end, he’d been wrong. He’d been weak. He’s past feeling guilty for it now, at least; there’d been a good few months where he’d been rabbit-shy of even looking at Teomitl for too long, until the day he’d realized Teomitl was looking back.

He thinks it should frighten him, how easy it is to be Emperor.

The Turquoise-and-Gold Crown is not meant to sit lightly on a man’s head. The throne is not supposed to be comfortable to sit upon. His turquoise-beaded cape, his turquoise-netted hip cloth, the bracelets and armbands and legbands of beaten gold—they are made to weigh heavily upon him, to remind him at every step of the responsibilities he has in running the Empire. He should not bear them as though they are a bundle of duck feathers.

But.

But.

But men bow to him, and his army respects him, and even the supercilious Quenami is appropriately terrified of attracting his attention. But he smiles and waves his hand, and the people cheer. Even his coronation war brings new lands into the Mexica Empire, brings thousands of captives to feed the gods. It is easy to let his name rise like smoke, like mist, until only the stone his brother raised in his own honor even bears the name Tizoc. It is easy to rule.

It is terrible.

He performs many of the sacrifices for the Great Temple’s rededication himself. Blood slicks his hands, his arms, his finest regalia, and his face is appropriately grave—but oh, oh, Huitzilopochtli’s power burns in him like a flame, like a second sun, and it is all he can do not to smile. It is not only the council that chose him. The gods, too, see him as worthy. With this...ah, with this he can be great. Greater than Tizoc, greater than Axayacatl—greater even than Moctezuma, the first to build an empire out of their little island city.

And so he marches to war again. He is a seasoned warrior now, dozens and dozens of captives fallen to the flat of his blade—but then, when he took those captives he was not yet fully invested with the power of his patron god. His armies sweep the field before them, and when he returns home in glory, Mihmatini is waiting.

Another child, she tells him. They have two already, twin girls, and he loves them. He does. And he rejoices in this one too, watching with pride the way Acatl’s eyes light up when he’s told he’ll be an uncle again.

He misses the birth. There is a city on their borders that has announced it will not be paying tribute this year, and he is all too glad to convince them otherwise. In the midst of the carnage, the blood and screaming and broken feathers, he doesn’t even think of those he left behind him.

After that, it’s easier to miss more. His son’s first steps, Acatl’s birthday, Mihmatini successfully not strangling her Texcocan Guardian counterpart when the woman purportedly insinuates that she cannot possibly be an effective Guardian, mother, and Imperial Consort all at the same time. Does he feel bad? He supposes he does. But more and more, Tenochtitlan feels...flat. He sits upon his throne, holding sway over his court, and it does not fill his heart with joy.

He is happiest on the campaign trail. No—he is happiest conquering. Bringing rebellious provinces to heel, leading his army to take new ones with fire and the sword. He stands where fire meets water, where the jaguar feeds and feathers are crushed, where blood dyes his turquoise sandals red, and he laughs for the sheer joy of it. This place, and no other, is where he belongs—the staging ground from which he will build the glory of his reign. Peasants in far-flung villages and kings upon their suddenly-precarious thrones curse his name, but his army cheers and grows fat upon its spoils and really, isn’t that all he could ask for?

Sometimes he is less than successful, of course, but those times are few and far between. Huitzilopochtli guides him and Chalchiuhtlicue protects him, and so his Empire continues to grow. He returns in glory, bearing vanilla and quetzal feathers and precious jade, and they cheer his name.

And then the victory speeches and the banquets are over, his obligations discharged, and he, the Emperor of the Mexica, slips from behind his screen and—

Well. He has a private celebration. Sometimes he goes to his own chambers, all gold and furs and precious stones, and fucks Acatl there amidst the spoils of war. Acatl is yet more radiant even than these, his hair like spilled ink over the spotted pelts and his cries the sweetest music to Teomitl’s ears. My lord, he calls him, and Ahuitzotl, and it thrills him to the core. But other times...other times he sheds his finery and walks the streets of the Sacred Precinct to Acatl’s own house, cool and gray and dim in the moonlight, and they have their hands in each other’s hair and their mouths on each other’s skin and Acatl only calls him Teomitl.

In the moonlight, he thinks he prefers to be Teomitl.

But in sunlight, in torchlight, under the burning gaze of the gods, he will and must be Ahuitzotl.

It is Ahuitzotl who makes the hard decisions, who turns his heart to stone and his eyes to the heavens. It is Ahuitzotl who razes temples, who shackles women and children as slaves, who invites the ire and the retribution of those who see his conquests and think to stop him. It is Ahuitzotl who does these things, even if it is Teomitl who wonders if it is possible to stretch too far, to exceed the limits of his reach—

No. Doubt leads to fear, and fear leads to weakness.

He will not be weak. He will never be weak.

Mihmatini withdraws from him, and he lets her. She has her children, after all. She no longer needs him. He thinks he should miss her more than he does, but...well. Things between them have never been easy, even before he was crowned. It only grows more strained when he has their daughters wed to foreign kings, sealing alliances with their hands and the children they will bear. They leave, and he knows he’ll likely never see them again.

Acatl stays. Acatl always stays.

The shadows rise. There are those who whisper that he listens too much to his Priest for the Dead, that he has forgotten how it is to live, that perhaps—perhaps he ought not to be Emperor. He feeds them to his ahuitzotls for the insult. There are others who do not whisper, who never even attract his notice, but they must have done something for one day there is a space in the palace where they once were, and a lingering haze of dry bone-dust, and Acatl walking the halls in somber and careful reflection. Once—just once—he spies a man speaking to Acatl from a distance. The man is sneering. Acatl is smiling. He never sees that man again. Rumors later say that the Wind of Knives took him from his mat in the middle of the night and left only blood behind.

There are very few complaints after that.

Besides, he has not forgotten how to live. Life is in the blood that spills over his hands, the teeth clenched in pain when he takes a wound in battle. Life is in the smooth order of his glorious city, shining like a jewel on the lake. Life is in Acatl’s fingers twined with his own.

But...there are dark days. Days where Tizoc’s specter looms large over his reign, days where anger rises up in his throat and chokes him, chokes him until he has to spit it out. On days like that, it doesn’t matter who’s in his way; he’ll cut them down like so much tall grass, and only feel bad about it later. Even Neutemoc is not spared. His brother-in-law speaks out of turn once on a day that’s already going bad, and Ahuitzotl doesn’t think before ordering him stripped of his rank for the insolence. Even Acatl draws back at that, and for a moment he thinks he’ll lose him too.

He remembers fear. It takes real effort for him to hold his tongue until they’re alone—until they’re in his own chambers, the guards dismissed, and he can take Acatl’s hands in his. Teomitl would have apologized. Teomitl would have restored Neutemoc to his proper place. Teomitl would have promised to keep a better hold on his temper and a firmer rein on his tongue.

But Ahuitzotl says none of that. He squeezes his lover’s hands too hard, but Acatl doesn’t flinch. Acatl has never flinched from him. “Am I your Revered Speaker, Acatl?”

Acatl closes his eyes, and does not smile. “Always.”

“...Good.” It is all he can find to say.

The day shines bright around them when they leave the room, and for a moment Ahuitzotl finds himself smiling. Acatl believes in him as he always has. Even now, even in this, Acatl believes in him and in his reign. Long fingers brush against his arm as Acatl draws away, and he feels his strength restored.

He watches Acatl’s retreating back and thinks, in what is left of his heart, I love you. He thinks, I will give you the world.

He only has to claim it, first.

It takes her a while, but after he returns from the coronation war, Chalchiuhnenetl decides she quite likes her baby brother. She’d discounted him at first—after all, she has many brothers, Tizoc and Axayacatl as shining examples of their general mediocrity—but he is different from the others. His conviction and ambition burns brightly within him. He is strong. Proud. A skilled warrior, even at his young age.

And so, so deliciously easy to manipulate.

There were nights Acatl loved. Nights where he could relax with a full belly and a reasonably peaceful heart, where his only major concerns were the day-to-day problems of his temple and any outstanding cases at least didn’t require his personal attention. Nights where he could rest and dream of anything other than blood and death. (And if some of those dreams were of Teomitl’s bright eyes and the curve of his mouth, that was a strictly private matter.)

And then there were nights like this.

Everyone in the Fifth World has a soulmate. Some people are born with another’s day sign seared into the thin flesh of their inner wrists; others only find it igniting their skin as they linger on Mictlan’s threshold. Children dream about meeting their tonalli’s other half, though most in time settle for people their families know and trust. There are many infants born each day, after all, and you would sooner have your Eight Death be the girl next door instead of the flat-faced, knock-kneed spinster across the canal. (Then your girl runs off with a lover, you marry the spinster anyway because she’s good with your children, and you find she makes you smile as the beautiful one never did. Fate has a way of working these things out.)

Acatl is twelve years old when he wakes with a strangled scream in the middle of the night to discover why it is that soulmarks, which don’t look much like burns, are always described as lighting up your veins. When it’s over, he blinks back tears, swallows the blood in his mouth—he’s bitten the inside of his cheek, and now it will swell and he’ll probably keep biting it for the next three days—and holds up his wrist to the moonlight. There is a number. There is a glyph.