“All of you,” he went on, addressing the three. “I know how to irk you, how to goad you, how to mislead and dupe you. That’s always been my way. My role. Every family has to have its black sheep, and I’m sorry, Xipe Totec, but it’s not you, however much you’d like to think it is.”
The hairless man gave a careless shrug.
“But it isn’t. You’re a dark horse, maybe, but never a black sheep. You’re violent and cruel, but you toe the line. When push comes to shove, you always side with the majority. You do as you’re told. As do you, Huitzilopochtli.”
The third of the three glowered at him.
“The Hummingbird. Bright as the sun. But none too bright in other ways. A good footsoldier but hardly an independent thinker.”
“Ignore him, Huitz,” said Quetzalcoatl. “You too, Xipe. He’s trying to get a rise out of us. Let’s not give him the satisfaction.”
“Don’t you want to be antagonised, Kay?” said the Great Speaker. “Isn’t that secretly, deep down, the very thing you’ve come for? An excuse to lash out at me? I’m sure it is. That business with Quetzalpetlatl, it’s got to be eating you up inside, even now. Our beautiful sister. So fresh. So innocent. So voluptuously fertile. How long had you been quietly lusting after her, unable to admit it even to yourself? How long had you been watching her, yearning to have her? How long, and then I gave you the opportunity to? I never forced you to sleep with Quetzalpetlatl, or her with you. You desired her, she reciprocated, and all I did was pave the way, arranging it so that the feelings you’d both kept locked inside could come out. And did I get any recognition for that? Any gratitude? No. Just an explosion of temper, the hissy fit to end all hissy fits, and then this exile, like a ship’s captain being marooned on a desert island by mutineers. ‘It’s all yours. You look after it. No telling when we’ll be back, if ever.’ You think you’ve got a bone to pick with me, Kay? I have a whole skeleton’s worth to pick with you.”
The Great Speaker’s voice didn’t rise once during this tirade, but a distinct note of petulance entered it. All at once he came across as less than the supreme, all-powerful emperor he was supposed to be.
At the same time, Mal was halfway to becoming convinced that he was more. Much, much more.
“Take it off,” said Quetzalcoatl, biting back anger. “The mask. I want to see your face. I don’t want to talk to the Great Speaker any more. It’s the person beneath the mask I’m interested in.”
“This? Off?” The Great Speaker rapped the mask with his knuckles. It rang like a bell. “Why not? Gets so stuffy in here anyway.”
He placed a hand either side of the golden head-covering and hoisted it off, setting it down on a nearby table.
“There. That’s better. Fresh air.”
The face that stood revealed was a handsome one like Quetzalcoatl’s. There was a clear resemblance between the two of them, from the high domed forehead to the prominent cleft chin. They could easily, as the Great Speaker was claiming, be brothers. Twins, even. The Great Speaker, however, had a less attractive cast to his features. He looked haughty, where Quetzalcoatl looked noble. His eyes were that little bit closer together and deeper set, that little bit less frank and open. His complexion was several shades darker, too, black coffee as opposed to Quetzalcoatl’s cafe-au-lait. As the two of them faced each other, it was as if one was the distorted image of the other, a reflection seen in a mirror that somehow removed sincerity and replaced it with cunning.
“There you are,” said Quetzalcoatl. “Just as I remember. You haven’t changed a bit, Tezcatlipoca.”
Mal had passed beyond astonishment and entered a state of being where nothing felt solid or certain and where everything that had once made sense no longer did. A kind of wild hilarity kept bubbling up inside her, threatening to break out as a mad cackle. Had Aaronson not been next to her and looking not one iota less stunned, she’d have wondered if she was losing her grip on sanity. Was she dreaming? Was she in the throes of a drug trip which she couldn’t remember embarking on?
Had the Great Speaker really just removed his mask before her very eyes?
Had Quetzalcoatl really just addressed him by the name Tezcatlipoca?
Were these four beings on the terrace — these four who were sharing the same space as her, breathing the same air — really none other than the Four Who Rule Supreme?
It was inconceivable.
Impossible.
Absurd.
And yet Mal knew it was true. It must be. She felt it at a level inside her that had nothing to do with rationality and everything to do with intuition. Her brain was screaming at her that this was all some extraordinary, elaborate stunt. Someone was having her on. Any moment now, the four of them would turn round and wink and say, “Gotcha!” Meanwhile, her heart, her gut, her soul, was insisting that yes, it was exactly as it appeared. There could be no mistake. She was witnessing a meeting of the full complement of the Four, the first in five hundred solar years. Gods had returned to the earth. Or, in Tezcatlipoca’s case, had never been away.
“Look at them,” said the Great Speaker, alias Tezcatlipoca. “What a staggering revelation this is to them.” He meant Mal, Aaronson and Reston, of course; Colonel Tlanextic gave every indication that he had known his master’s true identity all along. He was coolly enjoying the startlement on the others’ faces. “They’ve been led to believe the Great Speaker is Moctezuma the Second, but that was just a cover story, a convenient fabrication. It came down to a choice. Which would be the easier to swallow, that a man could be granted extraordinary longevity, or that Tezcatlipoca now ruled them?
“People might wonder, why Tezcatlipoca? Why not one of the other divine visitors? Why not Quetzalcoatl himself? I was aware I wasn’t the most popular of the Four. So I concocted the role of Great Speaker, usurping the identity of an emperor already beloved of his people. Moctezuma himself was none too pleased when he learned that he was about to be forcibly supplanted as ruler. Ironic, really; here was a man who had presided over so many human sacrifices, who had chalked up countless deaths in the name of his own glory, yet he was profoundly reluctant to give up his own life. He struggled quite a bit. Screamed and bit like a howler monkey under my hands.”
“You… killed him?” said Mal.
“Someone had to,” Tezcatlipoca replied airily. “Seemed simplest to do the job myself. It happened in his private quarters, not far from this spot. There were no witnesses. It was just Moctezuma and myself in a room, the last true Aztec emperor and the last god left on earth. He perished, I disposed of the body so as not to leave a trace behind, and next day this entity called the Great Speaker emerged, claiming to be a Moctezuma energised by godly power, a Moctezuma who would live and rule forever by divine decree.
“I wasn’t entirely sure at first that people would fall for it. The priesthood, especially, I thought would see through the imposture and demand proof that I was the emperor in new clothes. In the event, everyone was duped. Some perhaps had their doubts, but went along with it anyway because up until then Moctezuma, with the gods’ aid, had overseen expansion of Aztec territory on an unprecedented scale, and as the Great Speaker I quickly established that the future would hold more of the same, even though the gods were now gone. I promised them the world, as a matter of fact. It was what the Aztecs wanted to hear, so they were willing to set aside any misgivings they might have had and take me at face value. I told them that the gods had raised me up, elevated me to a higher order of being. I planted the seeds of a story which grew into a legend and from there to a simple fact of truth, a cornerstone of the Empire. People will believe anything if it’s in their interest to do so.”
“A grotesque hoax,” said Quetzalcoatl.