Gods of Jade and Shadow(76)

There were frescoes, the walls painted in the brilliant shade of blue they called Mayan blue, the truest blue you’ve ever seen. Oceans filled with marine creatures appeared on those walls, the flora and fauna painted in rich reds and intense yellows, fringed with geometric shapes. Above them, the ceiling was silver and gold, with the glyphs for earth and water repeated over and over again.

It was like tumbling into another world, the textures on display—stone, glass, wood—coming together in a mixture so heady it was impossible not to stop and gawk.

“Come along,” Martín said. “No need to check in, it’s all been arranged.”

“What has been arranged?” Casiopea asked, regaining the capacity for speech.

“Your stay.”

They went into the elevator, all gleaming metal—the glyphs there again—and got out on the third floor. The porter had attached himself to them and carried their bags. When they reached the end of a hallway, Martín unlocked the doors and motioned for them to step in.

They stood in a vestibule, the sofas yellow, the walls blue. A table in the center with lilies on display. At each side a door. Martín opened one, then the other.

“Your rooms,” he said.

Casiopea took a tentative step into one of the bedrooms. The yellow and blue scheme also reigned here. The windows were huge and led toward a balcony. If she stood out there she might smell the ocean, its salt. They’d come so far! She had not even realized the magnitude of the trip until now, all the states they’d crossed, the cities that had gone past their window, to reach this point at the edge of the sea.

She felt such joy then. This was one of the things she’d dreamed about. An ocean offering itself to her. It was the postcard in the old cookie tin, it was that breathless feeling she’d carried hidden in her heart. She stepped out, onto the balcony, and gripped the railing with both hands. She could hear them talking from where she was standing.

“You are to have dinner with Zavala tonight at eight,” Martín said. “He’s asked that you make use of the stores downstairs to outfit yourselves. Zavala has dinner in the main ballroom. Travel suits and ordinary dresses will not do.”

“Very well. And my brother, will he grace me with his presence tonight during dinner?” Hun-Kamé asked.

“I wouldn’t know. I’ll see you at eight. If you need anything, do ring for it,” Martín said, making his exit.

Casiopea turned and went back into the room, leaning against the balcony door, watching Hun-Kamé. He walked around, looking at the ceiling, inspecting the windows, all the finery, his hands behind his back. He was smiling.

“Vucub-Kamé is up to his clever games. Very, very clever, my brother.”

“I don’t understand.”

Hun-Kamé continued his inspection, now running his hands along a wall, scratching with a nail its blue paint. Casiopea saw the expensive room and the elaborate décor, but he was clearly finding something unusual about the setup. “I told you about the chu’lel, remember? Vucub-Kamé wanted to connect two points of power together. Look at this place. Look at the glyphs, the shape of it, each wall, each angle, it sings with magic. It’s not an ordinary hotel.”

Casiopea cocked her head, staring at the motifs on the ceiling and the walls. It reminded her of the images in history books, drawings of temples in the midst of the jungle or the ruins dotting the peninsula where she’d grown up. “It’s a pyramid without being a pyramid,” she ventured.

“Precisely,” Hun-Kamé said, looking very pleased, although she wasn’t sure why he would be so happy.

“You said he had not connected the two points of power.”

“No, he hasn’t. This place is thrumming with potential, it’s a sleeping beast, one of your engines before it’s been set in motion.”

In her dream there had been an obsidian throne, the Lord of Xibalba on it. Now she recalled other details: piles of bones as tall as houses, littering the land, skulls that formed walls, blood slick upon the earth. Yes, she had glimpsed something that was not, but which could well be.

“Why hasn’t it been set in motion?” she asked.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Hun-Kamé replied. “There must be a mortuary chamber somewhere. He intends to kill me and rule across this whole vast expanse of land; my blood is bound to be the final stone. Oh, I can feel it.”

“Why aren’t you afraid, then?”

He smiled even more, as if she’d made a particularly clever joke. “Because, Casiopea Tun, he hasn’t killed me yet, has he?”

“He could come barreling down that door, ready to fight you,” she said, pointing in that direction. It was unlikely, but there was no sense in dismissing the possibility either.

“Gods don’t fight each other with shields and swords. That would be improper.”

“He cut off your head.”

“I’m aware of it. When I am done with him I’ll have this place hauled off, bit by bit, into the sea, not a speck of his work left behind. How glorious that will be. The misery of his cries when he gets to enjoy a few centuries in a carved box, and the added misery of watching his creation crumble into nothing.”

“That’s your plan, then. You’re going to do exactly the same as he did to you,” she said, taken aback by the harshness of his words. “It hardly seems right.”