Gods of Jade and Shadow(96)

She had dreamed this moment, the slicing of the wrists. It was the arrow of fate. She had been foolish to think she could win this challenge. Unlucky Casiopea, born under a bad star, could not prevail.

Casiopea clutched the knife, tight. Desperate, scared, wishing to weep her sorrow, she waded into the lake until the water reached her thighs. The knife was in her hand. The obsidian blade was sharp, unnaturally perfect, it was like a black mirror. She caught her reflection in it.



* * *



—

The Black Road grew more convoluted the farther Martín walked around the city. It led him down alleys with dead ends, it dragged him next to magnificent temples and through a market where men sold jaguar pelts and featherless birds, their bones inked with dozens of colors. Gamblers sat on woven mats and threw dice, moving red and blue pebbles across a board. They laughed, showing Martín their pointed teeth.

“Damn it,” he cursed.

But he caught a flash of green in his right eye and, turning, beheld, not so distant, the unmistakable silhouette of the Jade Palace.

Martín smiled.



* * *



—

She could hear Martín’s steps upon the stones of the Black City. She could hear his breath and she could feel inside her the last shreds of time wilting away.

Casiopea was scared. The fear was like a cloak lined with lead; it held her stiff in its arms. It would not let her move. She was bound in its coils. Live, live, she wanted to live. She wanted a way out.

It was as Hun-Kamé had told her: life was not fair. Why should she be fair? Why should she suffer? This was not even her story. This kind of tale, this dubious mythmaking, was for heroes with shields and armor, for divinely born twins, for those anointed by lucky stars.

She was but a girl from nowhere. Let the heroes save the world, save kings who must regain their crowns. Live, live, she wanted to live, and there was a way.

Who was to say she couldn’t serve a death lord, as her grandfather had? Vucub-Kamé had promised Casiopea would be his favorite courtier. She might even become like Xtabay, with jewels on her fingers and her ears, much admired and respected.

Why not?

“I pledge myself to the Supreme Lord of Xibalba,” she told the blade, her voice wavering.

She raised her arm. And she could see Hun-Kamé dead, the head separated from the body, the body falling. And she could see the future Vucub-Kamé envisioned: his expanded kingdom, the world tasting of smoke and blood, and darkness blotting the land.

Then she remembered the long road she’d traveled, the obstacles she’d overcome, and what Hun-Kamé had told her when they stood by the sea. It rang in her ears so clearly: And yet you are. She also recalled the ways his eyes had deepened, the velvet blackness, that third kiss he did not share. He didn’t need to. He loved her, she knew it. She loved him back.

She could not betray him. She could not betray herself. She could not betray the story.

Mythmaking. It’s greater than you or I, this tale.

Maybe she was not a hero with a shield and a divine provenance, but it’s the symbolism that matters. She gripped the knife tight.

“I pledge myself to the Supreme Lord of Xibalba, the Lord Hun-Kamé,” she said, this time with aplomb. Casiopea slid the knife against her throat.

K’up kaal. The cutting of the throat. The proper way to die. Vucub-Kamé’s suggestion of the slashing of the wrists would have been inadequate.

Proper or no, the pain was raw; it roared through her body and she opened her eyes wide. The blood welled. It soaked her shirt and she trembled. She let go of the knife, she did not attempt to press her hands against her throat, did not attempt to stop the flow of blood.

Instead, she remembered what she’d told Hun-Kamé at the hotel: that she wanted everything to live. And her lips, they repeated this request, not life for herself but for all others.

Casiopea sank to her knees, slid into the water, the lake swallowing her whole.

The lake was perfectly still. She might never have been there at all.

K’up kaal.



* * *



—

In the deserts of Xibalba men walked and cried for mercy. In the swamps skeleton birds shrieked. In caves like honeycombs mortals tore their hair out, having forgotten who they were. In the Black City the noble dead who had made proper preparations for the Underworld, decking themselves in serpentine and jade and placing the correct offerings, sat on their couches and drank a black liqueur.

Xibalba was as it always had been.

Then the snakes and the jaguar and the bats turned their heads, because the land held its breath. The men in the deserts paused in their cries, the skeleton birds ceased their shrieking, and the lost mortals stopped their gnashing and their tearing, the noble dead held on to their cups tightly.

Martín, approaching the main entrance to the Jade Palace, stumbled and stood motionless. He did not understand why, only that he must pause, that a force greater than himself demanded he be anchored and he dare not even turn his head.

In Middleworld, in the casino by the sea, the ground shook. The chandeliers clinked. Huge cracks spread across many mirrors and windows in the hotel. The guests who were watching the roll of the dice and the employees working their shifts let out a gasp, thinking an earthquake was assaulting the peninsula.

The two Lords of Death, who had been sitting in their wooden chairs, stood up and held their breath, just like the land did. Aníbal Zavala watched as the map of ash that showed the Land of the Dead trembled like a leaf, and though he ordinarily would have coaxed it to regain its shape with his sorcery, he could not.