Brian D'Amato - The Sacrifice Game

“Our win has yet to be solidified,” he said. On the west side of the courtyard, the public side, a messenger came in with a dispatch 2JS had to deal with and he took his leave for a moment, using an among-equals form. Evidently he was really busy. I’ll just hang out here for a while, I thought. Me and the rest of the big shots. Relief soaked into me again. Except, wait, I wondered, where’s Lady Koh? There were four-hundred-tesseracted things I had to ask her. Starting with whether she’d remembered to tell all our friendlies not to drink the water.

I started to get up. The dressers couldn’t hold me down because they didn’t have the authority, so they let me get halfway to standing. Then they caught me as I keeled over. I heard 2JS talking with Hun Xoc and some of his commanders.

You have to wait, I thought. I looked up at the sky. I don’t know whether I faded out or not but at some point later 2 Jeweled Skull had come back again and was asking me if I was all right.

I said I felt ready to play another ball game right now. He smiled.

And something in the smile Something wasn’t quite right. I’d been about to ask him whether they’d told him not to drink the water, to make sure he knew about the earthstar compound. But there was something-hmm.

I’ve never thought of myself as a great judge of character. When other kids in grade school were learning spelling from flash cards, I had a special set of cards that were supposed to teach me emotions, like it had a face with X’s for eyes and a tongue sticking out and I was supposed to check off the word disgusted. But maybe Chacal was a better judge. Or at least he picked up on the vocal microtones of a lie, or inimical pheromones, or something. Anyway, somewhere in Chacal’s lower brains, the cortices that scent danger on a reptilian level, somewhere in there a neuron fired that said Don’t tell him.

And I didn’t. Instead, I congratulated him again on the victory. He said thanks, it was nothing-part of the polite protocol-and then said it looked secure but had cost the Harpy House a lot of bloods. I said that was too bad but that they died “in the right place,” as we put it, and he said yes. I asked him if I could ask him a question. He said fine.

I asked-or inquired politely-whether Hun Xoc or 5–5 was still “in the middle level,” that is, alive.

My son 5–5 is dead, 2 Jeweled Skull said. My son Hun Xoc is missing, and not claimed by the Ocelots.

I said the necessary things. After that I was expected to ask, “And who else of our family have we lost?” to which he’d recite the list. Then I’d ask, “And whom have we taken?” and he’d recite that presumably much bigger list. But we didn’t do any of that. I guess he’d gotten enough of me to be a little less formal. Instead he said we’d hear the triumphant speeches later, around the conquest feast, but that he had to go see to the repair of the palisades. He said he was already digging a dry moat across the “Right Shoulder,” the narrowest part of the northern pass into the valley.

I asked if I could ask about something else.

He said all right.

I asked whether he knew where Lady Koh was.

I don’t know, he said, we had to win without Lady Koh’s help. Which is why “win” may still be a bit of an exaggeration.

I held my right hand up to my mouth, with the palm open, and rotated it to the right, meaning, “That’s hard to believe, tell me more.”

2 Jeweled Skull said that he’d seen images from my memory in his mind, historic battles and formations of paper soldiers over vast map tables, and that after I’d left he’d drilled a squad of a hundred of his best blowgun marksmen as an archery-style firing line. He’d broken the families up into smaller units and told them to keep fighting even if their lords and standards were captured, just like I’d tried to do back at Teotihuacan. He’d done everything right. Lady Koh’s army never showed up, but despite inferior numbers he’d taken the temple-district peninsula and most of the city.

But we’re still vulnerable, he said, we still need the Rattlers’ help, and Koh’s army isn’t here.

I said that even if Koh had been captured by the Ocelots, 1 Gila was supposed to be bringing in the Rattler army anyway.

He said the equivalent of “Well, we’re waiting.”

I asked whether he had any idea what had happened to Lady Koh after the ball game. I was getting this dizzy, ripped-off, betrayed feeling.

2 Jeweled Skull said that if the Ocelots had captured her he would have heard about it. They would have offered to trade her. Either she’d sold us out and made a deal with 9 Fanged Hummingbird, or somehow she’d had her guards spirit her away at the very beginning of the battle, or maybe she’d gotten out some other way. If she had made a deal with the ahau of the Ocelots, that is, 9 Fanged Hummingbird, it would mean she was coming back later, with him and Severed Right Hand, to retake Ix.

So 9 Fanged Hummingbird is still alive and outside the city? I asked.

Yes, he said. I think Koh may have been plotting with 8 Smoking Peeper, the Ixian Rattler feeder. Maybe that whole business with the Ocelots getting 8 Smoking Peeper onto their side was just an excuse for her to get away from us. It was setup city.

But the Rattler army was in our own territory, I said. The border patrols out there would have to know where they are.

I haven’t heard anything, he said.

We looked at each other.

Dang.

I started to make a formal apology. It wasn’t like I’d vouched for Lady Koh or anything, but still, I guess I should have seen this coming.

2 Jeweled Skull said I’d done more than any of his other sons had ever done for him.

I gestured, “Thanks to my Father,” and he gestured, “Accepted.”

There was another pause. Behind me 2JS’s commanders were impatient to go. He looked past me at them and gestured for them to wait another ten beats. He looked back at me. Under all the fooferaw, he was starting to look like a worn-out old politician.

I said I supposed no one from 1 Gila’s squad had given him the Scorpion-adders or the tzam lic either. He can’t know about the earthstar drug, I thought. Can he? No, no way. Koh and I’d kept that one too close to our vests. Didn’t “No,” 2JS said. “They haven’t given me anything.”

I didn’t answer. He asked whether I had gotten any idea of where Koh might have gone. I said no.

Was there anyplace they talked about in the region? he asked. Anywhere they might have supporters and space and cover, where they could go to regroup?

I said I didn’t know of any. If anyone had set something like that up, it would have been 1 Gila.

And Lady Koh never told you anything? he asked.

I said no. I thought we’d talked through everything, but evidently she fooled me. I’m a fool, I’m a porcupine, I’m not worthy.

“Nothing?” he asked again.

“No,” I said, “I didn’t-”

I paused like there was something in my throat.

2 Jeweled Skull looked at me.

I looked back.

He’d looked at me that way, with that same scraping-the-back-of-your-skull look he’d had when he first interrogated me such a hard, if not long, time ago, and I understood.

Without any perceptible change of expression, his eyes shifted to that look that-hmm. It’s that look… let me think… okay. Instead of trying to describe it, let’s do this. If you have a dog, there’s a way to see this that involves scaring yourself. Make eye contact with your dog, command her/him to sit, and reward the behavior with a strip of turkey jerky or bacon or something your dog loves the smell of. Keeping him/her sitting, and keeping up eye contact, take another strip and hold it in front of your face, right between your eyes. Your dog’s expression will shift ever so subtly, but, if you’ve done it right, the shift is terrifying. Something in his face had something of my own mind in its expression, something I could read.