Read Online Aztlan: The Last Sun by Michael Jan Friedman - Free Book Online

instructions.
    And I went outside to see what had happened.
    The Atlaua property, I noticed, was bigger and hillier than that of Centeotl. It seemed the body was in a low-lying area between two of the hills.
    In this case, the officers keeping it company were from the Twelfth District rather than the Seventh, so they wore blue tunics rather than yellow ones. But like the guys from the Seventh, they would rather have been doing almost anything else.
    It wasn’t just that it was a corpse. It was what it looked like.
    I didn’t kneel beside the poor bastard. I was too stiff from the beating I had taken. Besides, I could see all I needed to without bending down.
    As Necalli had said, it was the same deal as before. The same splintered ribs, the same gaping cavity where the victim’s heart should have been, the same pallid pool of candle wax congealed in his gut.
    But this victim was a lot more prosperous-looking than Patli had been. His clothes were made of the finest fabrics, so fine that one might almost have mistaken him for a nobleman.
    Except for the jewelry, of course. Unlike a nobleman, he wasn’t wearing any.
    “Colhua?” said a familiar voice.
    I looked back over my shoulder and saw Necalli coming over the hill. He looked tired. But then, it was late, and I had no doubt he would rather have been in bed.
    “Did you just get here?” he asked.
    “Just,” I confirmed.
    He took a look at the victim and made a face. “Gods of Death. It makes you want to lose your dinner.” He turned to the police officers. “Identification?”
    “Not a thing,” said one of them.
    Just like Patli. “But not because he’s homeless,” I noted. “Not with those clothes.”
    Necalli nodded. “I doubt we’ll have as much trouble identifying this one.” He knelt beside the body. “Smells from octli . The other one did too, right?”
    “Right,” I said.
    “So they had that in common.” He looked up at me, no doubt meaning to add something—and winced. “Say, you really did get beat up.”
    “I told you I wasn’t joking.”
    His whole face seemed to furrow. “You’ll file a report when we’re done here. It’s bad for people to think they can beat up police officers and get away with it. It makes other people think they can get away with it too.”
    The officers from the Twelfth nodded. Obviously, they approved of the sentiment.
    “Well,” said Necalli, glancing at the corpse again, “I’ve seen enough. How about you, Colhua?”
    “More than enough,” I said.
    As we walked back to the pyramid, Necalli shivered. “I’ve eyeballed my share of corpses, but none like that one. Whoever did that had to be a real sicko.” A pause. “You think anyone in Ancient Light is that sick?”
    “No,” I said.
    “Even after those guys in the masks said what they said?”
    “Even then.”
    He shrugged. “We’ll haul them in anyway. I mean, we’ve got to do something .”
    In accordance with Necalli’s orders, we rounded up the cultists again. This time we had files on forty-three of them, including the seven who had come in the last time of their volition.
    Eren was one of those arrested, of course. She didn’t talk to me. She wouldn’t even look at me.
    We questioned her people as we had previously, and got pretty much the same answers. If they were covering something up, they were doing a remarkably fine job of it.
    Eventually we let them go, but I wasn’t there to see it. Because I looked like I had one foot in the Lands of the Dead, Necalli sent me home halfway through the night.
    It wasn’t so much because he felt bad for me. It was more because having me around was bad for morale.
    I didn’t care. I was just happy to drag myself back to my place, drink enough octli to dull the pain, and put my beat-up bones to bed.
     



Chapter Six
    I n the morning, I was hung over. That was bad. But I was able
to bend a little here and there, which was good.
    When I arrived at work, Necalli told me that he’d set up a