"Cast away the demons, smash your idols, and surrender! You were born clean, but these priests and your Emperor have led your heart into sin! Reject the blasphemous blatherings of these black-robed atrocities and embrace the Everlasting Refuge of the All-Mighty Allah!"
"Someone should remind him that he's still wearing his own smelly black robe," Etetl Xochitl chuckled, his thick fangs bared in a gruesome smile.
"We should arrest him--" Nahui Atl started but Xochitl silenced him with an upraised hand.
"Let the crowd have at him first."
Chicome Calli glanced at Atl, who shrugged but his twitching tail betrayed his irritation. The crowd of humans--which had grown five times larger since the knights' arrival--rumbled in discontent. Already people passed tomatoes and apples amongst themselves, but when Calli saw rocks among them, he said, "I think we should stop this now--" Xochitl hissed for silence but Calli continued anyway. "Someone could get killed, sir."
"He brings it on himself," Xochitl said.
Calli bared his claws but kept his hands hidden. Any junior jaguar knight who showed his claws to his superior in challenge faced a good thorough flogging, if he survived the senior officer's response. "Someone in the crowd may get injured, sir." Even speaking out of turn could get him cuffed across the face.
But not today. "You go get him then," Xochitl said and took a seat on the bench next to the store window behind them.
Calli drew his sidearm and pushed through the crowd towards the pyramid steps. Atl followed, growling orders for people to disperse, but no one left. As the crowd pummeled the priest with fruits and vegetable, he kept up his sermon between dodging the projectiles.
As Calli prowled up the steps, the first rock sailed through the air. The second one hit him between the shoulder blades. He turned to the crowd, the gun poised in his hands, the black-spotted yellow fur on his neck upraised. He narrowed his golden eyes and laid back his velvety ears. The people nearest the pyramid moved back a few steps.
He approached the top to see the priest watching him and backing away too. Don't run, Calli thought, advancing slowly. The odor of coagulated blood oozed from the open temple door, making Calli's heart race and challenging his focus. He slipped in his nasal filters to help calm himself. Concentrate. Don't panic, and don't run.
But just as Calli crested the final step, the priest panicked and fled. Calli leaped after him, the instinct to chase blocking everything else. He tackled the man through the temple door, slamming them both into the mahogany table and flipping them over it. "Devil! Servant of Iblis! Allah the All-Mighty will rain his vengeance on you!" the man screamed, pounding his fists into Calli's ribs.
Calli slashed him across the face and just before he sank his fangs into the back of the man's skull, he regained his wits. "You never run!" he shouted, throwing the priest against the wall. "Everyone knows that!" The priest cowered in the corner, covering his wounded face with both hands.
Atl appeared at the temple door. "Are you okay?" Calli cursed and grabbed the gun Atl held out to him. "You dropped it on the stairs."
Shaking, Calli returned the weapon to the sling under his bare human arm. The priest moaned in the corner.
"It's not your fault, Calli. He ran."
"I should make sure he's okay."
But when Calli moved closer, the priest swung a knife. Atl disarmed him with a swift kick of his steel-toed boot and both knights fell on him. "Shouldn't you two be out raping and ravaging women and children?" the priest spat into his wet stringy hair as Calli held his head to the slick, filthy floor with his knee. Atl bound his hands behind him.
"We should get him some medical attention," Calli suggested as they hauled the man to his feet.
"He doesn't need any," Xochitl said as he entered the temple and looked around. "How long will you two leave the high priest tied up like that?" He pointed to another man, bound and gagged in the far corner next to the over-turned gold statue of the rain god Tlaloc. A goo of deteriorating hearts and old blood oozed from the statue's square mouth. Numerous smashed stone idols littered the floor around it.
Atl freed the high priest, who immediately began a tirade at the other man, but Xochitl cut him off. "You'll get your chance to spout at the trial." He then turned to Calli and said, "As for you, is this skin of yours attached?" He pulled hard on Calli's ear and Calli struggled not to cry out. "Well, could have fooled me. I thought maybe you were a human wearing a fur cloak, not a real jaguar knight. Keep your weak human side under control. A suspect who runs is fair prey, and you're doing everyone a favor by killing the stupid ones. If you two kittens ever want to rank in the real imperial army, you'd best forget you have any human genes at all." He punched the prisoner in the stomach and the man crumpled to the floor with a wail. "Now go draw up his paperwork."
#
"Do you think me too human sometimes?" Calli asked Atl as they passed a bottle of octli back and forth. They sat on the couch in their apartment, watching the evening news and quickly getting drunk.
"No more than me," Atl replied. "If we were meant to be animals, we'd have four legs instead of two. And if Tezcatlipoca had wished us to be just men, I wouldn't have the pleasure of being able to hear Xochitl taking a piss three doors away." They both broke out into coughing laughter. "Embrace the light with the dark. One cannot exist without the other."
"Except that one feels stronger than the other," Calli replied. "Sometimes I wondered if the gods made a mistake."
Setting his hand on Calli's shoulder, Atl said, "I know you've always felt that you don't belong here, but the gods don't make mistakes, Calli."
"But the gods speak to us in dreams, don't they?"
"As does the octli." Atl raised the bottle and smiled, showing his fangs. "Dreams are just sleep fantasies, problem-solving mechanisms. They aren't prophecies."
"But maybe they're memories...memories of the life I should have had."
Atl shook his head, like he did anytime Calli brought up the dreams. "And maybe they're nothing. Will nothing I say ever convince you that you belong here?"
With Atl's words still on his mind, Calli fell asleep and the dreams returned. He'd had them for most of his life, and he even remembered them with surprising clarity when awake. They were always the same: a woman screaming silently, as if trapped in a vacuum, and she reached out for him, her arms wide, calling him by a strange name he instinctively knew was his. Her wavy black hair crept like vines from under her white scarf. Her deep, terrified eyes always left him anguished. As someone carried him away, she crawled after him through rubble, dust and shattered stone, sobbing and reaching. He awoke shaking when someone pounded on the front door.
"Why aren't you dressed?" Xochitl demanded when Calli answered. "You're supposed to be on the shuttle to Tenochtitlán in half an hour." When Calli stared dumbly at him, Xochitl growled, "The Allah wacko's trial? Where you're supposed to testify in front of the Revered Speaker? Any of this piercing your thick skull?"
Calli hurried into his fatigues and made it to the shuttle just in time.
The priest--identified as Teotlatolli in his transfer papers--had been thoroughly bathed since yesterday and his face stitched up. He wore a brilliant red prison jumpsuit rigged with electrodes, incase he attempted to run again. Calli secured him to his seat in the rear compartment of the shuttle, where the jaguar knights always sat apart from the human passengers. They'd arrive in Tenochtitlán in two hours and Calli hoped for a little dreamless sleep on the way.
But just as he drifted off, Teotlatolli told him, "Kind of pale for a jaguar knight, aren't you?"
"And what exactly do you mean by that?" Calli growled back. Until now, no one had ever mentioned his complexion to him. In fact, the only one who seemed to notice was Calli himself. He'd even asked about it as a child growing up in the House of the Knights but, despite the obvious fact that every other knight was considerable darker, his teachers always told him he was no different than anyone else. He'd tried to embrace that philosophy as he grew older but couldn't help burning with anger when the other children whispered about him when they thought he wasn't looking. The only other jaguar knight he'd ever confided such feelings in was Atl, who assured him that their kind came in all varieties.
The priest rolled up his sleeve to show Calli his arm. His color was of the lightest of brown, just like Calli's.
"Perfectly normal genetic diversity," Calli growled, repeating the very same words Atl always told him.
Teotlatolli laughed. "They have you well-trained, don't they? Ask no questions they don't want to answer."
Calli tapped his claws on the armrest, wishing the priest would just leave him alone, but apparently Teotlatolli wasn't done with him.
"Is it true there are no female jaguar knights?"
Calli merely narrowed his eyes at him.
"I suppose you find company among our own, do you?" Teotlatolli muttered, "Allah, save this poor creature." He returned his piercing gaze to Calli. "God keeps account of all our sins, yolcatl."
"My name isn't 'animal'," Calli retorted. "And who I 'keep company' with doesn't concern you or your 'loving' God, who would smite me."
"Of course your name isn't 'animal.' That would require too much thought. It's just easier to just give you one of the thirteen day names and be through with it. Calli, right? The house: the conflict between our animal natures and the safety of culture. But in which of these does your heart reside, jaguar knight?"
Calli pulled the electrode controller from his shirt pocket and smiled, his finger poised over the button.
Teotlatolli looked away. "And how aptly he demonstrates the answer."
Once he tucked the controller away, Calli closed his eyes but didn't get anywhere near asleep before Teotlatolli interrupted again.
"I must pray now. You will release me." When Calli laughed, Teotlatolli replied, "And where would I go? We're a thousand feet in the air with a locked door between us and the other passengers, and you've wired me to your torture device. I must kneel to pray."
Sighing, Calli relented and undid the shackle. Most of the older knights wouldn't have allowed it--not for a Muslim--but Calli was too young to remember the tragedy at the Temple Mayor, when bombs had reduced half of the Great Pyramid to rubble and most of the crowd to bloody bits. He watched the priest go through the motions, bowing over and over again and mouthing his prayers.
"You've got testicles, going up atop that temple and preaching Islam to that crowd," he replied when the man finished. "You're lucky they didn't stone you to death."
Teotlatolli settled into his seat again and refastened the wrist shackle. "Any death in service to Allah is a worthy death. Like those men who martyred themselves at your temple. They were the Sword of God."
"They were murderers," Calli growled.
"Then what would you call your devil of an emperor, who stole innocent men and women from their holy pilgrimage and slaughtered them in retaliation?"
Only the foolish dared insult the Revered Speaker to a jaguar knight, but Calli resisted the urge to slash up the priest a second time. "Cuauhtémoc is your Emperor too," he snarled, fangs bared.
Teotlatolli sneered but said nothing, instead turning to the window and speaking no more the rest of the trip.
#
When the shuttle landed at the royal airfield in Tenochtitlán, three imperial jaguar knights escorted Calli and his prisoner to the palace. They were much bigger than Calli, both in height and bulk. Instead of ratty spotted yellow fur, theirs grew black as ravens and their human skins were red like the finest clay. Legend said the gods created the imperial jaguar knights from the blood of the ancient warriors who could trace their lineage back to the ancestral Toltecs who originated the orders of the jaguar and the eagle. While anyone, black or otherwise, could serve in the imperial army, only the black knights served in the Revered Speaker's personal guard. As this was Calli's first trip to the royal precinct, these were the first imperial knights he'd ever met.
"You're not in your dress uniform," the head knight noted as he looked over the prisoner transfer documents Calli gave him. "The Revered Speaker expects us immediately."
Calli had tried to change his clothes in the shuttle until Teotlatolli railed at him about impropriety and how the sight of his abominable mutant nakedness would singe his eyes. He'd figured he could change into his uniform at the palace. But now he had to strip down in car on the way, in the company of three strange knights, one of which kept shocking Teotlatolli when he protested the spectacle.
By the time the transport rolled over the causeway crossing Lake Texcóco and entered the royal plaza, Calli finished donning his uniform and pulled his black boots on over his human feet. The jumpsuit's yellow right shoulder stood for Calli--the thirteen-day trecena he was born into--and the left green, for the number seven. By this color scheme, the Revered Speaker Cuauhtémoc would know his name--Seven House--without having to ask.
In the Council Hall on the ground floor of the royal palace, Calli stood against the front wall with the few other witnesses. The high priest Teotlatolli had tied up stood just to the right, wearing a fresh layer of blood for the special occasion, so Calli slipped his nose filters in. Several dozen men and women--priests, nobles, and business leaders--gathered around a half-moon desk facing them. The Revered Speaker sat midway around, on equal ground to his council members but still at the center of everything. His war chief, a very old, one-eyed black jaguar knight named Matlactlomei Tochtli, sat to his right.
The guards made Teotlatolli kneel on the cold marble platform several paces from Cuauhtémoc, keeping his head bowed with their spears while the council members finished chatting and rustling papers. Cuauhtémoc cleared his throat to hurry the silence. He then tapped at the computer screen before him. "Nahui-Cipactli Teotlatolli, you're charged with the crime of proselytizing teachings outside the realm of the state-approved religions. You're also charged with inciting riot. We shall consider your plea now."
"I’m but the instrument of Allah's will," Teotlatolli replied.
Several of the priests snorted. Cuauhtémoc remained placid, superbly regal in his gold-trimmed maroon robes, his long black hair tied back in an intricate Mayan knot. The outline of an eagle was tattooed on the left side of his face in lines of red, blue, white, and black. When he turned to tell Calli to step forward, the eagle itself seemed to stare at him.
Calli delivered his incident report, stumbling over his words and occasionally backtracking to mention something he'd left out. Tochtli growled irritably and Calli wanted to melt into the frescoed wall behind him. Surely the Emperor thought him an ignorant little kitten.
"What happened to the defendant's face, knight?" Cuauhtémoc asked once Calli finished. "I do not tolerate mistreatment of prisoners."
I'm going to be flogged, he thought, both panicked and guilt-ridden. "He ran, sir," he finally stammered.
The other jaguar knights nodded their heads, murmuring in raspy coughs under their breath. "He's lucky to be alive, My Lord," Tochtli said to Cuauhtémoc, who pursed his lips but nodded. He then thankfully dismissed Calli back to the wall.
The priest spoke next, regaling the council with the terrifying ordeal of Teotlatolli tying and gagging him before desecrating the god Tlaloc's holy temple, smashing idols and scaring away the young man meant to feed the god that morning. "And when we went through his belongings, we found this abomination." He handed Cuauhtémoc a leather-bound book with strange writing on the cover. "I have no idea how he came into possession of it, Revered Speaker."
Calli leaned forward slightly, hoping to see the book a little better, sniffing the air, curious. When he noticed Teotlatolli peering back at him with intense eyes, he straightened up and looked away.
Cuauhtémoc casually flipped the book open. "He's within his legal rights to own a copy of the Qur'an, priest, so long as he's not distributing copies in hopes of garnering converts. Whom he chooses to worship in private doesn't concern me or you."
"Of course, Your Grace, but for him to worship his foreign god while in service to the Great Feathered Serpent is blasphemous. We did all you asked of us; we raised him in the ways of the most merciful Quetzalcóatl, we gave him food and clothed him. We did everything we could, but we couldn't turn his heart. His parents corrupted him far too deep for us to reach him in any meaningful way. He's a lost cause."
"I will determine that," Cuauhtémoc replied sharply and waved the priest away. The priest backed away, bowing as he went.
The high priest of Huitzilopochtli, sitting to Cuauhtémoc's left, leaned towards the Revered Speaker. "He's right, Your Excellency, and we must do everything to appease Tlaloc's wrath in the face of such sacrilege."
"And what would you have me do?" Cuauhtémoc asked him. "Turn a priest of Quetzalcóatl over to you so we can offer his body and blood to the rest of the gods? You risk infuriating one god for the appeasement of another?"
"Any of my blood you spill will honor the All-Merciful Allah," Teotlatolli said, his head bowed and eyes close. "It's not too late to surrender to Him and save your immortal souls."
The room erupted into outraged shouts as nearly every person came to their feet. Tochtli rose, drawing his sword to protect Cuauhtémoc when the priests shouted at the Revered Speaker, demanding he execute the prisoner that very moment. The two knights jabbed their spears against the back of Teotlatolli's neck, waiting to dispatch him when the order came. Even Calli reached for the blaster he hadn't brought with him. The Council's sudden hostility unnerved him.
"Quiet and sit down," Cuauhtémoc finally shouted over the din. He'd remained seated during the whole outburst, the ever calm leader. Several knights had to repeat his orders before the others finally listened and reclaimed their seats.
But one man remained standing. "How dare you speak such vile words to this room," he said, his voice ripe with fury. "My father lost his life at the Great Temple the day your lunatic fringe bombed it--many of us lost family and friends to that--and you disgrace the memory of so many when you even mention that demon's name here. If the Emperor would allow it, I'd relieve you of your head this very instant."
Cuauhtémoc started to respond but Teotlatolli shouted back, "A few hundred lives doesn't compare to the million that butcher took in retaliation!" He pointed at Cuauhtémoc. "He slaughtered innocent people, mere pilgrims gathered in the Holy City to celebrate a sacred holiday, set his animals upon them while they prayed--"
Both jaguar knights hit him behind the head. His face struck the floor and his nose exploded with blood. One raised his weapon to strike but Cuauhtémoc stopped him. "He has a grievance, so let him speak it."
Teotlatolli sat up, spitting blood on the white marble floor. He'd lost some teeth as well. "You're a murderer. You and your knights stormed my father's palace and tore me from his arm. You threw my older brothers from your transport a thousand feet from the ground, and you took my youngest one--only months old--and turned him into one of those atrocities." He turned and pointed at Calli.
Why's he pointing at me? Calli wondered, his throat constricting. Why?
"It's all burned into my memory. You can try to brainwash me for the rest of eternity, apprentice me to every god under your sun, and it won't erase any of it." He glared at Cuauhtémoc. "Allah has special plans for you when death finally darkens your door, Temictiani."
Calli bristled, his horrified confusion suddenly forgotten in his rising rage. He'd let the first insult slide but no one called his Emperor a killer. He bared his claws.
But Tochtli spoke first. "You will address your Emperor with respect," he growled, his one good eye narrowed balefully at Teotlatolli.
"He will never be my Emperor. My kidnapper, yes; my tormentor, most certainly; and perhaps now my executioner, but never will I sink into the dirt and call him my Emperor."
Cuauhtémoc placed a hand on Tochtli's arm as the old jaguar knight started to his feet. Outraged whispers swam through the Council chambers but Cuauhtémoc called for silence. "What do you wish me to do with you, Teotlatolli? Return you home to Saudi Arabia?"
Teotlatolli laughed. "What home? You left it such a mess, no wonder half of Europe marched in and started their own squabbles for the oil. War and poverty ravages the whole region, not to mention you turned it into a nuclear wasteland. My home doesn't exist anymore, all to avenge one little temple. But then you Méxica were always barbarians."
"Outrageous!" a council woman said but Cuauhtémoc raised his hand for silence again. He flipped through the book for a moment then said, "Tochtli, take him to the garden and give him the Flowery Death, so he may be with his brothers again. Allow him to say the shahadah as many times as he wishes. We can do no more for him here."
Huitzilopochtli's high priest said, "My Lord, we must offer his blood in payment for the desecration--"
"And you will cease your prattle immediately," Cuauhtémoc snapped. "Or it will be your blood I offer to the gods." He stood and handed the book to Tochtli. "Return this to him so he may be buried with it." Then he departed the council chambers without another word.
The knights dragged Teotlatolli to his feet. As they pushed him towards the doors, he looked back at Calli and said, "How much longer will you let them continue lying to you? Make them tell you the truth! As the last Arabian prince, it's your right! If you just look inside yourself--"
"Enough with your tongue already," Tochtli snapped, throwing the priest out the door.
Calli remained standing alone in the Counsel Hall, staring at the empty doorway, his heart pounding so hard he thought he might collapse.
#
"I'm having a crisis, Atl." Calli lay on the bed in his palace quarters, staring at the ceiling. "I heard some things today and I'm wondering."
"Wondering what?" Atl's voice came from speakers hidden in the walls.
"The priest talked about his lost brother. He said the Emperor turned the baby into a jaguar knight."
"I've heard of that before, that sometimes human children are changed over."
"I think I might be that lost brother."
"Why would you think that?"
Calli wanted to tell Atl what the priest said, but he couldn't bring himself to repeat the words, as if saying them again would make them true.
Atl sighed. "You had the dream again."
"It has to mean something--"
"You really think you're this priest's lost brother?"
Calli paused for a moment before saying, "I'm different than everyone else. My skin--"
"Natural genetic variation," Atl replied.
"You always tell me that."
"Well, it could be."
"And I'm not as ferocious as everyone else. I'm weak."
"I don't think you're weak."
"Of course you don't." Calli went to the window and looked out onto the holy precinct with its temples and ball courts. Smoke swirled from the braziers at the top of the Great Pyramid. Tourists milled through the streets, taking pictures, some leaving offerings of flowers and food in the urns at the bottom of the pyramid steps--gifts for those torn asunder in the bombings almost twenty years ago. Cuauhtémoc had rebuilt the entire pyramid even bigger than before but that in itself reminded everyone of what had happened. "Do you think if I asked for the truth, they would give it to me?"
"I think Xochitl would ridicule you."
"I'd ask the war chief Tochtli. I met him today."
Atl rumbled for a moment then said, "Do what you must. Just remember I'm always your friend."
"Of course."
"I must go. I work the late shift tonight."
"I'm coming home tomorrow," Calli said.
After a pause, Atl said, "I certainly hope so."
#
Calli arrived at the gardens hoping to find Tochtli alone, but Cuauhtémoc stood with him, speaking in a hushed voice. Calli tried to sneak away but Tochtli heard him and called the young knight over. "You smell like you have a problem."
"Well, I had...uh, I'd hoped you might--"
"Spit it out, kid. I have things to do, you know."
"It's nothing, sir," Calli finished.
The war chief growled and coiled the flowered rope used for garroting condemned prisoners around his fists. But Cuauhtémoc told him, "Go oversee the priest's burial. Make sure the body is treated respectfully, in accordance with Muslim customs." Tochtli bowed then left.
Calli turned to leave as well, but the Revered Speaker stopped him. "Chicome Calli, right? From the trial?" Calli bowed his head. "You heard something that troubled you today?"
After a hesitation, Calli asked, "Is it true--what the priest said--that we sometimes turn human children into knights?"
Cuauhtémoc scrutinized him for a moment then beckoned Calli to follow him as he walked down the garden path. "He spoke the truth. We took the youngest of King Rashad's sons and initiated him into the Knighthood of the Jaguar. As for what became of him after that, I know not. The older one--Teotlatolli, as we named him--was too old to be changed over so I gave him to the priests to look after. We of course know what happened to him."
As they came to the bridge crossing a small creek, the Revered Speaker looked back at Calli and said, "I generally prefer to keep the past in the past, but obviously Teotlatolli's words have left you with questions."
"After you left, he told me I was that brother," Calli admitted. "He seemed so sure of it...and there's these dreams...they've plagued me my whole life. I'm not entirely sure they're dreams anymore now."
Cuauhtémoc nodded but said nothing.
"I'm not a very good knight, Revered Speaker; I haven't the killer instinct. Had he run from any other knight, he would have died with no trial."
"And I wouldn't have approved," Cuauhtémoc replied. "You're just as much human as jaguar, and you should take pride in your ability to listen to your human side."
"My commander believes I'm more human than soldier."
Cuauhtémoc laughed. "Humans can be just as beastly as any animal, Calli. One need look no further than the mess I created in the Middle East to see that."
"But they attacked us first."
"You say that with such confidence, Calli, like a true loyal jaguar knight." Cuauhtémoc stepped onto the bridge and gazed down into the water. Tiny trout darted in and out of the calm spots. "If you're seeking answers about where you came from, I will give you the information, but what will it really tell you about who you are? If our records say we created you in our labs just like most jaguar knights, will you suddenly discover your courage and feel you belong? Or what if you were born human? Will you just be bitter for the life you never had and forget the one you live right now?"
Calli didn't know how to answer.
"I'll have one of my scribes bring you the information before you leave tomorrow morning."
#
Calli arrived home the next afternoon. Atl lay asleep in the bed they shared but roused when the door opened. "You're back," he said between a fang-filled yawn and a very human stretch.
"I didn't mean to wake you."
"Did you get your answers?"
Calli held up the beige envelope the royal scribe had handed him just before he boarded the shuttle that morning.
Atl hitched up on one elbow. "So what does it say?"
"I haven't looked at it."
"Why not?"
Sitting on the bed, Calli contemplated the envelope for a moment. "If this gives me bad news, would you still be my friend?"
"I'll always be your friend. It's you I fear wouldn't remain mine, that you and I...." Atl sighed and rested his chin on Calli's leg. "I don't wish to be alone again, Calli."
And neither do I, Calli thought, setting his hand on Atl's soft head. He tossed the envelope into the fireplace.
"Are you sure you really want to do that?"
Calli watched the flames curl and blacken the paper. It felt like the only right thing he'd ever done. "You were right, Atl. They're nothing more than dreams."
