Aztlan: The Last Sun Read Online Free PDF

there were flowers everywhere—yellow ones, white ones, deep purple ones. They went flying over the dinner table, over the floor, over the food and over us. Even Aunt Xoco laughed at the wild extravagance of the gesture.
    “Flowers for my flowers!” my father bellowed, embracing my mother and my aunt at the same time.
    “Where did you get so many ?” my mother asked, a note of disapproval in her voice despite the smile on her face. She had always been the practical one.
    My father shrugged. “From the god, where else? He favors poor Investigators who get called away from their families to do the bidding of the Empire.”
    I could still see that night in great detail.
    But I had another Renewal memory that I wished I could forget: The night that my father’s chief came to the door and whispered something horrible to my mother, and left her a blighted cornstalk the rest of her days.
    Still, I thought of Renewal as my father’s favorite time of the cycle. He had always loved the display of colors, the fires leaping into the night sky, and the animal heads that people wore to the celebrations.
    And the food, of course. Always the food.
    That night, my dinner with my aunt was uninterrupted. We ate, we drank our octli —in moderation, of course, because I would be going out in public on my way home—and we laughed.
    Once again, because she was as persistent as the drop of water that over centuries carves out a canyon, she tried to get me to go out with the woman from the Merchant City. And again, I fended off her suggestion. The woman just wasn’t my cup of cane water, I said.
    “Then who is?” Aunt Xoco insisted.
    I thought of Eren, though I didn’t mention her to my aunt. Eren, whom I had always held deep in my heart. Eren, with whom I had an undeniable connection, though our lives had walked distinctly different paths.
    I was still thinking about her when I hugged Aunt Xoco and wished her a good night, and assured her that I would be back for the third of the Unlucky Days regardless of which specialty she set in front of me. It wasn’t as if I was risking anything. Whatever she made was fit for the gods.
    I had left her building and was halfway to the rail station when I got the buzz. “Colhua,” I said.
    “Investigator, this is Pyramid Security at Centeotl.” It was the chief there, the man I had met the night before. “We found someone lurking outside the fence, near the hole.”
    “Did he say what he was doing there?” I asked.
    “Not exactly. But he did say he was a friend of yours. His name is Yaotl.”
    I frowned. “Zuma Yaotl?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I said. “Ask the fellow to remain with you until I arrive.”
    “Of course,” said the security officer.
    I made a left at the next corner and headed for a different rail line—the one that would take me back to Centeotl. The carriage came just as I got to the top of the stairs, which was good because I didn’t like the idea of Yaotl waiting for me any longer than he had to.
    For the third time since dinner the day before, I walked into the lobby of the Centeotl Pyramid. Yaotl, a small man about sixty cycles old with big ears and sad eyes, was waiting for me, sitting alone on one of the redwood benches. A couple of security guards—the chief and one other—were standing in his vicinity, but not so close as to be offensive to him.
    After all, Yaotl had been an Investigator once himself, and I had no doubt that he had informed them of the fact.
    “Maxtla!” he called out as he caught sight of me. His voice echoed in the shiny, black lobby. “So good to see you!”
    “Yaotl,” I said in return.
    He got up, and laughed as he started to close the distance between us. He had a limp, the result of an injury he had sustained while chasing down a murder suspect twenty cycles earlier.
    I grasped his hand and said, “You should be at home.”
    “Sorry, Maxtla. You know what they say. Once an Investigator, always an