Aztlan: The Courts of Heaven Read Online Free

that lizard turd Coyotl, all right? I don’t think I can take too many more scores like last night’s.”
    “I’ll try,” I assured her.
     
    The Aztlan Rail System was designed to take you anywhere in the city, even the most obscure and otherwise inaccessible parts. And, of course, the Imperial Rail Network took you from Aztlan to the other ninety-six cities in the Empire, some as far away as the Bay of Ice in the north and the Land of Fire in the south.
    But there wasn’t any rail that stopped just outside the city. For that, you needed to contract an auto-carriage.
    Fortunately, the police force had a few at their disposal. One of them picked me up just before midday and drove me out to the estate of Mictlan Xochipilli, second cousin of the Emperor and owner of the Aztlan Eagles.
    Like any nobleman, Xochipilli disdained the environs of the city, even its most elegant districts, unless he was coming in for a big event at a posh hotel. But then, his private estate sprawled across nearly one hundred acres of meticulously tended lawns, stone pathways, and expertly sculpted greenery. If I’d had a place like that, I too might have spent all my time there.
    Actually, I had been to Xochipilli’s place once before, cycles earlier, when I was playing for the Eagles. He was away at an academy for young noblemen at the time, too young to own a team. Or so his father told me shortly after I arrived, as we sat on the huge stone patio behind the house and watched a flock of geese nibble at his grass.
    “Mictlan is a little like them ,” said Axaya Xochipilli, who had still looked trim and bright-eyed at the age of eighty-four. He pointed a wrinkled finger at the geese. “He starts out doing an effective job but often leaves a mess in the end.”
    He spoke to me as if I were a fellow nobleman and not the low-born son of an Investigator. I felt honored. I might have been a star in the tlachtli , the ball court, but I never forgot that I was still an employee of someone much richer and more powerful than I was.
    I recalled the note of reason in the elder Xochipilli’s voice that day as he brought up the subject of my contract. “Well,” he said, “you’ve been with the team a cycle and a half now, Maxtla, and you’ve established yourself as one of the best players in the league—both statistically and in the opinion of people who know the game. Fans come to see you as much as they come to see the outcome of the match. Fair to say?”
    I could hardly argue.
    “On the other hand,” Axaya Xochipilli continued, “the Eagles’ fortunes in the ball court have been declining of late. Last cycle, we came close to winning the championship. This cycle, we’ve fallen back to the middle of the pack—and a player is only as valuable as his team’s record. Also fair to say?”
    I said it was.
    I didn’t know which position Xochipilli would take. As it turned out, he took neither of them.
    “I could offer you a contract based on your first cycle,” he said, “but that might be unfair to one of us. Or I could offer you a contract based on this second cycle, in which the Eagles have struggled, but that might be unfair as well. So what I’m going to do is base your contract on your third cycle—the one in which you’re going to bring me a championship.”
    “A championship . . . ?” I said.
    “That’s right,” he said, and handed me a two-cycle contract worthy of the star on a championship team.
    That next season, my third in the league, I got Xochipilli his championship. It was in my fourth cycle, as we seemed headed for our second first-place finish in a row, that I saw my career come to an end.
    My contract, like all Sun League agreements, said that the team could cut me at any time for any reason, and discontinue my salary. Axaya Xochipilli paid me anyway.
    Later I heard a story that one of the old man’s ancestors had played in the ball court in ancient days, and that he had played so long and so well, by the