Atl's patron is Xiuhtecuhtli, the turquoise fire lord, a pairing of water and fire in patron and sign together that produces the atl tlachinolli, burnt water, war emblem directly, since the day sign's own name and its governing deity's element combine into precisely the two substances the compound figure crosses. Its direction is east, the third instance of that direction in the twenty sign count after Cipactli and Coatl, each standing five places apart in the four direction rotation.
Atl is not a year bearer, falling between Tochtli at eight and Acatl at thirteen, outside the select spacing that marks the four signs able to open a solar year. Xiuhtecuhtli's patronage of Atl as a day sign is a separate office from his standing as the first of the nine Lords of the Night and from his further role as trecena patron of Trecena 9 and Trecena 20, so the turquoise fire lord holds at least four distinct calendrical posts across the tonalpohualli's several layered registers, a concentration of duties matched by few other deities in the pantheon and reflecting his standing as one of the oldest and most central gods in Mexica religious life. The ritual bathing of Mexica newborns, performed under a different water deity's invocation regardless of the day a child was actually born, meant Atl's own reading touched a rite every family already knew from direct experience, giving the sign's unpredictable augury a domestic, familiar counterpart in ordinary practice.