There is no need to decide whether the artisan worships or reviles the ruling elites. No society is so homogeneous as to make that question black-and-white. If someone does give a black-and-white answer, that's as good evidence as any that they don't really understand how cultures work.

Think of the gazillion different, mutually incompatible attitudes that modern Americans have about Hillary, Trump, and everyone else. Now re-imagine your artisan. You can be simultaneously afraid of being sacrificed and ashamed of being afraid. You might have a great deal of respect for some of the warriors but also revile the way they lick the elite's ass. You might have heard that the next village got leveled and all of their women and children enslaved because they dared to question the authority of the high priests, and have conflicting thoughts about whether they deserved it or not. Your friends might disagree with you on this matter, but some of them are afraid to speak out. But then this big customer wants his swords repaired by morning, and you don't have time to worry about those things anymore. Most of daily life is mundane, it has always been. Just because there are human sacrifices going on on that hill over there doesn't make life unrecognizable all of a sudden.

Knowledge of specific details is not a prerequisite for empathizing with someone as a human being. The point is to appreciate the many different ways that a Mexica life could be experienced (which you do very well) and keeping it all in your working memory instead of aggressively map-reducing it into answerless questions like "What did the artisans think about the warriors?" Likely, there were more than one artisan and more than one warrior.