Gary Jennings - Aztec

But I wander. And our delicious lovemaking was not the last event of that notably eventful day. Zyanya and I were lying in each other's arms, I just falling into sleep, when there came a scratching at the door like that of Cozcatl earlier. Foggily hoping I was not being summoned to fight another duel, I struggled to my feet, slung my mantle about me, and went to investigate. It was one of the palace under-stewards.

"Forgive the interruption of your devotions, lord scribe, but a swift-messenger brings an urgent request from your young friend Cozcatl. He asks that you make all haste to the house of your old friend Extli-Quani. It seems the man is dying."

"Nonsense," I said in a furred voice. "You must have mistaken the message."

"I hope so, my lord," he said stiffly, "but I fear I did not."

Nonsense, I said again—to myself—but I began hurriedly to dress while I explained my errand to my wife. Nonsense, I kept telling myself; Blood Glutton could not be dying. Death could not get its teeth into that leathery, sinewy old warrior. Death could not suck him dry of his still-vital juices. Old he might be, but a man still so full of manly appetites was not old enough for death. Nevertheless, I made all haste, and the steward had an acáli waiting at the courtyard bank of the canal, to take me faster than I could run to the Moyotlan quarter of the city.

Cozcatl was waiting at the door of the yet unfinished house, and he was anxiously wringing his hands. "The priest of Filth Eater is with him now, Mixtli," he said in a frightened whisper. "I hope he will have breath enough left to tell you good-bye."

"Then he is dying?" I moaned. "But of what? He was in the prime of health at the banquet last night He ate like a whole flock of vultures. He kept running his hand up the skirts of the serving girls. How could something have stricken him so suddenly?"

"I suppose the soldiers of Ahuítzotl always strike suddenly."

"What?"

"Mixtli, I thought the four palace guards had come for me, because of what I did to Chimali. But they brushed me aside and burst in upon Blood Glutton. He had his maquahuitl handy, as he always does, so he did not succumb without a fight, and three of the four were bleeding copiously when they departed. But one sweep of a spear blade had laid the old man open."

Realization made a cold shudder rack my whole body. Ahuítzotl had promised to execute an expendable nonentity in my stead; he must have chosen even while he told me that. He had once described Blood Glutton as being overage for anything more useful than playing nursemaid to my trading expeditions. And he had said that all must know that his threats were not empty ones. Well, the all included me. I had congratulated myself on my reprieve from punishment, and I had celebrated it by frolicking with Zyanya, and at that very time this was being done. It was not meant just to horrify and grieve me. It was meant to dispel any illusions I might entertain of my own indispensability, to warn me never again to flout the wishes of the implacable despot Ahuítzotl.

"The old man bequeaths the house and all his other possessions to you, boy," said a new voice. It was the priest, materializing in the doorway, addressing Cozcatl. "I have taken down his testament and I will bear witness—"

I shoved past him and through the front rooms into the rearmost. Its still unplastered stone walls were splashed with blood and my old friend's pallet was drenched with it, though I could see no wound upon him. He wore only a loincloth, and he lay sprawled on his belly, his grizzled head turned in my direction, his eyes closed.

I threw myself down on the pallet beside him, unmindful of the gore, and said urgently, "Master Cuáchic, it is your student Fogbound!"

The eyes slowly opened. Then one of them closed briefly again, in a wink accompanied by a weak smile. But the signs of death were there: his once piercing eyes gone an ashy dull color around the pupils, his once fleshy nose gone thin and sharp like a blade.

"I am sorry for this," I choked out.

"Do not be," he said faintly and in hard-forced little gasps.

"I died fighting. There are worse ways. And I am spared them. I wish you... as good an end. Good-bye, young Mixtli."

"Wait!" I cried, as if I could command him to. "It was Ahuítzotl who ordered this, because I vanquished Chimali. But you had no part in the affair. You did not even take sides. Why should the Revered Speaker take vengeance on you?"

"Because it was I," he labored to say, "who taught you both to kill." He smiled again, as his eyes closed. "I taught well... did I not?"

Those were his last words, and no one could have pronounced a more appropriate epitaph. But I refused to believe he would speak no more. I thought perhaps his breathing might have been pinched off by the position in which he lay; it might resume if he reposed more comfortably on his back. Desperately, I took hold of him and lifted and turned him, and all his insides fell out.

* * *

Though I mourned Blood Glutton and seethed with anger at his assassination, I could take some consolation in a fact that Ahuítzotl would never know. In trading blow for vengeful blow, I still had precedence of him. I had deprived him of a daughter. So I made a determined effort to swallow my bile, to put the past behind me, to begin hopefully preparing for a future free of further bloodshed and heartache and rancor and risk. Zyanya and I turned our energies to the building of a home for ourselves. The site we had selected had been purchased by the Revered Speaker as his wedding present to us. I had not declined the offering at the time, and it would have been impolitic for me to spurn it even after our mutual hostilities, but in truth I had no need of gifts.

The pochtéa elders had marketed my first expedition's cargo of plumes and crystals with such profitable acumen that, even after dividing the proceeds with Cozcatl and Blood Glutton, I was affluent enough to live out a comfortable existence without ever having to engage in trade again, or lift my hand to any other kind of labor. But then my second delivery of foreign goods had astronomically increased my wealth. If the burning crystals had been a notable commercial success, the carved-tooth artifacts caused a positive sensation and a frenzy of bidding among the nobility. The prices brought by those objects could have enabled me and Cozcatl to settle down, if we had so wished, and become as bloated, complacent, and sedentary as our elders in The House of Pochtéa.

The homesite Zyanya and I had chosen was in Ixacualco, the best residential quarter of the island, but it was occupied by only a small, drab house of mud-brick adobe. I engaged an architect, told him to pull the thing down and to construct a solid limestone edifice that would be both a fine home and a pleasurable sight for the passerby, but not ostentatious in either respect. Since the plot was, like all on the island, a narrow and constricted one, I told him to achieve commodiousness by building upward. I specified a roof garden, indoor sanitary closets with the necessary flushing arrangements, and a false wall in one room with ample hiding space behind it.

Meanwhile, without calling me in for further consultation, Ahuítzotl marched south toward Uaxyacac, leading not an immense army but a picked troop of his best warriors, at most a mere five hundred men. He left his Snake Woman as temporary occupant of the throne, but took with him as his under-commander a youth whose name is familiar to you Spaniards. He was Motecuzóma Xocoyotzin, which is to say the Younger Lord Motecuzóma; he was, in fact, about a year younger than myself. He was Ahuítzotl's nephew, a son of the earlier Uey-Tlatoani Axayácatl, hence a grandson of the first and great Motecuzóma. He had until that time been a high priest of the war god Huitzilopóchtli, but that expedition was his first taste of actual war. He was to have many more, for he quit the priesthood to become a professional soldier and, of course, at command rank.