“And I accept.” I paused. “Denis?”
Denis de Toluard came forward. “My lady?”
“Will you translate something into Aragonian for me?” I asked him. “I would have the commander and all his men hear it.”
“Of course.”
I thought about what I wanted to say. “Although I did not choose this bargain, I do not regret it. Emperor Achcuatli showed me kindness and respect. He treated me with honor, and I am grateful for it.”
Denis translated my words. Diego Ortiz y Ramos and his men heard them with sullen disapproval, but I saw Lord Cuixtli’s lips curve in a faint smile, and I knew my message had found its intended audience.
“We will not presume on your hospitality much longer, my lord,” I added to the commander. “I am sorry for having unwittingly provoked unpleasantness here.” Beckoning to Denis, I pointed at one of the bags of cacao beans in the palanquin. “Please accept this as a token of my apology, and in compensation for lodging and feeding our company.”
It embarrassed the fellow. “No, no!” He waved a hand in dismissal, his Aragonian sense of chivalry belatedly asserting itself. “You have accepted my apology, and that is payment enough.”
I smiled sweetly at him. I did not want any debt between us. “Oh, but I insist.”
Without waiting for a word from me, Denis tossed the sack at the nearest guard, who caught it out of reflex.
“And now I would like to retire for a few hours,” I announced. Turning to Lord Cuixtli, I inclined my head to him. “Please thank the Emperor again for his generosity,” I said in Nahuatl.
Lord Cuixtli touched his chest and brow in a gesture of respect far less casual than his salute at our first encounter. “I will tell him.”
Once we had returned to our shared chamber, Bao was restless and moody, pacing the small space, moving in and out of the sunlight that slanted through the crude window and spinning his bamboo staff in his hands. I sat quiet and still on the coarse reed-stuffed pallet atop the wooden bed-frame, watching him pace through light and shadow, not wishing to disturb him.
“I was not angry until that idiot opened his foul mouth,” he said abruptly. “Then…” He shrugged. “I was.”
“I’m sorry,” I murmured.
“It’s not your fault.” Bao sighed. “I meant what I said, Moirin. I knew who and what you were when I wed you.”
“That doesn’t make it any easier,” I said.
“No.” He twirled his staff in an intricate pattern. “It doesn’t. And fellows like that Aragonian make it harder. I shouldn’t have hit him, should I?”
“I think you needed to.” I smiled. “For my part, I found it quite satisfying.”
That earned a reluctant answering smile from Bao. “Did you see the look on his face?”
I nodded. “He was gaping like a fish on dry land.”
Laying down his staff, Bao sat beside me and took one of my hands in his, lacing our fingers together. “I am not angry at you, Moirin. I swear it.”
“I know.”
“I have been thinking of what you said to Desirée at her father’s funeral,” he said. “That it was all right to be angry at the gods sometimes. You told her that the gods understand sorrow—and anger, too.”
“She asked why they send so much of it,” I said, remembering. “And you told her it was to make us stronger. That it was hard, but it was the only way.”
“Yes.” Bao took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. “It helps to remember why we are doing this.”
“For Desirée?”
He squeezed my hand. “Yes. For her, I can be strong.”
“Strong like a dragon?” I asked, echoing the young princess’ words.
Bao smiled. “Exactly.”
FORTY-TWO
A day later, all was in readiness.
The steel tools we had brought had been delivered to the Emperor’s palace, keeping back only the hatchets and adzes that Septimus Rousse gauged we might need to create vessels to navigate the jungle rivers.
For that alone, I was grateful that he had chosen to accompany us. Even Bao, my resourceful magpie, admitted such a need would not have occurred to him.
Emperor Achcuatli assigned two pochtecas to guide us into the verdant wilderness of Tawantinsuyo.
It was strange to see him once more after the lone day and night we had shared. Truly, we were intimate strangers. His obsidian gaze lingered on me with a certain tenderness as he made the introductions. I could not but help remember his weight upon me as I sank into the feather pallet, the feeling of him inside me.
I pushed those memories away.
Bao maintained an expressionless face.
The pochtecas were an uncle and nephew. Neither were young; indeed, the elder of the two, Eyahue, was a wiry old fellow with skin tanned like leather by time and sun, his black hair gone to grey, his mouth sunken around missing teeth. At least he looked to be in reasonably good spirits regarding the journey. His nephew, Pochotl, was a sturdy fellow in his late forties, and he looked none too happy to obey the Emperor’s order.
Rounding out our company was the spotted warrior Temilotzin, and he looked downright cheerful at the prospect. I had the impression Achcuatli had assigned him the duty simply because Temilotzin had taken a liking to us.
Standing atop a gilded dais in the great temple square of Tenochtitlan, the Nahuatl Emperor bade us a ceremonial farewell, publicly announcing that we were under his protection as far as the empire extended. He invoked the blessing of the gods on our journey, adding that offerings of flowers and honey would be given to Xochiquetzal, goddess of desire, in my name—every day until our return, or a year had passed.
I found myself unexpectedly touched by the gesture. The Nahuatl folk seemed to approve.
Bao raised his brows at me, but he kept his silence.
And then it was done, and there was nothing left but to bow deeply to Achcuatli, offer thanks for his generosity, and take our leave.
I cannot imagine what an odd sight our caravan made as we departed the city of Tenochtitlan and crossed the broad southern causeway for what might well be the last time. Forty D’Angeline warriors, sunlight bouncing off their steel helmets, bright reflections wavering in the placid water of the lake along which they marched. Our two pochtecas, one wizened, one sullen. Temilotzin in his jaguar hides and a wooden helmet with a feathered crest, a club in one hand, spear in the other, his wicker shield slung over his shoulder. Bare-headed Septimus Rousse, his coppery red hair a blaze beneath the blue sky. Bao with his staff lashed across his back, resembling no one else in our company. Three laden pack-horses, and me riding astride the fourth.
Nahuatl fishermen in reed boats and farmers on the artificial islands watched us go. It felt as though we were marching into history, never to be seen again. The Aragonians would tell the tale of the D’Angeline expedition that had tried to whore its way into the Emperor’s graces with disdain.
Mayhap the Nahuatl would tell the tale as a tragic romance, the doomed expedition led by a woman from across the sea, who left behind the Emperor to lay flowers on Xochiquetzal’s altar in vain.
And back in Terre d’Ange, my name would become a hallmark for folly, the half-breed bear-witch whose pride and arrogance compounded the realm’s grief.
I prayed to Blessed Elua and his Companions, and to the Maghuin Dhonn Herself, that it would not be so.
The first weeks of our journey were easy enough as such things go. We were within the confines of the Nahuatl Empire. Achcuatli had sent out runners carrying word that we were under his protection, and no one troubled us. While one could not exactly say Balthasar and his recruits were inured to the hardship of marching beneath the hot sun in chain-mail and brigandines, they bore it more easily. As soon as we were out of sight of Tenochtitlan, I’d dismounted and taken to walking like the others, reckoning sharing the hardship was the least I could do. I’d done my part to command respect, and my mount was better used carrying supplies and trade goods, which we redistributed accordingly.
Every few days, we came across inns catering to the large parties of pochtecas, where we were able to refresh ourselves with baths and skillfully cooked meals. Septimus Rousse, who had served as a galley-cook as a lad, had taken on himself the duty of overseeing the preparation of meals in the field, but many of the ingredients in the stores we’d bartered for were unfamiliar to him. His overgenerous use of dried chiles to flavor the maize porridge he made had my eyes watering more than once.
As an added benefit, we were able to inquire if anyone remembered a party of fair-skinned strangers from across the sea passing through over a year ago. More often than not, we were able to confirm that we were still on the trail of Prince Thierry’s expedition, something that heartened all of us and made the following day’s journey easier to bear.
And at the first inn we visited, I introduced Bao to the pleasure of the temazcalli, the Nahuatl steam-bath.
It had the purgative effect I’d hoped for. Although I knew Bao had spoken truly when he said he was not angry at me, I knew he was angry nonetheless, and matters had been uneasy between us since he’d struck Diego Ortiz y Ramos.
There in the temazcalli, the tension melted away. We sat cross-legged and side by side on the stone ledge, wreathed in steam, breathing it deep into our lungs, sweat streaming down our naked bodies.
When Bao glanced sidelong at me through the steam, there was a familiar gleam in his eyes. “You look… slippery.”
I eyed him, noting his phallus was hard and erect, curving toward the shining trail of sweat trickling down his flat, lean-muscled belly. “You look… interested.”
“Did you do this with him?” he asked. “In the steam-bath?”
I shook my head. “No.”
Bao smiled, unfolding his legs. “Good.”
And it was good; slippery and awkward and good. The hard stone of the ledge dug into my knees as I straddled him, my hair falling from its lover’s-haste knot in damp tendrils that clung to my cheeks. Bao braced me as we kissed, his hands firm on my hips, our tongues dueling. Skin slid against sweat-slick skin as I reached down and fitted his phallus to me, sinking onto him, leaning against him to press my breasts against the hard plane of his chest, clinging to his shoulders, rising and falling to impale myself on him amidst the clouds of steam.
Whether or not our Nahuatl innkeepers knew and were scandalized, I never knew. If they were, they did not say.
Afterward, things were easier between us. An unspoken accord had been reached, and I felt lighter in my heart for it.
As our unlikely caravan journeyed farther and farther southward, all of us came to know one another better.
Eyahue, our senior pochteca, was unexpectedly garrulous for a Nahuatl, telling long, rambling tales of heroic trade expeditions he’d undertaken during his younger days. Due to his missing teeth, his diction was imperfect and I often had a difficult time understanding him, but the Jaguar Knight Temilotzin found his tales worthy of thigh-slapping hilarity, roaring with laughter. Bit by bit, I came to gather that Eyahue had ventured into the river-laced jungles of Tawantinsuyo in pursuit of various herbs that could be obtained nowhere else, the specific details of which the old fellow was cagey about revealing.
“All you need to find is your missing prince, right?” he said to me, sucking meditatively at his remaining teeth. “You did not come for herbs, so it does not matter, eh?”
His nephew was another matter. Unlike his uncle, Pochotl maintained the traditional stone face and a stone heart.
My initial impression was correct. While the stolid, middle-aged Pochotl had accompanied his uncle on previous journeys, he had no desire to undertake another. He had made his fortune, and he resented the Emperor’s order for disturbing his comfortable life.
I could not blame him for it.
But I could not like him, either.
In addition to proving surprisingly talkative, Eyahue had a prodigious libido for a man of his years. He reminded me of the old Tatar guide who’d led me across the desert and had been so taken with Master Lo’s Camaeline snowdrop tonic, except Eyahue had no need of aphrodisiacs. At nearly every inn or village we visited along the way, the old fellow managed to find a woman willing to accommodate him. Although the goddess Xochiquetzal did not have an equivalent of Naamah’s sacred service, it seemed a casual form of prostitution was not unknown among the Nahuatl.
“I’ll tell you, he’s an inspiration,” Balthasar observed, watching Eyahue steer a broad-hipped woman back to his chamber, one hand firmly planted on her buttocks. “I don’t know where the old codger finds the energy.”
“He’s not marching in sodding armor, for one thing.” Brice de Bretel rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m beginning to wish someone would damn well attack us just to justify slogging along in it.”
Denis shook his head at him. “Don’t wish for trouble. Once we’re past the boundaries of the Nahuatl Empire, we’re likely to find enough of it.”
It was a prospect I regarded with equal parts dread and eagerness. Terra Nova was vast, vaster than I’d reckoned. We trudged through mountain passes and descended into fertile valleys, pausing to let the pack-horses graze whenever we were able, a necessity that further delayed our progress.
We followed long, winding rivers, where I had some success shooting waterfowl for the pot. For reasons I didn’t entirely fathom, Temilotzin found my skill with a bow well nigh as hilarious as Eyahue’s tales and took to calling me his little warrior.
On and on we travelled.
A part of me wondered if mayhap the Dauphin had simply misgauged the distances involved and his party was somewhere ahead of us, marching across the endless landscape, an ever-receding target.
