"You were right to chide me, Mixtli," the old man conceded. "Ayyo, a maiden of the Cloud People. She is indeed a treasure beyond price."

"I recognize you, my lady," Cozcatl said gallantly to her. "You were the younger goddess at that temple disguised as an inn."

When I had made introductions all around—and my two old friends, I do believe, had fallen instantly in love with Zyanya—I said, "We are well met. I was on my way to Xicalanca, where yet another treasure waits for me. I think the four of us can transport it and I need not hire porters."

So we went on, by leisurely stages, through those lands where the women all chewed like manatees and the men all walked bent by their names, to Cupilco's capital city, and to the workshop there of the Master Tuxtem, and he brought out the items he had fashioned of the giant teeth. Since I knew something of the quality of the material I had given him to work with, I was not quite as taken by surprise as were Zyanya, Cozcatl, and Blood Glutton, when we saw what he had done with it.

As I had requested, there were figurine gods and goddesses of the Mexíca, some of them standing as tall as the length of my forearm, and there were engraved dagger handles and combs, which I had also suggested. But in addition there were skulls as big as those of young children, intricately etched with scenes from old legends. There were artfully worked little boxes with fitted lids, and copali perfume vials with stoppers of the same material. There were chest medallions and mantle clasps and whistles and brooches, in the shape of tiny jaguars and owls and exquisite little naked women and flowers and rabbits and laughing faces.

On many of those things the detail was so fine that it could be properly appreciated only by scrutiny through my close-viewing crystal. Seen thus, even the tipíli was visible on a naked-girl ornament no bigger than a maguey thorn. As instructed, Tuxtem had not wasted a fragment or sliver: there were also nose plugs and ear plugs and labrets and dainty ear picks and toothpicks. All those things, large and small, shone mellow-white, as if they possessed an interior light of their own, as if they had been carved from the moon. And they were as gratifying to touch as they were to look at, the artisan having polished their surfaces as smooth as the skin of Zyanya's breasts. Like her skin, they invited, "Touch me, caress me, fondle me."

"You promised, young Lord Yellow Eye," said Tuxtem, "that only worthy persons would ever own any of these things. Permit me the presumption of choosing the first worthy of them."

At which he stooped to kiss the earth to Zyanya, then rose and hung around her neck a delicate, sinuous chain of hundreds of links, the which must have cost him incalculable time to carve from a single length of hard tooth. Zyanya smiled radiantly and said, "The Master Tuxtem does me honor, in truth. There can never again be such works as these. They should be reserved to your gods."

"I believe only in the believable," he said. "A beautiful young woman with lightning in her hair and a Lóochi name which I know to mean Always, she is a much more credible goddess than most."

Tuxtem and I divided the articles as we had agreed, and then separated my share into four bundles. The working of the pieces had made them rather less in bulk and weight than the original tusks had been, so the resultant packages were wieldy enough that I and my three companions could carry them unaided by porters. We took them first to an inn there in Xicalanca, and engaged rooms, and rested, cleaned ourselves, and dined, and slept.

The next day, I selected one item from among our new acquisitions: a small knife sheath, etched with the scene of Quetzalcoatl paddling away from that shore on his raft of entwined snakes. Then I dressed in my best and, while Cozcatl and Blood Glutton escorted Zyanya to show her the sights of Xicalanca, I went to the palace and requested an audience with Cupilco's ruling noble, the Tabascoob, as he was called there. From that title—I do not know why—you Spaniards have concocted a new name for much of the land that was then Olméca country.

The lord received me graciously enough. Like most persons of other nations, he probably had no prodigious affection for us Mexíca. But his land lived by trade, and ours were the most numerous of all traders.

I said, "Lord Tabascoob, one of your local craftsmen, the Master Tuxtem, has lately done a unique kind of artwork in which I expect to turn a profitable trade. But I thought it fitting that the very first example should be presented to the lord of these lands. Hence I offer this token as a gift in the name of my own lord, the Uey-Tlatoani Ahuítzotl of Tenochtítlan."

"A thoughtful gesture and a generous gift," he said, examining the sheath with open admiration. "And a most beautiful work. I have never seen the like."

In return, the Tabascoob gave me a small quill of gold dust to present to Master Tuxtem, and a boxed collection of sea creatures—starfish, sea fawns, a coral sea feather, all gold-dipped for preservation and added beauty—as a reciprocal gift for the Revered Speaker Ahuítzotl. I left the palace feeling that I had accomplished at least a little in the furtherance of good relations between Cupilco and Tenochtítlan.

I made sure to mention that to Ahuítzotl when I called on him immediately after our arrival in The Heart of the One World. I hoped the Tabascoob's good-fellowship gift would help induce the Revered Speaker to grant my request: that Zyanya and I be married by a palace priest of impressive rank and credentials. But Ahuítzotl only gave me his most red-eyed glare and growled:

"You dare to come asking a favor of us, after having disobeyed our express instructions?"

Honestly not understanding, I said, "Disobeyed, my lord?"

"When you brought us the account of your first expedition to the south, we told you to remain available for further discussion of it. Instead you vanished, and deprived the Mexíca of a possibly valuable opportunity to make war. Now you come back, two years later, two years too late, to wheedle our sponsorship of a trifling thing like a wedding!"

Still puzzled, I said, "Assuredly, Lord Speaker, I would never have gone away if I suspected I was doing a disservice. But... what opportunity was lost?"

"Your word pictures told how your train had been beset by Mixteca bandits." His voice rose angrily. "We have never let an attack on our traveling pochtéa go unavenged." He was obviously more angry at me than at the bandits. "Had you been available to press the grievance, we would have had good excuse to send an army against the Mixteca. But, with no demonstrable plaintiff..."

I murmured apologies, and bowed my head humbly, but at the same time I made a deprecatory gesture. "The miserable Mixteca, my lord, possess little worth the winning. However, this time I return from abroad with news of a people who do possess something well worth seizing, and they likewise deserve punishment. I was most harshly treated by them."

"By whom? How? And what do they possess? Speak! It may be that you can redeem yourself in our estimation."

I told him how I had discovered the sea-and-rock-barricaded habitat of the Chontaltin, or the Zyu, or The Strangers, that viciously reclusive offshoot tribe of the Huave. I told how only that people knew when and where to dive for the sea snails, and how those unlovely slugs yield the lovely deep purple dye that never fades or discolors. I suggested that such a unique commodity would be of immeasurable market value. I told how my Tzapotecatl guide had been butchered by The Strangers, and how Zyanya and I had but narrowly escaped the same fate. During my narrative, Ahuítzotl heaved himself up from his grizzled-bear throne and strode excitedly about the room.