Slowly, so that I should not mistake his meaning, he turned his beetling glare from me to Zyanya.

She said in a small voice, "We should be praying, Záa."

And I said honestly, fervently, "I am praying."

Our chambers contained every necessary furnishing except a bed, which would not be provided until the fourth day after the ceremony. The intervening days and nights we were supposed to spend fasting—refraining both from nourishment and from consummation of our union—meanwhile praying to our various favorite gods that we would be good for each other and good to each other, that our marriage might be a happy one.

But I was silently engaged in a rather different kind of prayer. I was asking, of whatever gods there might be, only that Zyanya and I survive the morrow to have a marriage. I had put myself in some precarious situations before, but never one where, no matter what I did, I could not possibly triumph. If, through prowess or sheer good fortune or because my tonáli decreed it, I should succeed in killing Chimali, then I would have two choices. I could return to the palace and let Ahuítzotl execute me for having instigated the duel. Or I could flee and leave Zyanya to take the punishment, doubtless a terrible one. The third foreseeable circumstance was that Chimali would kill me, through his superior skill at weaponry or because I withheld my own killing blow or because his tonáli was the stronger. In which case, I would be beyond Ahuítzotl's punishment and he would exercise his wrath on my dear Zyanya. The duel must result in one of those three eventualities, and every one of them was unthinkable. But no, there was one other possibility: suppose I simply failed to appear in the wood of Chapultepec at dawn....

While I thought about the unthinkable, Zyanya was quietly unpacking the little luggage we had brought. Her cry of delight roused me from my gloomy reverie. I lifted my head from my hands to see that she had found in one of my panniers the old clay figurine of Xochiquetzal, that which I had preserved ever since my sister's misfortune.

"The goddess who watched while we were married," Zyanya said, smiling.

"The goddess who fashioned you for me," I said. "She who governs all love and beauty. I meant her statuette to be a surprise gift."

"Oh, it is," she said loyally. "You are forever surprising me."

"Not all my surprises have been pleasant ones for you, I fear. Like my challenge to Chimali tonight."

"I did not know his name, but it seems I have seen the man before. Or someone very like him."

"You saw the man himself, though I imagine he did not look quite such an elegant courtier on the earlier occasion. Let me explain, and I hope you will understand why I had to mar our wedding ceremony, why I could not postpone doing what I did—and what I must yet do."

My instant explanation of the Xochiquetzal figurine, a few moments before—that I had intended it as a memento of our wedding—was the first outright lie I had ever told Zyanya. But when I told her of my earlier life, I committed some small lies of omission, I began with Chimali's first betrayal of me, when he and Tlatli had declined to help save Tzitzitlini's life, and I left some gaps in my account of why my sister's life had been in peril. I told how Chimali, Tlatli, and I had met again in Texcóco and, omitting some of the uglier details, how I had connived to avenge my sister's death. How, out of some mercy or some weakness, I had been satisfied to let the vengeance fall on Tlatli alone, and let Chimali escape. How he had since repaid that favor by continuing to molest me and mine. At the last I said, "And you yourself told me how he pretended to aid your mother when—"

Zyanya gasped. "He is the traveler who attended—who murdered my mother and your..."

"He is," I said, when she paused discreetly there. "And so it happened that, when I saw him sitting arrogantly at our wedding feast, I determined that he should murder no more."

She said, almost fiercely, "Indeed you must face him. And best him, no matter what the Revered Speaker said, or what he does. But may the guards not prevent your leaving the palace at dawn?"

"No. Ahuítzotl does not know of all that I have told you, but he knows this is a matter of honor. He will not hold me back. He will hold you instead. And that is what troubles my heart—not what may happen to me, but how you may suffer for my impetuosity."

Zyanya seemed to resent that remark. "Do you think me less brave than yourself? Whatever happens on the dueling ground, and whatever comes of it afterward, I shall willingly await. There! I have said it. If you stay your hand now, Záa, you are only using me as an excuse. I could not live with you after that."

I smiled ruefully. So the fourth and final choice was closed to me. I shook my head and took her tenderly into my arms. "No," I said with a sigh. "I will not stay my hand."

"I never thought you would," she said, as matter-of-factly as if, in marrying me, she had married an Eagle Knight. "Now there remains not much time before sunrise. Lie here and let me pillow your head. Sleep while you can."

It seemed I had just laid my head on her soft breast when there was a hesitant scratching at the door and Cozcatl's voice called, "Mixtli, the sky pales. It is time."

I stood up, ducked my head in a basin of cold water, and rearranged my rumpled clothes.

"He has already departed for the acáli landing," Cozcatl told me. "Perhaps he intends to spring upon you from ambush."

"Then I will need only weapons for close fighting, not for throwing," I said. "Bring a spear, a dagger, and a maquahuitl."

Cozcatl hurried off, and I spent a bittersweet few moments saying good-bye to Zyanya, while she spoke words meant to embolden me and reassure me that all would be well. I kissed her one last time and went downstairs to where Cozcatl waited with the arms. Blood Glutton was not present. Since he had been the Master Cuáchic teaching both me and Chimali at The House of Building Strength, it would have been unseemly for him to proffer advice or even moral support to either of us, whatever his own feelings about the duel's outcome.

The palace guards made no move to prevent our going out the gate that led through the Snake Wall into The Heart of the One World. Our sandaled footsteps on the marble paving echoed back and forth from the Great Pyramid and numerous lesser buildings. The plaza looked even more than usually immense in its early morning opal light and emptiness, there being no other people in it except a few priests shambling to their sunrise duties. We left by the opening in the western side of the Snake Wall and went through streets and over canal bridges to the edge of the island nearest the mainland, and at the boat landing I commandeered one of the canoes reserved for palace use. Cozcatl insisted on rowing me across the not very wide expanse of water, to save me tiring my muscles.

Our acáli bumped the bank at the foot of the bluff called Chapultepec, at the point where the aqueduct vaulted from the hill toward the city. High above our heads, the carved visages of the Revered Speakers Ahuítzotl, Tixoc, Axayácatl, and the first Motecuzóma stared from the otherwise rough natural rock. Another canoe was already there, its tie rope held by a palace page, who pointed to a rise of ground to one side of the cliff and said politely, "He awaits you in the wood, my lord."

I told Cozcatl, "You stay here with the other arms bearer. You will soon know whether I have further need of you or not." I stuck the obsidian dagger in the waist of my loincloth, took the obsidian-edged sword in my right hand and the obsidian-pointed spear in my left. I went to the top of the rise and looked down into the wood.