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.

About a month after the troop's departure, Ahuítzotl's swift-messengers began to return at intervals to the city, and the Snake Woman made their reports publicly known. From the news of the first returning messengers, it was obvious that the Revered Speaker was following the advice I had given him. He had sent advance notice of his approach and, as I had predicted, the Bishosu of Uaxyicac had welcomed his forces and had contributed an equal number of warriors. Those combined Mexíca and Tzapoteca forces invaded the seacoast warrens of The Strangers and made short work of them—slaughtering enough that the remainder surrendered and bowed to the levy of their long-guarded purple dye.

But the later arriving messengers brought less happy news. The victorious Mexíca were quartered in Tecuantépec, while Ahuítzotl and his counterpart ruler Kosi Yuela conferred there on matters of state. Those soldiers had long been accustomed to their right to pillage whatever nation they defeated, so they were disgruntled and angered when they learned that their leader was ceding the only visible plunder—the precious purple—to the ruler of that same nation. To the Mexíca it seemed that they had waged a battle for the benefit of nobody but the very country they had invaded. Since Ahuítzotl was not the sort of man to justify his actions to his underlings and thereby quell their unrest, his Mexíca simply rebelled against all military restraint. They broke ranks and broke discipline and ran wild through Tecuantépec, looting, raping, and burning.

That mutiny could have disrupted the delicate negotiations intended to effect an alliance between our nation and Uaxyacac. But fortunately, before the rampaging Mexíca could kill anyone of importance, and before the Tzapoteca troops intervened—which would have meant a small war right there—Ahuítzotl bawled his horde to order and promised that, immediately upon their return to Tenochtítlan, he would personally pay to every least yaoquizqui of them, from his own personal treasury, a sum well in excess of what they could hope to loot from their host country. The soldiers knew Ahuítzotl for a man of his word, so that was sufficient to put down the mutiny. The Revered Speaker also paid to Kosi Yuela and the bishosu of Tecuantépec a sizable indemnity for the damage that had been done.

The reports of mayhem in Zyanya's natal city naturally worried her and me. None of the swift-messengers bearing news could tell us whether our sister Béu Ribé or her inn had been in the path of the spoilers. We waited until Ahuítzotl and his troop returned, and I made some inquiries among the officers, but still could not ascertain if anything bad had happened to Waiting Moon.

"I am most anxious about her, Záa," said my wife.

"It seems there is nothing to be discovered except in Tecuantopec itself."

She said hesitantly, "I could stay here and continue to direct our house builders, if you would consider..."

"You need not even ask. I had planned to revisit those parts in any case."