"Stop it, Záa!" she exclaimed. "You refuse to hear what I am earnestly trying to tell you. It is hard enough for me, because it is not a woman's place to say such things—"

"Please, Béu, no more," I said, wincing. "We have lived too long together, too long accustomed to our mutual dislike. Saying sweet words at this late date would strain either of us, and probably astound all the gods. But at least, from tomorrow on, our detestation of each other can be formally consecrated and indistinguishable from that of most other married—"

"You are cruel!" she interrupted. "You are immune to any tender sentiment, and heedless of a hand reaching out to you."

"I have too often felt the hard back of your tender hand, Béu. And am I not about to feel it again? Are you not going to laugh now and tell me that your talk of marriage was just another derisive prank?"

"No," she said. "I meant it seriously. Did you?"

"Yes," I said, and raised high my cup of octli. "May the gods take pity on us both."

"An eloquent proposal," she said. "But I accept it, Záa. I will marry you tomorrow." And she ran for her room.

I sat on, moodily sipping my octli and eyeing the inn's other patrons, most of them pochtéa on their way home to Tenochtítlan, celebrating their profitable journeys and safe return by getting eminently drunk, in which pursuit they were being encouraged by the hostel's numerous available women. The innkeeper, already aware that I had engaged a separate room for Béu, and seeing her depart alone, came sidling to where I sat, and inquired:

"Would the Lord Knight care for a sweet with which to conclude his meal? One of our charming maátime?"

I grunted, "Few of them look exceptionally charming."

"Ah, but looks are not everything. My lord must know that, since his own beautiful companion seems cool toward him. Charm can reside in other attributes than face and figure. For example, regard that woman yonder."

He pointed to what must surely have been the least appealing female in the establishment. Her features and her breasts sagged like moist clay. Her hair, from having been so often bleached and recolored, was like wire grass dried to kinky hay. I grimaced, but the innkeeper laughed and said:

"I know, I know. To contemplate that woman is to yearn for a boy instead. At a glance, you would take her for a grandmother, but I know for a fact that she is scarcely thirty. And would you believe this, Lord Knight? Every man who has ever once tried Quequelyehua always demands her on his next visit here. Her every patron becomes a regular, and will accept no other maátitl. I do not indulge, myself, but I have it on good authority that she knows some extraordinary ways to delight a man."

I raised my topaz and took another, more searching look at the draggle-haired, bleary-eyed sloven. I would have wagered that she was a walking pustule of the nanaua disease, and that the effeminate innkeeper knew it, and that he took malicious pleasure in trying to peddle her to the unsuspecting.

"In the dark, my lord, all women look alike, no? Well, boys do too, of course. So it is other considerations that matter, no? The highly accomplished Quequelyehua probably already has a waiting line for tonight, but an Eagle Knight can demand precedence over mere pochtéa. Shall I summon Quequelyehua for you, my lord?"

"Quequelyehua," I repeated, as the name evoked a memory. "I once knew a most beautiful girl named Quequelmíqui."

"Ticklish?" said the innkeeper, and giggled. "From her name, she must have been a diverting consort too. But this one should be far more so. Quequelyehua, the Tickler."

Feeling rather sick at heart, I said, "Thank you for the recommendation, but no, thank you." I took a large drink of my octli. "That thin girl sitting quietly in the corner, what of her?"

"Misty Rain?" said the innkeeper, indifferently. "They call her that because she weeps all the time she is, er, functioning. A newcomer, but competent enough, I am told."

I said, "Send that one to my room. As soon as I am drunk enough to go there myself."

"At your command, Lord Eagle Knight. I am impartial in the matter of other people's preferences, but sometimes I am mildly curious. May I ask why my lord chooses Misty Rain?"

I said, "Simply because she does not remind me of any other woman I have known."

The marriage ceremony was plain and simple and quiet, at least until its conclusion. My four old stalwarts stood as our witnesses. The innkeeper prepared tamaltin for the ritual meal. Some of the inn's earlier-rising patrons served as our wedding guests. Since Quaunahuac is the chief community of the Tlahuica people, I had procured a priest of the Tlahuica's principal deity, the good god Quetzalcoatl. And the priest, observing that the couple standing before him were somewhat past the first greening of youth, tactfully omitted from his service the usual doleful warnings to the presumably innocent female, and the usual cautionary exhortations to the presumably lusting male. So his harangue was mercifully brief and bland.

But even that perfunctory ritual elicited some emotion from Béu Ribé, or she pretended it did. She wept a few maidenly tears and, through the tears, smiled tremulous smiles. I must admit that her performance enhanced her already striking beauty, which, as I have never denied, was equal to and almost indistinguishable from the sublime loveliness of her late sister. Béu was dressed most enticingly and, when I looked at her without the clarification of my crystal, she appeared still as youthful as my forever twenty-year-old Zyanya. It was for that reason that I had made repeated use of the girl Misty Rain throughout the night. I would not risk Béu's making me want her, even physically, so I drained myself of any possibility of becoming aroused against my will.

The priest finally swung his smoking censer of copali around us for the last time. Then he watched while we fed each other a bite of steaming tamali, then he knotted the corner of my mantle to a corner of Waiting Moon's skirt hem, then he wished us the best of fortune in our new life.

"Thank you, Lord Priest," I said, handing him his fee. "Thank you especially for the good wishes." I undid the knot that tied me to Béu. "I may need the gods' help where I am now going." I slung my traveling pack on my shoulder and told Béu good-bye.

"Good-bye?" she repeated, in a sort of squeak. "But Záa, this is our wedding day."

I said, "I told you I would be leaving. My men will see you safely home."

"But—but I thought—I thought surely we would stay here at least another night. For the..." She glanced about, at the watching and listening guests. She blushed hotly and her voice rose, "Záa, I am now your wife!"

I corrected her, "You are married to me, as you requested, and you will be my widow and my heiress. Zyanya was my wife."

"Zyanya has been ten years dead!"

"Her dying did not sever our bond. I can have no other wife."

"Hypocrite!" she raged at me. "You have not been celibate for these ten years. You have had other women. Why will you not have the one you just now wed? Why will you not have me?"

Except for the innkeeper, who was smirking lewdly, most of the people in the room stood fidgeting and looking uncomfortable. So did even the priest, who nerved himself to say, "My lord, it is customary, after all, to seal the vows with an act of... well, to know each other intimately—"