While that was being done, I said, "My lady wishes me to draw a picture of someone?"

"Yes."

"Of whom, my lady?"

"Of anyone," she said, and I blinked in puzzlement. "You see, when I walk about the palace grounds or go into the city in my chair, it would be unladylike of me to point and say that one. Also, my eyedrops can dazzle me so that I might overlook someone really attractive. I mean men, of course."

"Men?" I echoed stupidly.

"I want you to carry your papers and chalks wherever you go. Whenever you encounter some handsome man, put his face and figure on paper for me." She paused to giggle. "You need not undress him. I want as many different pictures of as many different men as you can provide. But no one is to know why you are doing it, or for whom. If you are questioned, say you are merely practicing your art." She tossed back to me the two drawings I had just done. "That is all. You may take your leave, Fetch!, and do not come back until you have a sheaf of pictures to show me."

I was not, even then, so dense that I did not have an inkling of what Jadestone Doll's command portended. But I put that out of my mind, to concentrate on doing the task to the best of my ability. My main problem was in trying to guess what a fifteen-year-old girl might regard as "handsome" in a man. Having been given no other criteria, I confined my surreptitious sketchings to princes and knights and warriors and athletes and other such stalwarts. But when I returned to the queen, with Cozcatl carrying my stack of bark papers, I had whimsically topped them with a drawing I had done from memory—of that bent, crooked, cacao-brown man who had so oddly kept reappearing in my life.

She sniffed, but surprised me by saying, "You think you jest in mischief, Fetch! However, I have heard whispers among women that there are special delights to be had from dwarfs and hunchbacks and even"—she glanced at Cozcatl—"a little boy with a tepúli like an earlobe. Someday, when I tire of the ordinary..."

She riffled through the papers, then stopped and said, "Yyo ayyo! This one, Fetch!, he has bold eyebrows. Who is he?"

"That is the Crown Prince Black Flower."

She frowned prettily. "No, that might cause complications." She went on, intently studying each picture, then said, "And this one?"

"I do not know his name, my lady. He is a swift-messenger whom sometimes I see running with messages."

"Ideal," she said, with that smile of hers. She pointed to the drawing and said, "Fetch!" She was not just pronouncing my name, but the verbal imperative: "Bring him!"

I had fearfully anticipated something of the sort, but I broke into a cold sweat nonetheless. With the utmost diffidence and formality, I said:

"My Lady Jadestone Doll, I have been ordered to serve you, and cautioned not to correct or criticize you. But, if I rightly perceive your intentions, I beg you to reconsider. You are the virgin princess of the greatest lord in all The One World, and the wedded virgin queen of a lord who is also great. You will be demeaning two Revered Speakers and your own noble self, if you trifle with some other man before you go to your Lord Husband's bed."

I was expecting her at any moment to produce the whip she used on her slaves, but she heard me out, still wearing her infuriating sweet smile. Then she said:

"I could tell you that your impertinence is punishable. But I will merely remark that Nezahualpili is older than my own father, and that his virility has apparently been sapped by the Lady of Tolan, by all his other wives and concubines. He keeps me sequestered here while he is no doubt desperately trying medicines and enchantments to stiffen his limp and withered old tepúli. But why should I waste my urges and juices and the bloom of my beauty while I await his convenience or his capability? If he requires postponement of his husbandly duties, I shall arrange that they are long postponed indeed. And then, when he and I are ready, you may be sure I can convince Nezahualpili that I come to him untouched and pristine and as timorous of the experience as any maiden."

I tried again. I really did my best to dissuade her, though I do not think anyone afterward ever really believed it.

"My lady, remember who you are, and the lineage from which you descend. You are the granddaughter of the venerated Motecuzóma, and he was born of a virgin. His father threw a gemstone into the garden of his beloved. She tucked it into her bosom, and at that moment conceived the child Motecuzóma, before she ever married or coupled with his father. Thus you have a heritage of purity and virginity which you should not sully—"

She interrupted me with a laugh. "I am touched, Fetch!, by your concern. But you should have lectured me when I was nine or ten years old. When I was a virgin."

It belatedly occurred to me to turn to Cozcatl and say, "You had better—you may go now, boy."

Jadestone Doll said, "You know those carvings that the beastly Huaxteca make? The wooden torsos with the oversized male member? My father Ahuítzotl keeps one hanging on the wall of a gallery in our palace as a curiosity to amuse or amaze his men friends. It interests women, too. It has been rubbed smooth and glossy by those who have handled it admiringly in passing. Noblewomen. Servant wenches. Myself."

I said, "I really do not think I care to hear..." But she ignored my protestation.

"I had to drag a big storage chest against the wall, on which to stand to reach the thing. And it took me many painful days, because after each of my attempts I had to wait and rest while my inadequate tipíli stopped hurting. But I persisted, and it was a day of triumph when I finally managed just the tip of the tremendous thing. Little by little, I took more of it into me. I have had perhaps a hundred men since then, but none of them has ever given me the sensation I enjoyed in those days of thumping my little belly against that crude Huaxteca carving."

I pleaded, "I should not know these things, my lady."

She shrugged. "I make no excuses for my nature. That sort of release is something I must have, and must have often, and will have. I would even use you for that purpose, Fetch! You are not unappealing. And you would not inform against me, for I know you will obey Nezahualpili's bidding that you be no talebearer. But that would not prevent your confessing your own guilt at our coupling, and that would be the ruin of us both. So..."

She handed me the picture I had drawn of the unsuspecting swift-messenger, and a ring from her finger. "Give him this. It was my Lord Husband's wedding gift to me, and there is not another like it."

The ring was of red gold, set with a huge emerald whose value was incalculable. Those jewels were only seldom brought by traders who ventured as far as the land of Quautemálan, the uttermost southern limit of our trade routes, and the emerald's origin was not even there, but in some land, its name unknown, an untold distance farther to the south of Quautemálan. The ring was one of those designed to be worn on a hand held vertically, for its circlet was hung with jadestone pendants that would show to best advantage when the wearer kept her hand uplifted. The ring had been made to the measure of Jadestone Doll's middle finger. I could barely squeeze it onto my little one.

"No, you are not to wear it," the girl warned. "Nor is he. That ring would be recognized by anyone who saw it. He is merely to carry it, hidden, and then at midnight tonight show it to the guard on the eastern gate. At sight of the ring, the guard will admit him. Pitza will be waiting just inside, to bring him here."