Aztec a-1

by Gary Jennings

  Then, rather heavily encumbered, I sat with Ahuítzotl and the other knights while the palace servants brought an opulent banquet and many jars of the best octli. I had to make a pretense of eating heartily, since by then I was so flustered and excited that I had little appetite. There was no way, though, that I could avoid drinking in response to the numerous and vociferous toasts raised—to me, to the Eagle chieftains present, to Eagle Knights who had died spectacularly in the past, to our supreme commander Ahuítzotzin, to the ever greater might of the Mexíca.... After a while, I lost track of the toasts. That is why, when I was finally let depart from the palace, I was more than a little addled and my splendid new uniform was in some disarray.

  "I am proud of you, Záa, and happy for you," Zyanya said when I had concluded my account. "It is indeed a great honor. And now, what brave feat will you do, my warrior husband? What will be your first deed of valor as an Eagle Knight?"

  I said feebly, "Were we not supposed to pick flowers today, my dear? When the freight canoe brings them from Xochimilco? Flowers to plant in our roof garden?"

  My brain hurt too badly for me to strain it, so I did not even try to understand why Zyanya again, as she had done the night before, burst into peals of laughter.

  * * *

  Our new house meant a new life for all of us who inhabited it, so we had much to occupy us. Zyanya continued to be busy with the evidently interminable task of visiting market stalls and artisans' workshops in chase of "just the right sort of matting for the nursery floor" or "a figurine of some sort for that niche at the top of the stair" or something else that seemed always to elude her.

  My contributions were not always received with acclamation, as for instance when I brought home a small stone statue for that staircase niche and Zyanya pronounced it "hideous." Well, it was, but I had bought it because it looked exactly like that brown, wizened, and hunched old-man disguise in which Nezahualpili had used to accost me. Actually, the figure represented Huehueteotl, Oldest of Old Gods, so called because that was what he was. Though no longer widely worshiped, the aged, wrinkled, sardonically smiling Huehueteotl was still venerated as the god first recognized in these lands and known since time before human memory, long before Quetzalcoatl or any of the later favorites. Since Zyanya refused to let me put him where guests would see him, I set The Oldest of Old Gods at my side of our bed.

  Our three servants, in the free time during their first few months with us, attended their classes at Cozcatl's school, and to noticeable effect. The little maid Ticklish was cured of giggling every time she was spoken to, and gave only a modest and obliging smile. Star Singer became so attentive that he presented me with a lighted poquietl almost every time I sat down, and—not to rebuff his solicitude—I smoked rather more than I wanted to.

  My own business was that of consolidating my fortune. Trains of pochtéa had for some time been coming into Tenochtítlan from Uaxyacac, bearing flasks of purple dye and skeins of empurpled yarn which they had purchased legitimately from the collected stock of the Bishosu Kosi Yuela. They had of course paid an exorbitant price for it, and of course asked an even more extortionate price when they doled it out through the Tlaltelólco merchants. But the Mexíca nobles—their ladies especially—were so avid for that unique coloring that they paid whatever was asked. And, once the legitimately acquired purple was on the market, I was able discreetly and without detection to pour my own stock trickling into the stream.

  I sold my hoard for more easily concealable currency: carved jadestones, a few emeralds and other gems, gold jewelry, quills of gold dust. But Zyanya and I kept enough of the dye for our own use that I believe we owned more purple-embroidered garments than the Revered Speaker and all his wives. I know ours was the only house in Tenochtítlan with solid-purple draperies at the windows. Those were visible only to our invited guests, however; they were backed with less sumptuous stuffs on their street side.

  We were most frequently visited by longtime friends: Cozcatl, lately and more properly known as Master Cozcatl; associates of mine from The House of Pochtéa; one or several of Blood Glutton's old fellows-in-arms who had helped me secure the purple. But we also made many acquaintances among our higher-class neighbors in our Ixacualco quarter and the nobles we met at court—in particular a number of noble-women who had been captivated by Zyanya's charm. One of those was the First Lady of Tenochtítlan, which is to say Ahuítzotl's premier wife. When she came to visit, she often brought her eldest son, Cuauhtemoc, Swooping Eagle, the young lord who would be the likeliest successor to his father's throne. Though the Mexíca succession was not immutably patrilineal, like that of some other nations, an eldest son was the first candidate considered by the Speaking Council on the death of a Uey-Tlatoani who left no surviving brother to succeed him. So Zyanya and I treated Cuautemoctzin and his mother with fitting deference; it does no harm to be on good terms with him whom you may someday be addressing as Revered Speaker.

  From time to time during those years, a military messenger or a pochtéatl's porter coming up from the south would make a side trip past our house to bring us a message from Béu Ribé The message was always the same: she was still unmarried, Tecuantépec was still Tecuantépec, the inn was still prospering, and even more so with the increased traffic to and from the Xoconóchco. But the very sameness of that scant news was rather depressing, since Zyanya and I could only assume that Béu remained unmarried not from inclination but from a lack of suitors.

  And that always recalled the exiled Motecuzóma to my mind, for I was sure—though I never said so, even to Zyanya—that he had been the Mexícatl officer of strange proclivities who had devastated Béu's life. Just as a matter of family loyalty, I suppose I might have felt animosity toward that Motecuzóma the Younger. Just from what Béu and Ahuítzotl had told me, I might have felt contempt for a man partly crippled both in his private parts and in his appetites. But not I or anyone could deny that he did a soldierly job of holding and developing the Xoconóchco for us.

  He located his army garrison practically on the border of Quautemálan, and he oversaw the design and building of a stout one, and the neighboring Quiche and Lacandon no doubt watched with dismay as its walls went up and the patrols marched about it. For those wretched people never made another foray outside their jungle, they never again threatened or blustered or, indeed, showed any other sign of ambition.

  They lapsed back into being no worse than squalid and apathetic, and, as far as I am aware, they still are so.

  Your own Spanish soldiers who first traveled into the Xoconóchco expressed surprise on finding there, so far distant from Tenochtítlan, so many peoples unrelated to us Mexíca—the Mame, Mixe, Comiteca, and such—who spoke our Náhuatl. Yes, that was the farthest land on which one could stand and say, "This is Mexíca soil." It was also, despite its distance from The Heart of the One World, perhaps our most loyal province, and that was due in part to the fact that many of our people moved into the Xoconóchco after its annexation.

  Even before Motecuzóma's garrison was completed, other comers began to settle in the area and to build homes and market stalls and rudimentary inns and even houses of pleasure. They were Mexíca and Acolhua and Tecpanéca immigrants seeking wider horizons and opportunities than they could find in the ever more crowded lands of The Triple Alliance. By the time the garrison was fully built and armed and manned, it threw its protective shadow over a town of estimable size. The town took the Náhuatl name of Tapachtlan, Place of Coral, and, though it never approached the size and splendor of its parent Tenochtítlan, it is still the biggest and busiest community east of the Tecuantépec isthmus.

  Many of the newcome northerners, after staying a while in Tapachtlan or elsewhere in the Xoconóchco, moved on farther yet. I have never journeyed quite so far, but I know that, east of the Quautemálan jungle, there are great fertile highlands and coast lands. And beyond them there is another isthmus, even more narrow than that of Tecuantépec, winding between the northern and southern oceans a
nd extending no one can tell how far. Some insist that somewhere down there a river connects the two oceans. Your own Captain-General Cortés went looking for it, in vain, but some Spaniard may find it yet.

  Though the onward-pressing emigrants consisted only of individual explorers, or at most of family groups, and though they settled only sparsely throughout those far lands, I am told that they have left their mark indelibly on the native peoples of those places. Tribes never originally or remotely related to any of us of The Triple Alliance now wear our faces; they speak our Náhuatl language, though in corrupt dialects; they have adopted and perpetuated many of our customs and arts and gods; they have even renamed their villages and mountains and rivers with Náhuatl names.

  Several Spaniards who have traveled widely have asked me, "Was your Aztec Empire really so vast that it abutted upon the Inca Empire in the great continent to the south?" Although I do not fully comprehend the question, I always tell them, "No, my lords." I am uncertain of what an empire is, or a continent, or an Inca. But I do know that we Mexíca—Aztecs, if you must—never pushed our border beyond the Xoconóchco.

  Not everybody's eyes and interests were fixed toward the south in those years. Our Uey-Tlatoani, for one, was not ignoring the other points of the compass. I rather welcomed the interruption of my increasingly domestic daily routine when one day Ahuítzotl called me to his palace to ask if I would undertake a diplomatic mission into Michihuácan.

  He said, "You did so well for us in the Xoconóchco and in Uaxyacac. Do you think you might now seek for us better relations with The Land of the Fishermen?"

  I said I could try. "But why, my lord? The Purémpecha allow our travelers and merchants unhindered passage across their country. They engage freely in trade with us. What more can we ask of them in the way of relations?"

  "Oh, think of something. Anything that would justify your visiting their ruling Uandakuari, old Yquingare." I must have looked blank, for he leaned forward to explain. "Your supposedly diplomatic negotiations will be only a mask for your real mission. We want you to bring us their secret of making that superbly hard metal which defeats our obsidian weapons."

  I took a long breath and, trying to sound reasonable instead of apprehensive, I said, "My lord, the artisans who know how to forge that metal are assuredly well guarded against any encounters with strangers who might tempt them to betray their secret."

  "And the metal itself is kept locked away, out of sight of the inquisitive," said Ahuítzotl impatiently. "We know all that. But we also know of one exception to that policy. The Uandakuari's closest advisers and personal guards are always armed with weapons of that metal, to ward off any attempts on his life. Get into his palace and you have a chance of getting hold of a sword, a knife, something. That is all we need. If our own metalworkers can have but a specimen to study, they can find out the composition of it."

  I sighed and said, "As my lord commands, an Eagle Knight must do." I thought over the difficulties of the task ahead and suggested, "If I am going there only to steal, I really need no complicated excuse of diplomatic negotiations. I could be merely an envoy-bringing from the Revered Speaker Ahuítzotl a friendly gift for the Revered Speaker Yquingare."

  Ahuítzotl also thought about it, frowning. "But what?" he said. "There are as many precious things in Michihuácan as there are here. It would have to be something unavailable to him, something unique."

  I said, "The Purémpecha are much given to strange sexual diversions. But no. The Uandakuari is an old man. Doubtless he has already sampled every sexual delight and indecency and is jaded beyond—"

  "Ayyo!" cried Ahuítzotl exultantly. "There is one delight he cannot possibly have tried, one he cannot possibly resist. A new texquani we have just bought for our human menagerie." I flinched, visibly I am sure, but he took no notice; he was sending a steward to bring whatever it was.

  I was trying to imagine what kind of human monster could arouse the tepúli of even the most pornerastic old lecher, when Ahuítzotl said, "Look at this, Knight Mixtli. Here they are," and I raised my topaz.

  The two girls were about as plain of face as any girls I had ever seen, but in simple charity I could hardly have called them monstrous. A trifle unusual, yes, in that they were identical twins. I took them to be about fourteen years old, and of some Olméca tribe, since they were both chewing tzictli, as placidly as a matched pair of manatees. They stood shoulder to shoulder, slightly turned toward each other, each with her nearmost arm thrown across the other's nearmost shoulder. They wore a single blanket wrapped around both their bodies from their chests to the floor.

  "They have not yet been shown to the public," said Ahuítzotl, "because our palace seamstresses have not finished the special blouses and skirts they require. Steward, remove the blanket."

  He did, and my eyes goggled when I saw the girls naked. They were not just twins; it appeared that in the womb they had somehow got melted together. From armpit to hip, the two were joined by a mutual skin, and so tightly that they could not stand, sit, walk, or lie down except half facing each other. For a moment, I thought they had only three breasts between them. But I stepped closer and saw that the middle breast was two normal breasts pressed together; I could part them with my hand. I looked the girls over: four breasts in front, two sets of buttocks in back. Except for their unlovely, unintelligent faces, I could see no deformity but that section of shared skin.

  "Could they not be sliced apart?" I inquired. "They would each have a scar, but they would be separate and normal."

  "Whatever for?" growled Ahuítzotl. "Of what earthly use are two more mud-faced, tzictli-chewing Olméca drabs? Together, they are novel and valuable and can enjoy the pleasurably idle life of a tequani. At any rate, our surgeons have concluded that they cannot be separated. Inside that binding flap of skin, they share vital blood vessels. But—and this is what will beguile old Yquingare—each girl does have her own tipíli, and both are virgins."

  "It is a pity they could not be handsome," I mused. "But you are right, my lord. The sheer novelty of them should make up for that lack." I addressed the twins: "Do you have names? Can you talk?"

  They said, in the Coatlicamac tongue, and almost in unison, "I am Left." "I am Right."

  Ahuítzotl said, "We had planned to present them to the public as the Lady Pair. Named for the goddess Omeciuatl. A sort of joke, you see."

  I said, "If an uncommon gift will make the Uandakuari more amicable toward us, the Lady Pair is that gift, and I will gladly be the bearer of it. Just one recommendation, my lord, to render them more attractive. Have them both shaved bald of hair and eyebrows. It is the Purémpe fashion."

  "Singular fashion," said Ahuítzotl wonderingly. "The hair is the only thing attractive about either of these. But it will be done. Be prepared to depart as soon as their wardrobe is completed."

  "At your summons, Lord Speaker. And I shall hope that the Lady Pair's presentation at that court will cause enough excitement that I can purloin one of the metal weapons unnoticed in the commotion."

  "Do not just hope," said Ahuítzotl. "See to it!"

  "Ah, the poor children!" Zyanya exclaimed, when I introduced her to the Lady Pair. I was surprised to hear someone express pity for them, since everyone else involved with Left and Right had either gaped or snickered, or, in the manner of Ahuítzotl, had regarded them as a marketable commodity, like the meat of some rare game animal. But Zyanya mothered them tenderly throughout the whole journey to Tzintzuntzani, and continually kept assuring them—as if they had brains enough to care—that they were traveling toward a wondrous new life of freedom and luxury. Well, I supposed they would be better off in the comparative liberty of a country palace, even serving as a sort of reversible concubine, than as an object being forever pointed at and laughed at in the confines of a city menagerie.

  Zyanya went with me because, when I told her of that latest and queerest embassy laid on me, she insisted on coming along. At first I said a loud no, for I knew that no one in my pa
rty would live longer than the moment in which, very likely, I would be caught trying to steal one of the sacrosanct metal weapons. But Zyanya argued persuasively that, if our host's suspicions were allayed in advance, I would have the greater opportunity of getting close to such a weapon and getting it into my possession undetected.

  "And what looks less suspicious," she asked, "than a man and wife traveling together? I should like to see Michihuácan, Záa."

  Her man-and-wife idea did have some merit, I reflected, if not exactly the merit she ascribed to it. For the lewd and licentious Purémpecha to see a man traveling with his own, everyday, commonplace female mate—in that country where, for the asking, he could have any other mate, or kind of mate, or number of mates—that would indeed dumbfound the Purémpecha. They would scornfully dismiss me as too impotent, witless, unimaginative, and lethargic to be a thief or a spy or anything else dangerous. So I said yes to Zyanya, and she immediately began packing for the journey.

  Ahuítzotl sent me word, and I reported to the palace, when the twins and their wardrobe were ready to go. But ayya, I was horrified when I first saw the girls after they had been shorn of hair. Their naked heads looked like their naked breasts—sharply conical, tapering to a point—and I wondered if my recommendation had been an awful mistake. A bald head might be the epitome of beauty to a Purémpe, but a bald pointed head? Well, it was too late to remedy; bald they would have to remain.

  Also, it was only then belatedly discovered that no ordinary litter chair would accommodate Left and Right, and that a special one would have to be constructed to their peculiar requirements, which delayed our departure for a few days. But Ahuítzotl was determined to spare no expense on that expedition, so, when we finally did set out, we made quite a procession.