"I did not," I said. "I left him insensible, but if he wakes he will have suffered nothing worse than a bad headache. If he wakes. I told you once, long ago, that when the time came for Chimali's execution you would decide the manner of it." I plucked my dagger from my waistband and handed it to him. The page watched us with horrified fascination. I waved Cozcatl toward the wood. "You will easily find where he lies. Go, and give him what he deserves."
Cozcatl nodded and marched over the rise and out of sight. The page and I waited. His face was discolored and contorted, and he kept swallowing in an endeavor not to be sick. When Cozcatl returned, before he got close enough to speak, we could see that his dagger was no longer a glittery black, it was a gleaming red.
But he shook his head as he approached, and said, "I let him live, Mixtli."
I exclaimed, "What? Why?"
"I overheard the Revered Speaker's threatening words last night," he said apologetically. "With Chimali helpless before me, I was much tempted, but I did not kill him. Since he still lives, the Lord Speaker cannot vent too much anger on you. I took from Chimali only these."
He held out one clenched hand and opened it so I could see the two mucously glistening globules and the flabby pink thing, raggedly cut off about halfway down its length.
I said to the miserable and retching page, "You heard. He lives. But he will require your help to return to the city. Go and stanch his bleeding and wait for him to awaken."
"So the man Chimali lives," said Ahuítzotl frostily. "If you can call it life. So you complied with our prohibition against killing him, by not quite killing him entirely. So you blithely expect that we will not be outraged and vengeful as we promised." I prudently said nothing. "We grant that you obeyed our spoken word, but you understood very well our unspoken meaning, and what of that? What earthly use is the man to us in his present condition?"
I had by then resignedly come to expect that in any interview with the Uey-Tlatoani I would be the focus of a bulging-eyed glare. Others quailed and quaked before that awful look, but I was beginning to take it as a matter of course.
I said, "Perhaps, if the Revered Speaker would now hear my reasons for having challenged the palace artist, my lord might be inclined to leniency regarding the tragic outcome of the duel."
He merely grunted, but I took it as permission to speak. I told him much the same history I had told Zyanya, only omitting all mention of the events in Texcóco, since they had so intimately involved Ahuítzotl's murder of my newborn son, hence my fears for my newly-wed wife, Ahuítzotl grunted again, then meditated on the matter—or so I assumed from his scowling silence—then finally said:
"We did not engage the artist Chimali because of or in spite of his despicable amorality, his sexual proclivities, his vindictive nature, or his tendency to treachery. We engaged him only to paint pictures, which he did better than any other painter of these or bygone days. You may not have slain the man, but you most certainly slew the artist. Now that his eyeballs have been plucked out, he can no longer paint. Now that his tongue has been cut out, he cannot even impart to any of our other artists the secret of compounding those unique colors he invented."
I remained silent, only thinking to myself, with satisfaction, that neither could the voiceless, sightless Chimali ever reveal to the Revered Speaker that it was I who had caused the public disgrace and execution of his eldest daughter.
He went on, as if summing up the case for and against me, "We are still wroth with you, but we must accept as mitigation the reasons you have given for your behavior. We must accept that this was an unavoidable affair of honor. We must also accept that you did take pains to obey our word, in letting the man Chimali live; and our word we likewise keep. You are reprieved from any penalty."
I said gratefully and sincerely, "Thank you, my lord."
"However, since we made our threat in public and the whole population by now knows of it, someone must atone for the loss of our palace artist." I held my breath, thinking that surely he must mean Zyanya, But he said indifferently, "We will give it thought. The blame will be put upon some expendable nonentity, but all will know that our threats are not empty ones."
I let out my pent breath. Heartless though it may sound, I could not really feel much guilt or sorrow on behalf of some unknown victim, perhaps a troublesome slave, who would die at that proud tyrant's whim.
Ahuítzotl said in conclusion, "Your old enemy will be evicted from the palace as soon as the physician has finished tending his wounds. Chimali will henceforth have to scavenge a living as a common street beggar. You have had your revenge, Mixtli. Any man would rather be dead than be what you have made of that one. Now begone from our sight, lest we have a change of heart. Go to your woman, who is probably worried about your welfare."
No doubt she was, about her own as well as mine, but Zyanya was a woman of the Cloud People; she would not have let her concern be evident to any passing palace attendant. When I entered our chambers, her placid expression did not change until I said, "It is done. He is finished. And I am pardoned." Then she wept, and then she laughed, and then she wept again, and then she plunged into my arms and held to me as if she would never let me go again.
When I had told her all that had happened, she said, "You must be near dead from fatigue. Lie down again and—"
"I will lie down," I said, "but not to sleep. I must tell you something. A narrow escape from danger seems always to have a certain effect on me."
"I know," she said, smiling. "I can feel it. But Záa, we are supposed to be praying."
I said, "There is no more sincere form of prayer than loving."
"We have no bed."
"The floor matting is softer than a mountainside. And I am eager to hold you to a promise you made."
"Ah, yes, I remember," she said. And slowly—not reluctantly, but tantalizingly—she disrobed for me, discarding everything she wore except the pearly white chain necklace the artisan Tuxtem had hung about her neck in Xicalanca.
Have I already told you, my lords, that Zyanya was like a shapely vessel of burnished copper, brimming with honey, set in the sun? The beauty of her face I had known for some time, but the beauty of her body I had known only by touch. But then I saw it and—she had been right in her promise—it might have been our first time together. I literally ached to possess her.
When she stood naked before me, all the womanly parts of her seemed to thrust forward and upward, ardently offering themselves. Her breasts were set high and tilted, and on their pale copper globes her cacao-colored areolas protruded like lesser globes, and from them her nipples extended, asking to be kissed. Her tipíli was also set high and forward so that, even though she stood with her long legs modestly pressed together, those soft lips parted just the slightest bit at their upper joining, to allow a glimpse of the pink pearl of her xacapili, and at that moment it was moist, like a pearl just out of the sea—
Enough.
Although His Excellency is not now present, and so cannot be driven out by his usual revulsion, I will not recount what happened then. I have been frankly explicit about my relations with other women, but Zyanya was my beloved wife, and I think I will miserly hoard most of my memories of her. Of all that I have possessed in my life, my memories are the only things remaining to me. Indeed, I believe that memories are the only real treasure any human can hope to hold always. That was her name. Always.
But I wander. And our delicious lovemaking was not the last event of that notably eventful day. Zyanya and I were lying in each other's arms, I just falling into sleep, when there came a scratching at the door like that of Cozcatl earlier. Foggily hoping I was not being summoned to fight another duel, I struggled to my feet, slung my mantle about me, and went to investigate. It was one of the palace under-stewards.