Aztec

I nodded and said, 'It will be a good thing for them, for their employers, and for you. An ingenious idea, Cozcatl, You have not just found your place in the world, you have carved an entirely new niche, for which no one is better fitted than yourself.'

He said with humility, 'I could not have done it but for you, Mixtli. Had we not adventured together, I would probably still be a drudge in some Texcoco palace. I owe all my good fortune to the tonali, whether it was yours or mine, that linked our lives.'

And I too, I thought, as I walked slowly home, was much indebted to a tonali I had once cursed as capricious, if not malign. It had caused me grief and loss and unhappiness. But it had also made me a man of property, a man of substantial wealth, a man lofted high above the expectations of his birth, a man married to the most desirable woman among women, and a man still young enough to explore further enticing prospects.

As I strolled toward my comfortable home and the welcoming arms of Zyanya, I was moved to waft my gratitude toward the supposed sky residences of the major gods. 'Gods,' I said—in my mind, not aloud—'if gods there be, and you are they, I thank you. Sometimes you have taken from me with one hand while giving to me with the other. But on the whole you have given me much more than you have taken. I kiss the earth to you, gods.'

And the gods must have been grateful for my gratitude. The gods wasted no time in arranging that when I entered my house, I should find a palace page waiting with a summons from Ahuitzotl. I took only time enough to give Zyanya a hurried kiss of greeting and farewell, then followed the boy through the streets to The Heart of the One World.

It was quite late that night when I came home again, and I was very differently dressed, and I was more than a little intoxicated. Our slave Turquoise, when she opened the door to me, instantly forgot any poise she might have learned at Cozcatl's school. She took one look at me and my somewhat disordered profusion of feathers, gave a piercing shriek, and fled toward the back of the house. Zyanya came, looking anxious.

She said, 'Zaa, you were gone so long—!' Then she too gave a squeak and recoiled from me, exclaiming, 'What did that monster Ahuitzotl do to you? Why is your arm bleeding? What have you got on your feet? What is that thing on your head? Zaa, say something!'

'Hello,' I mumbled foolishly, with a hiccup in it.

'Hello?' she echoed, taken aback by the absurdity. Then she said crisply, 'Whatever else, you are drunk,' and went away toward the kitchen. I slumped down onto a bench, but I came energetically to my feet again—perhaps even some distance off the floor—when Zyanya poured ajar of shockingly cold water over my head.

'My helmet!' I cried, when I stopped coughing and spluttering.

'A helmet, is it?' said Zyanya, as I struggled to get it off and dry it before the wetting should damage it. 'I thought you were caught in the craw of some giant bird.'

'My lady wife,' I said, with the stately sobriety of the half drunk, 'you might have ruined this noble eagle head. Now you are standing on one of my talons. And look—just look at my poor draggled feathers.'

'I am. I am looking,' she said, in a strangled voice, and I perceived that she was trying mightily not to burst out laughing. 'Get out of that silly costume, Zaa. Go to the steam room. Sweat some of the octli out of you. Clean that blood off your arm. Then come to bed and tell me... tell me what on earth...' She could hold the laughter no longer, and it came forth in peals.

'Silly costume, indeed,' I said, contriving to sound both haughty and hurt. 'Only a woman could be so insensitive to the regalia of high honor. Were you a man, you would kneel in awe and admiration and congratulation. But no. I get ignominiously drenched and laughed at.' With which, I turned and stalked majestically up the stairs, only stumbling occasionally in my long-taloned sandals, to go and soak and sulk in the steam room.

Thus did I behave with lugubrious bluster, thus was I received with indulgent mirth, on what should have been the most solemn evening of my life to date. Not one in ten or twenty thousand of my countrymen ever became what I had that day become—In Tlamahuichihuani Cuautlic: a Knight of the Eagle Order of the Mexica.

I further humiliated myself by falling asleep in the steam room, and was quite unconscious of being moved when Zyanya and Star Singer somehow got me out of there and into the bed. So it was not until morning, when I lay late abed, sipping hot chocolate in an attempt to ease the ponderous weight of my headache, that I could coherently tell Zyanya what had happened at the palace.

Ahuitzotl had been alone in the throne room when the page and I arrived, and he said abruptly, 'Our nephew Motecuzoma left Tenochtitlan this morning, leading the considerable force that will man the garrison in the Xoconochco. As we promised, we mentioned to our Speaking Council your admirable role in negotiating the acquisition of that territory, and it was decided that you should be rewarded.'

He made some signal, and the page departed, and a moment afterward the room began to fill with other men. I would have expected them to be the Snake Woman and other members of the Speaking Council. But, looking through my topaz, I was surprised to see that they were all warriors—the elite of warriors—all Eagle Knights, in full-feathered battle armor, eagle-head helmets, wing pinions fringing their arms, taloned sandals on their feet.

Ahuitzotl introduced them to me, one by one—the highest chieftains of the Eagle Order—and said, 'They have voted, Mixtli, to raise you—in one vaulting bound—from the mediocre rank of tequiua to full knighthood in their exalted company.'

There were various rituals to be performed, of course. Though I had been stricken nearly speechless, I made an effort to find my voice, so that I could swear the many and wordy oaths—that I would be faithful to and fight to the death for the Eagle Order itself, for the supremacy of Tenochtitlan, for the power and prestige of the Mexica nation, for the preservation of The Triple Alliance. I had to gash my forearm, the knight chieftains doing likewise, so that we could rub our forearms one against another and so mingle our blood in brotherhood. Then I donned the quilted armor with all its adornments, so that I had arms like wide wings, a body feathered all over, feet like an eagle's strong claws. The culmination of the ceremony came when I was crowned with the helmet: the eagle's head. It was made of corkwood, stiff paper, and oli-glued feathers. Its wide-open beak protruded above my forehead and under my chin, and its glaring obsidian eyes were somewhere above my ears. I was given the other emblems of my new rank: the stout leather shield with my name symbols worked in colored feathers on its front, the paints to make my face fierce, the gold nose plug to wear as soon as I felt like having my septum pierced for it....

Then, rather heavily encumbered, I sat with Ahuitzotl 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 Ahuitzotzin, to the ever greater might of the Mexica.... 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, Zaa, 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.