Aztec

mates, many of them several times over. Since all agreed that our commander should be honored, even in his absence, all were unanimous in the choice of the symbolic one. And now you have returned in time to see the god represented in the person of—'

He stopped abruptly there, for I had swung my maquahuitl through his neck, cleaving it clear to the bone at the back. Beu gave a small scream, and the soldiers behind her goggled and craned. The man stood wavering for a moment, looking bewildered, nodding slightly, soundlessly opening and shutting his mouth and the wider red lips below his chin. Then his head flopped backward, the wound yawned open, blood spouted, and he fell at my feet.

Beu said, aghast, 'Zaa, why? What made you do that?'

'Be silent, woman!' snapped Angry at Everybody. Then he gripped my upper arm, which perhaps stopped me from falling too, and said, 'Mixtli, we may yet be in time to prevent the final proceeding—'

I shook my head. 'You heard him. He had been blessed with the bone. All has been done as that god requires.'

Qualanqui sighed and said hoarsely, 'I am sorry.'

One of his ancient comrades took my other arm and said, 'We are all sorry, young Mixtli. Would you prefer to wait here while we—while we go across the river?'

I said, 'No. I am still in command. I will command what is to be done in Yanquitlan.'

The old man nodded, then raised his voice and shouted to the soldiers bunched on the path, 'You men! Break ranks and spread out. Make a skirmish line up and down the riverbank. Move!'

'Tell me what has happened!' cried Beu, wringing her hands. 'Tell me what we are about to do!'

'Nothing,' I said, my voice a croak. 'You do nothing, Beu.' I swallowed the impediment in my throat, and I blinked my eyes clear of tears, and I did my best to stand up straight and strong. 'You do nothing but stay here, on this side of the water. Whatever you hear from over here, and however long it goes on, do not move from this spot until I come for you.'

'Stay here alone? With that?' She pointed at the corpse.

I said, 'Do not fear that one. Be happy for that one. In my first rage I was too hasty. I gave that one an easy release.'

Angry at Everybody shouted, 'You men! Advance in skirmish line across the river. Make no sound from here on. Encircle the village area. Let no least person escape, but surround them all and then wait for orders. Come, Mixtli, if you think you must.'

'I know I must,' I said, and I was the first to wade into the water.

Nochipa had spoken of dancing for the people of Yanquitlan, and so she was doing. But it was not the restrained and modest dancing which I had always seen her do. In the purple dusk, in the mixture of twilight and firelight, I could see that she was totally unclothed, that she danced with no grace, but with grossly indecent sprawlings of her legs, while she waved two white wands above her head, occasionally reaching one of them out to tap some person who pranced near.

Though I did not want to, I raised my topaz to see her more clearly. The only thing she wore was the necklace of opals I had given her when she was four years old, and to which I had added a new firefly stone on each of the eight birthdays—the so very few birthdays—she had had since. Her usually braided hair hung loose and tangled. Her breasts were still firm little mounds, and her buttocks still shapely, but between her thighs, where her maiden tipili should have been almost invisible, there was a rent in her skin, and through it protruded a flopping male tepuli and jiggling sac of ololtin. The white things she waved were her own thigh bones, but the hands that waved them were a man's, and her own half-severed hands dangled limply from his wrists.

A cheer went up from the people as I stepped inside the circle of them dancing around the dancing thing that had been my daughter. She had been a child, and a shining, and they had made carrion of her. That effigy of Nochipa came dancing toward me, one glistening bone extended, as if she would give me a blessing tap before I hugged her in a father's loving embrace. The obscene thing came close enough for me to look into the eyes that were not Nochipa's eyes. Then its dancing feet faltered, it ceased to dance, it stopped just out of my reach, stopped by my look of loathing and revulsion. And when it stopped, so did the gleeful crowd stop its milling and its prancing and its joyful noise, and the people stood looking uneasily at me and at the soldiers who had ringed the site. I waited until nothing could be heard but the crackling of the celebration fires. Then I said, addressing nobody in particular:

'Seize this foul creature—but seize him gently, for he is all that remains of a girl who once was alive.'

The small priest in Nochipa's skin stood blinking in unbelief, and then two of my warriors had him. The other five or six priests of the train came shouldering through the crowd, angrily protesting my interruption of the ceremony. I ignored them and said to the men holding the god-impersonator:

'Her face is separate from her body. Remove the face from him—with the greatest care—and bear it reverently to that fire yonder, and say some small prayer for her who gave it beauty, and burn it. Bring me the opals she wore at her throat.'

I averted my own face while that was done. The other priests began to rage even more indignantly, until Angry at Everybody gave such a fearsome snarl that the priests became as quiet and meek as the motionless crowd.

'It is done, Knight Mixtli,' said one of my men. He handed me the necklace; some of the firefly stones were red with Nochipa's blood. I turned again to the captive priest. He no longer wore my daughter's hair and features, but his own face, and it twitched with fright.

I said, 'Lay him supine on the ground, right here, being very careful not to lay rough hands on my daughter's flesh. Peg his hands and feet to the ground.'

He was, like all the priests of the train, a young man. And he screamed like a boy when the first sharp stake was hammered through his left palm. He screamed four times altogether. The other priests and people of Yanquitlan moved and murmured, rightly apprehensive of their own fate, but all my soldiers held their weapons at the ready, and no one dared be the first to try to run. I looked down at the grotesque figure on the ground, writhing against the four stakes that fixed its spraddled extremities. Nochipa's youthful breasts proudly pointed their russet nipples toward the sky, but the male genitals protruding from between her spread legs had gone flaccid and shrunken.

'Prepare lime water,' I said. 'Use much lime in the concentration, and drench the skin with it. Keep on wetting the skin all night long, until it has become well sodden. Then we will wait for the sun to come up.'

Angry at Everybody nodded approvingly. 'And the others? We await your command, Knight Mixtli.'

One of the priests impelled by terror, lunged between us and knelt before me, his bloodstained hands clutching the hem of my mantle, and he said, 'Knight Commander, it was by your leave that we conducted this ceremony. Any other man here would have rejoiced to see his son or daughter chosen for the personation, but it was yours who best met all the qualifications. Once she had been chosen by the populace, and that choice approved by the people's priests, you could not have refused to relinquish her for the ceremony.'

I gave him a look. He dropped his gaze, then stammered, 'At least—in Tenochtitlan—you could not have refused.' He tugged at my mantle again and said imploringly, 'She was a virgin, as required, but she was mature enough to function as a woman, which she did. You told me yourself, Knight Commander: do all things required by the gods. So now the girl's Flowery Death has blessed your people and their new colony, and assured the fertility of this ground. You could not have withheld that blessing. Believe me, Knight Commander, we intended only honor... to Xipe Totec and to your daughter... and to you!'

I gave him a blow that toppled him to one side, and I said to Qualanqui, 'You are familiar with the honors traditionally accorded to the chosen Xipe Totec?'

'I am, friend Mixtli.'

'Then you know the things that were done to the innocent and unblemished Nochipa. Do all the same things to all this filth. Do it in whatever manner you please. You have sufficient soldiers. Let them indulge themselves, and they need not hurry. Let them be inventive, and leisurely at it. But when all that is done, I want nobody—nothing— left alive in Yanquitlan.'

It was the last command I gave there. Angry at Everybody took charge then. He turned and barked more specific orders, and the crowd howled as if already in agony. But the soldiers moved eagerly to comply with their instructions. Some of them swept all the adult men into a separate group, and held them there with their weapons. The other soldiers put down their arms and took off their clothes and went to work—or to play—and when any one