I decided to take the offensive – or we'd still be standing there when the Fifth World collapsed. 'If you were expecting me, then you know what I'm going to ask.'
Yayauhqui shook his head. 'Please. My quarrel with Eptli was hardly a secret matter.'
'No,' I said. 'I was a little unclear on what it was about, though.'
'Eptli–' and, for a moment, his expression shifted, slightly, into something that might have been anger, that might have been disdain – 'Eptli was a conceited fool. His father was elevated into the nobility – do you even imagine how rare that is, for merchants to be recognised that way?'
'I can imagine,' I said. His sudden intensity frightened me.
'I don't think you can.' Yayauhqui's gaze took in my finery – the embroidered cloak, the feather headdress, the fine mask of smoothened bone – and he shook his head, contemptuously. 'Anyway, Eptli's father is another matter. He might have moved out of Pochtlan entirely, but he still kept his ties with us. Never forgot to tell us when a child was born in his family, or to invite us to banquets. Never forgot to consult us for important decisions. Why, I attended Eptli's birth myself – of course, I was a youth at the time, barely returned from my first expedition.'
He didn't look young, not anymore, but he didn't look old, either: well-preserved, but there was something about him that bothered me, something I couldn't quite grasp even though it was right there in front of me.
'So Eptli and you–'
Yayauhqui spread his hands, in what seemed like a peaceful gesture, but I wasn't fooled. 'Eptli was a conceited fool. I despised him, but I wouldn't have killed him.'
'Even when he captured his prisoner?' I asked. 'That would have elevated him higher than his father – into the Jaguars and Eagle Knights.'
Yayauhqui shook his head. 'Eptli wasn't smart enough to see that there is more to life than riches and honour, and the consideration of warriors.'
He sounded sincere – but then, he was a merchant, and he would have been a skilled liar. Not only for negotiation with customers, but also because if he was indeed with the army, it meant he was no harmless merchant, no trader obsessed with his own profit. It meant that he was a spy, ranging ahead of the army to gather information on the country we were about to fight. 'You quarrelled with Eptli on this campaign,' I said. 'In quite a visible fashion.'
Yayauhqui looked mildly irritated. 'I let the young fool goad me past endurance. I was coming back from a thirteen-day gruelling mission into Metztitlan, and here he was, laughing with his cohorts on how merchants were all useless bags of flesh.'
I bit my lip. I liked what I heard of Eptli less and less – I could understand his behaviour, but that didn't mean I condoned it.
On the other hand, if he had been well-liked, he probably wouldn't have died in such a horrific fashion. 'So you shouted at him.'
'We both shouted, to some extent.' Yayauhqui appeared peeved – more, I suspected, because he'd lost his calm than out of any sympathy for Eptli.
I looked at him again – something was still bothering me. 'I was given the impression that it was far more than an ordinary quarrel. That Eptli was a calm man with no reason for provoking people, and that you'd both been noticed by the whole encampment.'
'I don't see what you mean.'
'I think you do,' I said. I had nothing more than that, and he likely knew it; but I could bring more pressure to bear, and he also knew that. 'Or shall we take that up with the war council?'
Yayauhqui's lips pinched into an unamused smile. 'As you very well know, as a merchant, I am subject only to the elders of my clan.' He looked as if he might add something, but didn't.
'But the elders of your clan are subject to the Mexica Emperor,' I said.
His features shifted again – he was too canny to show naked hatred, but I could catch some of it, in the folds of his eyes, in the tightening of his lips. 'I haven't forgotten that,' Yayauhqui said. His voice could have broken obsidian.
He didn't like that. And I, in turn, didn't get the idea. 'What did Eptli say?'
It was a stab in the dark, but it worked. 'He insulted Tlatelolcans. Said we were all cowards, and it was no wonder we'd been thrown into the mud.'
'Did you fight in the war?' I asked. Seven years wasn't such a long time, and Yayauhqui looked old enough to have been a hotheaded youth at the time – assuming he'd ever been hot-headed, which wasn't that likely. A man raised by merchants, just like one raised by priests, would learn the value of calm and decorum early in life.
Yayauhqui hesitated. Trying to decide whether to lie to me, or to twist the truth? 'We were merchants. Not fighters. And the invasion was unjustified.'
I had been much younger then, cloistered in my temple in the small city of Coyoacan, and paying little attention to the affairs of the great. But I remembered some things of how the war had started. The Revered Speaker of Tlatelolco, Moquihuix, had been married to a Mexica wife – elder sister to Tizoc-tzin and Teomitl. When she grew old, he mocked her, set her aside and, crucial to the war, denied her the finery and luxurious apartments which had been her right.
Our previous Revered Speaker, who had long itched for an excuse to invade our sister city, had leapt at the chance and called to arms the whole valley of Anahuac to avenge the insult to his family.
And, of course, we both knew how the war had ended. 'Wars aren't just,' I said, finally. 'Just necessary.'
Yayauhqui shook his head. 'Still the old lies? That our destiny is to triumph for the Fifth Sun's sake.'
I looked at him, aghast. 'What do you mean, lies?'
Yayauhqui spread his hands. 'It seems to me the gods aren't choosy about who spills the blood.'
His words terrified me. 'You fought in the war, didn't you? What did you see?'
'A god, abandoning us.' Yayauhqui's voice was bitter. 'He had chosen me, elevated me – promised me a destiny of glory. But, in the end, when your warriors stormed the temples, took His idols, and set fire to the altars, I saw Him. I saw Him laugh, and turn away. They feed on blood and fear and pain, and it doesn't matter
