Aztec Autumn - Jennings Gary - Страница 61

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"Bring me a torch. Then take Tiptoe to a decent chamber, where she can cleanse herself and don proper feminine clothing. Then return here immediately, you reptile woman, so I can keep you in my sight."

Torch alight, I stepped into the little room, nearly retching at the stench of it. The only furniture it contained was a single axixcali pot, reeking of its contents. There was a stir in one corner, and Ameyatl stood up from the stone floor there, though I would scarcely have recognized her. She was clad in filthy rags, her body was gaunt, her hair was matted, her face was ashen, hollow-cheeked, and there were dark circles about her eyes. And this was the woman who had been the most beautiful in all Aztlan. But her voice was still nobly firm, not feeble, when she said:

"I thank all the gods that you have come, cousin. For these many months I have been praying—"

"Hush, cousin," I said. "Conserve what strength you still have. We will talk later. Let me take you to your quarters and see that you are attended and bathed and fed and given rest. Then we will have much to discuss."

In her chambers, there were several female servants waiting—a few of whom I recalled from former days—all nervously wringing their hands and avoiding my eye. I curtly dismissed them, and Ameyatl and I waited until G'nda Ke returned with Tiptoe, who had been as richly garbed as if she were a princess herself—no doubt the Yaki woman's notion of ironic japery.

She said, "All of G'nda Ke's own new apparel fitted Pakapeti, except the sandals. We had to search for a pair small enough for her." She went on, conversationally, "Having been afoot and frequently barefoot during so much of her earlier life, G'nda Ke is now most insistent on being luxuriously shod. And she is grateful to have had Yeyac as her patron—however odious she found him in other ways—because he could indulge G'nda Ke's fondness for footwear. She has whole closets full. She can wear a different pair of sandals every—"

"Cease your witless prattle," I told her, and then presented Ameyatl to Tiptoe. "This much abused lady is my dear cousin. Since I trust no one else in this palace, Pakapeti, I will ask you to attend her, and tenderly. She will show you where to find her steam room and her wardrobe and so on. From the kitchens downstairs, fetch for her nourishing food and good chocolatl. Then help her to her pallet, and pile it high with many soft quilts. When Ameyatl sleeps, you join me downstairs."

"I am honored," said Tiptoe, "to be of service to the Lady Ameyatl."

My cousin leaned to kiss me on the cheek, but only briefly and lightly, not to repel me with the prisoner-smell of her body or breath, and went away with Tiptoe. I turned again to G'nda Ke.

"I have already slain two of the palace guards. I assume that everyone else currently employed here likewise served Yeyac without demur during his false reign."

"True. There were a number who disdainfully refused to do so, but they left long ago to seek employment elsewhere."

"I charge you, then, have those loyal servants found and brought back here. I charge you also, dispose of the present retinue. All of them. I cannot be bothered with the slaughtering of so many menials. I am sure that you, being a serpent yourself, must know of some venom that can poison them all, and expeditiously."

"But of course," she said, as tranquilly as if I had asked for a soothing syrup.

"Very well. Wait until Ameyatl has been well fed—doubtless the first decent meal she will have had during her captivity. Then, when the domestics gather for their evening repast, see to it that their atoli has been well dosed with your poison. After they are dead, Pakapeti will take charge of the kitchens until we can find reliable servants and slaves."

"As you command. Now, would you have these menials die in agony or with ease, quickly or lingeringly?"

"I do not give a putrid pocheoa how they die. Just see that they do."

"Then G'nda Ke chooses to do it mercifully, for kindness comes naturally to her. She will dose their meal with the tlapatl weed that makes its victims die in madness. In their delirium, they will see glorious colors and wondrous hallucinations, until they see no longer. But now, Tenamaxtli—tell G'nda Ke—is she also to partake of this final, fatal repast?"

"No. I still have use for you. Unless Ameyatzin overrules me, when she regains her strength. She may demand that I dispose of you, and in some highly imaginative, not kindly manner."

"Do not blame G'nda Ke for your cousin's mistreatment," said the woman as she followed me to the royal chambers that had once been Mixtzin's and then Yeyac's. "It was her own brother who decreed that she be so inhumanly confined. G'nda Ke was merely ordered to keep barred the door. Even G'nda Ke could hardly overrule him."

"You lie, woman! You lie more often and more easily than you change your precious footwear." To one of the hovering manservants I gave orders to place hot coals and water buckets in the royal steam room, and to do it instantly. To the Yaki woman, as I began to discard my Spanish apparel, I went on, "With your poisons and your magics—ayya, even with your reptilian eye—you could have slain Yeyac at any time. I know you worked your evil charm to aid him in his alliance with the Spaniards."

"Mere mischief, dear Tenamaxtli," she said airily. "G'nda Ke's usual mischief. Delightedly setting men against men. Merely to while away the time until you and she were together again, and could really ravage and rampage."

"Together!" I snorted. "I had rather be yoked with the terrible underworld goddess Mictlanciuatl."

"Now you are telling an untruth. Look at yourself." I was nude by now, waiting impatiently for the servant to report that my steam room was ready. "You are pleased to be again with G'nda Ke. You are wantonly, seductively showing your naked body—and a superb one it is. You are deliberately tempting her."

"I am deliberately regarding her as inconsequential, of no account. Whatever you see and whatever you think concerns me no more than if you were a slave or a woodworm in the wall's paneling."

Her face went so dark at the insult that her cold eyes glittered out from it like chips of ice. The servant returned and I followed him to the steam room, saying to the Yaki woman, "Remain here."

After a prolonged and thorough and voluptuous steaming and sweating and scraping and toweling, I emerged, still nude, to find that G'nda Ke had been joined in the main room by the warrior Nocheztli. They stood apart and eyed one another, he warily, she sneeringly. Before he could speak, she did, and with malice:

"So, Tenamaxtli, this is why you cared not if G'nda Ke saw you naked. Nocheztli I know to have been one of the late Yeyac's favorite cuilontin, and he tells me now that he stands henceforth at your right hand. Ayya, so you keep sweet Tiptoe in your company merely as a disguise. G'nda Ke would never have suspected it of you."

"Ignore the woodworm," I told Nocheztli. "Have you something to report?"

"The assembled army awaits your inspection, my lord. They have been waiting for quite some time."

"Let them wait," I said as I began rummaging through the Uey-Tecutli's wardrobe of formal cloaks, headdresses and other regalia. "It is what is expected of an army, and what an army expects—long tediums and boredoms only occasionally briskened by killings and dyings. Go and make sure they wait."

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