Naamah's Blessing (32 page)

I kissed him. “Dinner first.”

He grinned, wrapping his arms around my waist. “And later?”

“Later, we put our privacy to good use,” I assured him.

The sun was setting over Orgullo del Sol when all of us joined Mayor Porfirio Reyes for dinner in a torch-lit courtyard patio. The air of Terra Nova was thick and moist, smelling of green, growing things.

Stoic Nahuatl servants brought course after course of food, including many unfamiliar fruits and vegetables, which were indeed a welcome sight, and flatbread made from a strange grain. The meal culminated in a delicious dish of fresh-caught fish simmered and slathered in a spicy red sauce comprised of yet another unfamiliar fruit, this one savory rather than sweet.

I reveled in its tang on my tongue. “What is this?”

“Do you like it?” Porfirio beamed. “The fish is called
huachinango
. It’s quite good, I think. The sauce is made with a fruit the natives call
tomati
, and a blend of Aragonian spices.” He took a judicious bite. “Yes, quite good. Unfortunately, we’ve not had much success in exporting
tomati
plants.”

“Too delicate to survive the journey?” Balthasar inquired. “Or too difficult to cultivate?”

Bao gave me a speculative glance. “I bet Moirin could do it.”

“Neither.” The mayor dabbed his lips with a linen napkin. “Due to an unfortunate resemblance to the leaves of deadly nightshade, there’s a persistent rumor that the fruits are poisonous.”

Balthasar dropped his fork in alarm.

Porfirio Reyes laughed. “I assure you, it’s utterly baseless. I’ve eaten my weight in
tomati
without a single ill effect.”

I was hoping the mayor would serve
chocolatl
after the meal, remembering the exquisite taste of the frothy beverage, but instead he insisted on tapping the cask of perry brandy we’d brought him. He swirled the contents of his glass and inhaled deeply before allowing himself a sip.

“Delicious.” Porfirio smacked his lips. “I can taste the sunlight on the pears as they ripen in the orchard.” Setting down his glass, he regarded the four of us. Beneath his drooping lids, his eyes had a shrewd gleam. “Now, let us discuss this matter. First, I would like to know if your tale of romantic folly, this search for the lost Dauphin, is merely an excuse for a second attempt to undermine our trade with the Nahuatl.”

“No, my lord,” I said. “It’s not.”

“Although House Shahrizai does hope to recoup its investment,” Balthasar said. “At least on this journey. But we plan no others.”

The mayor’s fingers drummed on the table. “You claim to be a seer, Lady Moirin?”

“Of a sort,” I said honestly. “All I can tell you is that I’m very, very certain Prince Thierry is alive.”

His expression softened. “It is highly unlikely, my lady.”

“Nonetheless.”

“You haven’t the faintest ideas of the dangers you face.” He waved one hand. “What little you’ve seen here is nothing compared to the jungle. Even the Nahuatl avoid it, and they’re some of the most fearless folk I’ve ever met.” He leaned forward. “Do you know what they seek to achieve as the measure of an ideal man? They have a saying for it. A stone face and a stone heart.”

I shrugged helplessly. “My lord mayor, I know it’s dangerous, but I
have
to go. Do you mean to prevent us?”

“I am considering it,” Porfirio Reyes said frankly. “My conscience counsels against allowing a woman to undertake such a risk.”

My
diadh-anam
flared in alarm. “Close your eyes.”

He blinked at me. “I beg your pardon?”

“All of you, please,” I added. “Or just glance away for a moment.”

“I beg you grant the lady’s request, my lord mayor.” Denis de Toluard averted his gaze. “She means to summon her magic.”

“Her what?”

“It will take only a few seconds, my lord,” I said. “Please?”

The mayor shrugged his stocky shoulders and closed his eyes. “Never let it be said I refused a beautiful woman’s earnest request.”

As soon as the others followed suit, I breathed in deeply and summoned the twilight, blowing it around us. To be sure, it would have been more effective were the courtyard not already in dusk, but the twilight at once deepened and brightened everything, turning blue shadows to violet, making the torch-flames burn silvery-white.

When I bade him open his eyes, Porfirio gave me a startled look. “What trick is this?”

“Moirin’s magic,” Bao said with satisfaction.

One of the Nahuatl servants entered the courtyard, halted, and stared around in blank confusion, calling out a question to someone inside.

“What ails the woman?” Porfirio demanded. “We’re right in front of her!”

“She can’t see us,” I said softly. “No one can until I release the twilight.” As soon as the Nahuatl servant left, I let it go. The deep shadows lightened and the torches burned yellow and orange once more.

The mayor looked a trifle pale. “A sorceress, then?”

I shook my head. “ ’Tis a gift of the Maghuin Dhonn Herself to my mother’s folk, and it is She Herself who laid this destiny on me—not for the first time. I have travelled the far reaches of the world before, my lord. I am not some pampered court noblewoman with a foolish romantic notion of heroism, and I beg you not to seek to protect me for my own good.”

Porfirio Reyes swirled the brandy in his glass once more, and took another measured sip. “I see.” He set down his glass. “All right, then. You’ll need to travel to Tenochtitlan to obtain the Emperor’s blessing on the venture.”

“I know.”

He rubbed his bearded chin. “Achcuatli’s a clever fellow. He was under pressure from our side not to open serious trade with your Dauphin’s party, but thanks to that physician’s preventative treatment of the pox, he owed them a debt. He provided them with a map to the empire of Tawantinsuyo under the guise of a reward, but I’m not so sure it wasn’t a convenient way of dodging the issue.”

Balthasar raised his brows. “Is the empire real or not?”

“Oh, it’s real,” Porfirio said. “Or at least so I’m told. But if Achcuatli truly had your Dauphin’s best interests at heart, he wouldn’t have given them a map that sent them deep into the heart of the jungle.”

“There’s a better route?” Denis inquired.

The Aragonian mayor nodded. “Overland across the isthmus, and southward along the coast to the mountains.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Bao said with his usual pragmatism. “We’re not looking for the empire, we’re looking for the missing prince. Which means we have to follow
his
route, not a better one.”

Porfirio Reyes sighed. “Altogether too true.”

“Into the jungle!” Balthasar hoisted his glass, contemplating its contents. “With its myriad dangers and flowers of surpassing beauty.”

The bewildered Nahuatl servant who had found us missing returned to the courtyard and found us restored, all of us in our seats. Porfirio Reyes issued a series of commands, and she returned to refill our glasses with stoic efficiency.

“Whatever trade goods you’ve brought, you’d be well advised to use them in exchange for Emperor Achcuatli’s aid,” he told me. “I understand there are
pochteca
who have ventured into the green realms.”

“
Pochteca
?” I asked.

“Merchants,” Denis murmured. “Travelling merchants.”

The mayor nodded again. “They guard their secrets fiercely, but Achcuatli has the authority to command them. Your chance of survival would be greatly enhanced by having a guide familiar with the territory.”

Denis de Toluard flushed with anger. “All of this would have been most helpful to know before, my lord mayor. I may have been sicker than a dog, but I know there was no talk of better routes or knowledgeable guides; and in all the months that followed, Captain Ortiz y Ramos never breathed a word about either. If you ask me, that makes the lot of you complicit in Thierry’s disappearance.”

“May I remind you that you weren’t welcome here?” Porfirio’s tone hardened. “Aragonia has no desire to share trade relations with Terre d’Ange! Not only that, but when your physician shared his method of inoculation with the Emperor’s
ticitls
, he took away one of our greatest weapons.”

My stomach felt hollow. “You used the pox as a weapon? The killing pox?”

He gave me an apologetic look. “Not deliberately, of course. But it was cutting quite a swath through the Nahuatl population before the D’Angelines arrived. It seemed they had no natural resistance to it. In time, it would have reduced their numbers to a mere fraction, rendering the entire nation ripe for conquest.”

Reminding myself that this fellow who had seemed so charming had the power to thwart our mission, I swallowed hard and said nothing.

“I know it seems ruthless, but believe me when I tell you that you’ll find little to love in the Nahuatl,” Porfirio said gently. “If you’d seen the steps of their temples running red with blood, you’d understand. They have no regard for human life, and they’re capable of immense cruelty. They believe their god Tlaloc requires the sacrifice of young children to bring the rain, and they torment the little ones before death so that their tears dampen the earth; and that is but one of the gods they worship.” He shook his head. “No, no. You’ll find nothing to love about them. They’re a barbaric folk, in some ways scarce better than animals.”

Clearing his throat, Balthasar changed the subject. “If I may return to the matter at hand, we’re most grateful for your counsel, my lord mayor. But if the Emperor did not see fit to appoint the Dauphin a guide, what makes you think he’ll grant our request?”

The mayor laced his hands over his belly. “Because thanks to me, you know to ask for it. And you’re not here to upset the balance of order, are you?”

“No,” I murmured. “Only to attempt to find Prince Thierry and the others, I swear it.”

“Listen, my lords, my lady.” There was sympathy in Porfirio’s drooping gaze. “I spoke truly when I said it was a sad tale. No one wanted your Dauphin and his men to meet a foul end. We hoped only that the rigors of the jungle would dissuade them, that they would accept defeat, turn back, and abandon the notion of encroaching on Aragonia’s claim here. If I’d known what would happen, I would have turned him away here.”

Bao stirred. “Why didn’t you?”

He smiled wryly. “I didn’t want to provoke a diplomatic incident; and quite frankly, our garrison here wasn’t yet fully staffed. If the Dauphin had refused my order, I doubt I could have enforced it.”

“Pity,” Balthasar said. “It would have saved a lot of trouble.”

“Indeed.” Porfirio Reyes lifted his brandy glass and drank the last of its contents, then rose and patted his belly before giving us a sweeping bow. “And now I shall bid you good evening, my lady, my lords, and retire.”

All of us took his cue. In the room Bao and I shared, both of us gazed at the wide-seeming bed with its comfortable pallet and clean linens.

“Do you…?” Bao asked uncertainly.

I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I’ve lost my appetite for lovemaking tonight.”

“Oh, good,” he said with relief, taking a seat on the bed and prying off his boots. “Never thought I’d say
that
.”

I sat beside him. “It’s a lot to stomach.”

“It is.” Bao put his arm around my shoulders and kissed my temple with uncommon tenderness. “Let’s just get some sleep, huh? We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.”

It was sound advice, but sleep evaded me. Bao… Bao could sleep anywhere, no matter what the circumstances. I lay on the bed in the sheltering curve of his arm, trying to take comfort in his deep, even breathing, trying to dispel the images of bloodstained temples and crying children that haunted me.

A stone face and a stone heart
.

You’ll find little to love in the Nahuatl…

Mayhap it would prove true, but I’d found little to love in the Aragonians in Terra Nova thus far, too.

The killing pox…

I remembered summoning the fallen spirit Marbas with the Circle of Shalomon. While they had bartered in vain with a spirit who had appeared in the form of a lion, under no obligation to answer as a human, I had spoken to him in the twilight.

Among the many gifts Marbas could bestow was the cure for any disease. I had begged him to relent and give one to Raphael de Mereliot.

The lion’s eyes had glowed.
It’s not so simple
, he had told me.
To learn the charm to cure, you must learn the charm to cause. Leprosy, typhoid, pneumonia, plague… I can teach you to invoke and banish any one of these. Would you possess such knowledge? Would you put it into
their
hands?

I had refused.

That, no one knew. I’d never told anyone. But after tonight’s conversation with Mayor Porfirio Reyes, I was convinced that that was one of the wiser decisions I’d made in my young life. Even without a fallen spirit’s charm to invoke, the Aragonians would have gladly seen the vast majority of the population of the Nahuatl Empire wiped from the face of the earth by the killing pox.

And it was a piece of irony that even without Marbas’ gift, Raphael de Mereliot had spared the Nahuatl from that fate.

A small part of me that had once loved Raphael was glad for his sake.

I hoped he was, too.

THIRTY-FIVE