Naamah's Blessing

over the hot stones.
    The stones hissed, clouds of steam arising. The Nahuatl women retreated, closing the door behind them.
    I sat naked and cross-legged on the ledge, breathing slowly through the cycle of the Five Styles to allay any anxiety at being confined in a man-made place of stone, steam filling my lungs as I breathed in and out. A sheen of sweat broke out on my skin. All along my hairline, I began to sweat until it ran in rivulets down my temples. Droplets of sweat gathered in the hollow of my throat, trickled between my breasts.
    Surprisingly, it felt good.
    Cleansing.
    After the purgative effects of the
temazcalli
, a cool bath felt wonderful. My attendants scrubbed me from head to toe with a soapy root that had a pleasant smell and produced a considerable lather.
    You’ll find little to love in the Nahuatl…
    “Well, I have found one thing,” I said aloud in D’Angeline to the absent Porfirio Reyes. “Mayhap that is why Naamah wills this.”
    “My lady?” one of my attendants inquired. “Is it well?”
    I smiled at her. “It is well.”
    When we returned to the chamber allotted me, gifts from Emperor Achcuatli had arrived.
    There was a sleeveless shirt and matching skirt of fine embroidered cloth, blue and yellow and green. There was a headdress of shimmering green feathers, bordered with embroidered bands of blue and gold. There was a mantle of multicolored, iridescent feathers that lay light as a whisper over my shoulders. And although they did not have soles of gold, there were sandals that laced to the knee.
    But there was gold—armbands of solid gold, wrought with the faces of unfamiliar gods staring out at me.
    Piece by piece, I donned everything.
    Naamah, the bright lady, approved.

THIRTY-NINE

    I did not expect kindness.
    In that, I was mistaken. The Emperor Achcuatli gazed at me long and hard when I was escorted once more into his presence, and there was desire in his gaze, but there was also a gentleness he hadn’t shown before. At length, he smiled. “It is pleasing to see you dressed in my gifts.”
    I bowed. “They are very beautiful, my lord.”
    He gestured to a chair across the table from him. “Come, sit. We will take
chocolatl
.” At that, I must have brightened, for he laughed. “You know it?”
    I sat opposite him. “Yes, my lord.”
    While attendants prepared the frothy concoction, sweetening, spicing, and whisking it, Achcuatli studied me. “You are not scared or—” The second word was unfamiliar. Naamah may have graced my tongue, but not my vocabulary—at least not in a permanent manner.
    “No, my lord. I am not scared,” I said. “I do not know the other word.”
    Achcuatli pressed a fist to his belly. “To feel sick inside at an unclean thing.”
    The image of the skulls flashed before my eyes again, and once again, I pushed it away. “There are things about the Nahuatl I find… hard to understand,” I said slowly, choosing my words with care. “Desire is not one of them. It is a sacred thing to my father’s people.”
    His obsidian eyes were intent. “Is that why it is so strong in me for you?”
    Attendants set golden goblets of foamy
chocolatl
before us. I waited for the Emperor to drink before taking a sip, reveling in the wondrous mixture of bitterness and sweetness, the rich taste of it. “Yes.”
    “A sacred thing,” he mused.
    I took another sip. “I am a child of the goddess Naamah, to whom all desire is sacred.”
    Achcuatli’s mouth twisted. “The men of Aragonia would have had us believe they were gods, too.”
    I shook my head. “I do not say that. Only that Naamah is—” I didn’t know the word for ancestor. “My father’s hundred-times-ago mother.”
    His face cleared. “I see. Yes, such things are known.”
    “Did you think it was true?” I asked. “About the Aragonians?”
    “No.” The Nahuatl Emperor was silent a moment. “I knew they were men. They fight and bleed and die like men. But I thought their gods had favored them, giving them knowledge to build great ships that cross the sea, giving them armor against which our
macahuitls
shattered and broke, and great beasts to master and ride. And so I let them stay. I was young, and knew no better.”
    It was on the tip of my tongue to ask why he did not send them away now, but not wanting to provoke a diplomatic incident, I did not voice it.
    Achcuatli guessed anyway, giving me a shrewd look. “Now it is too late. There are too many to defeat with ease, and