Naamah's Blessing

missing prince, right?” he said to me, sucking meditatively at his remaining teeth. “You did not come for herbs, so it does not matter, eh?”
    His nephew was another matter. Unlike his uncle, Pochotl maintained the traditional stone face and a stone heart.
    My initial impression was correct. While the stolid, middle-aged Pochotl had accompanied his uncle on previous journeys, he had no desire to undertake another. He had made his fortune, and he resented the Emperor’s order for disturbing his comfortable life.
    I could not blame him for it.
    But I could not like him, either.
    In addition to proving surprisingly talkative, Eyahue had a prodigious libido for a man of his years. He reminded me of the old Tatar guide who’d led me across the desert and had been so taken with Master Lo’s Camaeline snowdrop tonic, except Eyahue had no need of aphrodisiacs. At nearly every inn or village we visited along the way, the old fellow managed to find a woman willing to accommodate him. Although the goddess Xochiquetzal did not have an equivalent of Naamah’s sacred service, it seemed a casual form of prostitution was not unknown among the Nahuatl.
    “I’ll tell you, he’s an inspiration,” Balthasar observed, watching Eyahue steer a broad-hipped woman back to his chamber, one hand firmly planted on her buttocks. “I don’t know where the old codger finds the energy.”
    “He’s not marching in sodding
armor
, for one thing.” Brice de Bretel rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m beginning to wish someone would damn well attack us just to justify slogging along in it.”
    Denis shook his head at him. “Don’t wish for trouble. Once we’repast the boundaries of the Nahuatl Empire, we’re likely to find enough of it.”
    It was a prospect I regarded with equal parts dread and eagerness. Terra Nova was vast, vaster than I’d reckoned. We trudged through mountain passes and descended into fertile valleys, pausing to let the pack-horses graze whenever we were able, a necessity that further delayed our progress.
    We followed long, winding rivers, where I had some success shooting waterfowl for the pot. For reasons I didn’t entirely fathom, Temilotzin found my skill with a bow well nigh as hilarious as Eyahue’s tales and took to calling me his little warrior.
    On and on we travelled.
    A part of me wondered if mayhap the Dauphin had simply misgauged the distances involved and his party was somewhere ahead of us, marching across the endless landscape, an ever-receding target.
    Balthasar and Denis, who knew Thierry de la Courcel better than I, assured me it was not so. The prince had given his word that he would return in a year’s time. He would have turned back rather than break his oath.
    At two months into our journey, we entered the farthest reaches of the Nahuatl Empire. The folk there were not native Nahuatl speakers. According to Eyahue, they had been conquered by Achcuatli’s father, and chafed under the rule of the Nahuatl. They regarded us with curiosity and suspicion, but they were willing to trade to replenish our dwindling stores, and fortunately, Eyahue and Pochotl spoke their tongue.
    In the market-place of the first such city, it struck me that if our stores were running low, Thierry’s must have been, too. Travellers’ inns were becoming fewer and farther between, and it had been well over a week since we’d had confirmation.
    As Temilotzin cheerfully observed, there was no way of knowing if the Dauphin’s party had succeeded in reaching Tawantinsuyo; and we had entered territory that was potentially hostile.
    So I dispatched Eyahue and Pochotl to comb the market-place in search of any merchant or farmer who remembered the strangers from across the sea trading for food goods. For a mercy, they returned with an affirmative answer.
    Our journey continued.
    At every settlement, we repeated the same process, the
pochtecas
questioning the local folk.
    I could not help but think of the tale of the D’Angeline Prince Imriel de la Courcel, who had tracked my ancestor Berlik all the way to the Vralian wilderness using a similar method, seeking to avenge the death of his wife and unborn child.
    It was a piece of irony that it now fell to me to follow in the footsteps of Prince Imriel’s descendant on the opposite side of the world, venturing deeper into the increasingly torrid southern heat, even as he had followed Berlik into the frigid, snowy wild.
    When I mentioned it to Bao during the course