Naamah's Blessing

along the banks of the big river, the villagers waved farewell to us, calling out encouragement.
    Eyahue’s canoe went first, with Captain Rousse following close behind him. Bao and I were in the third vessel, Temilotzin in the fourth. After that, it was catch as catch can.
    On the morning of the first day, it began to rain, fat drops dimplingthe milky-green surface of the river. We paddled through the rain. An hour or so after it had begun, the skies cleared and the sun returned.
    Come noon, the sun stood high overhead, beating down on us like a hammer. The jungle steamed like a
temazcalli
, the air thick and hard to breathe. Everyone sweated profusely, and clouds of mosquitoes and gnats enveloped us.
    “Gods!” Balthasar, seated behind me, leaned over and spat into the river. “Seems I’ll be eating my share of insects after all.”
    I was hot, itchy, and miserable, my arms aching with the unfamiliar strain of paddling, but I did my best to bear it without a complaint. Eyahue reckoned we had three weeks on the river before we reached the city of Vilcabamba, the easternmost stronghold of the empire of Tawantinsuyo. With the worst yet to come, there was no point in complaining at the outset of this leg of the journey.
    With an hour’s daylight left, Eyahue spotted a stretch of rocky shoreline large enough to beach all nine canoes and ordered us to make camp. It felt as though we’d travelled a great distance into the jungle. Tipalo’s village might have been only a day’s journey behind us, but it lay upriver and would not be so easily regained. Assuming we survived, our plan was to return via a land passage. According to Eyahue, there was another river farther south that flowed from west to east through the jungle, an even greater river with hundreds of tributaries, but not even he had traversed it.
    In the absence of other human inhabitants, or at least none we could see, the jungle seemed denser and more wild. To me, it felt like one great living creature, the trees and plants growing so thick and close-packed that I couldn’t pick out individual senses among them—just one enormous green being with its own heartbeat pulsing, inhaling and exhaling in long, slow breaths.
    Despite my fatigue and aching muscles, I found it exhilarating.
    The rest of our company did not.
    Almost to a man, they found the jungle ominous and frightening. Only Eyahue seemed inured to it, selecting the best place to sling hishammock and nap while the rest of us endeavored to make camp and prepare a meal.
    With thirty-odd folk in our company, it was necessary to spread out and venture some distance into the jungle to find sufficient sites for our hammocks. A full half the men elected to forgo them, clearing spaces on the rocky shore and wrapping themselves in cloaks.
    I had to own, when night fell, even I was uneasy. Beneath the canopy of the jungle, the darkness was absolute. Creatures that slept during the day came alive under the cover of darkness, and the night was filled with sounds—small sounds like the incessant whine of insects, and other, more menacing sounds.
    Thanks to my sojourn in the palace gardens in Tenochtitlan, I recognized the deep, coughing roar of a jaguar.
    “Moirin?” Bao whispered from his nearby hammock.
    “Aye?”
    “It’s going to be all right,” he said with an assurance I knew he didn’t feel. “We’re going to be fine.”
    Grateful for the lie, I returned it. “I know.”
    In the morning, those who had chosen to sleep on the ground regretted their decision, waking to find themselves stiff and bruised from sleeping on the stony shore, and bitten by an array of insects that hadn’t troubled those of us in hammocks. Denis de Toluard in particular scratched himself furiously, his nose twitching all the while.
    “Gods, man!” Balthasar, who had slept in a hammock and looked reasonably well rested, eyed him. “What ails you? Have you got the palsy?”
    “Ants,” Denis said briefly. “They’re everywhere.”
    I winced, having forgotten. The fallen spirit Caim with his owl’s eyes and a bird’s nest in his antlers had taught the language of ants to all the members of the Circle of Shalomon save me—and it had proved nothing but a plague and a nuisance to them. It was the reason Lianne Tremaine, the former King’s Poet, lived in a tower chamber at Eglantine House. Given the terrain through which we’d already passed, the fact that Denis hadn’t evinced his discomfort until now was a