Naamah's Blessing

rather than kill in order to take prisoners to sacrifice to their gods. Warriors gain status that way. But there are also those who go willing to the altar, and reckon it an honor. Apparently, it’s one of two ways to ascend immediately to the highest heaven, bypassing some rather unpleasant stages of the afterlife.”
    “What’s the other?” Bao asked.
    Denis gave him a jaundiced look. “A noble death on the battlefield.”
    I glanced at Bao. Upon dying a hero’s death, he had been granted a reprieve from the more unpleasant aspects of the Ch’in afterlife. By aiding Master Lo in trading his life for Bao’s, I had stolen that from him all unwitting. Bao caught my not-so-stealthy glance and returned a level gaze, reminding me without words that he
had
found a way to choose this fate for himself.
    I cleared my throat. “So it’s a bloody place, and the Nahuatl are a bloody folk. Do you suppose Thierry ran afoul of them?”
    “No.” Denis shook his head. “That’s the thing. I
don’t
. If we ran afoul of anyone, it was the Aragonians. They treated us civilly enough, but they weren’t happy about Terre d’Ange encroaching on their territory. And they weren’t happy that Raphael rose so high in the Emperor’s regard.”
    “Do you suspect this commander… what was his name? Diego Ortiz y Ramos? Of being somehow complicit?” Balthasar inquired delicately.
    “No. No, I don’t think so.” Denis hesitated. “Ah, gods! What do I know? I was shitting myself half to death with dysentery at the time. Here’s what I
do
know.” He unrolled a scroll on a low table between us. “This is a copy of the map the Emperor Achcuatli gave to Raphael, that he and Thierry might seek out the empire of Tawantinsuyo.” His finger traced a course. “Here is the isthmus overland.” He tapped the map. “Here the jungle begins; and here is the river on which they were meant to travel.”
    I peered at the map. “My lord Denis, forgive me, but… why were you so sure Thierry died?”
    He raised his voice. “Because he didn’t come back!”
    “Aye, but—”
    “Thierry’s word is his bond,” Denis said, and Balthasar Shahrizai nodded in agreement. “He’d no sooner break it than you would break your people’s oath, Moirin. He promised his father he would do everything in his power to return in two years’ time. He gave
me
his word the secondary expedition would return within a year’s time no matter what they found; and made me promise to sail without him if they didn’t. I waited for almost a year and a half. There’s a reason even the Nahuatl haven’t sought to conquer Tawantinsuyo. Do you know how many ways there are to die in the jungles of Terra Nova?”
    I shook my head humbly.
    Denis de Toluard regaled us with a litany of horrors ranging from hostile natives, raging rivers, poisonous snakes, strangling snakes, maddening insects, ravenous ants, hideous diseases, suppurating wounds, and razor-teethed fish that could strip a man’s flesh from his body in a matter of minutes. “That’s where you mean to go,” he said when he had finished. “
That’s
what you’re bound for.”
    Everyone was silent for a moment.
    “Well,” Bao said presently. “But people live there, don’t they? So it must have some merits.”
    “They say it’s beautiful,” Denis murmured. “Beautiful and terrible. That there are flowers of surpassing beauty that bloom there and nowhere else in the world. That you can go for days and days without seeing the sky, only an endless roof of green leaves high overhead. It can drive a man mad.”
    “In the Tatar lands, nothing blooms, there is only sky overhead, and you can ride for days and days without seeing a tree,” I observed. “I think I would like this better.”
    “You really mean to go? You, yourself?” Denis asked. “Elua have mercy, Moirin! It’s no place for a woman.”
    I shrugged. “I have to.”
    “You and your bear-goddess,” he said in a mild tone that intended no offense. “All right. All right, then.” He took a deep breath. “I’m coming with you.”
    “Are you sure?” Given our history, I didn’t like him well enough to relish the prospect.
    Denis met my gaze and smiled bitterly. “If you’re right, Thierry’s alive and I abandoned him. All of them. I could have begged the Aragonians to mount a search for them, promising a vast reward, promising we would abandon efforts to infringe on their trade rights. I could have begged Emperor