"Will you not speak?" said Beu, her own voice breaking slightly. "I have waited so long...."

Cocoton said shyly, tentatively, breathlessly, "Tene...?"

"Oh, my darling!" exclaimed Waiting Moon, as her tears overflowed, as she knelt and held out her arms, as the little girl ran happily to be enfolded in them.

"Death!" roared the high priest of Huitzilopochtli, from the top of the Great Pyramid. "It was death that laid the mantle of Revered Speaker upon your shoulders, Lord Motecuzoma Xocoyatl, and in due time your own death will come, when you must account to the gods for the manner in which you have worn that mantle and exercised that highest office."

He went on in that vein, with the usual priestly disregard for his hearers' endurance, while I and my fellow knights and the many Mexica nobles and the visiting foreign dignitaries and their nobles all sweltered and suffered in our helmets and feathers and hides and armor and other costumes of color and splendor. The several thousand other Mexica massed in The Heart of the One World wore nothing more cumbersome than cotton mantles, and I trust they got more enjoyment out of the ceremony of inauguration.

The priest said, "Motecuzoma Xocoyotzin, you must from this day make your heart like the heart of an old man: solemn, unfrivolous, severe. For know, my lord, that the throne of a Uey-Tlatoani is no quilted cushion to be lolled upon in ease and pleasure. It is the seat of sorrow, labor, and pain."

I doubt that Motecuzoma sweated like the rest of us, though he wore two mantles, one black, one blue, both of them embroidered with pictures of skulls and other symbols intended to remind him that even a Revered Speaker must die someday. I doubt that Motecuzoma ever sweated. Of course, I never in my life put my finger to his bare skin, but it always appeared cold and dry.

And the priest said, "From this day, my lord, you must make of yourself a tree of great shade, that the multitude may take shelter under your branches and lean upon the strength of your trunk."

Though the occasion was solemn and impressive enough, it may have been a little less so than other coronations during my lifetime which I had not witnessed—those of Axayacatl and Tixoc and Ahuitzotl—since Motecuzoma was merely being confirmed in the office which he had already held unofficially for two years.

And the priest said, "Now, my lord, you must govern and defend your people, and treat them justly. You must punish the wicked and correct the disobedient. You must be diligent in the prosecution of the necessary wars. You must give special heed to the requirements of the gods and their temples and their priests, that they do not lack for offerings and sacrifices. Thus the gods will be pleased to watch over you and your people, and all the affairs of the Mexica will prosper."

From where I stood, the softly waving feather banners that lined the staircase of the Great Pyramid appeared to converge toward the top, like an arrow pointing to the high, distant, tiny figures of our new Revered Speaker and the aged priest who just then placed the jewel-encrusted red leather crown on his head. And at last the priest was finished and Motecuzoma spoke:

"Great and respected priest, your words might have been spoken by mighty Huitzilopochtli himself. Your words have given me much upon which to reflect. I pray that I may be worthy of the sage counsel you have dispensed. I thank you for the fervor and I cherish the love with which you have spoken. If I am to be the man my people would wish me to be, I must forever remember your words of wisdom, your warnings, your admonitions—"

To be ready to shatter the very clouds in the sky at the close of Motecuzoma's acceptance speech, the ranks of priests poised their conch trumpets, the musicians raised their drumsticks and readied their flutes.

And Motecuzoma said, "I am proud to bring again to the throne the estimable name of my venerated grandfather. I am proud to be called Motecuzoma the Younger. And in honor of the nation which I am to lead—a nation even mightier than in my grandfather's day—my first decree is that the office I occupy will be no longer called Revered Speaker of the Mexica, but that it have a more fitting tide." He turned to face the crowded plaza, and he held high the gold and mahogany staff, and he shouted, "Henceforth, my people, you will be governed and defended and led to ever greater heights by Motecuzoma Xocoyotzin, Cem-Anihuac Uey-Tlatoani!"

Even if all of us in the plaza had been lulled to sleep by the half a day of speech making we had just endured, we would have started awake at the blast of sound that seemed to make the whole island quake. It was a simultaneous shriek of flutes and whistles, a blare of conch horns, and the incredible thunder of some twenty of the drums that tear out the heart, all massed together. But the musicians could also have been asleep, and their instruments mute, and we would all have come wide awake just from the impact of Motecuzoma's closing words.

The other Eagle Knights and I exchanged sidelong glances, and I could see the numerous foreign rulers exchanging scowls. Even the commoners must have been shocked by their new lord's announcement, and no one could have been much pleased by the audacity of it. Every previous ruler in all the history of our nation had been satisfied to call himself Uey-Tlatoani of the Mexica. But Motecuzoma had just extended his dominion to the farthest extent of the horizon in all directions.

He had bestowed upon himself a new title: Revered Speaker of The One World.

* * *

When I dragged myself home that night, again eager to be out of my plumage and into a cleansing cloud of steam, I got only an offhand greeting from my daughter, instead of the usual scamper to fling herself upon me in a four-limbed hug. She was sitting on the floor, undressed, in an awkwardly backward-arched posture, holding a tezcatl mirror over her head as if she was trying to get a view of her bare back, and was too engrossed in the attempt to take much notice of my arrival. I found Beu in the adjoining room and asked her what Cocoton was doing.

"She is at the age of asking questions."

"About mirrors?"

"About her own body," said Beu, adding scornfully, "She was told a number of ignorant mistruths by her Tene Ticklish. Do you know that Cocoton once asked why she does not have a little dangle in front, like the boy up the street who is her favorite playmate? And do you know what that Ticklish told her? That if Cocoton is a good girl in this world, she will be rewarded in her afterlife by being reborn as a boy."

I was tired and grumpy, not too happy at that moment with my own burden of body, so I muttered, "I will never know why any woman should think it rewarding to be born a male."

"Exactly what I told Cocoton," Beu said smugly. "That a female is far superior. Also much more neatly made, not having an excrescence like the dangle in front."

"Is she trying instead to grow a tail behind?" I asked, indicating the child, who was still trying with the mirror to look down her back.

"No. Today she noticed that every one of her playmates has the tlacihuitztli, and she asked me what it is, not realizing she has one herself. Now she is trying to examine it."

Perhaps, reverend scribes, like most recently arrived Spaniards, you are unfamiliar with the tlacihuitztli mark, for I understand it does not appear on any white children. If it appears on the bodies of your blackamoors, I suppose it would be unnoticeable. But all our infants are born with it: a dark spot like a bruise in the small of the back. It may be as large as a dish or as little as a thumbnail, and it seems to have no function, for it gradually diminishes and fades and, after ten years or so, entirely disappears.