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What Makes Us Strong
by
T. L. Morganfield
The messenger arrived just as Emperor Cuauhtémoc sat down to a humble breakfast of blood soup and raw fish with his Inuit hosts. "A message for you, Revered Speaker, concerning the Cihuacóatl," the messenger said as he pulled a folded piece of paper from a leather satchel at his side. Fresh snow dripped off his wolf-skin coat in the heat of the small hut.
Cuauhtémoc opened the note, expecting to see his friend Ixtlilxochitl's immaculate scrawl, but instead found most of the letter had been written by his camp supervisor, Elotl. The Cihuacóatl has been injured, Revered Speaker, and he requests your presence back at camp, it read. But at the bottom, in barely legible scribble were the words, "Please come soon. Ixtlil."
Cuauhtémoc read the note over and over, his mind reeling over what it might mean. He stuffed the paper into the pocket of his caribou-skin robe and hurried to his feet. "I must leave immediately."
The sons of the chief prepared a sled of their fastest dogs and the Emperor departed, leaving behind his servants and even his bodyguards in favor of making better time.
What I wouldn't do for an airplane or a truck right now, he thought as the sled struggled through the deep snow, hour after hour. Anything to get to Ixtlil quicker.
But such wishful thinking accomplished nothing; in his one hundred and fifty years since taking the throne in Tenochtitlán, he'd turned the One World into the most technologically advanced nation in the world, but wonders such as automobiles and airplanes were still another hundred years away. He'd been so careful to introduce change slowly, when he felt his people were ready for it; great empires couldn't be built in a rush after all and thanks to the nanites that made him immortal, he had plenty of time. What was most important was keeping the One World ahead of the English and the Germans and the Italians, to keep these enemies from making footholds in his lands. It was what the nanites had programmed him to do; to protect the One World from them.
But now he cursed his lack of foresight; he should have at least assigned a team of mechanics to work on prototypes of vehicles, for his own personal use. For just these kinds of situations. He couldn't stop thinking about Ixtlil's shaky writing. It didn't make sense. Ixtlil had the nanites, just like him—the only other person in the whole empire who did—and for him to have suffered an injury they couldn't fix…. Every time Cuauhtémoc stopped to let the dogs rest and eat, he cursed himself some more and hoped he wouldn’t arrive too late to help his friend.
The exhausted dogs pulled him into the camp on the shore of the western bay under the near perpetual night two days later. He nodded to the fur-clad warriors who greeted him with hoots as he hurried through the clusters of canvas tents, his polar-bear fur cape flapping in the brisk wind. He didn't stop until he threw aside the flap on the medical tent.
The camp supervisor Elotl met him just inside, relief plain on his face. "What happened?" Cuauhtémoc asked as Elotl helped him shrug off his heavy coat.
"The Russians," Elotl replied. "The night after you left, they brought their ships across the bay and bombarded the edge of camp, so we sent our own ships out after them. We thought we'd chased them all away, but a few came on foot, through the forest. They'd dressed as eagle warriors and snuck through camp, right to your tent, and fired into it. They killed three of your servants before we realized what was happening. The Cihuacóatl was shot several times in the attack."
Cuauhtémoc frowned. "They knew which tent was mine?" His tent always looked the same as the rest of the army's, so the enemy couldn't just pick it off with artillery fire, and he often switched to other tents under the cover of dark, as added security. Very few people knew where or when he would switch tents.
Elotl nodded. "There's a traitor in your army, Revered Speaker," he said in a low voice. "We captured several of the Russians but they've refused to speak to our interpreter."
"I will take care of it," Cuauhtémoc said.
Ixtlilxochitl—the governor of Texcóco and Cuauhtémoc's vice-ruler—lay on a cot in the corner of the tent, shivering under the pile of blankets covering him. His youngest and only living son Nextlalli stood at the foot of the bed, watching his father with a frown. He was better dressed for the tropical climate of his home than the bitter coldness of the north; he held his bare arms crossed and wore a thin cotton mantle decorated with row upon row of white and brown eagle feathers.
In the other corner of the tent, a young boy sat on a stool next to a tall wooden box, sweating as he turned a crank on its side to generate electricity for the single bulb dangling from a wire stretched to the middle tent pole. The surgeon, who'd been wiping the sweat from Ixtlil's forehead, bowed to Cuauhtémoc as he approached. "He's still alive, Revered Speaker," the surgeon said. "But he's lost a lot of blood and he's only grown sicker by the day." He shifted his gaze to Nextlalli for a moment before adding, "I'm afraid there's nothing more I can do for him. He's in the hands of the gods now."
Cuauhtémoc pulled up a stool next to the cot and lit a lantern on the table. "Leave us," he said, and the surgeon and the boy departed.
Nextlalli stayed at the foot of the bed though, until Elotl cleared his throat and told him, "Everyone." Nextlalli bowed to Cuauhtémoc then gave his father one last look before whirling away and disappearing out the tent flap into the gray morning. Elotl followed.
Cuauhtémoc set his fingers on Ixtlil's wrist, feeling his pulse. It thudded so fast it was amazing he still lived at all. His friend groaned, his breathing rapid but shallow. Septicemia, Cuauhtémoc concluded then pulled back the blankets to look at the wound. Blood and puss oozed through the cotton dressing across Ixtlil's lower abdomen and swirls of yellow and red soaked the bandage at the back of his head. The smell of rotting flesh spoke of more than just a minor infection. Judging from the filthy water in the basin next to the bed—no doubt used to clean the wounds—it was no wonder Ixtlil's nanites couldn't keep up with the spread of the bacteria now killing him. The surgeon was right. There was nothing to be done for the man. Not even by Cuauhtémoc. He felt unable to breathe.
He covered the shivering body and set a gentle hand on his friend's sweating forehead. "Ixtlil?" He repeated the name several times before Ixtlil finally opened his eyes and looked at him. It took a moment for him to focus, but then a weak smile crept to his face.
"You made it."
"Of course I'd be here," Cuauhtémoc said, struggling with his own smile. "How do you feel?"
"Like I was mauled by a jaguar … again."
"Elotl told me what happened. I will make the Russians pay for this, friend. That's a promise. I will make you a cape of their skins, just like I did with the jaguar."
"And I'll wear it when we invade their camp and crush them into the ice." Ixtlil tried to laugh but it turned into loud coughing and violent shakes. Cuauhtémoc had to hold his shoulders down to help him calm. "I'm so glad you're here," he whispered, his face ashen and his lips trembling. "Is there anything you can do for me? Like before?"
"This is much different than last time," Cuauhtémoc replied. He'd been with Ixtlil when the jaguar lunged at them from the jungle while they were hunting deer. Back then Cuauhtémoc hadn't had to travel for days to get to him; no infection had had time to set in and begin destroying Ixtlil from the inside. Death hadn't been this close last time. "You've lost a lot of blood, friend," Cuauhtémoc told him.
"Nothing a god can't cure," Ixtlil said with half-hearted chuckle.
They'd had often joked about Cuauhtémoc being considered a god; he'd more than once hear the common folk refer to him as Huitzilopochtli or even Quetzalcóatl—some even thought Ixtlil was Tezcatlipoca, the patron god of Texcóco—but today the comment left him cold. For years he'd enjoyed the power such superstitions granted him, the way people obeyed his orders as if they were the words of a god, their trust in him implicit, but at this moment, he'd never felt so un-godlike and helpless.
"I will do what I can for you," he said. Ixtlil gripped Cuauhtémoc's hand with his own trembling one, its strength fading with each second. "I will make it painless, I promise." He choked on the words.
Taking his hand from Ixtlil's, Cuauhtémoc cut his palm with the surgeon's knife, pulled back the blanket and the bandage, and let the blood drip into his friend's wound. He couldn't give him enough nanites to save him—not without bleeding himself to death—but these new nanites would help ease his suffering. With just a thought, he'd reprogrammed these few million to sever the pain receptors in Ixtlil's brain, so his friend could die peacefully once they began work shutting down his organs. They would spread the orders to all the other nanites in his body and death would come soon after.
Cuauhtémoc had lost wives, lost children, seen many people die in the hundred and fifty years he'd lived, but this time left him shaken. Not even the death of his favorite wife a hundred years ago had struck him with this intensity. It's because Ixtlil isn't supposed to die, Cuauhtémoc though, bitterness creeping up on him. Giving his friend the nanites in the first place had been a simple decision. Ixtlil was already as dedicated to the good of the empire and her destiny as Cuauhtémoc himself, religiously devoted it seemed. Ixtlil was the only person Cuauhtémoc had ever found trustworthy enough to share such a precious and potentially dangerous gift with.
But then there were some things that even the miracle of nanites couldn't repair.
The two men passed the minutes talking about Cuauhtémoc's missions to build alliances with the scattered Inuit populations. He'd created treaties with a dozen so far, all willing to take up arms against any European or Asian nation attempting to invade through their lands. They'd also agreed to let Cuauhtémoc garrison troops with them, to help against the invaders' superior numbers.
"The smallpox has already ravaged several of their villages," Cuauhtémoc told Ixtlil. "So they're just as eager to be rid of the Russians as we are."
"I always loved that part, where we'd go visit the different tribes and make friends," Ixtlil said. "I really looked forward to the day when I'd see us all united, from the farthest south all the way to here in the north, united in common cause and friendship. But I guess I won't be here for that." He sighed, and then said, "I'm sorry I let you down, Cuauhtémoc."
"You didn't," Cuauhtémoc replied. He was happy to see that his friend's mind was very clear and focused—a sign the nanites had quelled the pain that had drained so much of his spirit before—but it also meant the nanites had gone on to their final work. At best he had only a few minutes left with Ixtlil. He squeezed his friend's hand as if it would keep back the rising pain in his chest.
"Will you grant me a dying request?" Ixtlil asked.
"Of course."
"Share the gift you gave me with my son. He will be a good Cihuacóatl. He's a little brash, but he believes in the plan. He knows we must all work together and stop all the petty infighting if we're to keep the Europeans out. He will do what you ask of him. I know he will."
Cuauhtémoc couldn't argue with him. Nextlalli was an excellent soldier and everyone thought he could look forward to a long, decorated military career; not like some of Cuauhtémoc's sons, who would rather laze around the palace in Tenochtitlán and accept the life of luxury their lineage afforded them. Still, the gift wasn't something to be given lightly…
Before Cuauhtémoc could answer, Ixtlil lunged up, almost out of the bed, gasping for breath and grabbing frantically at his chest. Cuauhtémoc took hold of him, feeling his wrist. His friend's pulse had risen even further out of control than before, faltering then quickening again. He hugged him tight and whispered, "I promise, if that's what you want, friend."
In answer, Ixtlil slumped against Cuauhtémoc's shoulder, his pulse shrinking to nothing. Cuauhtémoc held him the whole time, unable to breathe himself.
When Cuauhtémoc returned to his tent, he sent one of his surviving servants to fetch Nextlalli. He then stood next to the far wall, examining the tears in the black canvas left by the bullets. Elotl had offered to put him into a new tent but Cuauhtémoc insisted on keeping this one, with its reminders of what had happened.
Nextlalli arrived wearing his full eagle knight uniform—a coat of feathers and a stiff hood made to look like an eagle head. He also carried his father's ceremonial macuahuitl sword. It had a polished mahogany handle carved with serpents inlayed with rubies for their eyes. Cuauhtémoc had given it to his friend as a gift of comradeship and allegiance even before he'd made Ixtlil immortal.
"You called for me, Revered Speaker?" Nextlalli asked, gazing up at the Emperor from his kneeling position.
Cuauhtémoc leaned against his oak desk and nodded. "Your father has passed on."
"The surgeon told me," Nextlalli replied.
"Did you have an opportunity to speak with him before I arrived?"
Nextlalli nodded. "I spent all but his final minutes at his side."
"Did he discuss his final wishes with you?"
"He said he would ask you to make me your next Cihuacóatl."
Cuauhtémoc nodded. "Did he explain to you what that would entail?"
"He said you could share your blood with me and make me a god, just as you did for him."
"That is one way to explain it," Cuauhtémoc admitted. "But you'll think much different of it once you have it." He reached over the desk and opened the top drawer. From it he took a metal blade sitting among the quills and rolls of parchment. "We must talk first though. The gift I'm to bestow isn't one to be given lightly and I must be sure you understand the consequences of accepting it."
"Of course, Revered Speaker."
"Did your father tell you why I gave him my gift of immortality?"
"The two of you were hunting in the jungle and he was attacked by a jaguar—"
"Yes, but that's not why I gave it to him. It's very important for you to understand the why."
Nextlalli clasped his hands together over his left knee as he knelt. "He did not."
"Your father and I had been friends for a very long time, since childhood. We attended calmécac together in Texcóco and we both captured our first sacrificial victims during the same battle. But when his father died, my uncle Motecuhzoma blocked his ascension to the throne of Texcóco, playing dangerous games with our long-time allies. It was an action I knew would come back to haunt the empire if it wasn't corrected.
"After Motecuhzoma died in the palace fire, I convinced the new emperor Cuitláhuac to return control of Texcóco to its rightful prince. That cemented your father's loyalty to me and my plans for the future. He provided half of the troops that helped invade the Spanish settlements on the islands off our coast, helped squash them before they could establish a foothold in our realm."
Nextlalli shifted from one knee to the other. "We learned about that in calmécac."
"But did they teach you the significance of it, and what it says about why we as a people are still here today?" Cuauhtémoc asked. "The defeat of a few Spanish colonies didn't ensure our future."
"No, I suppose not," Nextlalli admitted.
"It's all about loyalty," Cuauhtémoc continued. "And creating friendships and allegiances for the good of all involved. Our past of petty fighting with our neighbors—and even with our own allies—would have shoved us under the wheels of time, forgotten except as a strange and brutal curiosity thankfully gone. Your father and I built this empire on loyalty; without it everything will crumble. Diligence is important too, but loyalty is everything: loyalty to the people you aim to rule and their well-being; loyalty to the cause of protecting the empire and expanding it not through conquest but through friendship and mutual respect; and loyalty to the fact that its necessary to put the good of the empire before yourself and your own personal wishes and ambitions.
"Are you willing to embrace this responsibility, Nextlalli, and devote the rest of your life to it, as your own father did?"
"I will," Nextlalli replied without hesitation.
Cuauhtémoc dragged the knife over his palm. "Give me your hand, Prince of Texcóco."
Nextlalli held out his left hand. Cuauhtémoc set the blood-covered blade across the young man's palm and then closed the fingers around it. "Loyalty to the empire," he said.
"Loyalty to the empire," Nextlalli repeated, and then Cuauhtémoc yanked the knife out, slicing open Nextlalli's hand. The young man didn't flinch at all.
"It will take a few days to take effect," Cuauhtémoc said. "Be warned though that it will not be a pleasant experience. There will be times when you'll wish you were dead just to stop the pain."
Cuauhtémoc still remembered his own ordeal with vivid detail; the cooking fever, the seizures, the dementia that made the walls of his room in his uncle's palace look as if they were melting like hot copal wax; all from what he thought at the time was a simple snake bite while he campaigned in the south against the Tlaxcalans. He'd been sleeping off the effects of a night of celebrating with too much octli when the seemingly ordinary black serpent had slithered into his tent and under his blankets, where it bit him on the left calf. It held on until Cuauhtémoc found his sword and cut off its head. He'd stared at lights flashing inside the body for a few minutes before his own drunkenness pulled him back into sleep. When he awoke the next afternoon, he found the serpent lying on the ground next to his bed, its head still attached by a single silver sinew; only much later did he realize it was a machine with needles for fangs, for injecting the nanites, a contraption sent from the ether of a future that had not yet happened.
By nightfall, he'd grown weak and unable to walk. Once the seizures began, a small detachment of warriors had carried him back to Tenochtitlán. For days he was convinced that he'd in fact died and was making the torturous journey to Mictlan, crawling over blades of obsidian and running through a downpour of arrowheads raining from the sky. He'd stood at the frozen lake in Mictlan and watched images of horror and destruction play upon its icy surface; the stoning death of the Emperor Motecuhzuma the Younger who'd allowed invaders into the city with open arms; millions dying of smallpox; the building-by-building destruction of Tenochtitlán; the burning of the libraries in Texcoco; their empire, their culture, their freedom, all turned to ash.
But he also saw visions of how to stop it all, how to overcome the Spanish invaders despite the empire's weaker weapons, and the nanites gave him knowledge of technologies to help lead his people into the future. He'd awoken from his near-death coma refreshed and full of purpose, his path laid clear before him, what he must do to save their world. That alone had made all the suffering worthwhile; a good emperor makes sacrifices for his people.
"I will announce your new position at the funeral tonight," Cuauhtémoc told Nextlalli as he wrapped his hand with a handkerchief. "Leave your father's sword and I will present it to you at the ceremony, as a symbol of the office I'm bestowing on you."
Nextlalli set the sword on the desk and Cuauhtémoc handed him a cloth for his hand as well. "Bring it back to me when you're done with it," Cuauhtémoc said. "It's important to make sure anything with your blood on it is properly disposed of. You can't be too careful when making sure your new power doesn't fall into wrong hands." He clapped Nextlalli on the shoulder and gave him a somber smile. "From this day forward, we are brothers."
"Brothers," Nextlalli agreed with a matching smile, showing off the decorative chips of turquoise in his front teeth. Cuauhtémoc's own sons bore similar decoration; turquoise was a stone only worn by royalty. "We will avenge my father's murder, right?"
"With the blood of the whole Russian army," Cuauhtémoc replied.
"As it should be."
He'll make a good Cihuacóatl, Cuauhtémoc decided as he watched Nextlalli leave. Ixtlil would be proud.
Once his palm ceased bleeding, he wiped the blade and tossed the cloth onto the small brazier sitting on his desk. He lit it aflame with a match and watched it char and shrivel while he boiled a small pot of chocolate over it. He then poured his beverage into a painted clay cup and dumped the ashes into it, stirring the concoction with a polished stick. He frowned a little when he sipped, but it wasn't wise to trust even fire to destroy the nanites.
The Russian prisoners huddled in iron cages near the docks, shivering. They'd been stripped of their eagle warrior disguises and instead wore tattered fur-coats and boots without laces. But such accommodations shouldn't have been mistaken for compassion; they were only meant to keep the men alive long enough for them to die at the sacrifice.
Several jaguar knights guarded the cages, looking nightmarish in their fanged hoods and rabbit-pelt masks. Polar bear claws adorned the fingers of their gloves. They stood straighter when Cuauhtémoc approached.
The Emperor stood before the cages, glaring over the scrawny, terrified Russian crew. "Which of you is in charge?" he asked in Russian.
The scraggly men stared at him for a moment, speechless at first but then began muttering amongst themselves. They kept darting nervous glances at one man who sat alone in the cage closest to camp.
Cuauhtémoc glared down at the man who stared back, frightened but determined to not show it. "What were your orders, soldier?"
The man raised his eyebrows. "You speak the mother tongue."
"Better than you, I'd wager." Cuauhtémoc sneered. "Who told you where to find the Emperor's tent?"
When the man didn't answer, Cuauhtémoc said, "I'm not asking you to betray your countrymen; I'm only asking for the name of one of my own men who gave you this information. If you give it to me, I will show mercy on your men.
"But if you don't…." He motioned to the jaguar knights and they threw opened the next cage and dragged one of the men out. They wrenched the coat from the man's shoulders, leaving him with only his trousers and one boot. He struggled against them, but they held him firm, his arms behind his back and his bare chest puffed out, his ankles chained together with steel shackles. Cuauhtémoc pulled a blade from his coat pocket.
"If you don't, I will remove this man's heart," he said, tapping the man's collarbone with the flat edge of the blade. "Did you know that a person can live for up to three minutes after removing the heart, and you can even maintain consciousness for half of that? Doesn't seem very long, I know, but then I'd imagine it could seem like eternity in the midst of all the pain and the sensation of drowning in your own blood."
But the man still didn't say anything. Cuauhtémoc narrowed his eyes at him but then plunged the blade into the other man's sternum. The victim wasn't the only one screaming then. The men's horrified cries sounded tinny in the frigid air.
"Are you going to make me torture this poor man to death in front of your men?" Cuauhtémoc asked, his hand still on the knife handle.
"Tell him, Yerik!" one of the soldiers begged, pressing his face against the bars of his cage.
"Yes, Yerik, before I become impatient again," Cuauhtémoc said, pushing down on the blade just enough to make the man howl.
"I don't know his name," Yerik sputtered. "I didn't speak to him or his interpreter. I took my orders from my captain."
"But you saw him?"
Yerik nodded. "He wore one of those feathered uniforms, and he had gold stripes painted across his face, like so." He smeared his fingers across his eyes on both sides. "And his ears had large holes in them, big enough to hook a thumb through."
The description sounded like any eagle warrior in the ranks. "Anything else unusual?" Cuauhtémoc asked, his impatience growing.
Yerik thought for a moment before sputtering, "Yes, he had blue teeth, in the front."
"Blue teeth?"
"His four front teeth, on the top, had blue in them."
"You mean like blue gems?"
"Yes, but they didn't sparkle. More like rocks."
Turquoise, Cuauhtémoc realized, both shocked and outraged. After all his talk about how important it was to not let the nanites fall into the wrong hands…. "He told your captain to kill me?"
"And your commander," Yerik replied. The words made Cuauhtémoc tremble and clench his fists. "This man—who came with the Inuit interpreter—he promised he would move the army back south and leave us alone."
Of all of the betrayals, that was the worse. It was one thing to remove an inept ruler for the good of the empire—he'd done that himself with Motecuhzoma—but to hand native lands over to the Russians…at least Ixtlil didn't live long enough to see what a treasonous serpent his son was. "The army will be on the move again, but we're going to come north and wipe out your base camp. We will spare no one. Never shall your Empress—or anyone who succeeds her—ever see Russian colonies on this continent," Cuauhtémoc hissed. "These lands are not free for your taking."
He pulled a revolver from his coat and sent the man he'd stabbed crumbling to the ground, bleeding from the head. He then turned it on the other Russians, stopping once to reload while Yerik babbled and pleaded for him to stop. When he'd shot the last of Yerik's men, he turned the pistol on Yerik.
"You said you'd show them mercy," the Russian sobbed through half-frozen snot and tears.
"I did," Cuauhtémoc replied. "Now they won't have to face death on the sacrificial stone tonight." He then pulled the trigger one last time.
Back at his tent, he paced for a moment then told his servant boy to fetch Elotl. He had much to do before the ceremony that evening.
Workers had built Ixtlilxochitl's funeral pyre on the cold beach below some shallow cliffs to the south of camp. Half of the army marched in procession, with four of the strongest soldiers carrying the former Cihuacóatl on a litter across their shoulders. He sat upright, wearing his jaguar knight uniform, but also wrapped in the royal robes of Texcóco. The traditional headdress of long, emerald quetzal feathers bobbed as his head nodded with each step.
Nextlalli followed close behind the litter, dressed in his eagle knight regalia and dragging a distracted malamute puppy behind him. The head priest had dyed the dog's white fur brown, in accordance with ancient tradition, for a brown dog was needed if the deceased wished to cross the Black River in the underworld. The puppy bounded through the snow, rolling around and nipping at Nextlalli's heels.
Cuauhtémoc walked a few paces behind Nextlalli, dressed in his soberest crimson robe. In the absence of flowers, his servants threw pine needles on the ground for him to walk on. Behind him, by a few steps, came Elotl, dressed in his best hooded jaguar cape and a decorative silver breast plate, presented to him by Cuauhtémoc just hours before.
Once the procession reached the beach, the warriors set the litter atop the pyre's giant wooden platform. Nextlalli tied the dog's rope to a log. Cuauhtémoc muttered a final goodbye to his friend then scratched the puppy's ears and fed it a piece of meat. The drug inside would kill the dog within minutes, so it wouldn't know the pain of dying by fire.
While the army gathered on the beach, Cuauhtémoc and Elotl followed Nextlalli back up the cliff overlooking the pyre. The camp priest waited there for them, dressed in his rank-smelling black robes. His blood-wetted hair glistened in the firelight from two kettle braziers. He bowed to Cuauhtémoc as the Emperor passed by, to stand at the cliff's edge with Nextlalli. Below, drums boomed to bring order.
To begin the ceremony, the priest notched his ears with a knife as a blood offering and he sang a hymn to the War God while the small army band played flutes and drums in accompaniment. Once everyone fell silent, Cuauhtémoc raised his arms and announced, "Let us honor your fallen war chief with a song of the venerable Nezahualcóyotl."
The warriors stamped their feet and the drums pounded, creating the beat. Cuauhtémoc turned to Nextlalli and said, "Start us off, if you would. 'There are Fresh and Fragrant Flowers among the Groves'."
Nextlalli cleared his throat then delivered the first lines in a near-perfect tozquitl—the harsh contra-bass sound most desirable for singing poetry. He'd sung in all the festivals since he was boy, much to his father's delight. Such a waste of something wonderful, Cuauhtémoc thought with bitterness then he joined in the song within a few lines:
The fleeting pomps of the world are like the green willow trees, which, aspiring to permanence, are consumed by a fire, fall before the axe, are upturned by the wind, or are scarred and saddened by age.
The warriors down on the beach now joined in, all doing their best to match Nextlalli's voice. The stern, haunting sound reminded Cuauhtémoc of a jaguar warning trespassers in the jungle. If the Russians were nearby, they would surely shiver and hide in their camp.
The grandeurs of life are like the flowers in color and in fate; their beauty and glory fail, and the brilliant gay colors which decked forth their pride wither and fade.
Both Cuauhtémoc and Nextlalli lit torches from the braziers and tossed them over the cliff down to the pyre below. Cuauhtémoc watched the flames consume Ixtlil's royal robes, engulfing his body in fiery glory.
All things of earth have an end, and in the midst of the most joyous lives, the breath falters, they fall, they sink into the ground.
"All the earth is a grave, and none escapes it," Cuauhtémoc muttered. The knot in his throat had grown so tight he couldn't sing another word.
Once the air fell silent, Cuauhtémoc announced to the crowd, "As Ixtlilxochitl leaves us to begin his new wondrous life serving Tonantiuh in His daily task of warming the earth and feeding our crops, it is time to honor him and the gods with a sacrifice." He then nodded to Elotl, who seized Nextlalli by the neck from behind with a flowery garland. He dragged him struggling to the stone altar workers had erected when the army first made camp four months before. The surface was slick with the frozen blood of numerous sacrifices.
Nextlalli reached for his weapon, but Cuauhtémoc took his hand off with one swipe of Ixtlil's sword, shattering quite a few of the delicate but ultra-sharp obsidian shards that made up the blade.
"At least your father didn't live to learn of your betrayal," Cuauhtémoc said. "Conspiring with the enemy to assassinate not only me, but your father as well? If you're fool enough to believe I wouldn't find out, then you've proven yourself unworthy of ruling this empire. A competent ruler would have made sure both his targets were in camp, so he could eliminate both at the same time."
Down on the beach, the warriors muttered to each other in confusion.
"You should be outraged, brothers," Cuauhtémoc shouted to them as he came to the cliff's edge again. "This traitor planned to throw away everything your fathers and grandfathers and their fathers fought and died for. He would have our temples burned to the ground and our cities reduced to rubble, your wives enslaved and your children taught to forsake your gods and speak in foreign tongues, all so he could play Emperor. Your Cihuacóatl deserved better than the death he dealt to him." He pointed back at Nextlalli with Ixtlil's sword. "You deserve better than the future he would have sentenced you to."
The muttering had turned to outraged shouts and warriors raising their guns and ceremonial swords into the air, calling for the sacrifice. Cuauhtémoc went back to the stone and pulled a bag of the potent drug yauhtli from his robe pocket. He motioned the priest to join him. "Hold his mouth open." When Cuauhtémoc began sprinkling the powder in Nextlalli's mouth and Nextlalli struggled to spit it out, Cuauhtémoc told him, "Take your medicine. You don't wish to die in agony, like your father did."
Cuauhtémoc finished emptying of the bag, leaving Nextlalli coughing and sneezing dust. Elotl dragged him off the stone, towards the cliff. Cuauhtémoc followed, stopping next to Nextlalli, who struggled to stand straight once Elotl let him go. He stared at the young man for a moment, trying for coldness but failing.
"Perhaps I should have cut your feet off and bound you to a tree in woods for the wolves and bears; the nanites would keep you alive long enough to make you wish I'd never given them to you," Cuauhtémoc said. "But I loved your father, and he loved you enough to not want something so horrendous for you, and so neither do I." He grasped Nextlalli by the shoulders. "I'm sorry it had to end this way."
"He wouldn't want you to kill me," Nextlalli said. He struggled to focus on Cuauhtémoc's face as the yauhtli's hallucinogenic effects began taking hold.
Cuauhtémoc shook his head. "Your father believed in justice, and that those of us closest to power should be held to a higher standard than everyone else. He understood that being the Cihuacóatl sometimes means having to give your own life for the good of the empire." He embraced Nextlalli. "I meant it when I said we are now brothers, so know this was a difficult decision to make. Your father thought you would make a good Cihuacóatl; it's now time to prove he was right."
Nextlalli seemed ready to argue some more but he stopped mid-sound, his face pale but resigned. He looked down over the edge of the cliff, the firelight reflecting off his wet cheeks. "What son doesn't wish to be like his father?" he muttered to himself then he looked back at Cuauhtémoc, his eyes raw with regret. He closed his eyes and whispered, "Forgive me, father." Then he toppled over the edge, as if falling asleep on his feet.
The warriors roared and Cuauhtémoc watched the flames on the pyre dance with new glee, but he didn't share in the jubilee. He felt as if something more precious than mere friendship and love was burning away in the fires below.
Cuauhtémoc stood atop the remains of the pyre, dressed only in trousers and boots, scrapping together the ashes on the metal sheet that had been under the wood platform. He'd been there most of the early morning hours, gathering the ash into jars to take back to camp with him. He'd be mixing ash with his drinks for weeks, and though it made everything taste like dirt, it was a small price to pay to make sure the nanites never again found themselves in an unworthy host.
Elotl—his new and completely mortal Cihuacóatl—had gone across the bay with the army, to wipe out the Russian camp, but he's left a few warriors to accompany Cuauhtémoc to the beach, to guard him. The warriors had offered to help the Emperor with his labor, but Cuauhtémoc insisted on doing it himself. Scraping up his friend's ashes was his job.
The hours had left him exhausted and melancholy, each shovelful of ash growing heavier than the last. Giving Ixtlil the gift was a mistake, he scolded himself. But not so much as your blind loyalty to your friendship. The empire always come first, even if it means abandoning things like friendship and camaraderie; what makes us strong one moment is our undoing the very next.
As h | 
