Naamah's Blessing - Jacqueline Carey [120]
There in the temazcalli, the tension melted away. We sat cross-legged and side by side on the stone ledge, wreathed in steam, breathing it deep into our lungs, sweat streaming down our naked bodies.
When Bao glanced sidelong at me through the steam, there was a familiar gleam in his eyes. “You look… slippery.”
I eyed him, noting his phallus was hard and erect, curving toward the shining trail of sweat trickling down his flat, lean-muscled belly. “You look… interested.”
“Did you do this with him?” he asked. “In the steam-bath?”
I shook my head. “No.”
Bao smiled, unfolding his legs. “Good.”
And it was good; slippery and awkward and good. The hard stone of the ledge dug into my knees as I straddled him, my hair falling from its lover’s-haste knot in damp tendrils that clung to my cheeks. Bao braced me as we kissed, his hands firm on my hips, our tongues dueling. Skin slid against sweat-slick skin as I reached down and fitted his phallus to me, sinking onto him, leaning against him to press my breasts against the hard plane of his chest, clinging to his shoulders, rising and falling to impale myself on him amidst the clouds of steam.
Whether or not our Nahuatl innkeepers knew and were scandalized, I never knew. If they were, they did not say.
Afterward, things were easier between us. An unspoken accord had been reached, and I felt lighter in my heart for it.
As our unlikely caravan journeyed farther and farther southward, all of us came to know one another better.
Eyahue, our senior pochteca, was unexpectedly garrulous for a Nahuatl, telling long, rambling tales of heroic trade expeditions he’d undertaken during his younger days. Due to his missing teeth, his diction was imperfect and I often had a difficult time understanding him, but the Jaguar Knight Temilotzin found his tales worthy of thigh-slapping hilarity, roaring with laughter. Bit by bit, I came to gather that Eyahue had ventured into the river-laced jungles of Tawantinsuyo in pursuit of various herbs that could be obtained nowhere else, the specific details of which the old fellow was cagey about revealing.
“All you need to find is your 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’re past 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.