Park turned. They had ascended only the lowest of Saxawaman’s walls. Other curtains of unmortared stone, pale in the starlight, climbed the hill behind them. And beyond those walls were the greater stone ramparts of the Andes, black against the sky.
The sky — In the north and overhead lay the constellations with which Park was familiar, though here they looked upside down. But to the south the stars were new to him, and made strange patterns. And there were so many of them! In Kuuskoo’s thin, clear air, they seemed almost close enough to reach out and touch.
Kuuskoo’s air was also chilly. Park had been sweating as he went up the stone stairs, but a few minutes of quietly looking about were plenty to make him start shivering. “Now I see why you wanted to walk the walls,” he said, matching action to word. “We’d freeze if we just stood here.”
“This is a fine mild night,” Kuurikwiljor protested; but she fell in step beside him. “Are all people from Vinland so sensitive to cold?”
“It’s like I told your brother: I don’t think all people from anywhere are any one thing. In Vinland, though, most people would not think this night is mild.”
“How odd,” Kuurikwiljor said. “In what other small ways are our folk different, I wonder? Color is plain at first glance, and faith soon becomes clear, but I never would have thought we might find different kinds of weather comfortable.”
“Tawantiinsuuju has provinces that get much hotter than Vinland, and stay hot the whole year around,” Park said.
“How do people from those lands like it here?”
Kuurikwiljor laughed. “They shake all the time, and wrap themselves up in blankets even at noon. I did not think you were so delicate.”
“I’m not, but it’s-” Park paused, trying to work out how to say it’s a matter of degree, not kind in Ketjwa. He was still thinking when he heard someone kick a pebble not too far away. “What was that?” His fists bunched. Kuuskoo had to have a few footpads, and no one was close by to hear him if he needed to shout for help.
But Kuurikwiljor laughed again. “Just someone else — or rather, some two else — walking the walls of Saxawaman. Did you think we were the only ones?”
“I hadn’t thought about it at all.” Now Park did, hard. So she’d taken him to the local lovers’ lane, had she? In that case… His arm slid round her waist. She didn’t pull back. In fact, she moved closer. That was doubly nice. Not only was she a pleasant armful of girl, she was also warm.
He kissed her. She put her arms around his neck. When at last they separated, she stared up at him, eyes wide and wondering. “You really do still care for me, knowing I am a widow?”
“Yes, I care for you,” Park said. “And what does your being a widow have to do with anything? I’m very sorry you lost your husband, but-”
Kuurikwiljor’s soft, breathy laugh made him stop. She said, “Another of those small differences between your people and mine, I see. In Tawantiinsuuju, most widows stay chaste, and most men want little to do with them. Indeed, if I had children it would be against the law for me to marry again.”
“That’s a foolish law,” Park blurted. Then, lawyerlike, he hedged: “At least, it would be in Vinland. As you say, our people are not the same.”
He noted that she’d told him she wasn’t forbidden to remarry, which probably meant she wanted to. He thought marriage a fine institution — for people who liked living in institutions. That didn’t mean he had anything against some of its concomitants. He kissed Kuurikwiljor again; she responded with an ardor he found gratifying. But when he slid a hand under her tunic, she twisted away.
“It’s fine to feel cared for, wanted,” she said, “but I do not give myself to a man I’ve known only a day. If that is all you want from me, better you should find a pampairuuna, a woman of the marketplace.”
“Of course it’s not all,” Park protested, hoping he sounded indignant. “I like your company, and talking with you. But — forgive me, because I do not know how to say this in fancy talk — you are a widow, and you know what goes on between men and women.”
“Yes, I do.” Kuurikwiljor did not sound angry, but she did not sound like someone who was going to change her mind, either: “I also know that what goes on between men and women, as you say, is better when they are people to each other, not just bodies. Otherwise a pampairuuna would be honored, not scorned.”
“Hmm,” was all Park said to that. She had a point, although he was not about to admit it out loud. After a moment, he went on, “I would like to know you better. May I call on you again?”
She smiled at him. “I hope you will, for I also want to know you. Now, though, I think we should go back to my brother’s house. It has grown cooler.”
“All right.” Feeling as if he were back in high school, Park walked her home.
Just around the corner from Pauljuu’s house, where none of his people could see them, she stopped and kissed him again, as warmly as she had up on Saxawaman. Then she walked on to the door. “Do call,” she said as she clapped for a servant to open it.
“I will,” he said. “Thanks.” Just then the door opened. Kuurikwiljor went in.
Allister Park headed back toward the house where he was staying. As he walked, he wondered (purely in a hypothetical way, he told himself) how to go about finding a pampairuuna.
For the next several days, Kuuskoo stayed quiet. Park met with Tjiimpuu and Da’ud ibn Tariq, both alone and together. In diplomatic language, the joint discussions were frank and serious: which is to say, agreement was nowhere to be found. At least, however, the two men did seem willing to keep talking. To Park, whose job was heading off a war, that looked like progress.
He enjoyed his wirecaller talks with Kuurikwiljor much more. They went out to a restaurant that she praised for serving old-style Tawantiinsuujan food. Park left it convinced that the old Tawantiinsuujans had had a dull time.
“What do they call this dried meat?” he asked, gnawing on the long, tough strip.
“Ktjarkii,” she answered. Her teeth, apparently, had no trouble with it.
“Jerky!” he said. “We have the same word in English. How strange.” With a little thought, he realized it wasn’t so strange. The English he’d grown up with must have borrowed the term from his world’s Quechua. For that matter, he didn’t know whether jerky was a word in the Bretwaldate of Vinland. Have to ask Monkey-face, he thought.
The dinner also featured tjuunjuu-powdered potatoes preserved by exposure to frost and sun. It was as bland as it sounded.
Afterwards, they went walking on the walls of Saxawaman. Park, whose judgment in such matters was acute, could tell he was making progress. If he pushed matters, he thought Kuurikwiljor would probably yield. He decided not to push. Next time, he figured, she’d come around of her own accord. That would keep her happier in the long run, not leave her feeling used.
By the time he got home that night, he’d forgotten all about asking Eric Dunedin about ktjarkii. He remembered the next morning, but Dunedin was still asleep. Park never had got fully used to the idea of having a servant. He got dressed, made his own breakfast, and left for the foreign ministry with Monkey-face still snoring.
Tjiimpuu was in a towering fury when he arrived. The Tawantiinsuujan hurled two sheets of paper onto the desk in front of him, slammed his open hand down on them with a noise like a thunderclap. “Patjakamak curse the Muslims for ever and ever!” he shouted. “As you asked, we showed restraint — and here are the thanks we got for it.”
“What’s gone wrong?” Park asked with a sinking feeling.
“They like their little joke, making goodwains into bombs,” Tjiimpuu ground out. “Here is one report from Kiitoo in the north, another from Kahamarka closer to home. Deaths, injuries, destruction. Well, we will visit them all on the Emirate of the Dar al-Harb, I promise you that. Nor will you talk me out of war this time, either.”