Centehua winced as she lightly touched the bruises on her arms. They were black and ugly, marring the smooth caramel of her skin, but at least they could be hidden. Not so the bruises on her face. Each mark represented Xomatzin's wrathful hand making contact. Over and over, he had slapped her...and then finally punched her...before storming out of their suite, demanding that she make herself presentable before he returned.

She slowly made her way to the mirror. Her small steps were painful because of the jarring her hip had received from being thrown against the wall. As wrenching as that pain was, it was the pain of seeing her face in the mirror that struck down to the depths of her soul. Not because of the disfiguring marks. Those would eventually fade away and her beauty would return. Rather, it was the fear still held there...even these many hours after his abrupt exit...that truly hurt. Never had she seen this woman's face in her mirror before, wincing, frightened, unsure. But never had he become this violent with her. Yes, he had slapped her before, threatened her with bodily harm or worse...but those had been merely words spoken in the heat of passionate anger. And she often elicited the worse type of passion from him. That was why he wanted her. He confused any passion at all with true feelings. He knew he loved her only because she could rile him so. So he thought. And so had she. Because deep emotions manifested themselves in passion, she had told herself. He was a man of passion who experienced everything with every fibre of his being, whether the taste of good wine, the fragrance of a lovely flower, biting into a succulent piece of roasted rabbit...or making her scream - in pleasure or pain.

She wiped the tears from her face. She had thought she was through with such weaknesses. He had never been able to make her cry before. Never. No one had. She sat before the mirror and stared at herself as though seeing her reflection for the first time. She was no longer a girl. Within ten, maybe fifteen years, her beauty and youth would fade for good. And eventually she would either retire to permanent seclusion, left with nothing but a few books and some paltry music lessons for diversion...or she would be thrown out to make her own way.

Unsettling as that thought was, nothing shook her as much as the inescapable realization of what she truly was, what everyone had said she was. She could no longer deny that those words had cut, but just a glancing cut, nothing deep enough to forever wound. And she had lived with the disapproval of those around her, because she had traded in her self-worth for something so much better. Wealth and security...and power, indirect though it was because her only power came through the power that Xomatzin owned and divvied out to her piecemeal. So the whispers that sometimes blared in her ears had meant nothing to her. Let them say what they would.

But today, she had not been able to shut her ears or raise her head just a little higher, defiant of the ugliness cast at her. Because the words had come from Xomatzin's own lips.

"You're nothing but a filthy whore...no better than some prostitute selling herself on the street! I tried to better your station in life, and look how you repaid me! I am now a laughingstock because of you! I can hear the whispers now. `Look, look there goes Xomatzin who claims power in the court and yet cannot keep his woman under control. She dallies in the river with barbarians doing lord knows what, dressed as some peasant woman!"

He had literally spit those words at her, his face only a breath away from hers. And the dew he ejected on her face seemed to punctuate his last words, not even yelled, but breathed with contempt - "You are nothing but a whore, aren't you? Why should I have expected anything more from you?"

She hadn't been able to stop the tears from flowing then. All the hurt she had balled away inside her loosened beneath his contempt. Instead of sympathy, her tears only elicited more anger.

"Dry those silly tears! Don't think you can continue to manipulate and make a fool of me!"

He looked at her as though he had never quite seen ugliness such as hers before. "Clean yourself up...I want you presentable when I return. Then we'll see just how well you can earn your keep!" And he had left her, slamming out the door.

Sobs wracked her body as she sat looking at her bruises. Staring at that battered face in the mirror, she made her decision. She could not stay here. She could not live with his contempt, for he would never let her forget her error. And he would never again hide his true feelings from her. If she let him kill the little bit of her soul left, then there would be nothing remaining, and she would be no better than the prostitute he had claimed her to be.

An unwelcomed image forced its way into her thoughts. It was the image of a dead woman she had seen here in the city when she was no more than eight or nine. The body of the woman had been half hidden in the marshes, her body skeletal, her skin wracked with sores. When she had run to her mother and told her about the dead lady, her mother had pulled her along, telling her to forget what she had seen. "Some things are not meant for young eyes or ears," was all her mother would say to her barrage of questions.

But later in her life, she had found out about the unfortunate women often found along the river, their bodies obscured by the reeds. These females had had the misfortune to be born under the sign of Tlazolteotl, the "eater of excrement and dirt". And because of this, once they reached the age of bleeding, they were forced to serve as auianime, courtesans to the warrior class. Pampered and beautiful, eventually their bodies wore down, and their health ebbed away. As soon as they showed signs of feebleness from the sickness that passed between men and women who did not care for themselves, they were invited to a dance where they were set upon by a designated priest and strangled to death. And because of their sexual evil, they were not even given a decent burial. They were disposed of near the water, in the reeds, to lie there until the zopilotes, the vultures, devoured what remained of their decomposed corpses.

She felt like one of those discarded bodies now, could almost feel the tearing of flesh as the vultures set upon her.

Xomatzin would be back soon. She would not be here when he returned. She reached for the case where she had retrieved her disguise hours before. Luckily, she had an extra blouse and skirt. The ones she was wearing had been torn during Xomatzin's tirade. She painfully eased out of the tatters and into the replacement clothing. Then she searched for another piece of jewelry...the last she would ever take from him. It was a beautiful gold pin, shaped like a jaguar in mid-run. Rubies blazed in its eyes, fierce, angry. She clutched it, entreating it to flow some of its courage into her. She would need that courage now.

She knew that Xomatzin would have someone watching to make sure she did not leave. She would have to use stealth and bribery to garner her release from this prison.

She creaked the door open a little and looked down the hallway that led to the various rooms inhabited by visiting dignitaries. She knew that behind each of those doors were women like herself, still lying to themselves, telling their mirrored reflections that they were fortunate to be so loved and cared for. But, finally she knew the truth and would not lie to herself again. She crept along the walls, until she saw one of the servants standing with his back to the entrance leading to the hallway of rooms. Xomatzin's patsy, no doubt. When she sidled up to him, she smiled, and he blinked, wondering about the presence of a peasant woman. And a beaten one at that. He had been expecting a concubine, some pampered flower of a woman, a ravishing beauty. But this beaten peasant, with her eye almost closed shut from a fist, took him by surprise. As did the gold treasure she handed him, and her whispered words of entreatment. Luckily for her, greed won out over duty and the man deliberately turned his back as she made her way to the door that would lead to the dangers of freedom.

Outside she kept her head down, not daring to give anyone a closeup of her face. Never before had she felt so ashamed, so dirty. The crowds were still celebrating in the marketplace and no one gave much attention to the lone peasant woman. So intent was she to blend into the crowd, she didn't see the young girl in front of her. She bumped into her, causing both of them to stumble and the young girl to look up.

Necahual looked at the battered face and gasped. She had never seen the cruelty of violence before. At least not up close. And on such a pretty face. There was something familiar about that face. She had seen this woman before.

"Are you all right, miss?" Necahual asked innocently and was surprised as the tears appeared from nowhere. The woman nodded unthinkingly. In that instant, child became woman and woman child as the young girl shook her head. "No, you're not all right at all. You're hurt and should see a doctor."

"A doctor?" Centehua asked confused. She had no money for a doctor.

The young girl nodded and took her hand. Centehua thought how strange it was that her welfare was suddenly in the hands of a peasant girl, a girl not too unlike herself at that age. And yet, for some reason, she trusted in the wisdom and strength of this very child; at the moment, she had none of her own.

At the physician's booth, Cozea had had a busy afternoon handing out poultices for everything from the sprained finger of a musician to the two-day fever of a little boy whose mother stood before her worriedly wringing her hands. Cozea handed the mother the elixir with explicit instructions to give only two spoonfuls to the child before he went to sleep that night. Then she was to stoke a good fire in the fireplace with some of the herbs that Cozea was handing to her. "The child needs to be in the same room so that the smoke can enter his skin and chase out the impurities. The elixir will flush the remainder out through his bowels and urine."

The woman thanked her exceedingly, especially since she had no items to barter with. Cozea just shrugged. Sometimes charity was its own reward.

It was the first flush of evening and the marketplace was still crowded with festivities from the Great Feast. These feast days were days of no rest for her for there was always somebody with a complaint that needed fixing.

She looked up from where she was sitting just as a young girl led a woman towards her. The woman's head was bowed, defeat in her whole frame. By the way she walked, her body seemed to be in pain. It was only after they had gotten within a few feet, being jostled by revelers coming to and fro, that Cozea saw the marks on the young woman's face, downcast though it was. She had seen those bruises often, on women young and old. After all this time, she thought she would be hardened to those marks. She wasn't, even after five years of taking over her father's practice.

"Excuse me, miss," the young girl said as she stopped in front of the booth, releasing her ward's hand. "This woman is hurt and needs your help." On cue, the woman finally looked up fully. Cozea winced at the swollen eye that was almost closed. But in the good eye, moist with tears, she saw something else.

"I have no money," Centehua said with a modicum of the pride she had carried for so long.

"You will need no money today. But I see that there is much repairing to do...more than any of my poultices can help. Because what I fix today, he will only undo tomorrow. You must leave him...."

"I have," Centehua said quietly. Necahual stood by silently, knowing that she would be in trouble for having left Nequametl and her mother without permission. But she had been trying to find the dancers and the music when she had come across the pretty lady, the same beautiful lady from days before. For now she recognized the beautiful woman who had so beguiled her the day the sun darkened in the sky, and who had disappeared into the crowds. What ill wind had befallen her to bring her so low?

Cozea, physician to only physical ills, looked pleased at the woman's words. "Good, good. How are you for shelter, food?"

The tears flowed freely now. "I have nowhere to go. I only have the clothes on my back."

"Well, that's all you will need for now," the young doctor said as she stood and reached over to softly run a finger along the bruise of her face, examining it. She knew that if there were bruises along the face, there were probably more beneath the clothing. The physical damage was reparable. She wasn't as certain about the woman's soul, though. There was bound to be much damage there. Hopefully, that damage could be repaired as well. A thought occurred to her.

"Would you be willing to work to earn your keep? I have need of an assistant, someone who can work alongside me and help with my practice. If you are willing to learn, I can teach you. Are you willing?" The woman's eyes were sharp in her beautiful face and Centehua blinked in uncertainty at the steadfast stare. Why had the gods deemed her so fortunate? She wasn't worthy of this. Yet, if they wanted her to serve, she would.

"Yes, I am willing."

Cozea nodded her satisfaction. "Come, it is time for healing." She led the other woman towards a tent situated behind the booth. In there, she kept her supply of medicines.

Only after the women had disappeared behind the tent's flap did the forgotten Necahual take off in search of her mother and sister.