The Audience

The Main God Temple stood high atop the pyramid, overlooking all of Kuramo City. The king sat within the Main God Temple, ruling over his myriad subjects. His expression calm, he accepted the secret letters and read through them one by one.

The contents of the first few secret letters were largely the same as the ones submitted by the Crow Family. Many warrior-generals of Purepecha origin had been in contact with the rebellious Purple Grass Family.

The degree of contact could roughly be divided into three levels. The first was simple greetings of courtesy, like Ezpan's. The letters only mentioned feelings for their homeland, along with some exchanges of ordinary gifts. The second was regularly accepting lavish gifts from the Purple Grass Family, from gold, silver, and jewels to fine clothes and feathers, all the way to houses and estates, music, dance, and beautiful girls. The Purple Grass Family had guarded the south for generations; aside from fields and registered households, they also controlled the waterways used for trade with the southern tribes, and had always been extremely wealthy. Their gifts were tempting enough that most generals would gladly accept them. The third was, on top of that, agreeing to look after one another, keep watch and help each other, establish private secret alliances, and even intermarry. There were not many generals like this, but they existed, and all held some military power to one degree or another.

Xolotl skimmed through them, his face unchanged the whole time. All of these were within the scope of what he could tolerate—until the final two secret letters. One of them had been written by the hereditary noble Grey Earth Puapu. There were only a few sparse words in the letter, followed by abstract drawings.

The king frowned, looking at the hand-drawn