Night deepened. The great camp was solemn and still, the air inside the tent warm, smoke rising from the incense burner. A bonfire leapt within the main tent, illuminating a figure bent over a desk writing, merging with the moon's shadow at the tent's peak.
Xolotl sat before the low desk, sometimes pondering for a long while, sometimes writing furiously. A detailed map of the kingdom was spread across his table, black towns arrayed up and down, blue rivers rushing north and south. The young king dipped his brush in expensive red pigment, set down a stroke, and joined blue and black into one with the shortest red line!
"Kingdom roads are to be divided into three grades. The first grade is village dirt roads. Clear the vegetation from the road surface, dig level and trim raised areas, fill and tamp low hollows, making travel back and forth convenient for pedestrians."
Writing to this point, Xolotl paused slightly. The roads within the kingdom now were basically dirt roads like this, carried over from the era of the Tarasco Kingdom. This kind of dirt road was simply "a path formed where many people had walked." And in the newly cultivated Apa County in the south, even roads like this did not yet exist.
"The second grade is county-level trinity-soil roads. Trinity-soil roads use clay and loam as the base, slaked lime as the binder, and natural sand as filler. Trinity-soil roads must be tamped down by manpower and kept maintained. In rainy, river-crossed, lushly vegetated areas, coal cinders, slag, and broken stone are to be used as the base layer, filled with natural sand dug from the seashore to guard against water and plants."
Xolotl looked at the map and pondered for a moment. He had questioned warrior chiefs who transported