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to consider her from an angle. “Yes, I will,” he says. “Yes. I’ll tell you . . . What does it matter now?”
    Then he is whispering, whispering the rest of the story to her, an enigmatic smile playing across his lips, as if he is enjoying himself, as if the weight of such a story, never before told, can now leave him, the machines the only weight left to keep him tied to this earth. And every word takes her further from herself, until she is outside herself, out there, in the darkness, with him.
    VI
    Tupac remembered precisely when he decided to kill the old man he called the Conquistador. They had stared into the dark waters of a lake above Cuzco and the Conquistador, already dismounted from his horse, had said, “This place holds a million treasures, if we could only find a means to wrest them from the hands of the dead.” The lake held the bones of Tupac’s ancestors as well as gold, but he did not say this, just as he had not protested when the old man’s map had led them to the hidden city. He had done nothing while the Conquistador had rummaged through the graves on their last day in the city, picking through the bones for bits of jewelry to supplement the gold. How could he have done nothing?
    But as they stood and looked into the dark waters, Tupac realized that the old man’s death had been foretold by the lake itself: the Conquistador’s reflection hardly showed in those black depths. If the Conquistador’s reflection cast itself so lightly on the world, then death was already upon him. Killing this man would be like placing pennies upon the eyes of the dead.
    When they came out of the hills and the fog of the highlands into the region of the deep lakes, Tupac’s resolve stiffened. In the early morning light, the Conquistador’s horse stepping gingerly among the ill-matched stones of the old Inca highway, Tupac had a vision: that a flock of jet-black hummingbirds encircled the Conquistador’s head like his Christian god’s crown of thorns.
    The Conquistador had not spoken a word that morning, except to request that Tupac fold his bed roll and empty his chamber pot. The Conquistador sat his horse stiffly, clenching his legs to stay upright. Looking at the old man, Tupac felt a twinge of revulsion, at himself for serving as the old man’s guide, and at the old man for his casual cruelty, his indifference, and most frustrating of all, his stifling ignorance.
    At midday, the sun still hazy through the clouds, the Conquistador dismounted and stood by the edge of yet another lake. He did not stand so straight now, but hunched over, his head bent.
    Tupac hesitated. The old man looked so tired. A voice deep inside him said he could not kill in cold blood, but his hand told the truth: it pulled the Conquistador’s sword from its scabbard in one clean motion. The Conquistador turned and smiled when he saw that Tupac had the sword. Tupac slid the sword into the Conquistador’s chest and through his spine. The Conquistador smiled more broadly then, Tupac thought, and brought close to his victim by the thrust, he could smell the sour tang of quinoa seeds on his breath, the musk of the Conquistador’s leathers, and the faint dusty scent they had both picked up traveling the road together.
    Then the old man fell, the sword still in him, Tupac’s hand letting go of the hilt.
    Tupac stood above the dead man for a moment, breathing heavily. An emptiness filled his mind as if he were a fish swimming blind through the black lake that shimmered before them. The sound of a chipparah bird’s mating call startled him and he realized that the Conquistador had died silently, or that his own frantic heartbeat had drowned out any noise.
    The Conquistador’s eyes remained open and blood had begun to coat his tunic. Blood coated the sword’s blade, which had been pushed upward, halfway out of the Conquistador’s body when he fell to the ground. Tupac tasted salt in his mouth and brushed the tears from his eyes. He