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the window, then continued: “I am sorry, Emperor, but we must find your son. For the safety of my men and their descendents who will settle these lands. You must tell us where he is.” Gaspar de Sotelo had an ordinary face, pocked with disease, and his regret, the way his mouth pursed as his teeth worried his lower lip, was ordinary too.
    Tupac Amaru said nothing.
    “Can you understand me?” Gaspar cocked his head. “I was told you would understand me. I had expected a man of reason, of restraint and shrewdness. Not a savage.”
    The Emperor stared out the window.
    “I am mistaken. I can see that now.”
    The priest mumbled a few words in Latin. He nodded to the Captain.
    “Forgive me, Emperor,” Gaspar de Sotelo said as he motioned to the soldiers.
    They removed Tupac Amaru’s bonds.  They forced him, hobbling, to his feet. They stripped off his mantle and doublet of crimson velvet, the shoes made of wool, his crown with the mascapachu royal insignia woven into it, then lowered him to the floor.
    They beat him with the flats of their swords until he screamed. They gouged his toenails and fingernails. They carved patterns in his skin, stroking him with the blades.
    Blood misted the room. Blood pooled in the corners. Blood rose in the torturers’ nostrils like an aphrodisiac.
    Night fell with no moon.
    The priest lit candles.
    The soldiers removed their armor, revealing pale skin whorled with scars.
    They sliced the flesh between his fingers. They chopped off his thumbs. They stabbed his testicles. They twisted his shoulders until bones popped from sockets.
    Night fell.
    The Emperor made noises like the weeping of a child’s ghost.
    Night fell.
    The soldiers did not blink. Their eyes formed a surface so smooth blood and tears could not cling to it.
    As Tupac Amaru trembled and groaned, spasmed and gasped, Gaspar de Sotelo said, more times than sane or necessary, “Because of who I am and who you are at this time, in this place, I must punish your silence. I do not enjoy this. I am not a savage. I would not wish this upon you if it were not forced upon me.”
    III
    Gaspar de Sotelo, like the soldiers, filtered the world through eyes of gold, but behind the gold lay the moldering image of the rainforest. Those eyes had recorded the madness of treks into the interior: the moist rot that seeped into brain and bone and soul, trapped in armor that roasted him day after day, rooted him in place and made him an easy target for poison arrows from enemies as formless and oppressive as the ever-present humidity. Gaspar feared the rot would never leave him, that it would infect the marrow of his bones, eat him up, and then eat of itself, until even the fear left him and only the gold lust remained; afraid that he would not even feel his own death until coins, cold and slick, were placed over his eyes.
    Sometimes he hoped God would show himself in the patterns left on the flayed skin of his victims, for in no act of decency or betrayal had he seen God’s will at work in this strange hemisphere. Even the stars betrayed his knowledge and he whirled beneath them, ripe to fall if not propped up by his fading religion and the discipline of his military experience.
    IV
    After a span of time measured by the swift and slow rhythms of his torturers, the Emperor could hear only the febrile rattle of his own breathing. He lay on his stomach, splinters from the wooden floor biting into his wounds.
    Above him, Gaspar de Sotelo said, his voice dry and taut, “Tell me where your son is or my men will cut out your tongue. I do not wish this. I do not enjoy this. But I will do it.”
    Tupac Amaru struggled to rise, coughing blood, drenched in blood. Blood clouded his eyes so that his torturers were gray, distant shapes. He lifted his face toward the window, wanting to tell Hualpa that he had not betrayed him, but his hands slipped in his own blood. He fell back against the salt birch floor —
    — and immediately convulsed, cried out