"A bird? Not a little bird?" She waited for me to shake my head, then started ticking off possibilities on her fingers.

"First thing that occurs to me is something to do with Quetzalcoatf."

"You just made dinner worth putting on the expense account," I said, beaming. "I hadn't thought of that."

I felt stupid for not thinking of it, too, for no sooner had I spoken than a busboy stopped at the table to clear away some dirty dishes. Unlike our waiter, he wasn't Hanese; he was stockier, a little darker, and spoke his little Anglo-Saxon with a strong Spainish accent. A lot of the scutwork in Angels City gets done by people from the south. As Sudakis had said, more of them come here every year, too. Times are so hard, people so poor, down in the Empire that even scutwork looks good to a lot of people.

Angels City, much of the Confederation's southwest, used to belong to the Empire of Azteca. The nobles, some of them, still plot revenge after a century and a half. For that matter, though most people in the Empire speak Spainish these days, some of the old families there, the ones that go back before the Spaniards came, go right on worshiping then own gods in secret, even though they go to Mass, too.

Quetzalcoati, the Feathered Serpent, is much the nicest of those gods, believe me.

The old families crave the Empire's old borders, too, even if their own ancestors never ruled hereabouts. They call our southwest Azdan, and dream it's theirs. The way immigration is headed, in a couple of generations that may be true in all but name. Some people, though, might not want to wait. So, Quetzalcoati.

Judy asked, "What ideas have you had yourself?" Thinking is hard work. She didn't want to do it all herself, for which I couldn't blame her.

I seized a big, meaty mushroom on my chopsticks, then said, "The Peacock Throne crossed my mind."