บท 46: 46th Time

Xixata smiled shyly. It was a room exactly like hers. Huge, bare. The difference was the heating and the huge blankets that covered the polished stone for a bed.

--I see that Saba Tamac and my daughter Altulay have raised you well. I didn't think so. Apart from wasting time dancing, singing and weaving, what other things did you learn in the Chibcha court.

--I learned some astronomy and mathematics," --the girl answered carefully.

--Really? You are not lying to me?"-- said the old man, suddenly fascinated to hear what was said, with a different gleam in his eye; for the great Capac, besides being cold and proud, was a construction and metarulgic engineer, a distinguished mathematician, a major astronomer, physician, architect, polyglot, unsurpassed astrologer and architect without equal.

---Let's see, bring those papyri over there," --ordered the man, with a hopeful tone in his voice.