The Demon of the Air

by Simon Levack

  The slaughter of ordinary peasants, the subjects of a town so close to Mexico itself, seemed to me an act so audacious, so desperate, so utterly lawless that the man who could order it must be capable of anything. At that moment I did not much care why he had done it. All I could think about was what it meant for me—for his slave, the man most at his mercy.

  Who, I asked myself, could protect me from a man like that, once he decided I had let him down once too often, and the trouble he would put himself to by explaining my death away was less than the trouble of keeping me alive?

  Only the Emperor himself, I knew, and I also knew that Montezuma would not trouble himself for a moment about the life of a slave unless I gave him what he wanted: the sorcerers. But all I could offer him now was a tongue-tied boy who, from what I had seen and heard, could not even tell us his own name.

  Night had fallen by the time I left. The boy was still with Star. He had eaten something but for all our coaxing had still not said a word. Handy urged me to stay, but I knew I had to get back to my master’s house. I was going to have a difficult enough time as it was, explaining where I had been.

  I was going to have to explain it to Lion, too. My brother had sent me to Coyoacan, and as I walked slowly home, treading carefully to avoid straying into the dark waters of the canal beside me, I rehearsed how I was going to tell him what we had found.

  But what had we found?

  I had gone to Coyoacan because my brother had hinted that if I went there I would find some clue to what Lord Feathered in Black had done, in the course of his search for the sorcerers. What I had found was not a sorcerer, but the aftermath of a massacre. It looked as if the victims had been the wife and children of the Bathed Slave who had jumped from the Great Pyramid. The Emperor and my master were both convinced that this man was himself a sorcerer, which explained why Lord Feathered in Black had apparently sent soldiers to his house in search of sorcerers. But killing the man’s family would not have helped my master to find him. There must have been another reason for doing that, but what was it?

  Then I thought about the warrior who had left his sandal strap at the house. He had been one of the army’s elite, perhaps either a Shorn One or an Otomi, the kind who would kill to order and never ask why. Who else would the Chief Minister trust to wipe out a whole family quickly, efficiently and without making a fuss?

  As soon as that question occurred to me I saw a possible answer, and it was so abhorrent that I had to stop walking for a moment to fight the wave of nausea that threatened to engulf me.

  My brother was one of the army’s elite. The strap could easily have been his.

  It was my brother who had told me about the warriors going to Coyoacan. I had thought at the time that he knew much more than he was letting on, and that he seemed strangely unsure of himself, as if afraid of saying too much. He would always obey orders and he would carry them out with ruthless dispatch. Yet he was one of the most pious, upright, unbending men I had ever known. What had been done in that village was something he would surely never have stooped to, no matter who ordered it.

  “No.” I swallowed a couple of times. “He couldn’t … .”

  I walked on slowly, unable to dismiss the appalling thought until I rounded the last corner before my master’s house and had it driven from my mind by the sight of yet another death.

  5

  A broad canal ran past the front of the Chief Minister’s house. His Lordship could alight from his canoe and climb straight up the steps to his private apartments if he chose to. It was here that I had been hailed by the steward three days earlier, before that tense interview with my master at the top of the steps. Tonight my intention was just what it had been then: to find my sleeping mat and curl up on it under my cloak.

  As soon as I saw the steps I knew this was not going to happen. They were covered in people standing or sitting on them, making them look like the tiers of stone seats surrounding a ball court.

  Several pairs of eyes turned on me for a moment, before swiveling back silently toward the canal. As soon as I had climbed a little way up the steps and turned around to get a good look at the water, I saw why.

  From behind me, someone said: “His Lordship should be back soon.” There was a general murmur of assent, as if our master’s arrival would help.

  Without taking my eyes off the thing floating in the water, I said: “Has anyone sent for a priest?”

  With neither my master nor his steward to be found, I found myself taking charge. I had them moor boats across the canal in two places, so as to keep the stretch opposite my master’s house clear of traffic. Then the two priests who had been sent for went out into the middle of the waterway in a canoe with a long pole to fish the dead man out.

  “If it’s a drowning, it’s our job,” one of them reminded me. The bodies of the drowned, like their souls, belonged to the rain-god and no one except a priest could handle one.

  “Just get the body back here,” I said wearily. “His Lordship will want to know who he is and what happened to him on Earth, not where his soul is going.”

  The priests had no trouble finding the body. It was floating in plain sight. It must have been dumped in the water earlier that evening, perhaps as soon as it had got dark, since otherwise someone would surely have seen it being left. Getting it out proved unexpectedly hard, however. The priests kept catching it with their pole only to find that it would not move. It was only after nearly capsizing their canoe twice that they stripped off their cloaks and started delving into the water to find out why.

  Seen from the shore in starlight, the priests’ sooty bodies, long black hair and sticklike limbs made them look like cranes hunting fish on the lake.

  Once they had located the rope, it took only a few moments to haul the stone up. It had been tied to the body’s ankle and used as an anchor.

  They heaved the body over the side and into the bottom of their boat. They gave it the briefest of examinations before heading back toward the bank. As they scrambled onto dry land their relief was visible in their faces.

  “You were right to call us, but it’s not a matter for us, after all,” the younger of the two told me. “He didn’t drown. His throat was cut.”

  That explained why he and his colleague were relieved, for it meant they would not have to bury the body. Those who died by water were not cremated but interred, normally in their own courtyards, in a sitting position. Getting them that way, when they were as often as not slimy, bloated, stinking and half eaten by fish, was not a pleasant task.

  “Someone fetch a torch,” I commanded, peering over the side of the boat.

  The dead man was naked. It was easy to see that he had been thin, almost emaciated. The hair plastered to the side of his head was long. His eyes and mouth were wide open, as if in terror.

  The throat had been slashed cleanly across. That may have been the fatal wound, but it was by no means the only one. The body was covered with strange marks, like scars of varying sizes, from tiny punctures to tracts of ugly puckered flesh.

  “Not been in the water very long, if you ask me,” the young priest said conversationally, peering over my shoulder. “He’s not swollen up, and the skin’s barely discolored. Doesn’t smell too bad, either.”

  I stretched a hand out behind me, without a word, and someone put a pine torch in it. I clambered into the boat. The priests had got the head and torso aboard but left the feet dangling in the water. I pulled them over the side one at a time, looking closely at the rope tied around one of the ankles as I did so.

  “Whoever decided to leave a corpse floating opposite my master’s house meant us to find it,” I observed.

  “You think it was some sort of message?” It was the young priest again.

  “Part of a message, at most,” I replied. “A corpse by itself doesn’t amount to much of a message, does it?”

  I looked at the naked body, frowning. After what I had seen that day it was hard to feel anything for this unknown victim e
xcept bewilderment. Had he really been killed just to convey a message? And if so, where was the rest of it—the key to whatever threat or warning he represented? I thought of a letter, but there was no obvious place where one could be hidden. My eyes roamed over the torso and limbs, searching for some pattern in the wounds covering them, but there was nothing there. Then I looked at the head again and saw the answer.

  “I wonder …” I reached down and parted the dead man’s long, lank hair. It was wet and sticky and clung to my fingers like cobwebs as they delved into it. They brushed against an ear, and the slick skin behind it, and something else—a coarser, less pliant surface than the skin. Of course, I thought, as I drew the little cloth square out and unfolded it, it would not be paper. Paper would have disintegrated in the water.

  Sure enough, someone had drawn on the cloth. It had been hastily done and the ink had got a little smudged but the message was clear enough for me to read. It was simple enough: just a name-glyph.

  “At least we know his name, now.”

  Then I looked at the drawings again. A single spot, a skull, a crude little stick figure wielding a sword and standing on a path decorated with chevrons.

  “Cemiquiztli Yaotl.” I mouthed the words over and over again like an idiot, while the cloth shook in my hands.

  “Cemiquiztli” meant “One Death” and “Yaotl” meant “Enemy,” but taken together they spelled out my own name.

  “Is this someone’s idea of a joke?” I demanded. I began climbing out of the canoe, too shocked to look where I was going. “Did someone tell you to put this with the body?” I waved the piece of cloth in the priest’s face.

  The priest was not there anymore. The face opposite mine as I stepped onto the edge of the canal was my master’s. Next to him was his steward. They were both staring at me, their expressions comically alike, with their eyes starting from their heads and their lower jaws slack with amazement.

  The steward recovered first. Stepping delicately around our master, he reached for the cloth square, plucking it from my hand.

  “I think we’d better have this, Yaotl.”

  The Chief Minister seemed to have lost the power of speech. He kept staring at the body in the bottom of the boat with his mouth hanging open like an imbecile’s. His steward silently pressed the note from the body into his nerveless fingers. Someone else took the torch from me and held it over my master’s head so that he could read it.

  He ignored the note as if unaware that he had it. He seemed oblivious to everything around him except the corpse. Nobody else dared to speak, even in a whisper, and so the only sound was his own breathing. It did not sound healthy—quick and shallow and with an ugly rattle in it.

  Finally he broke the silence himself. “Who did this?” he gasped.

  “My Lord,” the steward responded in his most simpering tone, “perhaps the note I gave you …”

  My master glanced down at the piece of cloth he was holding as if noticing it for the first time. He looked at the body again, and then turned his sharp, glittering eyes on me. It struck me then that they never seemed to age: however lined his face and frail his body got, they were always the same, as though made out of some hard, bright, imperishable stuff like jade or polished marble. Now their gaze was hooded, malevolent and calculating, and made me feel as cold as if I, and not the corpse, had spent the evening floating in the canal. The fear that had assailed me at Handy’s house came back redoubled.

  “Cemiquiztli Yaotl.” My master’s lips moved soundlessly over the name.

  “M-my Lord,” I stammered. “We found that note on the body—the body was in the canal. I had priests sent for …”

  “Yes, yes, I know all that.” My master looked at the note again. “Why has it got your name on it?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied in a wretched whisper.

  “I do.” The grim certainty in his words matched his expression. When he looked at me again his lips were pressed together in a thin line. “Huitztic!”

  “My Lord?” the steward responded eagerly.

  “Escort Yaotl to his room—and make sure he stays there until I send for him!”

  “But …” I began, but the Chief Minister did not want to hear me. The old man who had had a whole family done to death in Coyoacan quelled my protest with a glare, while his sneering steward propelled me out of his sight, a calloused hand clamped firmly on my arm.

  My master’s last words seemed to hang in the air behind us.

  “Cemiquiztli Yaotl! I will deal with you in the morning!”

  6

  “You get in there and stay put,” the steward snarled as he shoved me through the doorway. “I’ve got to talk to Rabbit.”

  Rabbit was a large, dim man who had been in my master’s household since boyhood and had risen eventually to the menial position of litter bearer. He had had the misfortune to cross our path as the steward was dragging me back to my room, and had been ordered to come with us. The steward had no intention of spending the rest of a winter’s night huddled in the open courtyard watching my doorway, and thought poor old Rabbit would be the ideal deputy.

  I slumped against the wall in a corner of my room, with all thought of sleep gone. I had come home that evening with my mind in turmoil.

  Why had a message bearing my name been left on the body? Did it have something to do with the sorcerers? I felt that it must, but could not see what.

  There had been something about the dead man himself—but I would have to see his body again to be certain, and I could hardly do that, I told myself gloomily, while I was confined to my room.

  And I suspected that by the time they came to let me out of here it would be too late.

  “So what have you done this time? And what’s Rabbit doing out there?”

  On any other night I would have dreaded the sound of Costly’s voice, but tonight it was a relief to hear he was awake. It gave me a chance to share my troubles instead of brooding on them. The old slave lived for gossip and devoured every word eagerly.

  As soon as I had finished he said astutely: “So let me guess. You think the body in the canal might be one of those sorcerers the old man’s so anxious to get his hands on, is that right?”

  “It could be,” I said. “I’d need to look at it again—and that still wouldn’t tell me why it had my name on it.” I growled in frustration. “But I can’t do anything about it from in here, can I? How do I get past Rabbit?” I could picture the litter bearer on guard opposite our doorway, no doubt wishing he was curled up on his own sleeping mat rather than squatting in this chilly courtyard, but wide-awake nonetheless and not about to let his master down.

  “Rabbit?” the old man scoffed. “I’ve known him since he was a boy. You leave him to me. Let’s just get him in here, shall we?” Before I could react he had raised his voice to a loud croak and was calling the litter bearer’s name.

  A suspicious-looking face appeared in the doorway. “What do you want?”

  “I don’t want anything,” responded Costly cheerfully. “We just thought you might be more comfortable in here with us than freezing your balls off out there in the courtyard!”

  Rabbit scowled. “What’s it to you if I would?”

  “Oh, come on.” Costly put on an air of hurt innocence. “We all know it’s nothing personal between you and Yaotl.” That was true enough: I had never thought of the litter bearer as anything other than an amiable buffoon. “You just had the bad luck to get picked on by the steward. But if you’re going to keep an eye on Yaotl, you might as well do it in comfort from where you can see him, don’t you think?”

  The face in the doorway took on a puzzled frown as Rabbit tried to work out what Costly was after. “I’m not sure …” he began.

  “So where’s the harm? Besides,” the old slave added, lowering his voice mischievously, “I’m fed up with hearing Yaotl’s problems. You could tell me yours, for a change. Say, how are things between you and the wife now?”

  This appeared to hav
e a disastrous effect. It was followed by the briefest of pauses and then the single word “Fine,” and Rabbit’s head vanished.

  “You idiot!” I hissed, but Costly seemed unperturbed. “So the old trouble hasn’t come back, then?” he called out after the other man.

  A moment later Rabbit was back. He took two steps into the room and growled at Costly: “No, it hasn’t! And I’ll thank you not to mention it in front of him!”

  The old slave cackled lewdly. “Oh, don’t worry about Yaotl. He used to be a priest, and you know they never do it at all—he hasn’t the faintest idea what we’re talking about!” I kept silent. “Still, I’m glad to hear everything’s working properly now. It’s funny, though: I was thinking about you just the other day, and remembering when I had the same trouble myself. I had to go to a curer for some medicine …”

  “Did it work?” The eagerness in the litter bearer’s voice told its own story.

  “Work? It was like walking around with a lump of hardwood between my legs! I never even had to use it all. Probably still got some, somewhere.”

  I could not believe even Rabbit was stupid enough to fall for a simple ruse like this, but he was obviously desperate. “I don’t suppose it still works, though,” he said nonchalantly.

  “Oh, I should think it’s gone off by now,” the old slave agreed. “And it probably never would have worked in the first place unless you invoked the right gods when you took it. It wouldn’t be much use to me now, anyway! But if you had still been having problems—well, I’m just glad to hear you aren’t.”