The Demon of the Air

by Simon Levack

  “No!” she cried vehemently. “It was not! I mean, who said we were doing anything …” She stumbled to a confused halt.

  I waited, listening in silence to her quick, agitated breathing. I was not about to ask any more questions and risk being thrown out into the street.

  Eventually she said, in a low, guttural voice: “My son gambles. It isn’t a secret. He has given more of his family’s wealth away to Curling Mist than I care to remember, and there are still debts. They have to be paid, do you understand? Merchants trade on their reputation: we would be ruined if they were not honored. So, yes,” she went on, forcing each word out between clenched teeth, “I did go to see the boy, to pay some of what my son owed his father, but I have never met the father and what I told you about my son is true—I will eat earth!”

  Then, keeping her eyes on me the whole time, she slowly knelt down, touched the ground beside her with a fingertip, and solemnly brought the fingertip to her lips.

  I tried not to react. I tried not to show my shock at the woman’s impiety, or surprise at the extent of her desperation, because I was convinced she was lying.

  “What was the message?”

  “Message?” I repeated absently.

  “The message you wanted conveyed to my son.”

  I hesitated. I was in no fit state to confront a ruthless killer now. On the other hand, I realized that what I had intended to say really did not matter. It was my name that had been found on the body in the canal. It would be enough for Lily just to tell her son or his allies where I was.

  Perhaps she would not betray me to them, though. I clung once more to the thought that she had saved me in the marketplace and brought me here and nursed me and done nothing to hurt me when she had ample opportunity. Perhaps the best way to dissuade her from going to my enemies was to tell her what she had demanded to know.

  I described all that I had seen and done since the day I had met her son, at the Festival of the Raising of Banners. By the time I had finished my throat was dry and my head was throbbing with the effort of remembering it all, but I got a strange sense of relief at having had someone to tell the story to, even someone I did not trust.

  “So my son’s Bathed Slave was a sorcerer,” Lily said wonderingly. “But I don’t understand how Shining Light got hold of him.”

  “Neither do I. I wondered if he had got him from Curling Mist, but it could just as well have been the other way round, and either way I can’t see how he fell into their hands.” I studied her for a moment until the pain between my eyes forced them shut. “What was going on between your son and Curling Mist? Was it just gambling, or was there something more?”

  She looked at me sharply. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Nothing,” I replied hastily, alarmed by her tone. “But I know Shining Light had one of the prisoners, and it looks as if Curling Mist and Nimble had another, and they were both treated the same way before they died, and I can’t see why. And my name comes into it somewhere, and I can’t see why that is, either …” I ended on a groan as the pain in my head was starting to make me dizzy.

  The woman stood up abruptly. “You need to rest.”

  “But …”

  “And I have work to do,” she added in a voice that did not invite argument.

  As she walked away I remembered something.

  “Lily.”

  I heard her footsteps falter. “What?”

  I looked at her as levelly as I could, through eyes squinting with pain under droopy, puffy lids. She stood with her weight on her left foot and the right slightly raised, a muscle in the ankle twitching as it made up its mind whether to take the next step or not, and looked at me over her shoulder with her eyebrows drawn together and her lips pursed thoughtfully, as if she was trying to anticipate my next words.

  “Thank you for saving my life,” I said.

  Lily’s work included rousing her aged father, who found it difficult to get up in the morning. Soon after she left me the old man appeared, stumbling into view on the arm of a servant, bearing a sour look and a gourd full of liquid.

  “Not against the tree. There’s a knot in the wood, it’s like an arrowhead between my shoulder blades. Put me against the wall, next to the slave, there.”

  As soon as the servant was out of sight he pulled the maize cob out of the neck of his gourd and upended it into his mouth, smacking his lips when he was done. When he turned to me the smell of his breath matched his expression.

  “You’re still here, then? Well, as my daughter seems to have taken a fancy to you, I’d better make you welcome. Have a drink!”

  I felt myself recoil as he thrust the gourd toward me, even though part of me wanted to seize it from him and drain it in several gulps.

  “Come on,” he snapped impatiently. “It’s all right. You’re ill and I’m old. We might as well both make the most of it!”

  I eyed the gourd suspiciously. But my bruises were hurting. I told myself it was for medicinal purposes, and that made it all right.

  My memory of the rest of that morning is obscured by pain and sacred wine.

  When I had drunk, it had been to make the days pass more quickly. Kindly clearly felt that, having reached the age when drunkenness was allowed, he had a sacred duty to make up for a lifetime’s restraint. He drank with the kind of determined concentration that I had seen on the faces of novice priests learning to recite old hymns from memory.

  While I still could, I tried to remember why I had come to the house and gone looking for his daughter in the first place, and before the drink had completely paralyzed my already swollen tongue, I tried to tease some information out of him.

  “Tell me about your grandson.”

  “What about him?”

  “Has he always been a gambler?”

  Kindly frowned at me over the curved surface of his gourd. “I suppose so. You know how it is: they start off as kids playing the Game of the Mat for beans, on a board scratched in the dirt, and it goes on from there. But I think it’s only in the last couple of years that it’s got really serious.”

  “Since he met Curling Mist?” I was guessing.

  He appraised the gourd for a moment before reluctantly handing it to me. “Could be.”

  “You see, what I think,” I said as I took a swig, “is maybe there’s more between them than just gambling.”

  The lined and leathery face grew dark.

  “What makes you say that?” he asked slowly.

  “I just mean that sacrifice of his,” I said carefully wishing neither of us had drunk so much. “I saw what state the man was in. He’d been tortured—beaten with burning torches and pricked with cactus spines. He wasn’t in any condition to be a Bathed Slave. In fact I don’t think anyone would have given a bag of cocoa beans for him, let alone presented him to a god. But he’s not the only man I’ve seen in that sort of state.” I found myself explaining again about my kidnapping, the body we had found floating in the canal outside my master’s house and the message that had accompanied it. While I spoke I put the drink down between us and I noticed that the old man made no move to pick it up until I had finished. His head was nodding on his chest, but it was nodding in time with my words, and he spoke up promptly when I had finished.

  “So Shining Light’s sacrifice and the body you think Curling Mist had something to do with were both treated the same way?” he mused. “Why would that be, though? Do you think my grandson gave his … associate a slave as a way of settling a gaming debt?”

  “That wouldn’t explain why he was tortured,” I pointed out, “nor where either the man in the canal or your grandson’s offering came from to begin with.”

  “Nor what they want from you,” the old man added. “It’s interesting that whoever left that message used your full name, isn’t it? I can’t see how my grandson would have known it. Curling Mist I wouldn’t know about.” He stroked the neck of the drinking gourd thoughtfully. “Did you ask Lily about any of this?”

  “She
didn’t seem to want to discuss it. Got quite angry, in fact.”

  “I’m not surprised.” He gave the gourd a thirsty glance and then pressed it to his lips in a sudden, almost convulsive movement.

  “You have to understand, I don’t know this Curling Mist,” he gasped, in mid-gulp. “Never met him. But anyone Shining Light takes up with would have to be a nasty piece of work. Torture, you say? Well, that sounds about right. He and my grandson should make a fine couple, in that case.”

  I stared at him as he took another long drink. “I don’t understand.”

  “That’s why my daughter was upset,” the old man said bitterly, when he had finally pulled the gourd away from his face. “Bad enough losing her husband to a bunch of savages, but to have her son burned to death for sodomy as well, that would be too much!”

  “Shining Light and Curling Mist?” I said incredulously.

  “Why not? Curling Mist has some hold on my grandson, and it’s not just money. He’s the one I was telling you about, who persuaded Shining Light to move all our property. It all ended up in Curling Mist’s own warehouse. As I said, I’ve never met the man, but he sounds like my grandson’s type: vicious. I told you once there were other vices that could seduce a man besides drinking, didn’t I?” He waved the gourd at me theatrically. “It’s not just the gambling, you see. I think Shining Light’s tried everything once. And he always had a cruel streak—I caught him once, he had one of Lily’s dogs in a sack with a turkey, I think he wanted to see which one would come out alive. Maybe they dreamed up this business with the sacrifice together as a kind of sick joke.”

  “And Lily knows about this?”

  “She knows what her son’s like, yes. But you can’t blame her for not wanting it talked about, can you?” He took up the gourd one last time, tipping it to let the last drops of liquid run into his mouth. “If it got out that her son liked boys instead of girls, he’d be killed and we’d be ruined.

  “In fact,” he added, turning a grin on me that had no humor in it whatsoever, “I wouldn’t let my daughter know I’ve even told you. She might kill you herself, just to keep your mouth shut!”

  2

  As if having one drunkard in this house wasn’t enough! Do you think I saved your miserable life just to provide that disgusting old sot with company?”

  The sound of Lily’s voice was like a hard rubber ball bouncing off the inside of my skull, although the words themselves seemed to come from far away and to be in a foreign language that I could just about understand with a lot of efforts.

  “He is your father.”

  “He could be the Sun, the Turquoise Prince himself, with a crowd of warriors dancing around him, and he’d still be a disgusting old sot! At least he has an excuse!”

  “So do I,” I ventured.

  “Oh no you don’t. The doctor prescribed snake’s tongue for you, not sacred wine, and that’s what you’re getting. Here!”

  I sniffed at the proffered bowl, which contained a brownish liquid. I knew it was not literally made of snakes’ tongues but of a herb which was used to treat chest pain. I had learned that much at school. They had not taught me how vile its smell was, but I assumed its taste could not be worse. I was wrong.

  “You might have mixed it with honey,” I spluttered.

  “I might,” she conceded, taking the bowl back. “Maybe I will, next time, if you learn to grow up!”

  It was getting toward evening, and a chilly breeze had got up and driven us indoors—Kindly to collapse, unconscious, on his mat, and me to endure revolting medicine and a lecture on the perils of drink.

  The stuff cleared my head, at least. I looked at Lily, who had knelt opposite me, by the open doorway, so that the sunlight that came into the room fell on her. She looked different, somehow, although I could not at first see why.

  “Tell me something, Lily. If I’m not your father’s drinking companion, what am I doing here?” I held my breath, fearing the kind of explosion a similar question had provoked that morning, but this time she took it calmly.

  “Getting better, of course. You were in such a bad way when the police had finished with you that I couldn’t see what else to do with you, except bring you back here.”

  “So you felt sorry for me? Look, I don’t want you to think I’m ungrateful, but if some beggar comes to your door offering withered chillies or stale maize cakes for sale, do you buy them? I doubt it.”

  She surprised me by looking hurt: she gave an audible sniff and turned her head away sharply As she did so the Sun caught her cheek and I realized what was different. Although her hair was still streaked with gray, her skin looked clearer and paler than before.

  On her the effect was so surprising that I could not help remarking: “Ocher?”

  She looked at me again. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You’ve painted your face.”

  “What do you mean? Oh, I see! No I haven’t,” she corrected me primly, although she could not quite suppress the smile that wanted to form on her lips. “Even if I had any reason to put on makeup, I couldn’t, not while my son’s … away. It’s like being in mourning, for us,” she added in a low voice. “This is only axin ointment, for the cold. It stops my skin drying out at night.”

  Her half smile did not chase the lines around her mouth and eyes away. If anything they deepened, but they looked now as if they might have been etched there by laughter as well as pain. They made me wonder how she could be in happier, more relaxed times.

  Since we seemed, just for a moment, to be able to speak to each other, I tried putting my question again.

  “Why am I really here?”

  She sighed. “Why do you think? I wanted to ask you about Shining Light’s sacrifice. Then when I saw you in the marketplace, I thought it was a gift from the gods.”

  “We were both lucky, then,” I said skeptically.

  “I had to speak to you, because I thought you could tell me about the offering—tell me something that would help me work out where he came from and why he did what he did. I know why my son would have had you with him, you see. He never told me, but it’s obvious enough. He knew he had not prepared the sacrifice properly, and he thought it would help if he had someone who knew all the rituals.”

  “I can see why he might have needed that,” I conceded, “but I don’t understand how he fixed on me. He might have got a real priest to advise him, and there must have been enough of his own people, merchants, that he could have turned to. Did your son ask my master for me in particular, or did my master volunteer my services?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  I followed my own train of thought. “Shining Light got my name from somewhere. What would have made him go to the Chief Minister? A mutual acquaintance? They both had dealings with Curling Mist.” I noticed Lily’s sharp intake of breath at my mention of the name, but I carried on thinking aloud. “So Curling Mist, or that boy of his, Nimble, could have suggested my name—but what for?” I groaned aloud, not from the pain of my wounds but from a much older, more enduring anguish. “It’s not even as if I’m a priest! I’m a scribe, a secretary, a messenger, a whipping boy for my master’s vicious dog of a steward. I haven’t set foot in a Priest House in a dozen or more years—what use could I have been anyway?”

  Lily said nothing. She was staring at me.

  Then I realized that I had been almost shouting, with my fists clenched like a baby’s and the muscles of my face clenched in an angry mask. With an effort and some pain I made them relax.

  “Sorry,” I muttered. “Sometimes it’s not so easy, remembering.”

  She leaned forward into the room and laid her hands on her knees.

  “What happened to you, Yaotl?” she asked earnestly. “You were a priest. You belonged to the gods. You belonged near the sky, in the mountains, on the summits of the pyramids. What made you give all that up to become another man’s possession?”

  “Perhaps the gods gave up on me,” I said lightly. It hurt, merely thinking a
bout this subject. “They do that, you know. They’re easily bored. They will raise a man up only to hurl him down again, and if it’s going to happen to you then it’s no use trying to prepare for it, or complaining. And I was dedicated to the most fickle of them all, the Smoking Mirror. Why do you think we call him ‘the Enemy on Both Hands?’”

  “Something drove you out of the temple,” she insisted. “What was it—a woman? An argument with another priest?”

  “It was a long time ago.” Being asked these things now was like being pricked with maguey spines. “It doesn’t matter any more. Please, let’s just forget it.”

  Memories, suddenly released, tumbled over each other in my head: the calculated cruelty of the priests, the temples with their reek of incense and slaughter, the hymns and prayers I still knew by heart, and the confusion, anger and despair that had ended it all. I could live without such memories, cheerfully abandoned years before, with the traces washed away by a cleansing tide of sacred wine.

  “You don’t want to tell me.” The woman sat back again, withdrawing from me a little, apparently feeling that my reserve was a poor return for her hospitality. “Well, it’s up to you.” She looked toward the doorway, as if making up her mind to leave.

  I realized, surprising myself, that I did not want her to go. All of a sudden sharing my memories with this woman seemed preferable to being left alone with them.

  “Do you know …” My voice faltered.

  She turned her head. “Yes?”

  “Do you know what happens during the month of Eating Maize and Beans, before the festival?”

  3

  The month of Eating Maize and Beans: it’s a time of testing. Summer is coming and if the rains fail, the city will starve, the way it did sixty years ago, when even the nobles had to sell their children for want of food. If a priest falters in a song or a sacrifice, the rain-god may just go away from us—empty his rain clouds on the far side of the mountains, perhaps, and water our enemies’ fields instead of ours. The priests have to be prepared for the festival. They have to be culled. Any who aren’t up to it have to be weeded out.”