The Demon of the Air

by Simon Levack

  He sat gazing up at the stars, as well he might. It was a clear winter’s night and the sky was ablaze. He seemed oblivious to our approach until he had my master standing next to him.

  “We need this boat,” Lord Feathered in Black told him bluntly.

  The man almost fell in. He was still recovering himself as the rest of us gathered around my master, holding onto the jetty with one hand as he tried to stop the canoe swaying under him.

  “What do you mean, you need the boat? You can’t have it, it isn’t yours! Who do you think you are, the Emperor?”

  “Almost,” said his Lordship dryly. “Handy, bring that torch over here.”

  Handy was approximately sober. Before we had left the house Lion and I had poured four cups full of strong honeyed chocolate down his throat. My brother had suggested tipping a fifth over his head, but there had been no need. At least he was capable of speech and had not stumbled into the canal, and the torch we had borrowed swayed only a little as he held it over the Chief Minister’s headdress.

  The boatman made an inarticulate noise.

  “If this boat belongs to my cousin, the Emperor,” my master went on pleasantly, “then I will apologize to him personally in the morning. If it doesn’t, then it’s mine!”

  “But it’s the middle of the night!” the poor man protested. “You can’t go anywhere in the dark!”

  “Nonsense! The merchants travel by night all the time!”

  The boatman went quiet. At night a woman’s voice heard out of doors was as likely as not to be a portent. She might be the goddess Cihuacoatl, or the soul of a dead mother returned to Earth to haunt the streets and bring sickness to men, or one of those hideous hunchbacked dwarfs that would accost a man visiting the latrines after dark to tell him he was about to die. Lily was none of these, but the boatman did not know that.

  The next voice he heard was Lion’s. “If you won’t do it for the Chief Minister,” he growled, “then you can do it for me. I’m the Guardian of the Waterfront. Either you do what you’re told or I’ll cut your legs off!”

  The man slumped miserably in the bottom of his boat. “All right. Tell me where you want to go, but you’ll need another boat—this is a one-man job.”

  “Fine.” My master lurched into the canoe and installed himself in the bow. “Lily can come with us, she doesn’t weigh much. Bring the torch.”

  “We’d better get in the next boat,” I said, as Handy gave the woman the torch.

  “It’s empty,” protested Lion. I raced along the line of moored canoes until I found one with a boatman in it, but the man was fast asleep and snoring resoundingly.

  “Hurry up!” cried my master, as Lily settled herself in his boat. His boatman, probably eager to put some distance between himself and my brother, pushed off from the jetty immediately.

  I ran back to join Handy and Lion.

  “They’re getting away!” My brother’s tone was anguished. “We’ll never rouse another boatman in time to catch them up.”

  “Then we’ll have to do without,” I said. “We’ll take this one. Handy, you can paddle a canoe, can’t you?”

  Once we had cleared the last of the canals and reached the open water of the lake we turned left, following the glint of torchlight in front of us until the Chief Minister, Lily and their boatman reached the causeway. There they stopped.

  As we drew alongside it became plain that something had got them excited. We could hear raised voices and see the boatman’s paddle waving uncertainly in the air as he tried to make his point.

  “What’s up?” Lion called out.

  Lily answered. “This man thinks he knows the boat we’re looking for!”

  “If it’s the boat with the birds,” the boatman replied, “then everyone on the water knows it. Anyone could have told you, if you’d asked, and they’d have told you to give it a wide berth, too! I’m not going anywhere near it. There’s no telling what would happen!”

  “I can tell you exactly what will happen if you don’t go on,” my master snapped. “What are you afraid of, anyway?”

  In a low voice, the man said: “Sorcery.”

  “Aha!” cried his Lordship triumphantly. “We’ve found them!”

  “What do you mean by sorcery?” I asked.

  “There are sorcerers on that boat. You can tell, because they can change themselves into birds and fly away. I haven’t seen it myself, but I know people who have. And why isn’t it moored near the city, instead of tucked away in a creek by itself? And strange sounds have been heard from it—horrible sounds, like men screaming.”

  Lily sat impassively, holding the torch up unwaveringly as she listened.

  “How do you know the birds are sorcerers?” I asked. “How do you know they aren’t just birds?”

  “They talk,” the boatman said in a hushed voice.

  3

  The surface of the lake was like polished obsidian, the stars’ reflections, broken by ripples, as enigmatic as the shadows that would rise and fall in an obsidian mirror.

  There were no voices or footsteps on the causeway and no paddles except ours broke the water around us.

  The light from Lily’s torch fell on the raised side of the causeway, throwing into relief the stones set into the wall. Since we had caught up with His Lordship’s party, his boatman had been less eager than ever and Handy had no difficulty keeping up with him.

  “You’re on the wrong side of the causeway, for a start,” the boatman had pointed out sulkily.

  “That’s all right,” my master had responded blithely. “The bridges are all raised at night. We’ll pass through at the last one. We’d better cut across the lake and head straight for your creek after that. I’ve no intention of explaining myself to the warriors in the guard post at the end of the causeway.”

  “Suppose we find Young Warrior’s boat,” I had said, thinking it was high time somebody asked an obvious question, “what do you propose to do then?”

  “We’ll make him come quietly, or we’ll kill him. The boy too.”

  “No!” My cry of protest had burst out of me before I had time to think about it. To the five shocked faces that turned toward me, I had explained: “You can’t just murder the lad out of hand. You don’t know what he’s done—maybe he couldn’t help it, maybe his father forced him into it!” I had turned to my brother for support. “The sorcerers—what about the sorcerers?”

  The torchlight had thrown Lion’s face into sharp relief, casting deep shadows that made it look like a bare skull and about as easy to read. His eyes had glittered like jewels in the flickering light as he looked from my master to me. “We’ll take the sorcerers—the ones that are left—and put them back where they belong: in prison. That’s right—isn’t it, my Lord? Those were Montezuma’s orders.”

  There had been a long, uncomfortable silence then, before my master had finally pronounced: “It all depends on what we find when we get there. I will decide then!”

  “And my son?”

  Lily had still been holding the torch steady in the Chief Minister’s canoe. Her hand had trembled slightly, shaking loose a few embers that had spiraled slowly into the water.

  “It all depends,” my master had repeated gruffly.

  Now Lion, Handy and I sat in silence as we watched the causeway slide by and waited for a dark interval to appear, revealing the last bridge and the place where we were to cross to the southern side.

  Handy said: “I still don’t understand what Shining Light’s doing on that boat. I thought he was on a trading venture. I saw him leave. He had a canoe full of provisions. It was One Reed, remember, and you thought it was a funny day to be off on a long journey.”

  “I suppose the provisions were for Young Warrior, the boy and the sorcerers,” I said.

  “Which means,” my brother pointed out, “that whenever the merchant and his boyfriend—or his boyfriend’s father, whatever—had their falling out, it must have been after that, mustn’t it? Shining Light would hardly have
delivered himself up as a hostage, complete with his own food supply.”

  “So what did they have a row about?” Handy asked.

  I hesitated while I tried to imagine what might have been going through the merchant’s mind. “I suppose Shining Light was going to lie low for a while, to keep out of the way of the merchants—not to mention the Chief Minister! He told his mother to pretend he’d gone on a trading venture. Maybe that’s why you were asked to deliver his message to my master, Handy—so that you could attest to the fact that he was off somewhere with a boat full of provisions, as if he was going on a long journey. In fact he wasn’t, but he needed somewhere to hide. The obvious place was Young Warrior’s boat. Maybe being cooped up with that vicious young man for a few days was enough to convince Young Warrior and Nimble that he was more useful as a hostage than a guest. Then again …”

  Then again, I realized, what I had just said was nonsense. Lily had told me that Shining Light had not known where Curling Mist’s warehouse was. If that was the truth, then Shining Light could not have delivered himself to Curling Mist—or Young Warrior—willingly or otherwise, because he would not have known where to find him.

  If that was the truth.

  Lily had no reason to lie to me about that; nor had her father, who had told the same story, accounting for the bare room in their house. But suppose Shining Light had lied to both of them?

  As soon as that thought occurred to me, the fabric of the story I had woven together out of the past few days’ events began to unravel. Things that I had seen and heard and all but forgotten about came to mind, and each was like a loose thread pulled away from the cloth until there was nothing left of it but the truth.

  And I had seen the truth myself, only that evening, without recognizing it. I had even told Lion and Lily about it, without knowing what I was saying.

  “We’ve got it all wrong,” I started to say, but Lion interrupted me.

  “Whatever they fell out over, you can ask them both about it soon. Here’s the bridge!”

  The Chief Minister’s boat coasted through the gap in the causeway and then, just as we turned to follow it, it vanished. There was a faint hissing sound as Lily doused the torch in the water of the lake, and then there was nothing to see by but the stars and the water’s own eerie phosphorescence.

  Trailing his paddle in the water, Handy brought us to a halt next to the other craft.

  “It’s a creek, a little bit south of Chapultepec.” Although this was still a long pull away by canoe, my master’s boatman had taken to whispering. “When we reach the aqueduct we’re almost there. The boat you’re looking for is moored in its mouth, a fair distance from the shore.”

  “That makes sense,” my brother muttered, “if he doesn’t want the sorcerers slipping overboard and swimming for it. We’ll have to get into the creek mouth as quietly as possible and try to get between him and the shore. If Young Warrior or anyone else tries to escape that way we should catch them.”

  Lord Feathered in Black silently prodded his boatman with his foot, and the man slowly took up his paddle and dipped it in the water.

  “If there’s a boat in there, I can’t see it,” Lion whispered.

  We lay in the bow of the canoe, staring into the tangled darkness that marked the edge of the lake. We dared not stand up, in case our quarry caught sight of us outlined against the stars.

  “Are we sure this is the right place?” Handy asked.

  “He seems to think so.” I looked over my shoulder at the dark, quiet water behind us, where I assumed my master’s boat still floated. “Our reluctant boatman was happy enough about finding the aqueduct.” The man had uttered a cry of delight, quickly stifled, when the long, low stone structure had emerged out of the darkness, as though he had surprised himself with his own skill. It had taken a long time to get that far, paddling cautiously through the gloom. The final leg of the journey, following the shoreline down to the creek mouth where our quarry was supposedly waiting, had been all too short.

  “Let’s go anyway. I’m tired of waiting.” I spoke through teeth clenched to stop them chattering. I had told myself it was a cold night, although it must have been colder for Handy, because after we had passed Chapultepec he had taken his breechcloth off and wrapped it around his paddle to muffle it.

  “If we keep to the middle of the channel,” Handy suggested, “we ought to find them.” He thrust his paddle into the water and began to push the canoe forward.

  A faint splash from behind us told me that the other canoe was on the move as well, but its boatman had not troubled to muffle his paddle, and we could hear its progress clearly as it forged ahead, steering a course wide of our own and much closer to the bank. A fleck of foam, gleaming white in the starlight, showed where the paddle blade dug into the water, tearing its surface and throwing it up as he sped past us.

  “What’s he doing?” Handy muttered. “He’s far too close to the bank! He’s going to run aground if he’s not careful!”

  “Not to mention the noise he’s making,” Lion said.

  I suddenly realized what the man was up to. “He wants to run aground! He’s trying to escape!” I was already standing up, making our canoe rock as I strained to see where the other boat was going.

  Across the water came a crash and the sound of splintering wood.

  The brief silence that followed ended with the beat of heavy wings as some large bird, perhaps a heron, started from its roosting place and took flight across the lake.

  “They’ve hit!” Handy observed.

  “Quiet!” I snapped. Had I imagined it, or had there been another sound? Even as I struggled to identify it, however, it was obliterated by curses and recriminations from the direction of the wrecked canoe.

  “Old Black Feathers is not happy,” remarked my brother.

  “Nor is the lady,” added Handy.

  It struck me that the merchants must bring their women up differently from the rest of us, because I was sure my mother had never known some of the words Lily was using. I wondered if she had learned them in the marketplace. I could not hear the boatman’s voice at all. I supposed he had made good his escape, leaping overboard as soon as he knew the crash was imminent.

  “Well, that’s that,” declared Lion. “Everyone on this side of the lake will know we’re here now. We might as well forget it.” He scrambled to his feet to join me in standing unsteadily in the center of the canoe. “If Young Warrior was ever here, he’ll be on the move. He can hardly have missed that lot—”

  “Well, shut up, then!”

  As Lion lapsed into shocked silence I looked hurriedly around. “If he’s moving, we should be able to hear him!” I explained. “That’s if my master and Lily will be quiet … Will you be quiet?” My last words were shouted to be heard over the commotion on the bank.

  There was a momentary pause before my master’s incredulous voice came back to me, reduced to little more than an outraged croak. “What did you say?”

  “Listen!”

  Everybody listened.

  “What was that?” asked Handy.

  Simultaneously he, Lion and I turned around.

  “Splashing,” Lion suggested. “Is it someone swimming?”

  Suddenly we were talking in whispers again. The three of us kept as still as we could with the canoe swaying beneath us, while we peered into the gloom around us, and even the voices from my master’s stranded canoe were stilled.

  “I can’t see …” I began.

  “What’s that?” Handy seized my forearm and tugged it toward where he wanted me to look. “Did you see?”

  Lion joined in. “Yes! Yes! I see!”

  Then I saw it too: a flash of white, like spray driven from the surface of the lake. I saw it again, but the second time there was something else with it: a pale flicker of movement, the sort a bare arm might make, frantically wielding a paddle.

  Raising my eyes a little, I saw a dark mass lying in the water, just in front of us and not much more t
han a spear-cast away.

  From behind me came the sound of maguey fiber ripping as Handy tore the breechcloth from the blade of his paddle.

  “Come on, everybody paddle!” Lion had thrown himself into the bottom of the canoe and was striking the water urgently with his hands, and before I had time to reflect on how pointless this was I was doing it too, drenching myself in clouds of icy spray as I tried my pathetic best to add to our speed.

  In no time my arms ached, and despite my exertions I was trembling with cold. My hands and feet were going numb and yet the strange, dark boat ahead of us seemed to get no nearer. My head began to spin and I closed my eyes for a moment to clear it.

  When I opened them again, the boat was on top of us.

  It was the largest craft I had seen. It must, as I had guessed, have been carved out of a whole tree, and a tall one at that. It had been decked over and a shelter the size of a small house stood on the deck, with a number of shapeless bundles scattered around it. I barely had the time to take all this in before we ran into it with a force that jammed my face into the bow of the canoe.

  Out of the darkness, and over the ringing in my ears, I heard someone mumble thickly: “We’ve hit!”

  All around me were noise and movement: angry male voices and running feet. The canoe seemed to be swaying, although as soon as I tried extracting myself from the narrow space I had been tossed into I realized it was because my head was spinning from the blow it had taken in the collision. The thick mumbling voice had been my own.

  I got to my knees, bringing my head level with the side of the canoe just as a sandaled foot landed on it. A moment later the foot took off again, and the canoe gave a sickening lurch as my brother launched himself into the air, screaming like an injured jaguar. As I tried to stand, with Lion’s war cry echoing off the trees at the lake’s edge, Handy shoved me aside. I heard the slap of his bare foot as he planted it where my brother’s had been and then he too hurled himself across the gap between the boats.

  “Wait!” It came out as an unintelligible gasp. What were they using for weapons?