Simon Levack: The Demon of the Air

The warning came too late. I heard the weapon’s faint whistle as it swung through the air in the very instant the blow fell.

He hit me with the flat of the sword, catching me between my shoulders with a force that sent me staggering to my knees. As I fell I half twisted around to see him launch himself toward me, the gleaming blade held aloft and a feral snarl on his lips.

“Remember this game, brother?” he cried.

I remembered: and suddenly we were little boys again, playing at being warriors, with sticks for weapons, and I had been knocked down, as usual, and my big brother was about to seize my hair in the tear-jerking grip that on a real battlefield would make me his captive.

“This is my beloved son!” His gloating cry completed the warrior’s ritual as he reached for me with his empty hand.

But I remembered the game better than he did, it seemed, including the way I had played it all those years before. As his fingertips brushed my hair I snapped my head around and sank my teeth into the base of his thumb.

He howled in pain and outrage. He tried to pull away but I held on like a stoat with a rabbit. I watched the sword twitching as he fought to control himself, to stop himself cleaving my neck in two with it, and then he threw the precious thing hard into the far corner of the room to free his remaining hand.

He bent toward me, aiming to pinch my nose and make me relinquishmy grip, and I drove my fist into his side, just under his ribcage, as hard as I could.

As he fell I rolled quickly away, opening my mouth and spitting his blood on the floor.

For a moment we both lay on our sides, panting and glaring impotently at each other.

A distant shout and the sound of running feet told us that someone had heard us. We got up, still watching each other warily.

“Your point, brother?” I gasped, as bemused-looking warriors trooped into the room behind me.

“My point, brother,” Lion growled, as he went for the sword, “is that you don’t have any friends. Get the Emperor what he wants and maybe he will protect you-but don’t expect me to look after your worthless hide this time!”

My master’s house was as imposing as you would expect a lord’s to be, a miniature version of Montezuma’s palace: two stories of smooth whitewashed stone decorated with curling friezes and a broad stairway at the front leading to a patio and the great man’s apartments on the roof. I had no intention of setting foot on the stairway: I used to spread my sleeping mat on the ground floor at the back and that was where I was headed. There was just a chance that my master had not sent for me yet and my lateness would not be noticed.

“Where do you think you’re going, Yaotl?”

I cursed under my breath. The voice that brought me up short belonged to a dark figure lurking in the shadows at the foot of the stairs: Huitztic, my master’s steward.

“Home to bed,” I replied, hoping his question had no purpose and that I might be able to get away before he thought of one.

“Not so fast! His Lordship wants to see you. He’s up there.” He jerked his head toward the stairway before adding ominously: “He’s been waiting.”

I loathed Huitztic. He was a typical three-captive warrior, a strutting bully who had done just enough in the field to convince himself he was the Emperor’s right-hand man and nowhere near enough really to make anything of it. His sort usually ended up with meaningless jobs as messengers or overseers in the houses of the great, where they might just have the brains to realize how futile their lives had become and to take it out on their underlings and the household slaves. He reminded me of the oafs who had taught in the House of Youth that my brothers had attended, another favored career for cast-off warriors, whose bumptious self-importance all too often rubbed off on their charges. The difference was that Huitztic was cruel as well as overbearing. His name meant a sharp object, so naturally I just thought of him as “Prick.”

“I am, as ever, at His Lordship’s command,” I said, as I started up the stairs. Sarcasm was safe with the steward: he was too stupid to recognize it.

“But you’re too late.” He sneered. “He’s got someone with him now.” Before I could ask who, he had turned on his heel, smirking, leaving me with one foot poised on the bottommost step, unsure whether to go on up or not.

I could not see past the top step onto the patio, but I could picture the scene. Old Black Feathers would be sitting in a high-backed wicker chair under his late father’s favorite magnolia tree, gripping his knees with thin, liver-spotted hands, with his visitor squatting respectfully in front of him. I climbed the stairs cautiously. If I kept my head beneath the level of the top step, I thought, I should be able to hear them without being seen.

The first voice I heard was my master’s. He sounded weary.

“That’s all he said? ‘Watch out for the big boat.’ Nothing else?”

“That’s all I was told.” The visitor’s voice was a surprise: it was a very young man’s, barely broken, with a distinctive accent, and I knew it from somewhere. I was still trying to place it as he went on. “He shouted it from the side of the Great Pyramid for all the city to hear and then jumped. Then your slave and that other man-”

“Yes, yes,” my master interrupted. “No doubt when my slave deigns to put in an appearance I will hear a full report from him. In the meantime, what does Shining Light want from me? Did anyone tell you that?”

During the short pause that followed I realized who the visitor was: Quimatini, the son of Ayauhcocolli, a man my master sometimes did business with and who used his son as a messenger. I had never met Ayauhcocolli, whose name meant Curling Mist, but I had seen the boy when he had come to the house: a well-built, lithe youth who looked as though he merited a name that meant “Nimble.” The first time we had met he had glared at me as if he wished me dead. I suspected that my master’s dealings with the lad’s father were not wholly legal. This would explain his familiar manner toward my master: he spoke more firmly than I would have done, and had not once addressed the Chief Minister as “My Lord.”

“I don’t know. He doesn’t confide in me or in my father.” The youth giggled suddenly. “Except when he’s run out of money and is trying to persuade us to take his bets on credit, that is!”

“I’ll have my slave disemboweled!” old Black Feathers raged. “How could he just stand by and let Shining Light make a fool of me-and so publicly as well? You realize what that young merchant’s done, don’t you? He’s made it impossible for me to move against him without making a spectacle of myself! What do I do now-watch those men being killed, one by one, until Shining Light chooses to tell me what he wants?”

The youth did not answer. I dared not break the silence but my mind was racing. It sounded as if my master knew a lot more than I did about the Bathed Slave, and the young merchant had some hold over him on account of it. Was the Emperor right? Were the men my master had mentioned the missing sorcerers, and had the Bathed Slave been one of them? It would explain how he had known he was destined for the Land of the Dead: a sorcerer might well have learned that much.

Old Black Feathers let out a long sigh. “You may as well go, Nimble. But if that young man says anything to you or your father, I want to know straightaway-you understand?”

“Of course,” replied the boy smoothly.

“Off you go, then.” I tensed, ready for the lad to appear and for my cue to go and face my master’s displeasure. I had a moment longer to wait, though.