Simon Levack - The Demon of the Air

The courtyard’s freshly swept stuccoed floor was already warm beneath my bare soles and its walls gleamed in the morning sunshine, making the doorways into the interior of the house resemble dark cavities. Wicker screens covered some of the doorways, and if anyone apart from the old man was at home, I thought they must be behind one of those.

I started toward the nearest of the screens.

The voice cut me off before I had gone two steps.

“If it’s money you’re after, don’t bother. We don’t keep any here.”

The other man in the courtyard had raised his head and was watching me. His stare had a vague quality that made me think hewas looking past me, until I noticed that his eyes were filmed over with age. There had been nothing vague in his voice, however.

“I want to speak to Shining Light,” I informed him brusquely. “Do you know where he is?”

“You want my grandson? Oh, I was right, then. It is money you’re after! You’re still wasting your time, though. You’re welcome to look, but you won’t find so much as a bag of cocoa beans.”

I reappraised him hastily. I had assumed this piece of human litter was some broken-down old slave that the merchant’s family tolerated out of sentiment and because they expected death to relieve them of him shortly. A second glance did little to change my impression of him, but if he was Shining Light’s grandfather then he might well be head of the household and so entitled to some respect.

I believed what he said. Merchants hid their wealth. They kept it in secret warehouses, often using each other’s, so that no one else could ever be quite sure who owned their contents. Anything they kept in their own houses would be carefully concealed behind false walls. If I had been interested in the merchant’s money-whether he kept it in the form of cotton cloaks, bags of cocoa beans, little copper axes or goose quills filled with gold dust-I would have known better than to look for it here.

“I’m not after money,” I assured him. “I just want to speak to Shining Light.”

“Aren’t you that man he does business with down at the ball court-what’s his name, Curling Mist?” I recalled the meeting I had overheard between my master and Curling Mist’s son; here was confirmation that they had had dealings with Shining Light as well. “I assumed you were him, come to collect.”

“I was sent here by the Chief Minister, Lord Feathered in Black,” I declared importantly. “He’s the one who has business with your grandson-not some petty criminal.”

The old man laughed, sending a shower of spittle across the courtyard. “The Chief Minister! Young Shining Light’s surpassed himself this time, then, if he’s managed to get into trouble with him! I wish I could help,” he added, wheezing while he got his breath back, “but my grandson isn’t here.”

“Then I’ll wait here until he returns.”

“We don’t know when he’ll be back.” This was the voice of theslave, who had come back bearing a plate of the stuffed maize cakes known as tamales. He stood in front of me, offering them as politeness dictated, although his surly expression made it clear that this was as far as his courtesy extended. “You might as well go home.”

I looked from the slave to the old man. “No one said he was in trouble. I was just told to speak to him about the Bathed Slave he presented at the festival, that’s all.”

“Oh, that,” the old man mumbled. “I might have known. Constant here’s right, though: Shining Light, my grandson, he’s gone away and we don’t know where he’s gone or when he’ll be back.”

“Well, do you know anything about his offering?” I demanded. “Where did he get him from?”

“I don’t know anything about it,” he said firmly. “It was nothing to do with me. Look,” he added with a touch of impatience, “you’re talking to the wrong person. My daughter handles our business now. It’s her you need to speak to.”

“Then may I see her?”

“Sure. You’ll have to wait, though. She’s got the chiefs of the merchants’ parishes with her at the moment.”

He gestured to Constant, miming the action of upending and draining a gourd full of liquid. As the scowling slave went to fetch his drink, the old man said: “You can keep me company, in the meantime.”

The old man’s name was Icnoyo, which meant “Kindly.” He told me this as he pulled the maize cob out of the neck of the gourd to let the contents splash freely into his mouth. As an afterthought he offered it to me. He seemed surprised, although not offended, when I waved it away.

“It’s against the law,” I pointed out primly.

He laughed. “Not for me, son. I won’t see seventy again and I’m a grandfather, I’m allowed as much as I can hold!”

As he tipped the gourd up again I decided I had better ask him something before he fell into a stupor. “You think your grandson owes this man Curling Mist money? Is that why he went away?”

“Could be. I’ve heard him mention the name-and Shining Light spends a lot of time hanging around the ball courts.”

“So he’s a gambler?”

“You could say that. Aren’t we all?” There was a trace of bitterness in the old man’s voice. “You know the mistake my daughter made with that boy? He was born on Two Rabbit, and you understand what that means.”

“Prone to drunkenness,” I responded automatically, like a student answering an examination question on the Book of Days. I had spent much of my youth in the Priest House poring over screenfold texts, committing to memory the fate of every man and woman ever born, on pain of a beating if I later got any of them wrong. I could still recall the stiffness of the bark paper under my fingers and the crackling sound the pages made when I turned them over. I had no trouble recognizing the destiny prescribed for a man born on Two Rabbit: to be ruined by sacred wine. I wondered how his parents had chosen his name. An exemplary life: I knew only too well how hard that would be to live up to.

“That’s right. But believe it or not, our Shining Light never touched a drop, except when he had to as part of a festival. He was never let near it, because his mother was so terrified he would fall victim to his fate. But she didn’t realize there are other vices that can seduce a man.” He sighed and upended the gourd, draining it once and for all. “You can’t blame her, poor girl. He was the only one she had, and with his father gone …”

“His father? What happened to him?”

The old man closed his eyes. He sat like that, neither looking at me nor speaking, for so long that I wondered if he had been taken ill. I was on the point of doing something-shaking his arm to rouse him or calling for a slave-when abruptly he opened them again and said one word.

“Quauhtenanco.”

I had been a very young man when the inhabitants of a province in the far Southwest had risen against the Aztecs, killing some merchants and besieging the survivors in a town called Quauhtenanco. The merchants had held out for four years, beating off their attackers and making captives of many of them, and when a young general named Montezuma had come to their rescue at the head of the Aztec army, the merchants could only apologize to him for his wasted journey.

Quauhtenanco was no mere symbolic victory and the merchants secured more than just their own lives. It was the key to the hot lands in the South, whose wealth included rubber, cocoa, emeralds and above all feathers-the long, soft, shining green quetzal feathers that Aztecs coveted more than anything and could get nowhere else. It was chiefly for this that the merchants had been awarded their privileges, including the right to dress as warriors and offer slaves to the war-god at the festival of the Raising of Banners. If Shining Light’s father had helped win them their status, especially if he had died in the process, then I could see why Shining Light had been allowed to sacrifice a Bathed Slave at the festival.