Simon Levack - The Demon of the Air

“What about this bird, then?” Costly interrupted my thoughts. “You say it talked-that could be an omen, couldn’t it? Either that or it was a sorcerer who’d turned himself into a bird. Say, you don’t suppose …?”

“It wasn’t one of the men I’m looking for. I’m sure they’re just charlatans. I don’t think real sorcerers would have let themselves get shut in the prison in the first place, and anyway the bird I saw looked too big to get between the bars of one of those cages. A sorcerer would have turned himself into something tiny, like a hummingbird or a swift. An omen, though …”

I hugged my blanket uneasily. There had been many omens seen in Mexico of late. The Emperor had described some of them to me but there had been others: two-headed men, a disembodied female voice crying out in the streets at night, lightning striking the war-god’s temple. “It could be. An omen of what, though?”

He let out a breathless, croaking laugh. “That’s an easy one to answer! Take a leaf out of the Emperor’s book-get a sorcerer to tell you!”

“Very funny.” At last the shivering was beginning to subside. I rolled over, intending to sleep, but the old man was not finished.

“No, I mean it,” he persisted. “Why not hire a sorcerer to interpret the bird? It might be the answer to all your questions.”

“I don’t know any sorcerers-not real ones, anyway.”

“No problem. There’s a man I used to go to, name’s Crocodile, he lives in a village down near Coyoacan. Just mention my name and he’ll-”

I sat upright once more. “Did you say Coyoacan?”

“I know it’s a long way, but if you start early enough …”

“Coyoacan.” The name recalled my brother’s face, and the thing hidden in its shadows when he had mentioned it. I shivered, although I had forgotten the cold.

“Of course,” Costly went on, “he doesn’t come cheap. The genuine article never does.”

“I haven’t any money, you know that.”

“Then use some of mine. There’s some good cotton in that chest over there, easily enough to pay for a consultation.”

The chest he meant was the small reed box that contained our possessions. In my case they were pathetically few-a single worthless souvenir from my days as a priest, a couple of badly worn maguey fiber capes and breechcloths and little else. Costly had a little more: some money in the form of cloth and cocoa beans and a couple of bone nose-plugs, as I recalled. The money was what he had saved, as most slaves did if they could, against the day when he might be able to buy his freedom.

“I can’t take that,” I said.

He sighed. “Yaotl, what do you think I’m going to do with it? Buy myself back from old Black Feathers? What good would that do me? I can’t walk and there’s no one out there to look after me. I’d starve-I might as well be a slave and eat. I was …” I heard him swallow, as if trying to get rid of an obstruction in his throat. “I was going to leave it all to you anyway, so you might as well take some now. Consider it an advance on your inheritance!”

I could not think of anything to say.

I had spent years fetching and carrying for the old slave, putting food in his toothless mouth, giving him his medicine and cleaning up the results, turning him over in his bed when he was too weak and stiff to move himself and above all listening to his incessant complaints, and in all that time it had never occurred to me to expect anything more from him than what he had already done. Yet what made my eyes sting now was not his generosity in leaving me all he possessed. It was the thought that if I ever came into his money, it would be because I was never going to hear the old man’s whining voice again.

“Thank you,” I managed eventually.

The only answer was a loud snore.

Ileft my master’s house before dawn, without speaking to anyone. The Chief Minister had not got up and I wanted to be gone before he learned I had defied his order to rest. I took some of Costly’s money with me, although I had no intention of paying any of it to a sorcerer.

Handy, the commoner, lived in Atlixco, a parish in the east of the city. It was right on the edge of the lake and, but for the dyke that shielded the city from storms on the great salt lake beyond it, would probably have been awash in brackish water three or four times a year.

I arrived at the house early in the morning, to find the place already in uproar.

There appeared to be children everywhere. The youngest, yelling and whooping, chased turkeys and little dogs around the courtyard, in an elaborate game whose object seemed to be to herd the creatures between two human thighbones, stuck upright into the ground, and into the bathhouse. Two older lads stood nearby, trying to look grave and grown-up, even though they were transparently yearning either to join in the game or to break it up by seizing the bones-the proudly displayed remains of the two enemy warriors Handy had captured with his own hands-and using them to beat their siblings unconscious.

The youngsters looked at me just long enough to register my existence and then ignored me altogether. Their older brothers tracked me curiously as I crossed the courtyard and made for the family’s private rooms.

The big commoner stood in his doorway, wearing an even older cloak than the one I had first seen him in and a harassed look.

“Lively lot!” I congratulated him. “Are they all yours?”

He glanced over my shoulder. “I don’t know. How many did you see?”

“I think seven.”

“In that case no-a couple of the youngest are my brother’s. We’ve got nine,” he went on apologetically, “but the oldest girl’s married and her sister and two of her brothers are at the House of Youth. Snake and Buck won’t be far behind them-that’s if I haven’t suffocated the whole brood by holding them all head down over burning chillies first, of course! Excuse me.”

He was back a moment later, having righted one of the thighbones, pulled a couple of small children off an even smaller one, dragged a fourth child out of the bathhouse and roundly scolded the two eldest.

“You won’t believe it, but we’re expecting another one! You can see why I have to spend so much time and money on sorcerers, with all these birthdays to interpret.”

“Ah, that’s what I came about.”

“Birthdays?”

“No, sorcerers. I’ve got to go and see one.”

“What, you want me to recommend …”

“No, I know who I want to see: a man from Coyoacan. But I’ve got a lot of money with me for his fee, you see, so I was wondering if you could come with me-just in case I run into trouble on the way. I’ll pay you, naturally.”

The big man looked dubiously at me. “Trouble? What kind of trouble?”

“You know-thieves.”

I had spent much of the night mulling over the answer to this question, and in the end had decided to lie. It would be too difficult to explain what I expected to find at Coyoacan when I did not know myself, and I did not want my brother’s dark hints to put Handy off. Besides, I thought, if I started mentioning warriors and the Chief Minister he would only ask for more money.

He pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Coyoacan’s a long way. It’d take the best part of a day to get there and back. I mean, I expect I could do it, but …”

I sighed. “All right. How much do you want?”

However much it was, it was going to be worth it. If Lion had been telling the truth about Coyoacan, then there was no knowing what might happen, and I might need a strong right arm.

Coyoacan lay on the mainland at the southwestern corner of the lake, just at the end of a causeway.