Simon Levack - The Demon of the Air

“At least we know his name, now.”

Then I looked at the drawings again. A single spot, a skull, a crude little stick figure wielding a sword and standing on a path decorated with chevrons.

“Cemiquiztli Yaotl.” I mouthed the words over and over again like an idiot, while the cloth shook in my hands.

“Cemiquiztli” meant “One Death” and “Yaotl” meant “Enemy,” but taken together they spelled out my own name.

“Is this someone’s idea of a joke?” I demanded. I began climbing out of the canoe, too shocked to look where I was going. “Did someone tell you to put this with the body?” I waved the piece of cloth in the priest’s face.

The priest was not there anymore. The face opposite mine as I stepped onto the edge of the canal was my master’s. Next to him was his steward. They were both staring at me, their expressions comically alike, with their eyes starting from their heads and their lower jaws slack with amazement.

The steward recovered first. Stepping delicately around our master, he reached for the cloth square, plucking it from my hand.

“I think we’d better have this, Yaotl.”

The Chief Minister seemed to have lost the power of speech. He kept staring at the body in the bottom of the boat with his mouth hanging open like an imbecile’s. His steward silently pressed the note from the body into his nerveless fingers. Someone else took the torch from me and held it over my master’s head so that he could read it.

He ignored the note as if unaware that he had it. He seemed oblivious to everything around him except the corpse. Nobody else dared to speak, even in a whisper, and so the only sound was his own breathing. It did not sound healthy-quick and shallow and with an ugly rattle in it.

Finally he broke the silence himself. “Who did this?” he gasped.

“My Lord,” the steward responded in his most simpering tone, “perhaps the note I gave you …”

My master glanced down at the piece of cloth he was holding as if noticing it for the first time. He looked at the body again, and then turned his sharp, glittering eyes on me. It struck me then that they never seemed to age: however lined his face and frail his body got, they were always the same, as though made out of some hard, bright, imperishable stuff like jade or polished marble. Now their gaze was hooded, malevolent and calculating, and made me feel as cold as if I, and not the corpse, had spent the evening floating in the canal. The fear that had assailed me at Handy’s house came back redoubled.

“Cemiquiztli Yaotl.” My master’s lips moved soundlessly over the name.

“M-my Lord,” I stammered. “We found that note on the body-the body was in the canal. I had priests sent for …”

“Yes, yes, I know all that.” My master looked at the note again. “Why has it got your name on it?”

“I don’t know,” I replied in a wretched whisper.

“I do.” The grim certainty in his words matched his expression. When he looked at me again his lips were pressed together in a thin line. “Huitztic!”

“My Lord?” the steward responded eagerly.

“Escort Yaotl to his room-and make sure he stays there until I send for him!”

“But …” I began, but the Chief Minister did not want to hear me. The old man who had had a whole family done to death in Coyoacan quelled my protest with a glare, while his sneering steward propelled me out of his sight, a calloused hand clamped firmly on my arm.

My master’s last words seemed to hang in the air behind us.

“Cemiquiztli Yaotl! I will deal with you in the morning!”

“You get in there and stay put,” the steward snarled as he shoved me through the doorway. “I’ve got to talk to Rabbit.”

Rabbit was a large, dim man who had been in my master’s household since boyhood and had risen eventually to the menial position of litter bearer. He had had the misfortune to cross our path as the steward was dragging me back to my room, and had been ordered to come with us. The steward had no intention of spending the rest of a winter’s night huddled in the open courtyard watching my doorway, and thought poor old Rabbit would be the ideal deputy.

I slumped against the wall in a corner of my room, with all thought of sleep gone. I had come home that evening with my mind in turmoil.

Why had a message bearing my name been left on the body? Did it have something to do with the sorcerers? I felt that it must, but could not see what.

There had been something about the dead man himself-but I would have to see his body again to be certain, and I could hardly do that, I told myself gloomily, while I was confined to my room.

And I suspected that by the time they came to let me out of here it would be too late.

“So what have you done this time? And what’s Rabbit doing out there?”

On any other night I would have dreaded the sound of Costly’s voice, but tonight it was a relief to hear he was awake. It gave me a chance to share my troubles instead of brooding on them. The old slave lived for gossip and devoured every word eagerly.

As soon as I had finished he said astutely: “So let me guess. You think the body in the canal might be one of those sorcerers the old man’s so anxious to get his hands on, is that right?”

“It could be,” I said. “I’d need to look at it again-and that still wouldn’t tell me why it had my name on it.” I growled in frustration. “But I can’t do anything about it from in here, can I? How do I get past Rabbit?” I could picture the litter bearer on guard opposite our doorway, no doubt wishing he was curled up on his own sleeping mat rather than squatting in this chilly courtyard, but wide-awake nonetheless and not about to let his master down.

“Rabbit?” the old man scoffed. “I’ve known him since he was a boy. You leave him to me. Let’s just get him in here, shall we?” Before I could react he had raised his voice to a loud croak and was calling the litter bearer’s name.

A suspicious-looking face appeared in the doorway. “What do you want?”

“I don’t want anything,” responded Costly cheerfully. “We just thought you might be more comfortable in here with us than freezing your balls off out there in the courtyard!”

Rabbit scowled. “What’s it to you if I would?”

“Oh, come on.” Costly put on an air of hurt innocence. “We all know it’s nothing personal between you and Yaotl.” That was true enough: I had never thought of the litter bearer as anything other than an amiable buffoon. “You just had the bad luck to get picked on by the steward. But if you’re going to keep an eye on Yaotl, you might as well do it in comfort from where you can see him, don’t you think?”

The face in the doorway took on a puzzled frown as Rabbit tried to work out what Costly was after. “I’m not sure …” he began.

“So where’s the harm? Besides,” the old slave added, lowering his voice mischievously, “I’m fed up with hearing Yaotl’s problems. You could tell me yours, for a change. Say, how are things between you and the wife now?”

This appeared to have a disastrous effect. It was followed by the briefest of pauses and then the single word “Fine,” and Rabbit’s head vanished.

“You idiot!” I hissed, but Costly seemed unperturbed. “So the old trouble hasn’t come back, then?” he called out after the other man.

A moment later Rabbit was back. He took two steps into the room and growled at Costly: “No, it hasn’t! And I’ll thank you not to mention it in front of him!”

The old slave cackled lewdly. “Oh, don’t worry about Yaotl. He used to be a priest, and you know they never do it at all-he hasn’t the faintest idea what we’re talking about!” I kept silent. “Still, I’m glad to hear everything’s working properly now. It’s funny, though: I was thinking about you just the other day, and remembering when I had the same trouble myself. I had to go to a curer for some medicine …”