Simon Levack - The Demon of the Air

I knew I ought to wait until nightfall before attempting it. On the other hand, while I might just survive getting caught doing this during the day, to do it at night would be a sure way of being taken for a sneak thief. Besides, there was an ash tree growing next door, one of whose stout limbs dipped temptingly within my grasp before reaching across to shade the courtyard of Shining Light’s house, and there was no one about.

Seizing my opportunity, I scrambled up onto the limb. Further good luck greeted me on the far side of the wall, much of which was covered with a mature passionflower whose woody stems gave me a soft and silent landing in the courtyard.

It was as I had seen it before, except that there was no old man slumped against the wall. There was no one about. Not even a dog stirred.

I breathed a sigh of relief and stepped across to the nearest doorway. The screen had been pulled away from this one and lay propped against the wall beside it, so that I could walk straight in.

The room was empty.

I cursed myself for an idiot. Of course it was empty: why else had the doorway been left uncovered? I turned to go, but something made me turn back.

There was something odd about this room.

The walls were only half painted. The back of the room, the half farther from the door, was bare, and the division between the two halves was a straight line. Either it had been left that way on purpose or there had been some physical boundary that had been painted up to and that was no longer there.

When I inspected the line closely I could see what had happened. The false wall had been knocked away cleanly and the remains of the plaster swept away, but the traces of it were clear enough.

“So you did hide your wealth here, after all,” I muttered. “I wonder where you put it all?”

“I wish I knew, too,” said a voice from behind me. “But like I told you before, if you want to talk business, you’ll have to ask my daughter.”

Fright made me yelp like a dog. I jumped and tottered forward a couple of steps into what had been the hidden part of the room, before regaining my balance and turning to face the old man.

Shining Light’s grandfather stood in the doorway. His face was hidden in shadow but his bent frame and the sour smell of sacred wine that clung to the air around him were instantly recognizable.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, absurdly reproachful. “I thought you were all asleep!”

“Had to get up for a piss. Saw you skulking about, thought I’d come and see what you were up to. Besides,” he added, as though the thought had just occurred to him, “shouldn’t I be asking you that question, Yaotl? How did you get in?”

Drink and age had not dulled his mind too much, I noted, as he seemed to have no trouble remembering who I was.

“The servant let me in.”

“No he didn’t. You climbed that ash tree over the back, didn’t you? I ought to have made them cut it down years ago. In summer the kids use it to steal passion fruit off that wall.”

I was still standing in the bare half of the room. “You told me there was no money here,” I said, adopting the reproachful tone again as I looked at the space around me.

“There isn’t. There used to be.” Disconcertingly, the old man seemed not to mind being questioned by someone who was on the face of it a burglar. “My grandson took it all away. I gather a friend of his found a better hiding place for it. But as I keep saying, you’ll have to ask …”

Another voice interrupted his. It was a man’s but sounded as querulous as an old woman’s. “What’s going on? Who’re you talking to?”

Kindly glanced sideways at the newcomer and then stepped back to let him see through the doorway. As he did so the sunlight fell on his gnarled face, revealing a lopsided grin.

“It’s an old friend of yours, Constant,” he said, as the servant who had let me into the house on my previous visit peered myopically into the room. “Yaotl, the Chief Minister’s slave.”

“Yaotl!” The servant jumped back as if I had just stung him. “Him! All right, I’ll go and tell the Parish Chief. We’ll have him taken away!”

“There’s no need.” The old man laid a restraining hand on the servant’s arm. “I’m sure Yaotl was just going-weren’t you? I dare say he only wanted a word with Lily.”

“Yes, I do!” I said eagerly.

“Well, you can’t have one,” the servant informed me curtly. “She’s not here.”

“Where is she, then?” Somehow it had not occurred to me that Shining Light’s mother would not be at home, patiently waiting for me to slip over the back wall so that I could deliver my message to her.

“Mind your own business,” rejoined the servant instantly.

“Why do you want to know?” the old man asked mildly.

I hesitated, fearful of saying too much, although it occurred to me afterward that my presence was revealing enough by itself. “I want to tell her something that will interest her.”

“He’s lying,” growled Constant.

“Only a bit,” said the old man. “He came here for a reason, and I don’t suppose it was to steal our wealth from us. If your master was after money,” he added, looking shrewdly at me, “I imagine he’d just have demanded it.”

“I’m not working for the Chief Minister now,” I said hastily.

“Really?” The old man looked thoughtful. “Well, in the end it’sup to my daughter whether she wants to listen to what you have to say or not. She makes up her own mind about everything else. Oh, shut up!” Kindly directed his last words at the servant before turning back to me. “Try the ball court in Tlatelolco.”

What would a respectable merchant’s widow be doing at a ball court? “You mean Lily has gone to pay off her son’s gambling debts?”

Or was her motive more sinister than that? I had to face up to the possibility that, whatever Shining Light was up to with Curling Mist and Nimble, his mother was in on it too. If you wanted to arrange a discreet meeting then the ball court, thronging with gamblers, was the obvious place.

The idea of her conspiring with my kidnappers was enough to make me shiver.

“You said your daughter didn’t know there were other vices that could seduce a man,” I said bitterly. “I take it she knows all about them now!”

Shadows fell across the old man’s face as he looked away.

“Some of them, anyway,” he muttered.

Iraced to the ball court, anxious to outpace the news of my coming. If Lily really was talking to Curling Mist then I wanted to surprise them.

By the time I got there, sweating and breathless, a game was already in progress. It was a fine day for it, sunny and warm, but not excessively hot, and a recent light drizzle had been enough to dampen the dust in the ball court without softening the mud floor. As I approached I could hear the thump of the solid rubber ball as it bounced off the court’s brick walls and the players’ bodies.

It was hard to get near the stone seats overlooking the court for themass of people surrounding it. They were as quiet and well behaved as any gathering of Aztecs, but the business being carried on in whispers among them was being conducted with such intensity that I feared to interrupt it. I found myself edging between little knots of people talking earnestly of odds and prices and swapping gambling tokens.

Eventually I managed to climb up onto a stone seat and join the crowd looking down into the ball court itself.

The court was a long, narrow strip of hard earth at the bottom of a deep pit between high brick walls, with shorter strips at right angles to it at either end. Back and forth within the court ran two teams of tough-looking young men, whose hairstyles and scars showed that their bodies had been hardened by war as well as exercise. They wore abbreviated breechcloths and leather pads on their knees and elbows, and they hurled themselves at the ball as if their lives depended upon keeping it in the air-as well they might, for this game could be played to the death, and if the players ever forgot that, they only had to look at the lurid and bloody friezes on the walls above them.