Simon Levack - The Demon of the Air

Isat up with a start.

It was morning. The screen had been drawn back and sunlight streamed through the open doorway, around a dark figure whose shadow fell across my sleeping mat.

I stared stupidly at the shape for what seemed like hours, lying with my head on one side, waiting for sleep to wear off, before realizing there was someone else in my room.

“Who …?”

Lily did not move. “I think you should tell me what really happened.”

“What?”

“When you were thrown out of the Priest House, Yaotl.” She spoke in a bleak monotone, like somebody reciting a passage learned by rote. “Tell me who hated you enough to want you expelled, and why.”

Carefully, mindful of my sore ribs, I levered myself up on one elbow.

“I don’t understand. Why do you want to know?”

“Just tell me! I brought you into my house. I’ve fed you and treated your wounds and … and …” She seemed unable to bring herself to mention the rest. “It’s just one thing I want to know-don’t you think you owe me that much?”

This was bewildering. “I really don’t know. I’d tell you if I could, honestly.”

“Was it over a woman?”

“You’re never jealous?”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” She stamped her foot. “Just answer me! Was it that woman you were telling me about-Maize Flower?”

“Lily-what’s all this about?” As sleep receded, along came the memory of how the woman had treated my wounds, and how she had been, lying in my arms in the night. Something had happened since then: she had left me to wake up alone, and come back with a purpose that I did not understand.

In the way she leaned toward me, with her hands at her sides bunched tightly into fists, there was an almost childish air of determination, as if there was something she absolutely must have that was just beyond her reach.

All of a sudden I thought I knew what that something was. I had believed all along that Lily had been lying when she said her son had gone into exile. I had assumed that she had been covering up for him, but suddenly, recalling what Curling Mist and Nimble had done to me and what had happened to the sorcerers, I saw another possibility, one that would explain her sudden anger and desperation.

“This is about your son, isn’t it?” I said slowly. “They’ve got him, haven’t they-Curling Mist and his boy? They’ve kidnapped him-the way they tried to kidnap me! And now they’re threatening you. They made you tell everyone he’d gone away, so the chiefs of the merchants wouldn’t come looking for him. They wanted me-they wanted to know something about me-and now they’ve told you to find it out for them! That’s what this is all for!”

Even as I spoke them, I wondered at my own words. Could Curling Mist’s hold on Shining Light really have been so strong that he could induce him to part with his fortune? How had he persuaded the young merchant to offer the war-god, at the cost of his family’s good name, a bewildered, emaciated, mutilated prisoner? Had he somehow coerced him into doing that, before completely overpowering him?

It seemed impossible, but the merchant’s mother appeared to confirm it. Her face, which had been set as firmly as a statue’s, seemed to crumple, and she hid it in her hands and burst into tears.

“My son had no money, do you see? And he owed that wretched man Curling Mist so much. It ended up that he would do anything he asked him to. Curling Mist made him take that Bathed Slave. Idon’t know where he got him from, or why Shining Light had to sacrifice him to the war-god, but he did it, and afterward he had to go and see Curling Mist, to tell him what had happened. I think my son thought he had done all he had to. But he never came home. Before he went, he told me to give out that he’d gone away, because after the sacrifice he wouldn’t be able to show his face in Tlatelolco for a long time. A couple of days later I got the first message.” She looked into my eyes, blinking rapidly. “I had to keep up the pretense that my son had gone away. And I had to report to the boy-I had to tell him if I saw you.”

“Why, though? What do they want from me?”

“I don’t know.”

“And now you want me to tell you about … about the girl in the market.” A chill came over me, as it had the night before when I remembered how Maize Flower and I had parted.

She looked down so that her hair fell limply over her face. “I had to see the boy this morning. I told him what you told me last night. He told me to find out more.” With a despairing sob, she added: “Yaotl, please! They’ll kill him if I don’t tell them what they want to know! It’s such a little thing to ask, but it could be worth my son’s life!”

I did not want to. I did not want to drag this one event out of the tangle of petty and not so petty rivalries, squabbles and feuds that had been life at the Priest House. I did not want to examine it in all its painful detail and endure all that guilt and loss again.

I listened to the woman’s sobs and watched her shoulders heaving and realized that I had no choice.

Two boys had been born on the same day-One Death, in the year Nine Reed. One Death was the day-sign of the Smoking Mirror, and each of the boys bore one of the god’s many names. One was called Telpochtli, which meant the Young Warrior. The other was called Yaotl, the Enemy. Both their fathers had promised them to the priests a few days afterward, and that was as much as they had in common.

“Young Warrior was from a noble family,” I explained. “He could have been born on one of the Useless Days at the end of the year and he’d still have ended up a priest. My father’s just a commoner, and ifI’d been born on any other day I’d have gone to the House of Youth like my brothers.”

“And you were friends?” Lily’s tone had softened a little, now that I seemed to be telling her what she had to know.

“Friends? I don’t know. No, how could we be? He was a rich kid, surrounded by other rich kids. They’d accept him without question. They’d never accept me: I only survived by being smarter than they were, which didn’t make them like me any better. All the same, Young Warrior was taken into the Priest House the same day I was. He was always there. And we both knew, as soon as we knew each other’s birthdays, that our fates couldn’t be separated.”

We had practiced telling fortunes together, testing each other on the Book of Days. We had raced each other home with our bundles of sticks during the festival of Eating Maize and Beans, and joyously denounced each other in the evenings-although only during the first four days when it was a harmless game. We had gone into battle as novice warriors together, and on our first time out-when it was permissible to cooperate to bring down a captive-we had been on the same team.

It turned out we had even shared the same woman.

“That was Maize Flower?” Lily asked.

“Yes, although I didn’t know it at the time. To tell you the truth it was a surprise to find out that he’d been to see a girl at all, because I didn’t think he was the type-a bit too serious, more wrapped up in his service to the gods than me, I thought. But I found he was visiting the marketplace regularly too. He couldn’t keep it from me for long. I never told anyone, naturally. Sometimes we made excuses for each other when the other couldn’t be found. I didn’t know who his girl was, though.”

“But you found out.”

I did not want to go on with the story. I lifted my eyes from Lily to the edge of the doorway behind her and kept them there, trying to pretend I was alone, until the effort became too much and I became aware of her gaze fixed expectantly on me as if she were willing me to tell her something she already knew.