Simon Levack - The Demon of the Air

“I got the boy out,” Lion protested. “I risked my life to save him-doesn’t that mean anything? What else could I do?” Then he rounded on me, snarling: “This is all your master’s fault!”

“Don’t try to blame Yaotl for this, Lion,” my mother warned. “It sounds as if you should have told him all this days ago.”

“He couldn’t,” I said, surprising myself with my own mildness. “It was the shame of it, wasn’t it, brother? Especially when you realized old Black Feathers had duped you into thinking you were doing the Emperor’s bidding.”

“At least you might have looked after the boy!” my sister said. “What do you suppose happened to him?”

“I don’t know,” my brother muttered wretchedly.

“I do,” I told him. “And I’ve just thought of something you could do to make amends.”

I told them what I had seen and done since the Festival of the Raising of Banners.

I told them as much as I thought fitting. I saw no need to mention the night I had spent with Lily, but, to make sense of the rest, I was forced to stumble through an account of my visits to Maize Flower, the girl in the marketplace.

My sister silently rolled her eyes skyward at that point in the tale. My mother’s expression remained unmoved, as if nothing she heard now could affect her anymore. Lion listened to everything I said with his eyes half closed. Perhaps he thought following my story would help him make sense of his own.

My mother’s voice was the first to break the silence after I had finished.

“So it comes to this. All the while you were supposed to be devoted to the gods, you were running around with some cheap whore from the marketplace.”

“Not all the time,” I said defensively, “and she wasn’t especially cheap.”

“And you didn’t even have the sense to make sure you didn’t get her pregnant!”

“Now wait a moment!” I cried. “I didn’t get her pregnant! That was Young Warrior-you heard me tell you what she said!”

“And you believed her?” It was my sister’s turn. “I take back what I said, Lion-Yaotl’s even more stupid than you are, after all!”

My brother stiffened but did not answer her. Instead he looked thoughtfully at me.

“Let me see if I’ve got this right. You’re saying Young Warrior-that friend of yours at the Priest House, the one who vanished before they could stone him to death for fornication-really ran off with the girl you’d both been seeing, and they had the child she told you about, and now he’s going around pretending to be a priest and taking bets on the ball game, with the boy in tow?”

“They must have come back to the city years after they left,” I confirmed. “Nimble was brought up abroad, in exile. The lad still hasan accent.” I wondered where he had acquired it-among the Tarascans, perhaps? That would explain the bronze knife. “Young Warrior can’t use his own name, of course, and he goes about in disguise. Whenever I’ve seen him, he’s been so heavily blacked up he might be anyone.”

“But Young Warrior was a priest! What’s he doing, taking illegal bets for a living?”

“I was a priest-what am I doing as a slave?” I responded crisply. “Young Warrior’s been living outside the law ever since he left the Priest House. You said it yourself: he could be stoned to death. What has he got to lose?”

“So what do you want to do now, go and denounce them all to the Emperor-your master, Young Warrior and his lad?”

“The young man might be your nephew,” my mother warned him.

“No he isn’t!” I insisted. My mother’s and my sister’s willingness to believe the child had been mine made me uneasy. “All the same, I don’t think it would be a good idea. The Emperor wants the sorcerers, not a tall story about his Chief Minister. Telling Montezuma that old Black Feathers doesn’t know where those men are because he lost them, when we have no more idea of their whereabouts than he does, won’t help us at all.”

“So what can we do, then?” I noticed that all of a sudden Lion and I appeared to have become allies. I had mixed feelings about that: the renowned and mighty warrior was not going to be content to take directions from his disgraced younger brother for long. “Go looking for Curling Mist, Young Warrior, whatever his name is?”

I grimaced. “That hasn’t done me a lot of good so far! Besides, I don’t even know what he looks like under all that soot-not after all these years, anyway. I’d rather concentrate on the sorcerers. I think we ought to find out what my master’s interest in those men was in the first place-what any of them might have done that would have made him go after his whole family. The boy you saved from the burning house is the only person I know of who might be able to tell us that. As far as I know, he’s still at Handy’s place. He wasn’t talking when I left. He may have said something since, of course, but if he hasn’t, it will be because Star’s too gentle. I have a feeling what heneeds is a fright, to shock it out of him.” I looked steadily at my brother. “Seeing you again ought to do it.”

“That sounds brutal,” my sister objected.

“He could be right, though,” Lion replied. “Might even help the lad, in the long run. Boys from the House of Youth get like that sometimes, the first time they follow the army to war and see the darts flying and real wounds. They come back and won’t talk about it, and that’s not good. You want to go and see your friend Handy tomorrow, then?” The prospect of doing something, however small, to repair the damage he had done had given him back something of his old briskness of manner.

His pride had taken a beating, however, and was obviously still suffering under his mother and his sister’s reproachful looks. He soon announced that he was tired and wanted to go in and rest. I imagined him sitting awake all night, with his face to the wall, now scowling, now twisted with grief and regret, now frowning in bewilderment at the position he found himself in.

“You, in the meantime, can make yourself useful,” my mother said, handing me a bark-beater.

“What?” I cried feebly. “You let my brother go in and rest and expect me to do women’s work?”

“You’re eating our food, you can share our work,” said my sister. “And leave Lion alone-can’t you see he’s suffering?”

“So am I! I’ve still got the bruises-and I haven’t killed anyone!”

I wondered how it was that my brother’s offense seemed to have been so quickly forgiven, but then I decided to forget it. I was never going to be the favorite son.

My friend Handy, my brother had called him, but judging by the way the big commoner greeted us at dawn the next day he clearly saw our relationship differently.

“Get away from my house,” he said before I had opened my mouth, “and take your filthy pal with you.”

I took a step back from his threshold and stared at him in astonishment. I resisted the temptation to turn and look at my brother to see what he made of Handy’s appraisal. I was dressed in my usual short maguey fiber cape and breechcloth. Lion had let his appearance deteriorate still further since the previous day: now he wore only an old breechcloth that looked as if a pair of dogs had been fighting over it.

“Listen,” I protested, “you haven’t given me a chance to explain.”

“Explain what?” He turned back into his house. A mass of human hair, dangling from the ceiling, brushed the top of his head and he swiped at it angrily. It was an old war trophy, taken no doubt from the owner of one of the thighbones decorating his courtyard. “What’s there to explain? Exactly how I’m going to be put to death, just for being seen talking to you? I’d rather not know!”