Simon Levack - The Demon of the Air

“But what’s some trading post in the East to your master?” my brother asked.

“It’s not the place that interests him,” I replied, “but the reports that have come from there: these pale men from the East. My master thought the way to lasting fame was through these strangers, whoever or whatever they might be; and he wanted it for himself, and the Emperor was to know nothing about it. He obviously couldn’t go to see them in person. He needed an agent, someone he could rely on to keep his mouth shut-and someone who wouldn’t cause a stir if he turned up in a place like Xicallanco. Who else but a merchant? Famously secretive, and as for going abroad to deal with exotic foreigners-well, that’s what they do, isn’t it? And it turned out that the man he dealt with at the ball court, Curling Mist, knew just the man-another of his clients. He’s the link, you see, between old Black Feathers and Shining Light.”

“So the Chief Minister and the young merchant made a deal?” Handy suggested.

“That’s what I think. I suppose the Chief Minister paid off Shining Light’s debts and Shining Light agreed to go to Xicallanco for him. Probably old Black Feathers put up some capital for the venture too-goods to exchange for this wonderful cloth, whatever. And he consulted sorcerers-the way you would before any venture like this, only he did it very, very quietly.

“But then two things went wrong.”

“Montezuma had the sorcerers arrested,” my brother pointed out.

“That was the first, yes. The Emperor decided he wanted to talk to the sorcerers himself! My master must have been terrified when they were rounded up. He’d have had to get them out of the prison, just to make sure they didn’t compromise him. I suppose he just ordered the majordomo to release them into his custody. He’s the Chief Justice, he could do that. That explains why the majordomo was surprised when I came along afterward, as the Chief Minister’s slave, asking how they’d managed to escape. Then when the majordomo found he’d been ordered to act against the Emperor’s wishes he panicked, and said it must be magic. The Emperor more or less believed him, but in any case by then his Chief Minister had got the sorcerers out of his reach. What could he do with them then, though? He wasn’t going to kill them, not if he still wanted his questions answered, and he couldn’t just let them go. He needed somewhere to keep them, in case they talked. It was too dangerous to use his own house. I suppose he asked his partner in crime, Shining Light, who said put them in his warehouse. The only thing is, everything Shining Light owns-”

“Young Warrior!” breathed Lion. “So that’s how he got hold of the sorcerers! And their families-no witnesses, right?”

“Of course. The Chief Minister had to make sure no one could describe him coming to see the sorcerers, especially once they were out of the prison and beyond his control. So he got the Emperor to give him the job of finding them and used it as an excuse to have their families killed.”

Handy bit his lip. “But why the sacrifice?”

“Yes,” added my brother, “and why the body in the canal outsideyour master’s house? You thought that was a message from Young Warrior. What’s that got to do with these strangers in the East?”

“That’s the other thing that went wrong,” I said. “Whatever was going on between Shining Light and Young Warrior, it all changed, around the time of the Festival of the Raising of Banners. Then Shining Light became Young Warrior’s prisoner. Young Warrior had already got his hands on the sorcerers, along with the rest of the merchant’s property, and he’d started torturing them. I suppose he wanted the answers to old Black Feathers’ questions himself. Then he used them to blackmail my master. Old Black Feathers wanted them alive, so he started delivering them to him dead. As for the sacrifice …” I remembered what the merchant’s grandfather had told me, how Young Warrior-or, as far as he was concerned, Curling Mist-and Shining Light might have dreamed the whole business up together as a kind of sick joke. “It was the audacity of it, that was the whole point. They were telling my master they could do anything they wanted.” To have the peasant die at the summit of the Great Pyramid, and so publicly, and be powerless to intervene-unless he wanted to risk exposing his own dealings with the sorcerers-must have provoked my master beyond enduring. “They even sent Nimble to him as a messenger, to make sure he knew what had happened!”

“Storm’s father played his part well,” observed Handy, “considering he wasn’t supposed to be there. How’d they persuade him to be so cooperative?”

“The same way all Bathed Slaves are conditioned-remember what I told you about that, Handy, in the marketplace, just after the sacrifice? They give them sacred wine and sacred mushrooms, they keep them awake, they drill them endlessly, they get an old woman to bathe them and cosset them and make them feel like little children, they cut their hair and whiten their skins-and before that, he’d been hauled off to the prison, sprung and then tortured. In the end he wouldn’t have had an idea of his own left in his head-except one, and that was more important to him than staying alive. He wanted us to tell the old man about the big boat.”

“I still don’t see why Young Warrior was prepared to kill the sorcerers and threaten your master to get you,” Lion said. “Was it reallyall over something that happened at the Priest House all those years ago?”

“What else can it be? For some reason he seems to blame me for what happened to him and the girl from the market.”

“Doesn’t make sense to me,” said Handy. “It wasn’t your fault they had to run away, was it?”

“No, and I can’t pretend to understand it either. I suppose Young Warrior started out being jealous, and over the years it must have become an obsession.”

“Besides,” the commoner added, as though the thought had just occurred to him, “I thought you priests were all supposed to be impotent-aren’t you supposed to stick so many cactus spines and obsidian razors into your parts that you can’t get it up anyway?”

This drew a short, harsh laugh from Lion. “No,” I said coldly. “We used to draw blood from our penises, but only the real fanatics went further than that. I certainly didn’t. I always thought Young Warrior might be the type to do it, but I guess he wasn’t.”

“Does it really matter what started all this?” my brother asked impatiently. “We have to decide what we’re going to do now. Which of them do we go after-Young Warrior or the Chief Minister?”

My brother could be alarmingly direct, especially when he had an end in sight or, as now when his pride had been wounded, a score to settle.

“Both of them,” I said. “We still need to get the sorcerers to the Emperor before we can denounce my master, and we need Young Warrior to lead us to the sorcerers.” I considered for a moment before going on. “I think we go back to Lily’s house now-you and me, Lion. It’s just possible she was able to tell Nimble enough to get her son released, but if she wasn’t, Young Warrior won’t be able to resist having another crack at me. That’s where you come in, brother. You can protect me if he tries another trick like yesterday’s … What’s the joke?”

A wintry smile had appeared on Lion’s face. “I was just remembering,” he said dryly, “how I told you not to expect me to save your worthless hide this time!”

I looked at him seriously. “You will, though, if you have to. You owe me. I went to Coyoacan for you. I found the boy.”

My brother’s face darkened, but whatever he was about to say wasinterrupted by a sudden noise. An argument seemed to be going on outside the courtyard.