Simon Levack - The Demon of the Air

Eventually he took the clay tube out of his mouth. “Relax, Yaotl. If I wanted to exchange you for the sorcerers, would we be talking now? I would just have had my steward make the exchange, and that would be an end to it. But the truth is,” he went on, suddenly sounding older and wearier than ever, “I’m sick of being made a fool of. All this talk of godlike strangers from the East-well, it seemed like the perfect opportunity. You know what I mean?”

“No, my Lord.” I thought I did, however: it was the tale of jealousy, vanity and greed that I had outlined to Handy and Lion only that morning.

“You heard some of it from the Emperor himself, I believe. Weren’t you shown the box-the one that was washed up on the shore of the Divine Sea, with the marvelous cloth and the sword in it? Ever since I saw the things in that box I’ve been waiting for the men who made them to appear. Now they have, and who is going to be the man of the moment now, as my father was all those years ago? Montezuma? I don’t think so. He’s too preoccupied with omens and portents to be able to handle anything like this. All he can think of doing is consulting sorcerers over a silly fairy tale about some mythical ancestor of ours. If these strangers were to come to see him he’d run away-he’d find some cave to hide himself in. No, this was going to be my chance. I, Lord Feathered in Black, was going to be the man who made allies or slaves of these strangers and secured the things they brought with them, their weapons and goods, for the people! And who would have talked about Lord Tlacaelel then?”

I said nothing. I could understand his words but not the desire that lay behind them. It seemed to me not much of an ambition to be worth so many lives, simply to be a bigger man than your father.

My master toyed with the smoking-tube before putting it down for the last time.

“It’s gone out. They always do, if you leave them,” he said regretfully, as he let it roll across the floor away from him. “I know Montezuma thinks that I have the sorcerers, or that I know where they are. I know he told you to find them and bring them to him. You know why I can never allow that to happen?”

“Yes, my Lord. They could tell the Emperor that you instructed his majordomo to release them and hand them over to you. And you did that because you couldn’t let Montezuma know you had consulted them yourself about your plans to deal with the strangers on your own account.”

“I have to get those men back, dead or alive. If the only way to do that is to hand you over to the man who stole them from me, then that’s what I’ll do.” He let that hang in the air for a moment before going on: “But he’s laughing at me. I made a deal with Shining Light: he was to keep those men in a safe place until I could question them myself. Now I find that Young Warrior duped me and kidnapped Shining Light. He turned one of the sorcerers into a Bathed Slave for sacrifice and left another in the water outside my own house. So I don’t just want the sorcerers back-I want this man killed.” My master’s grim smile made his mouth look like just another line across his face. “And as for you, Yaoti-if you don’t want me to make a present of you to your enemy, you’d better help me think of a way of finding him!”

So my master wanted to shed still more blood. I might well have killed Young Warrior myself if I had the chance, but I felt a sudden urge to be sick.

I forced myself to think.

“The only person who I know is in contact with him is the merchant’s mother, Lily,” I said. “She was hoping that if she could tell the boy, Nimble, enough about me, her son would be released …”

“He wasn’t. She’s still saying he’s abroad.”

“Then she must still be talking to the boy. I thought that by goingto see her I could offer myself as bait-I could get Young Warrior to come to me.”

“And it worked. He did!”

“Yes-nearly killing me in the process.”

My master’s chair creaked as he sat back, with his eyes closed and the fingers of one hand drumming thoughtfully on his knee.

I had to try to think faster than he could.

It was too much to hope he would let me go anywhere alone: he would assume that I intended to run away the first chance I got. The idea of repeating my attempt to lure Young Warrior out of hiding through Lily obviously appealed to him, but if he had his way I would have an escort of his own choosing-and in all likelihood neither Young Warrior nor I would survive the encounter.

I had to find a way of arranging the meeting so that old Black Feathers could not control the outcome, and I could have some chance of getting away.

“My Lord,” I said slowly, “could the merchants be prevailed upon to hold a banquet?”

He opened his eyes and frowned. “A banquet?”

“If you tell Lily and her father to give one, they will. You are always invited to the merchants’ feasts. I would be in your retinue-and there would be enough of us to catch Young Warrior if he tried anything.” Not to mention, I thought privately, enough other people to enable me to hide in the crowd and make my own escape. It was not much of a plan, but it was all I could come up with.

“A banquet.” A dreamy look came into the Chief Minister’s eyes. “I like it. After all that family’s put me through, I think a good meal is the least they can offer me!”

Thirteen Snake was not the most propitious day for a feast, but it was not bad: the auguries told us it would probably not rain, none of the diners was likely to choke on a turkey bone and the honeyed mushrooms ought to make the guests mellow rather than pugnacious. Certainly, I thought, as a boatman slowly poled us-Lord Feathered and Black, Handy and me-along a canal toward the merchant’s house, the gods were playing their part: the whitewashed walls on either side of us glowed warmly in the setting sun, while above them only the frailest wisps of cloud clung to the mountain tops. It was a beautiful evening.

I thought about the task we were setting out to accomplish. From my master’s point of view, at least, it must have seemed simple enough. We had to find out where Curling Mist-or rather, Young Warrior-was hiding the sorcerers, and we were going to do it in essentially the way I had planned the last time I had been to Lily’s house: by offering me as bait, although this time I would not be alone.

From my point of view it was far from simple. As I had told my brother days before, my troubles would really begin if and when we found the sorcerers, and I had to choose whether to help my master to recover them or to try somehow to get them to the Emperor, knowing that either choice might lead to my death.

I frowned, not at the dilemma that I might have to confront, but at a nagging feeling in the back of my head that something was not right. It had something to do with the relationship between Young Warrior and Shining Light, I decided. I still could not see how my old enemy had got the young merchant so completely in his powerthat he would not only hand over everything his family possessed, but would give himself up as a hostage. I wondered whether there could be another explanation.

Old Black Feathers interrupted my train of thought. He was in a chatty mood. “This will be a good night. I haven’t looked forward to a party so much in years. I might even dance.”

“Who will be there, my Lord?” asked Handy.

My master had chosen the commoner to accompany us to the banquet. I had managed to persuade old Black Feathers that a large armed guard would simply scare our quarry off, besides upsetting the merchants; in any event, I had pointed out, there would be enough warriors among the guests.