Simon Levack - The Demon of the Air

“Really?” I was fascinated in spite of myself. “You mean you keep the birds here? How come I never saw or heard them?” Plenty of people kept finches, little twittering creatures that were quite at home hanging from the sides of houses in wicker cages. Parrots, I thought, must be a different matter. It would be hard to keep a parrot without the whole parish knowing about it.

“They went the same way as the rest of the merchandise,” he said bitterly. “So where they are now, only the gods and my grandson’s boyfriend know. But it was useful having them close at hand: it meant we could pluck a flight or a tail feather whenever the feather-workers needed one, and we saved ourselves all the effort of catching the birds and then packing the feathers and sending them home.”

I examined the bunch of feathers in my hand. In the twilight their rich, dark red reminded me of dried blood. “I thought the only person in the city who kept these birds was Montezuma.”

“Oh, I expect he has a houseful. And good luck to him! They’re almost more trouble than they’re worth. Of course, having live birds to pluck feathers from is a good idea, and apart from the fact that theyeat their cages they’re not hard to keep, but …” His talk dissolved into a rueful chuckle.

“The noise?” I offered.

“It’s worse than noise,” he confided. “They talk!”

I had an odd sensation in the pit of my stomach. “Talk?”

“Why, yes. You can train them to talk, but … Hey! Where are you going?”

I ran, darting this way and that to avoid the hurtling bodies of the dancers, looking for my brother.

Istared into the jostling, swirling crowd, but in the gathering gloom there was no way of telling the dancers apart. I took a deep breath and yelled at the top of my voice, to be heard above the drums, the flutes, the conch-shell trumpets and the stamping feet.

“Lion!”

None of the dancers even missed a beat. I was torn between relief and frustration. None of the assembled warriors seemed to have heard me, but where was my brother when I needed him?

I took another breath, but it caught in my throat as a man fell out of the crowd.

He was at my side in seconds. At first I could not work out how he had recovered from the sacred mushrooms so fast, but then it was obvious. He had not had any, preferring to keep his wits about him.

“What?” Lion demanded, as I led the way indoors, out of the way of the gyrating bodies in the courtyard. We found ourselves in the same room as the Chief Minister, but, judging by the way his chin was bouncing on his chest, his mind was somewhere else. There had obviously been enough mushrooms left over for Handy too, since his head was moving in vague circles and he was dribbling.

“I’ve found the sorcerers.”

“That’s more like it! Let’s pick them up and get out of here. Where are they?”

“On a boat! Young Warrior and his son must be holding them there. The sorcerers trained a bird to call for help, though, and let it go …”

My brother stared at me suspiciously. “Have you been at the mushrooms?”

“No! Look, you remember what that offering of Shining Light’s said, before he died, about a big boat? Everyone thought it was a prophecy-something to do with those pyramids on canoes the Emperor told us about-but it wasn’t! He was just trying to tell us where he and the others had been held. He wanted to tell my master, because he knew old Black Feathers was looking for them, and he thought he would save them from Young Warrior. I’m so stupid, I didn’t realize it until just now, when Shining Light’s grandfather told me his family breeds birds. Big birds with red tail feathers-birds that can be trained to talk, Lion! And I saw one on the lake, that day I was kidnapped by Young Warrior and Nimble!” I groaned as I realized where I had seen signs of the bird, or others like it, since then: displayed among the stakes at the ball court, right in front of where Nimble and I had been sitting, and on the pitch at Tlatelolco market where Young Warrior had accosted me: the pitch belonging to Shining Light’s family. “The sorcerers must have been coaching the birds and they managed to let them go, or they got away, while Young Warrior and his boy were out abducting me. And it was the boat they were being held on, the big boat, that I came up under when I fell out of Young Warrior’s canoe, only I didn’t realize it at the time: I must have swum further under the water than I thought. That’s where Young Warrior’s warehouse is. It’s not a big roomy place in the merchant’s parish. It’s in some sort of narrow, confined space where you’d have to use a knife if you wanted to kill someone because there’s no room to wield a sword. It’s a shelter on the deck of a boat, out on the lake!”

“If you can tell me where the boat is,” said a low voice that was like cold water trickling down my spine, “I will owe you more than my life.”

Lion whirled as if he were still dancing. I turned around slowly.

Lily stood facing us in the doorway. Her eyes shone in the torchlight.I noted from the heavy rabbit’s-fur mantle drawn tightly across her shoulders that she had been out, and not hiding in the women’s rooms after all.

My tongue seemed to have turned into a lump of wood. All evening I had been seeking this confrontation and now it had come I could not get the words out. In the end I managed to say “Lily” in a voice so thick the name was barely intelligible.

Lion recognized it, though. “Lily? You’re Shining Light’s mother? Yaotl here reckons your son’s boyfriend’s holding a lot of sorcerers prisoner on his boat!” My brother was not known for his delicacy of manner.

Lily looked at me levelly. “He’s not my son’s … Yaotl, you said that to me once, but you were wrong. Shining Light wouldn’t be interested in Curling Mist-not in that way, anyway. Whatever that man’s hold is over my son, it’s not that. He …” She caught her breath before going on. “Shining Light likes them younger-he’s more likely to have wanted the boy. I think Shining Light may have done the father’s bidding for the sake of the son, at least in the beginning. I don’t know. I’ve never met Curling Mist.”

“Nor has anyone else, except me,” I said dryly. I felt a sudden rush of self-pity. “Young Warrior doesn’t go near anyone else-you, my master, Kindly-he sends the boy to see everyone else, but I’ve met him three times-and each time he’s done his best to kill me!”

“Is he still holding your son hostage?” my brother asked.

Lily hid her face in her hands and stood for a few heartbeats with her shoulders heaving silently. Then she took a deep breath and looked at us both, blinking rapidly.

“I told the boy what you told me, Yaotl-about the girl in the marketplace. He said … he said it wouldn’t be enough.”

“Go on,” I said grimly.

“That was the evening of the day you told me about the girl. He said I would have to … that his father would come to the house the next day, and …”

“And you had to tell the slave to let him in. You let that bastard in to attack me! I nearly died! Constant did die!”

“Do you think I don’t know that?” she cried. “The boy didn’t tell me he meant you any harm. He just said there was something he had to know. My son’s life was at stake!”

“So was mine!”

“Yaotl,” my brother warned me, in his best imitation of a soothing voice.

“And where were you?” I yelled. “Couldn’t bear to watch, is that it?”

She seemed to flinch, as if I had slapped her, before screaming back: “Where do you think? I was trying to find my son! The boy told me to go back to the ball court in the morning, and I’d find him there, only”-her voice suddenly turned into a long, descending wail-“he wasn’t there!”