Simon Levack - The Demon of the Air

I wondered why that was. Perhaps my would-be assassin, piqued by his failure, had managed, in his flight from her house to the ball court, to overtake Shining Light’s mother, and had got her son back on board his boat, hoping the young merchant might still be useful if he wanted to make another attempt on my life. It seemed more likely that Young Warrior had never intended to honor the bargain Lily had made for her son’s freedom, and she had set out that morning on a fool’s errand. As much as I resented what she had done I felt a twinge of pity.

“Lily,” I began gently, but Lion interrupted me.

“Before you two wake the Chief Minister up, let me see if I’ve got this straight. You’re saying we have to look for a boat-a big one?”

“That’s right,” I replied.

“Where do we start, then?”

“It was in a cove on the western side of the city,” I said, “but that was days ago. They may have moved it since then.”

“So it could be anywhere on the lake? On any of the lakes?” Lily’s voice was low with disappointment. Young Warrior had chosen his hiding place well: finding one craft among the many thousands plying the vast complex of lakes around the city could be almost impossible.

“What does this boat look like?” Lion asked me.

“I don’t know. I scarcely saw it-I was busy being kidnapped at the time, remember.” I thought for a moment. “If it’s being used as a warehouse, it must be unusually big-like one of those seagoing craft the Mayans have, carved from a whole trunk, or even several lashed together. And that means it won’t move very far or very fast-especially if it’s just Young Warrior and his boy handling it. I don’tthink there’s anyone else working with them.” I glanced at Lily, who did not demur.

My brother gave her a shrewd look. “Madam,” he asked, his tone carefully polite, “did you report to the boy this evening?”

“Sir-of course I did!” she snapped back defiantly. “I had to tell him Yaotl was here.” She caught my expression. “Oh, don’t worry-he won’t come here tonight. There are too many people about.” So much for my plan to lure Young Warrior out of hiding, I thought.

“You must have had a prearranged meeting place.”

“Yes. On the Tlacopan causeway, at the nearer end. He’s there regularly, at dusk, in case I need to report anything. I have to get there before they pull the bridges up, though.”

Lion and I looked at each other, the same calculations running through both our heads. If Young Warrior and Nimble lived on the boat-and how else could they guard their hostages? — then the boy must return to it every night. But if he needed the bridges open, that meant he had to cross the causeway. So the boat could only be moored on the western side of the lake, opposite the city, not far from the mainland end of the causeway.

“What do you do if you’re late?” I asked.

“I don’t see him at all that evening. I’d have to wait until the following night, unless we’ve arranged something else, like the ball court.”

“So he has to be on the other side of the causeway by nightfall.”

“There are lots of little inlets and places you could hide a boat on the edge of the lake,” Lion pointed out. “How would we know where to look, especially if he keeps moving about?”

“But he won’t move the boat every day,” I said, “and I don’t think Nimble would want to go blundering around there after dark. There can’t be that many places close enough to the causeway where you could hide a boat that big.”

“We need a boatman to tell us where to look,” Lion observed. “Where are we going to find one at this time of night?”

I stared at him. “What do you mean, ‘at this time of night?’ No one’s going anywhere now. Send a squad of warriors first thing in the morning.”

“No time,” said my brother. “We’ve got to get to those sorcerers before your master does.”

“We have to go now,” said Lily quietly.

“But you can’t go!” I protested. “This is men’s work-warriors’ work!”

“My son is on that boat,” she said simply. She turned on her heel and walked away. “You can do what you like. I’m going to find a boatman!”

“Come on,” Lion said as he set off after her.

I had taken one step toward the doorway when a familiar voice stopped us all in our tracks.

“Not so fast! Just where do you think you’re going?”

Lord Feathered in Black was sitting up. He was bright and alert. I stared at him in confusion for a moment before it registered that he, like my brother, had obviously felt the need to keep a clear head, and had not taken any of the mushrooms. No wonder there had been some leftover for Handy. My master must have heard everything that had been said around him while he was pretending to sleep.

Lily glared defiantly at him. Lion and I looked at each other the way two small boys might if they were caught stealing squashes.

“So my sorcerers are on a boat, are they?” my master gloated as he rose, a little unsteadily, from his seat. “Let’s go and pick them up, then!”

We made a strange party, all looking for the same things-a boatman and a boat, to take us to where the sorcerers were-but at odds over what we would do if we found them. We worked our way along the landing stage outside Lily’s house in a wary silence, while the noises of the banquet faded behind us and the water lapped loudly in the space under our feet.

Finding a boatman turned out to be as easy as finding a boat. Some of Lily’s guests, including my master, had sent their canoes home, but others had left theirs tied up against the landing stage. Many of their crews had been left as well, to wait with their charges until their masters were ready for them sometime after daybreak. Most had curled up and gone to sleep in the bottom of their boats, but we eventually found one awake.

He sat gazing up at the stars, as well he might. It was a clear winter’s night and the sky was ablaze. He seemed oblivious to our approach until he had my master standing next to him.

“We need this boat,” Lord Feathered in Black told him bluntly.

The man almost fell in. He was still recovering himself as the rest of us gathered around my master, holding onto the jetty with one hand as he tried to stop the canoe swaying under him.

“What do you mean, you need the boat? You can’t have it, it isn’t yours! Who do you think you are, the Emperor?”

“Almost,” said his Lordship dryly. “Handy, bring that torch over here.”

Handy was approximately sober. Before we had left the house Lion and I had poured four cups full of strong honeyed chocolate down his throat. My brother had suggested tipping a fifth over his head, but there had been no need. At least he was capable of speech and had not stumbled into the canal, and the torch we had borrowed swayed only a little as he held it over the Chief Minister’s headdress.

The boatman made an inarticulate noise.

“If this boat belongs to my cousin, the Emperor,” my master went on pleasantly, “then I will apologize to him personally in the morning. If it doesn’t, then it’s mine!”

“But it’s the middle of the night!” the poor man protested. “You can’t go anywhere in the dark!”

“Nonsense! The merchants travel by night all the time!”

The boatman went quiet. At night a woman’s voice heard out of doors was as likely as not to be a portent. She might be the goddess Cihuacoatl, or the soul of a dead mother returned to Earth to haunt the streets and bring sickness to men, or one of those hideous hunchbacked dwarfs that would accost a man visiting the latrines after dark to tell him he was about to die. Lily was none of these, but the boatman did not know that.