The Demon of the Air

5

A broad canal ran past the front of the Chief Minister’s house. His Lordship could alight from his canoe and climb straight up the steps to his private apartments if he chose to. It was here that I had been hailed by the steward three days earlier, before that tense interview with my master at the top of the steps. Tonight my intention was just what it had been then: to find my sleeping mat and curl up on it under my cloak.

As soon as I saw the steps I knew this was not going to happen. They were covered in people standing or sitting on them, making them look like the tiers of stone seats surrounding a ball court.

Several pairs of eyes turned on me for a moment, before swiveling back silently toward the canal. As soon as I had climbed a little way up the steps and turned around to get a good look at the water, I saw why.

From behind me, someone said: “His Lordship should be back soon.” There was a general murmur of assent, as if our master’s arrival would help.

Without taking my eyes off the thing floating in the water, I said: “Has anyone sent for a priest?”

With neither my master nor his steward to be found, I found myself taking charge. I had them moor boats across the canal in two places, so as to keep the stretch opposite my master’s house clear of traffic. Then the two priests who had been sent for went out into the middle of the waterway in a canoe with a long pole to fish the dead man out.

“If it’s a drowning, it’s our job,” one of them reminded me. The bodies of the drowned, like their souls, belonged to the rain-god and no one except a priest could handle one.

“Just get the body back here,” I said wearily. “His Lordship willwant to know who he is and what happened to him on Earth, not where his soul is going.”

The priests had no trouble finding the body. It was floating in plain sight. It must have been dumped in the water earlier that evening, perhaps as soon as it had got dark, since otherwise someone would surely have seen it being left. Getting it out proved unexpectedly hard, however. The priests kept catching it with their pole only to find that it would not move. It was only after nearly capsizing their canoe twice that they stripped off their cloaks and started delving into the water to find out why.

Seen from the shore in starlight, the priests’ sooty bodies, long black hair and sticklike limbs made them look like cranes hunting fish on the lake.

Once they had located the rope, it took only a few moments to haul the stone up. It had been tied to the body’s ankle and used as an anchor.

They heaved the body over the side and into the bottom of their boat. They gave it the briefest of examinations before heading back toward the bank. As they scrambled onto dry land their relief was visible in their faces.

“You were right to call us, but it’s not a matter for us, after all,” the younger of the two told me. “He didn’t drown. His throat was cut.”

That explained why he and his colleague were relieved, for it meant they would not have to bury the body. Those who died by water were not cremated but interred, normally in their own courtyards, in a sitting position. Getting them that way, when they were as often as not slimy, bloated, stinking and half eaten by fish, was not a pleasant task.

“Someone fetch a torch,” I commanded, peering over the side of the boat.

The dead man was naked. It was easy to see that he had been thin, almost emaciated. The hair plastered to the side of his head was long. His eyes and mouth were wide open, as if in terror.

The throat had been slashed cleanly across. That may have been the fatal wound, but it was by no means the only one. The body was covered with strange marks, like scars of varying sizes, from tiny punctures to tracts of ugly puckered flesh.

“Not been in the water very long, if you ask me,” the young priest said conversationally, peering over my shoulder. “He’s not swollen up, and the skin’s barely discolored. Doesn’t smell too bad, either.”

I stretched a hand out behind me, without a word, and someone put a pine torch in it. I clambered into the boat. The priests had got the head and torso aboard but left the feet dangling in the water. I pulled them over the side one at a time, looking closely at the rope tied around one of the ankles as I did so.

“Whoever decided to leave a corpse floating opposite my master’s house meant us to find it,” I observed.

“You think it was some sort of message?” It was the young priest again.

“Part of a message, at most,” I replied. “A corpse by itself doesn’t amount to much of a message, does it?”

I looked at the naked body, frowning. After what I had seen that day it was hard to feel anything for this unknown victim except bewilderment. Had he really been killed just to convey a message? And if so, where was the rest of it-the key to whatever threat or warning he represented? I thought of a letter, but there was no obvious place where one could be hidden. My eyes roamed over the torso and limbs, searching for some pattern in the wounds covering them, but there was nothing there. Then I looked at the head again and saw the answer.

“I wonder …” I reached down and parted the dead man’s long, lank hair. It was wet and sticky and clung to my fingers like cobwebs as they delved into it. They brushed against an ear, and the slick skin behind it, and something else-a coarser, less pliant surface than the skin. Of course, I thought, as I drew the little cloth square out and unfolded it, it would not be paper. Paper would have disintegrated in the water.

Sure enough, someone had drawn on the cloth. It had been hastily done and the ink had got a little smudged but the message was clear enough for me to read. It was simple enough: just a name-glyph.

“At least we know his name, now.”

Then I looked at the drawings again. A single spot, a skull, a crude little stick figure wielding a sword and standing on a path decorated with chevrons.

“Cemiquiztli Yaotl.” I mouthed the words over and over again like an idiot, while the cloth shook in my hands.

“Cemiquiztli” meant “One Death” and “Yaotl” meant “Enemy,” but taken together they spelled out my own name.

“Is this someone’s idea of a joke?” I demanded. I began climbing out of the canoe, too shocked to look where I was going. “Did someone tell you to put this with the body?” I waved the piece of cloth in the priest’s face.

The priest was not there anymore. The face opposite mine as I stepped onto the edge of the canal was my master’s. Next to him was his steward. They were both staring at me, their expressions comically alike, with their eyes starting from their heads and their lower jaws slack with amazement.

The steward recovered first. Stepping delicately around our master, he reached for the cloth square, plucking it from my hand.

“I think we’d better have this, Yaotl.”

The Chief Minister seemed to have lost the power of speech. He kept staring at the body in the bottom of the boat with his mouth hanging open like an imbecile’s. His steward silently pressed the note from the body into his nerveless fingers. Someone else took the torch from me and held it over my master’s head so that he could read it.

He ignored the note as if unaware that he had it. He seemed oblivious to everything around him except the corpse. Nobody else dared to speak, even in a whisper, and so the only sound was his own breathing. It did not sound healthy-quick and shallow and with an ugly rattle in it.

Finally he broke the silence himself. “Who did this?” he gasped.

“My Lord,” the steward responded in his most simpering tone, “perhaps the note I gave you …”

My master glanced down at the piece of cloth he was holding as if noticing it for the first time. He looked at the body again, and then turned his sharp, glittering eyes on me. It struck me then that they never seemed to age: however lined his face and frail his body got, they were always the same, as though made out of some hard, bright, imperishable stuff like jade or polished marble. Now their gaze was hooded, malevolent and calculating, and made me feel as cold as if I, and not the corpse, had spent the evening floating in the canal. The fear that had assailed me at Handy’s house came back redoubled.

“Cemiquiztli Yaotl.” My master’s lips moved soundlessly over the name.

“M-my Lord,” I stammered. “We found that note on the body-the body was in the canal. I had priests sent for …”

“Yes, yes, I know all that.” My master looked at the note again. “Why has it got your name on it?”

“I don’t know,” I replied in a wretched whisper.

“I do.” The grim certainty in his words matched his expression. When he looked at me again his lips were pressed together in a thin line. “Huitztic!”

“My Lord?” the steward responded eagerly.

“Escort Yaotl to his room-and make sure he stays there until I send for him!”

“But …” I began, but the Chief Minister did not want to hear me. The old man who had had a whole family done to death in Coyoacan quelled my protest with a glare, while his sneering steward propelled me out of his sight, a calloused hand clamped firmly on my arm.

My master’s last words seemed to hang in the air behind us.

“Cemiquiztli Yaotl! I will deal with you in the morning!”