The Demon of the Air

NINE ALLIGATOR
1

You’re restless today.”

I had come out to sit against the fig tree but could not relax. Instead I tried to loosen up my limbs by walking around the edge of the courtyard.

Kindly felt no need of exercise.

“I wish you’d go and do that somewhere else,” he complained, “or at least walk round the other way. You’re making me dizzy!”

I turned around to limp in the opposite direction. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Constant hurrying toward the street entrance.

“Why don’t you have a drink?”

I surprised myself by refusing. “I need to think.”

“Suit yourself.”

My head was still full of the memories that had been stirred up over the last two days. Ever since they had abducted me, I had known that Nimble, at least, wanted me to tell him something, and that Curling Mist wanted me dead, but had not known why. Now I thought I could see why: if Curling Mist really was Young Warrior, and blamed me for his exile all those years ago, then he might well hate me. If Nimble was Maize Flower’s child, perhaps he wanted to find out what had happened to me, because he thought I might be his father, although it seemed strange that Curling Mist should have been willing to cooperate with him in this. If Shining Light was Curling Mist’s lover, then that could be why he had helped the other two, by agreeing to stage the farce Handy and I had witnessed on the Great Pyramid. I wondered what had happened since, and how the young merchant had changed from fellow conspirator to hostage. All Iknew about that was that it meant Curling Mist could use Lily against me, and that made my position in her house untenable.

What was I going to do? I had told Lily I would have to go away, but where could I go?

While I was fretting about this question, Constant reappeared, with another man scurrying behind him. He disappeared indoors before I got a proper look at him.

My mind kept returning to the things Lily and I had talked of the day before. I tried to remember Young Warrior, but after a dozen years or so all that came to mind was a priest, emaciated as we all were from the fasts, his face obscured by soot and dried blood. The pleasure girl I could recall a little more clearly: her braided hair swinging provocatively around her shoulders, the red flash of her cochineal-stained teeth when she smiled …

There had been a thousand girls in the market just like Maize Flower: why had I kept going back to her?

“Anybody would think you had woman trouble,” muttered Kindly sardonically.

“Maybe I have.”

He laughed: a short, harsh, barking sound. “Never my daughter? Well, good luck to you. You’ll need it. I was wondering why she’d taken to wandering around the courtyard at night.”

“It’s not like that at all,” I said impatiently. “She thinks I’m a nuisance-no, more than that. A threat.” My scalp itched where she had twisted my hair.

Kindly groaned. “You never repeated what I told you about Shining Light?”

“I had to,” I said helplessly. “I have to find out what Curling Mist is up to. He’s tried to kidnap me twice, remember?”

The old man mumbled something into his drink. It sounded like “Idiot.”

Constant’s harsh voice cut across my thoughts. “Yaotl! Come here!”

The servant was standing in the entrance to my room. Behind him, half hidden, lurked the shadowy figure of the stranger who had come in with him.

“What do you want?” I felt a twinge of foreboding. Who was the stranger?

“Time for your medicine!”

“What medicine?”

Constant stepped outside, giving me room to pass indoors and leaving the stranger behind him. “How should I know what medicine?” he answered testily. “Am I a physician? This man says the mistress sent for him, so get on with it!”

There was a snort of laughter from Kindly. “Better go, then, son. Once my daughter’s taken it into her head that something needs doing, you don’t want to start asking questions!”

“But I don’t need any medicine,” I protested, although I limped toward the door anyway. “Lily didn’t tell me anything about this.” And I could not ask her, as she had left the house before I had woken up.

She had gone to talk to Nimble. She had made no secret of it.

Now here was this stranger, claiming she had sent him to give me medicine I had not asked for.

Dreadful, cold certainty gripped my bowels as I realized this could hardly be a coincidence.

I had left it too late to run away. The confrontation I had sought when I first went to look for Lily was about to happen, and whether I felt strong enough or not, I had to face my enemy now.

Constant muttered: “Just get in there. The gods know what this is costing. She must have spent three times your worth keeping your miserable body and soul together already!”

Kindly laughed again.

Ignoring them both, I stepped through the doorway.

“Yaotl.”

The voice was like claws scrambling up my backbone. He was still talking like a priest, sounding as though there was something wrong with his mouth. I supposed it must have become a habit.

He squatted in the shadows, in the corner of the room. I sidled away from the doorway, keeping as much distance between us as I could and wishing the room were larger. I wondered whether he still had his knife. Fresh from the whitewashed brightness of the courtyard, my eyes told me nothing about him.

“What do you want?”

I heard a brief, unpleasant, throaty laugh. “To offer you some medicine!”

“No you don’t,” I said tautly, fighting to suppress the panic that was threatening to render me speechless. “I know who you are. I know what you’ve come for.” At my sides, my fingernails dug into my palms. I forced my clenched fists to relax slightly. I had no idea what was going to happen, or when, or how to prepare for it.

“Oh, but I think you’ll like this medicine, Yaoti-it’s mostly sacred wine!”

A hand snaked toward me out of the gloom, bearing a small gourd whose contents sloshed faintly.

I looked at it the way you might look at a live scorpion. Then I glanced through the doorway, as if reassuring myself that I had an escape route-a mistake, as the glare of the courtyard at midday blinded me again to whatever was to be seen in the room.

“Come on, Yaotl,” said the voice coaxingly. “I’m offering you a drink!”

The gourd was unstoppered. I could smell the contents, heady and sour. It smelled like good sacred wine, although there was a hint of something else, a slightly bitter undertone.

“I don’t want it!” I cried. “Just tell me what you want from me!”

Curling Mist erupted out of the darkness. He slammed into me, hurling me backward onto the floor, and the gourd was jammed against my lips, its contents running down my throat so that I must either swallow them or drown.

“Come on, drink it, you bastard!” he hissed.

Punching and kicking did no good. My hands and feet flailed uselessly in the darkness above me. The man holding me down was far too strong for my wasted, injured muscles. With a gourd jammed against my lips I could not even call for help. He held it there until it had emptied itself into me and then wrenched it away and tossed it aside.

“This is obsidian wine!” I spluttered. There was no mistaking the taste of the little mushrooms we called the Food of the Gods. I tried getting up again but there was a hand weighing me down like a rock on my chest. “Why?” I gasped.

“I think you know. You said it yourself: you’ve drunk the obsidian wine, the stuff they give captives before they die!”

I could feel the stuff reaching my belly, hot and indigestible, like a tortilla snatched straight from the griddle. I had to get rid of it before it started to spread through my veins, and the mixture of sacred wine and sacred mushrooms loosened my soul and deprived me of my will. I struggled furiously, contracting my stomach muscles and gulping air in the hope of making myself sick and expelling the poison.

“Not that I made you drink it because I’m going to kill you, Yaotl.” Curling Mist spoke in a throaty whisper. “I’d rather have you fully conscious. I want you to know exactly what’s happening to you, I don’t want you to miss a thing …”

I could feel myself weakening, the weight on my chest turning from a rock to a boulder, my head spinning, the tips of my fingers starting to tingle. Was it the drug or lack of breath which was doing this? Saliva filled my mouth and I swallowed it, bolting it down with more air as I fought to clear my stomach.

“But I made a promise, see? I told Nimble I wouldn’t kill you until you’d told us what he wanted to know. So I’ve given you something to get your tongue working. In a moment you won’t be able to help yourself.”

I bit my tongue to add blood to the fluid and air I was forcing into my stomach. The voice came to me over the roaring in my ears like the voice of a god speaking from the back of a cave.

“Do you remember the Priest House, Yaotl? Do you remember Young Warrior, and the girl in the market? You’re going to tell me all about her-what you did with her, everything!”

The mushrooms were beginning to work. I thought I heard footsteps and voices, a long way away, and someone calling my name: “Yaotl! What is it? What’s happening?”

I opened my mouth.

The twisting in my belly caught me by surprise, doubling me up with such force that the hand was thrown from my chest, and out of my mouth the poison, the sacred wine and the mushrooms and everything else poured in a jet that caught the other man just as he was struggling to keep his own balance.

As he cursed me I used the last of my strength to roll over and cry out, in a strangled voice, “Help! Help! Murder!”

Constant must have been waiting outside. I wanted to call out a warning but had no breath left to do it. My enemy hurled himself atthe slave, barged him out of the way and raced into the courtyard, but I knew from Constant’s cry that he had hit him with something more than his fists.

I staggered outside, my feet catching on Constant’s prone body and splashing through his blood.

“Help! Murder!” I croaked again. “Stop that man!”

The floor of the courtyard rose and fell beneath me as I blundered drunkenly across it, until finally I lost my footing and the ground came up and hit me in the face.

I lay there, with the sun-heated ground hard against my cheek and my voice still bleating vaguely about murder, until it occurred to me that no one was responding.

I got to my knees and looked around.

Kindly had left his seat by the wall and was bending over Constant. Without looking round he said: “Forget it. You were much too slow. He’s long gone.”

I stood up. My stomach heaved. The walls seemed to rush in toward me and then recede equally fast. I took a couple of steps toward the fig tree and leaned on it gratefully.

“Didn’t you try to stop him?”

“You must be joking!” He straightened up, putting a gnarled hand to the small of his back. “I’d be as dead as he is.” He prodded Constant with his toe. “That’s if I could have got near the man in the first place, and there was no chance of that.”

I stepped cautiously over to the body.

“Did you get a good look at him, at least?”

“With eyes like mine? I haven’t had a good look at anything in years. Besides, I was listening to you howling and watching Constant’s blood running away. I can’t be everywhere.”

“You didn’t see him at all?”

He sighed impatiently. “Tall man, long untidy hair, face blacked up, puke all over his cloak. Is that enough?”

I looked at the body curled up at our feet. “I’m sorry,” I added belatedly.

“So am I,” said Kindly. “He may have been a bit of an old woman but he had his uses. You knew where you were with him.” He tried bending down toward the body again, groaned, thought better of itand stood up. “My daughter will miss him. Look, make yourself useful and turn him over for me, will you?”

I obliged, although my head was still swimming. It took a little effort as the dead man was stuck to the floor with congealing blood. As he flopped over on to his back I heard Kindly give a triumphant growl.

“Thought so! What do you think of that?”

He did not have to show me what he meant. A knife jutted from under Constant’s second rib. To pull it free I had to jerk it up and down, feeling it scrape against bone as I did so. When it finally sprang out, like a decayed tooth from its socket, I saw that its blade was like nothing else in Mexico: a long glittering sliver of brown metal.

I held it up, grasping it gingerly between thumb and forefinger, and shivered. I knew this blade well: it had been held against my neck all through the long canoe journey from this house to the cove where I had seen the bird. It had come out at the marketplace, too, and on both occasions it had only been Nimble’s defiance of Curling Mist which had stopped it from being used. This time, I reflected sadly, the boy had not been around to prevent it.

“It’s bronze,” said Kindly. “It’s like copper, only much harder. The only people who know how to make it are the Tarascans-it’s a secret they don’t share with anyone. They won’t even trade the stuff, it’s so precious.”

“So it’s come a long way.” I put the knife down next to the body. “That man was no Tarascan, though.”

Constant’s eyes were wide open. As I looked at him I thought that even by Aztec standards I had seen a lot of dead people lately.

“That should have been me, shouldn’t it?” I said.

“It should,” said Kindly regretfully. “He was coming to help you, you know. He heard something amiss, so he went to investigate. He’d just got to the doorway when that madman came out, stabbed him and ran off. Constant was just in his way.”

I could hardly see the wound, despite all the blood. “He knew what he was about, didn’t he? Straight for the heart.”

“I need a drink.” The old man began walking slowly back to his place by the wall. A gourd lay there where he had dropped it.

I limped after him, to stand over him while he threw the liquid into the back of his throat and gasped with relief. He did not offerme any. I did not mind that in the least: after what had just happened, the thought of sacred wine made my stomach turn over.

At last, pulling the gourd from his lips with a sucking noise, he turned to look at me again, through eyes narrowed with disgust.

“So who was that man? I take it he wasn’t a doctor.”

“He was your grandson’s associate, Curling Mist.”

“Curling Mist?” He looked speculatively at his gourd, no doubt realizing for the first time that there was nobody to replenish it for him now. “Curling Mist? Here? Why?”

“Your daughter sent him,” I told him grimly. “So what he told Constant was half true. She told him where he could find me-and I don’t suppose for a moment she thought he was coming here to cure me of anything!”

I looked around me at the immaculately swept courtyard, all silence, cleanliness and order apart from a body lying in a pool of blackening blood in one corner. I did not know what to do. My bones still ached from the beating I had had, my head still swam from the sacred wine I had drunk, and I had nowhere to go. I knew only that if I stayed here I would be killed.

“I’m going,” I informed Kindly curtly.

“Wait!”

The urgency in his voice brought me up short. “What is it?” I asked suspiciously.

He waved his empty gourd toward Constant’s body. “Aren’t you going to clean up the mess? Someone will have to explain this!”

I started walking again. “You merchants police your own affairs, don’t you? Sort it out among yourselves. Only don’t involve me!”

I left, almost believing that could be the end of the matter.